Provided you run any semblance of a normal fantasy football league, this week marks the final week of the fantasy season, where championships are won or lost, and people get bragging rights to last a year. The Windy City Gridiron Writers' League is no different - lots of surprises, some crazy moves, and a lot of fun.
The matchups for this week are...
Championship Game
1) TJ Shouse - Drunken Polar Bears vs 2) Mallomania - Purple Cobras
3rd Place Game
4) Steven Schweickert - Punters for MVP vs 6) Just Dave - MobyDickInAFishBowl
7th Place Game
7) Brendan Hess - Wildcards vs 8) Kev H - Cuddly Babystealers
9th Place Game
10) Adam T - Hire Denny Green vs 9) Sam Householder - Super Bowl Shufflers
Awards and other assorted craziness after the jump.
First off, the standings for those not playing this week...
5th Place: David Taylor - Toughactin' Tinactins
6th Place: Dominique Blanton - Mel Kiper's lost son
11th Place: Steve Ronkowski - The Sex Cannon
12th Place: Ashley Czuba - HoneyBear Maulers
And now for the awards!
Fantasy GM: David Taylor. Made 35 moves on the year, including a league-high six trades, many of which brought some high-end talent to his roster.
Shrewdest GM: TJ. Only had 18 transactions, but finished first overall in the standings.
Homer GM: Kev H. For the love of Ditka, he started Caleb Hanie against me. That has to be a shoe-in.
Best Trade: David Taylor gets Chris Johnson, I get Darren Sproles and Daniel Thomas. Sproles gave me some top RB production to pair with MJD given our PPR setup, and David got a buy-low candidate that provided a little kick down the stretch to make him the 5-seed.
Best Free Agent Pickup: I can't give an answer for the league here, but personally, Nate Burleson gave me a couple good games when Maclin was sketchy and Harvin was shaky. For a fourth/bench receiver, can't ask for much more than that.
Biggest Surprise: David Taylor. For a fantasy rookie, he had a pretty strong showing. Make it to the playoffs, it's something to be proud of.
Biggest Disappointment: Brendan Hess. 7th place amongst us scrubs.
Scoring Leader: Mallomania scored 1605.52 points, 64.12 more than second place Dom Blanton.
Luckiest Player: Adam T, who only had 1305.02 points scored against him. We were nice, he can have us all fired.
Best Trash Talk: David Taylor, to Just Dave:
Haha. You'd think I vote for you? Your starting QB is a Jack loving hippie, and your defense is going against Sizzle. Nuff said.
Scoring Oddities: Well, playing decimal scoring leads to these situations... (Kev H, during Ashley vs Just Dave in September)
Haha, going into Monday night Ashley is winning by .02 points. Too bad she has someone playing, because I think that would be the closest margin I've ever seen.
Revenge Well Played: Mallomania changed his team slogan to...
The King sits on his throne
Which was promptly answered by TJ...
Ruh Roh, looks like the King could be back at the kid's table soon.
Best Self-Aimed Shot: Because if I can't make fun of myself at some point... After last week's playoff loss to TJ.
Welp, I got my one playoff win to make the fanbase happy. Now I'm content to suck for the next 100 years
And with the fun out of the way... On a serious note, we started this because Dave brought it up early in preseason and I kinda took it over, and we had a few stammers in getting it going but once we got it in the air, this was a blast to run and it was a lot of fun. We'll do it again next year (provided I remember to and provided all the folks want to) and maybe with more regular updates and stuff.
So come Monday, this ends, whether it be with TJ upholding the writers' standard, or member entry Mallomania taking one over the writer cadre.