Shawn Siegele looks at the massive weekends from Leonard Fournette, Cordarrelle Patterson, Elijah Mitchell, and A.J. Dillon as fantasy leagues head for the playoffs.
If there was any question about what worked in 2021, the dramatic answer arrived in Week 12 with a 44-point performance from Leonard Fournette. All told, four of the top-seven RB performances came from deep options, with Cordarrelle Patterson, Elijah Mitchell, and A.J. Dillon all cresting 20 points. James Conner was on a bye in Week 12, but he joins the late-round group as an RB1 on the season.
We also had another big day from Jonathan Taylor and Austin Ekeler, as the former showed that even Tampa’s elite run defense can’t stop him and the latter continued to lay claim to the pass-catching crown abandoned by Christian McCaffrey and Alvin Kamara.
As Ben Gretch and I have been discussing on Stealing Bananas, 2021 has been one of the craziest fantasy seasons ever. There were so many different ways to win – or lose – with deep, powerful teams being more important than ever. Structural drafting has been key in overcoming the onslaught of high-profile injuries.
With the FFPC regular season coming to a dramatic conclusion in Week 12, I had the good fortune of fielding five different Main Event teams with chances to finish first, but because of the tightness of so many races, it wasn’t guaranteed that all of those teams would even make the playoffs if things went wrong. And it didn’t take long for the carnage to start with D’Andre Swift going down a handful of minutes into the first Thanksgiving game.
As Swift was the focal point of so many squads, the outlook had shifted suddenly and dramatically for the worse, but that would just add tension for the remaining results. As Sterling Archer has said about catastrophe, “We’ll cross that bridge when we never come to it, because it doesn’t exist.” If you’re a structural drafter, you’re well on your way to living Sterling’s charmed existence. Of course, if you have Taylor and Dillon and four elite WRs, it makes it easier to feel charmed.
Could Joe Mixon spoil the party?
