RADIO
Welcome to this year's iteration of the RotoBaller Fantasy Football Awards! No trophies will be handed out due to an abundance of safety precautions. That and we were too cheap to spring for them.
We can still celebrate virtually though and we'll do just that by recognizing the highlights and lowlights of the 2020 season. I recently polled our crack team of analysts to get their takes on who is the rightful Fantasy MVP, Rookie of the Year, and much more along with some new, completely made-up awards.
Let's see who takes home the hardware (not really)! For what it's worth, I've been promised that next year we'll host this inside a fountain at the Bellagio and solid-gold footballs will be delivered to the winners via drone. Mark your calendars for a yet-to-be-determined date in the near future.
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Fantasy MVP: Alvin Kamara/Josh Allen
A tie?? In typical 2020 fashion, even this can't be easy. There was no consensus on who the best fantasy player was because nobody truly separated from the pack like Christian McCaffrey did last year.
Sure, Dalvin Cook and Derrick Henry had monster seasons but they weren't even in the top-five. Davante Adams came in third place due to his weekly dominance but the fact he missed a pair of games midseason and put up a dud in the crucial Week 15 were enough to knock him down a peg in some voters' minds.
Alvin Kamara was as consistent as it gets at an otherwise volatile running back position, providing a huge floor in PPR leagues. He only finished outside the top 10 fantasy RBs three times all year. Not coincidentally at all, two of those performances came with Taysom Hill as the starting quarterback but that's a matter for another article... Kamara then became the embodiment of a league-winner by scoring an absurd six touchdowns in Week 16, also known as Championship Week for most fantasy football leagues. He gets my vote all day.
There may be some recency bias at play with Josh Allen splitting the vote based on the way he finished the year but that also speaks to how great he was in the fantasy postseason. Between Weeks 13-16, he finished as a top-two fantasy QB three out of four times by throwing for more than 300 passing yards and four touchdowns in each of those games. He barely let up in Week 17 either, in a game he was supposed to be resting! Allen broke out in a huge way and surely helped many happy fantasy GMs to a title. Just not bitter Dolfans.
Rookie of the Year: James Robinson
To absolutely nobody's surprise, the top fantasy rookie was a running back. To absolutely everybody's surprise, it wasn't Clyde Edwards-Helaire, J.K. Dobbins, or Jonathan Taylor. Just before the season began, an undrafted free agent out of Illinois by the name of James Robinson was suddenly named the starter at running back in Jacksonville once Leonard Fournette was released. The move to ditch Fournette wasn't altogether unexpected but the timing was. With Ryquell Armstead placed on the COVID list and Devine Ozigbo hitting IR with a hamstring injury just before Week 1, the starting gig was gift-wrapped for Robinson. He responded by placing sixth in the league in rush attempts and yardage, going from an unknown to a reliable bell-cow overnight.
Justin Herbert had a great year, throwing for 4,336 yards and 31 touchdowns but faded a little down the stretch and wasn't as valuable at QB. Justin Jefferson makes the strongest case to challenge Robinson but he's going to have to settle for a different award.
Best Draft Sleeper: Justin Jefferson
As our Keith Hernandez put it, "When you finish just behind D.K. Metcalf in overall fantasy points in your first season, you're doing something right." Not only did Jefferson far exceed Metcalf's rookie output and nearly match his 2020 production, he broke Randy Moss' rookie records with 88 receptions and 1,400 yards. The crazy thing is that Jefferson wasn't even drafted in some leagues. In NFFC leagues, his ADP was 133 overall, right alongside Jalen Reagor.
While he was certainly a breakout candidate, nobody expected him to perform to the extent that he did. Hitting on a draft sleeper is the most rewarding feeling for a fantasy manager, especially when that hit turns into dollars from prize money!
That said, it'll cost a pretty penny to roster Jefferson in 2021 so it's time to start researching which player could be next year's biggest sleeper.
Keep Dreaming: Mecole Hardman
Instead of a rookie like Justin Jefferson or Brandon Aiyuk or a veteran with a new home like Robby Anderson or Emmanuel Sanders, many GMs took the plunge on the Chiefs' WR2 as their favorite draft sleeper. I mean, he's got Pat Mahomes throwing to him!
Instead of leaping forward in his sophomore season, Hardman put up almost identical yardage with 560 over a full 16 games. That's a paltry 35 yards per game or 97th among all players, behind guys like Richie James. He didn't do himself any favors by dropping the ball at an 11.3% rate, ranking fifth among wide receivers and worse than Diontae Johnson.
It's not like he made up for it in the scoring department, cashing in just four times on the year, two less than his rookie campaign. Being part of a prolific offense is always a positive, but it isn't a guaranteed recipe for success. Just ask those who drafted Clyde Edwards-Helaire as their RB1.
Biggest Draft Bust: Ezekiel Elliott
The fact that there were so many different answers to this question tells us how frustrating fantasy football can be. That was especially the case in 2020 when about half of the players who were taken in the first round on average wound up being useless for most, if not all of the season. Unfortunate injuries were to blame in the cases of Christian McCaffrey, Saquon Barkley, Joe Mixon, Michael Thomas, and Julio Jones so I don't consider them true busts. The same can't be said for Zeke, who suited up in 15 games this year yet failed to reach 1,000 yards on the ground. In fact, he didn't even record as many rushing yards as he did in 2017 when he played just 10 games.
Elliott started strong, averaging 107.4 scrimmage yards along with six total touchdowns over the first five games. We know what happened in that Week 5 game, though. Once Dak Prescott was gone, so was Elliott's fantasy value. He would average less than four yards per carry from that point on, tallying 78 total yards a game while only scoring twice. That's not what we signed up for with a top-five pick. With Prescott back in the fold for 2021 and some presumed improvements made to the offensive line, seeing him fall to the lower portion of the first round may make for a bargain.
For what it's worth, Clyde Edwards-Helaire should also get a nod here as the runner-up. If there were a category for most overhyped rookie, CEH would win in a runaway. As it stands, the helium around him as the season approached made him one of the biggest draft busts of 2020 as his ADP inflated all the way to the first round in many 12-team leagues.
Waiver Savior: Mike Davis
I thought James Robinson would be the obvious choice here but apparently he was drafted in enough leagues, at least by our experts, not to win outright. Davis was indeed a saving grace to CMC owners who were suddenly without their top pick for most of the season. He filled in nicely for what unfortunately turned out to be a 12-game stint, eclipsing 1,000 total yards on the season while scoring eight times. While it didn't work out quite so well for guys like Devonta Freeman or Boston Scott, there's still a strong case to be made for rostering an insurance policy at RB behind your first-rounder.
Most Consistent: Travis Kelce
Imagine having a tight end who you could actually set and forget each week. Kelce was so dominant at his position, he even garnered a couple of MVP votes and finished fourth in that category. Kelce finished second in the league with 1,416 receiving yards The only other tight end who broke the 1,000-yard mark was Darren Waller. No other tight end even reached 750 yards. Plus, Kelce's 11 TD tied for fifth among WR/TE.
The best part was that there weren't extreme peaks and valleys. Kelce only fell under 50 yards in a game once, had fewer than five receptions twice, and scored a TD in 10 out of 15 games. If he was a borderline first-rounder in 2020, it's safe to say a lot of people will be "Catching Kelce" early in 2021.
Biggest Headache: Carson Wentz
Sure, this seems obvious now but let's harken back to the days when Wentz was the QB10 on average in fantasy drafts. He was a "safe" QB1 relative to old men like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. Can it be that it was all so simple then?
We know how the season unfolded for Wentz, culminating in an unceremonious benching during a Week 13 loss to Green Bay. While you could have had Rodgers throwing for 295 yards and three touchdowns, if you drafted Wentz you were watching the end of his tenure as the starter in Philly while Jalen Hurts did things that Eagles fans didn't think were possible. The injuries at wide receiver! The offensive live! The play-calling! Maybe it was just Wentz all along...
The real headache wasn't that Wentz was drafted to be a starter, it was enduring weeks of him in the lineup and waiting for him to snap out of the funk. Waiting for Alshon Jeffery, DeSean Jackson, and Jalen Reagor to return. Waiting for something, anything!
There was a glimmer of hope in Week 7 when he threw for 359 yards, two touchdowns, and ran in a score against the Giants. Then, it was back to the suckitude. After Week 8, fantasy GMs had enough and he was dropped in most leagues. By then, the pounding migraine might have been too much to dull.
Blacklisted!: Todd Gurley
Serious question: does Gurley even get drafted in 2021? After being released by the Rams in the offseason, he signed a one-year "prove-it" deal with the Falcons. What he proved was that he was done as a starting running back in the NFL.
Gurley went over 80 rushing yards exactly once all season, limping to a sad stretch where he averaged under 30 total yards per game over the last six. He lost his job to Ito Smith and is now an unrestricted free agent. No matter where he ends up, he will join Dion Lewis, Chris Ivory, and Alfred Morris as the "winner" of my uncoveted Blacklist award.
He Sus Award: Leonard Fournette
The hottest game of 2020 was Among Us. Despite my 15-year-old's well-intentioned attempts to indoctrinate me into the game's universe, I was never able to survive more than 17 seconds without being viciously massacred. Maybe I should stop visiting that Electrical room.
No, Kirk Cousins! Why???
This award was going to go to Diontae Johnson for his league-leading drop total but he fixed that problem by season's end and looks to be entrenched as Pittsburgh's WR1. Instead, Fournette somehow had an even higher drop rate at 12.8%, averaged just 3.8 yards per carry, and was never able to win the starting job over Ronald Jones.
I can vouch for the fact that anybody who had Fournette on his/her roster was truly scared to put him in the lineup at any point during the season. Just to twist the knife after killing your team all year, he scored a pair of touchdowns in Week 15 when almost nobody was playing him. At least nobody who had drafted him in the first place.
The Bermuda Triangle Award: New York Giants
A nod to last year's Awards Show host Nick Mariano for this one. Sometimes a team can draw you in with the allure of fantasy points amid tasty matchups for talented skill players only to leave you as aimless as a teenager driving without GPS.
The Giants lost Saquon Barkley in Week 1 so the running game was never going to be the same but the signing of former Pro Bowler Devonta Freeman looked promising. He played four games, averaging 3.2 yards per carry, and hit IR for the remainder of the season. Darius Slayton, Golden Tate, and Sterling Shepard looked to be solid WR3 types but none were truly playable on a consistent basis. Evan Engram is one of the most athletic tight ends in the game and should have benefited from Barkley's absence, especially once Shepard hit IR. Instead, he posted a very meh TE15 fantasy finish in PPR. In standard scoring, he was TE18 behind Tyler Higbee who literally had ONE GOOD GAME ALL YEAR. I won't pretend Daniel Jones ever was or should have been fantasy-relevant.
Pandemic Special Award: Dez Bryant
Randy Marsh gets his face on this plaque but the award has to go to the 32-year-old former Cowboy who managed to be ruled out for Week 13 due to COVID despite never having it. While warming up on the field minutes before facing his former team, the Dallas Cowboys, Bryant was pulled due to an inconclusive test. He then tested negative twice and was cleared to play... after the game had taken place.
Some have intimated that a false positive test was to blame and that Jerry Jones may somehow have been involved in order to prevent his former star WR from getting revenge and throwing the X up. I have not found any concrete evidence whatsoever to support that but that is no longer a prerequisite to claim something as truth in modern America. Conspiracy theorists unite!
That does it for this year's Fantasy Football Awards. We may never agree on who is most deserving of an award or if it even matters but if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that we're done with 2020. Let's hope it stays that way.
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