RADIO
The XFL regular season was supposed to be in its final weeks, but instead it has been shut down just like all major sports leagues. That means we have half a season's worth of data to pore over and memories to hold onto.
While it has not been a long ride during this inaugural season, the XFL proved that it was a worthwhile product. The XFL is here to stay and we here at RotoBaller are all for it. With that in mind, it makes sense to cover what the first XFL season has given us by taking a look at the best (and worst) players and teams to feature in the league during this 2020 year by handing out some awards.
I will be recapping the abbreviated XFL season with fantasy awards with the hope that you can get to know the players better and who to keep an eye on going forward. You can also read about my XFL MVP awards and Most Promising Players.
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including Best NFL Series, MLB Series, NBA Writer, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!
Most Disappointing Player - Winner: Rashad Ross (WR, DC)
This must be one of the biggest upsets to have happened during the XFL inaugural season, which is not surprising considering Ross's career before he took on an XFL field for the first time. Ross attended Arizona State in college after signing as a JUCO, played a couple of seasons for the Sun Devils, and went undrafted in 2013. He played in the NFL in 2014, 2015, and 2016 racking up 192 receiving yards on nine receptions and adding a nice 812 extra-yards in the return game to go with three touchdowns on his career.
After a short stint as a member of the AAF Arizona Hotshots in 2019, he entered XFL fantasy drafts ranked as the No. 1 wide receiver and was drafted very high overall, getting off the board even with the first pick in some cases. All for nothing, that was. Ross finished the season with a paltry 37.2 PPR (33th overall, WR19) averaging 7.4 PPG on his five games played for the DC Defenders.
Ross' season compared to the rest of the players at his position was rather bad, and it looks even worse if we also take his ADP into consideration. Although DC relied heavily on him by throwing 22 targets his way, he could only catch 12 passes for 193 yards and a single touchdown on the year.
Even among DC players, Ross finished the season second to Eli Rogers (37.9) in PPR and third if we also include Cardale Jones (39.7) in the equation. Ross has had plenty of chances to thrive at every level and football league but he has never truly made the most of them. This was just another bump in a road that is turning out to be not so smooth for the receiver.
Most Disappointing Player - Runner Up: Sammie Coates (WR, HOU)
Speaking of high-pedigree receivers... Sammie Coates attended Auburn, became a SEC champ in 2013, was drafted by Pittsburgh in the third round of the 2015 NFL draft (87th pick), and stayed in the league until the end of the 2018 season after playing for the Steelers, the Browns, and the Texans. A year-long hiatus in 2019 led to Coates entering the XFL in 2020 as part of which would ultimately be the best team in the league, the Houston Roughnecks. No wonder he was getting drafted as a top-five player back in February in fantasy leagues.
Yes, the plot is correct. Coates's 12.1 PPR on the season formed his five-week total tally, not his per-game average. Coates was so bad that he finished the year as just the 79th-best player in the whole league and WR44! Houston was a bone-crunching offensive machine but Coates could only haul in six of his 19 targets on the year (four games played) for a rather mediocre 61 yards and no scores. He might keep his value up just on name, but he's lacking everything in actual game.
Most Disappointing Player - Third Place: Christine Michael (RB, STL)
Okay, folks. This had to happen. It was written from the get-go. We had to have a Super Bowl champion in the XFL... to put on an array of duds when facing seemingly-lower competition. It is how things work. And it is what Christine Michael did as a member of the St. Louis BattleHawks.
Even if you don't follow to the limit, if you're not a detail-obsessed fan of the league, or if you just consider yourself a casual fan, you must have heard about Michael in the past. He was an important member of the Super Bowl champion Seahawks back in 2015 and part of an NFL franchise from 2013 to 2018. Thus his preseason ADP of a top-five player and his RB3 rank entering the first XFL season.
The letdown was big, to say the least. Michael finished 2020 as the 44th-best player overall and RB13 even playing more games than two other running backs to finish above him. Not only that, but Michael was also part of the most run-heavy team of the XFL, St. Louis, which allowed him to log the fourth-most rushing attempts with 59. That didn't seem to help him a lot, though, as he was the only rusher with under 200 rushing yards (178) of those with more than 46 carries, finished the year with just one single rushing touchdown, and his contribution in the passing game was almost inexistent.
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