What a terrible game. The biggest plays were a TD pass by the running back, a fumble on a nicely executed inside run by a wide receiver, a two-point conversion return and a fumble-out-of-the-end-zone touchback. The Saints only TD drive was gifted by a ticky-tack pass interference penalty on an uncatchable ball too. At least the Panthers covered, but it was a brutal watch, and that was on the 40-minute condensed version.

I just have to laugh at some of my fantasy football teams. One top-seeded semi-final team lost Kareem Hunt two weeks ago and started both Aaron Jones and Keenan Allen. Its top scorers were Justin and Lamar Jackson. The team I lost to wasn’t great, either, but Derrick Henry and Jaylen Samuels were pretty much enough by themselves. The longer I play fantasy football and the more teams I own, the less I sweat it. Work the waiver wire, set your lineups, let the results play out how they will. 

I had arguably my worst beat of the year in the first game with the Jets getting six against the Texans. They lost by seven after their normally reliable kicker missed two PATs, and that’s not counting the tack-on FG the Texans got when the Jets turned it over on downs with just enough time left.

What a crazy game. I watched the condensed version the next morning, but accidentally caught the final score, so you can imagine I was wondering how it got there for most of the second half. In the end, it was Philip Rivers who played like the league MVP, not Pat Mahomes.

We as an industry spend a lot of time reviewing our just-finished drafts, but while we’ll occasionally incorporate our experiences from those leagues in our other articles and definitely in discussions on radio shows and podcasts, we often don’t do league recaps. And those recaps that we do are usually from our expert league titles – nice victory laps, and fun to write/read, but usually low on substance. It’s not often that we give you the full picture though – how did we do in all of our leagues?

It’s not as if we’re purposefully cherry-picking, trying to add polish to our overall record. At least, I don’t think that’s the case with most everyone in the industry. Rather I think it’s more of a time allocation issue. We are in a ton of leagues, and many of us cover and play in multiple sports. So we move on to the next league, the next draft kit, etc…

When it comes to our advice, our recommendations, our ratings, we like to say it’s the reasoning behind it that matters. Process is important, we say. And it’s true. It is really important. But you know what else matters? Results! How did our practice translate in our leagues? And guess what, we probably will learn more from our failures than our successes, and each season provides us plenty chances to learn. I’m in 14 leagues this year – here are my results so far.