Jack Nicklaus Sportsmanship Award. Winner: Detroit KneeBiters. Immediately after Demar Hamlin's cataclysmic injury, the Detroit KneeBiters sent out a message proposing that our season culminate with title game foes DKB and Leviathans sharing the title if the Bills-Bengals game were not resumed. Although the score was very close, DKB actually led on the scoreboard heading into the Monday night game and, as it happens, ESPN's official ruling after the game was eventually cancelled was to simply award zero points to the players in the Monday night game. That would have made DKB our league's champions, a not unjustifiable outcome in our league's case, given that DKB and Levi both had their quarterback and top wide receiver scratched due to the cancellation. Your commissioner should have at least suggested the option of awarding DKB the title at that point. But, as much as that possibility should have been suggested, it's equally true that DKB would not have accepted it. In a further act of sportsmanship, just to provide extra entertainment to us all, DKB then rolled the dice on an ad hoc 2v2 playoff to settle the tie in Week 18. The short-term results were not good for DKB, but good karma should accrue to him for years to come.
Tom Osborne Award. Winner: Leviathans. Not to be outdone, the Leviathans could have settled for a very satisfying co-championship. Instead, they enthusiastically proposed a run-off featuring Burrow and Chase v. Allen and Diggs in Week 18. This arrangement, due to incentives and a small deficit in points, arguably favored his opponent's Burrow-Chase pairing. The fantasy gods expressed their approval of Levi's gamble by delivering a 49-yard Allen to Diggs TD in the fourth quarter of the Bills-Patriots game. That's three championships for Leviathans, now. By the way, can somebody make sure that Levi doesn't get Josh Allen next year?
Alydar Award. Winner: Atomnation. They were so fast out of the gate. Atomnation scored the first or second most points in four out of the first five weeks. At that point, they had the 1st ranked receiver, 1st ranked kicker, 1st and 3rd ranked defenses, 2nd ranked QB, and 5th and 9th ranked running backs. Additional players on Atom's roster not accounted for in the preceding sentence would eventually finish as the 7th and 8th ranked receivers and the 8th ranked running back. Through Week 12 of the season, Atom had finished first in scoring four times, second four times and third three times. That's 11 out of 12 weeks in the top 3. But, as our former commissioner once said, a fantasy football season is like a marathon run through a minefield. In Atomnation's case, that minefield manifest itself in a high-ankle sprain to then-top ranked wide receiver Cooper Kupp. Atom was never bad the rest of the way. In fact, they only scored less than 95 points twice all season. But they weren't good enough - and that's why they finished third.
Atomanacity Award. Winner: Los Diablos. Speaking of Atomnation, for every season with a rocketship start like this one, there are about three when Atom doesn't wake up until they just about out of the playoff race. Those Atom teams, however, tend to fight their way back to respectability. Atom started off 1-7 in 2017 and came back to win the NIT; started 1-4 in 2018 and won the NIT; and started 0-4 in 2021 and made a run for the playoffs. This year's Diablos were nothing to write home about. But they had a lot of pride. After suffering a devastating loss by a missed extra point in Week 8, sinking their record to 2-6, Diablos captured two weekly wins, finished the season on a four-game winning streak and took home an NIT title (along with the curse of the 1st overall draft pick, which can be traded, by the way).
First Overall Curse Award. Winner: BCain. This award is preordained to go to the team with the first overall draft pick, which was BCain this year. BCain took Jonathan Taylor with that selection, as did most similarly situated teams across the country. But Taylor was more of a Menard than a Penske this year. His 2,200 yards and 20 TDs turned into 1,000 yards and four TDs before he sputtered out for good in Week 13. But BCain's owner, B. Cain, glued the broken team back together. And with a late three-game winning streak, they were knocking on the playoff door after starting 2-7. BCain was on the brink of extending that winning streak to four games, but JT's Indianapolis Colts suffered a complete collapse against the Dallas Cowboys - which was bad for BCain because their opponent that week was full of Dallas Cowboys. That ended BCain's 2022 playoff hopes, but not their dreams.
Golden State Warrriors Award. Winner: Motor City Kitties. It was smooth sailing for the expansion MCK this year as they breezed to a first place 11-3 record and racked up the second-most points in the league. But that was just a prelude to the playoffs, and the playoffs did not go well. Well, the first week of the playoffs was fine. They scored 112 points that week. But that was their bye week. The next week, they ran into the Josh Allen- Cam Akers and T.J. Hockenson-led Leviathans. And that was the end of MCK in 2022. The gears are turning in MCK's labs, however. They say they are a dynasty in the making.
Just Win Baby Award. Winner: Lights Out. In general, Lights Out did not light up the scoreboard in 2022, finishing just tenth in points scored. But they scored enough points at the right times to win enough games - six in a row at one point - to make the playoffs. Most impressive was how Lights Out dealt with a power outage at quarterback. They drafted Trey Lance. He was gone by the second week of the season. They drafted Matthew Stafford. He never really even arrived. This is their list of quarterbacks to close the season: Marcus Mariota, Tyler Huntley, Ryan Tannehill and Gardner Minshew. Lights Out even pulled out a weekly win in Week 16 with Minshew at the helm. The future is bright for this team on the upswing.
Jeff Fisher Award. Winner: Orion River Horses. What jumps out about the Orion River Horses' 2022 season is just how spectacularly average they were. They didn't have any weekly wins. But they scored enough to beat their opponent about half the time - or exactly half, if you just count the regular season. (Award background, there is a holiday called Jeff Fisher Day. It's on August 8 because Fisher's teams always finished 8-8.) In points scored, the Horses ranked 7th, which is as close as you can be to average. But sometimes average teams make the playoffs, especially in a league where exactly half of the teams qualify. And in Week 14, all the Horses needed to capture the final playoff spot was for BCain to beat Air Apparent. Midway through the third quarter of the Monday night game, BCain trailed Apparent by less than 0.9 points. BCain had James Connor (who had already scored 17 points) and the Cardinals defense. Air Apparent had no players left. Just nine yards from Conner or a touchdown by Connor or just one turnover by the Cardinals defense or a safety or even just one sack, and OHR would go to the playoffs. And then Arizona ran back an interception for a touchdown, seemingly clinching a playoff spot for OHR. But that turnover was overturned on replay. The Cardinals defense did nothing else and Conner only got five more yards the rest of the way - leaving BCain (and OHR) 0.38 points short.
Nostradamus Award: Winner: Eagles Super Bowl Champs. After the draft, IBM Watson forecast Eagles Super Bowl Champs to finish first in the league. What the owners of the Eagles may not have realized is that fulfilling Watson's promise would require actually managing their team. The Eagles got off to a tough start (0-7), partly because their players underperformed and more so because their owner did not fill lineup gaps when the Eagles players were not performing at all. What was remarkable is just how good the zombie Eagles were. From Week 8 to Week 12, they won three out of five and even took home weekly high honors in Week 10. At that point, the team had made exactly one roster change and only a handful of lineup adjustments all season. This team ended up with one of the hottest quarterbacks going, along with running backs who finished the season ranked 9th, 11th and 12th overall. With just a few tweaks, who knows where the Eagles might have landed.
Kelly Tripucka Award. Winner: Golden Grahams. Natives of the Detroit area, which comprise most of our league, might recall when a rookie from Notre Dame stepped into the Detroit Pistons' starting lineup and began scoring in bulk. He even poured in 56 points in a single game against the Chicago Bulls. But those points just never translated into enough wins to get the team over .500. The phrase "just good enough to lose" was bandied about in reference to the Notre Dame guy, and he was eventually shipped away (for Adrian Dantley, by the way, who also was from Notre Dame). This year's Golden Grahams scored the third-most points in the league, more than both teams in the championship game. They started off 5-3, which was just fine. And then this happened: L, L, L, L, L, W, L, L. Now, an honest report would have added a "W" at the end of that string, but you get the idea.
Marauder Meltdown Award. Winner: Merrill's Marauders. The 2020 Marauders followed up on a historically great 2019 championship team by falling to smack dead last in the league in points scored. So jarring was this fall from grace that the expression "Marauder meltdown" was coined as a generic term to describe epic collapses. In 2021, the Marauders bounced back to win another championship, suggesting that the 2020 episode was just a one-off. Or so we thought.
The defending champion Marauders started this year by winning three of their first four games and they set their sights on a first-round bye in the playoffs. Then they lost 10 of their next 12 games. That does not even include their exhibition game loss to the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs, when the two last-place finishers are given the week off before vying to avoid finishing last overall. (Yes, the Marauders got their first round bye, after all.) In fact, if not for a 0.56 point squeaker over Golden Grahams in Week 2 of the playoffs, the Marauders would have finished the season by losing 12 out of 13, including a stupendous nine losses in a row, if you count the exhibition game. But who's counting?
Now, we are all busy. But it might be worth taking just a moment to try to process just how terrible the 2022 edition of the Marauders actually was. The Marauders of 2019 averaged 81 points a game. That was excellent. The Marauders of 2022 averaged 79 points a game. That was under the new scoring system, which awards twice as many points for yards as the 2019 Marauders received. This year's Marauders did not happen to score the fewest overall points in the league. That honor went to the Eagles, who, as mentioned, did not seem to grasp that the season continued beyond draft day. But what happened when the Marauders faced off against the Eagles? Interesting that you should ask. We already mentioned the Eagles' exhibition game win in the first week of the playoffs, but let's look at the regular season. In the first Marauders-Eagles meeting, the Marauders scored 54 points, which was one of the lowest totals ever posted under the new scoring system. Miraculously, the Marauders actually won that game. The next time around, the Eagles headed into the game with an empty slot at tight end, an empty slot at wide receiver, and an empty slot at, yeah, quarterback. Final score: Eagles 74.1, Marauders 73.8. Enough said.
Susan Lucci Award. Winner: Air Apparant. Well, Apparent's owner would prefer not to have this advertised because it could - and almost certainly will - create a jinx. But Apparent has made the playoffs eight times in the ESPN era, including six times in a row. The eight playoff appearances is tied with ~AirMex for the league record. Now, ~AirMex, accomplished their eight appearances in only eight years (under two ownership teams), which should tell you something. But Air Apparent has been alright. They've been in the neighborhood. They just haven't gotten there. They'd happily accept a Marauder Meltdown Award in exchange for Just. One. Championship.
