Here we are, folks. The final waiver run. The last week of best ball. The Cutline looms.
Welcome to Thunderdome.
Welcome… to Week Ten.
The entire season hinges on this week for so many players. If you’ve been following this column with anything remotely resembling regularity, you know that teams routinely jump 40-60 spots in the rankings on the backs of huge performances. So, too, can position be lost as easily. This bye week doesn’t seem as fantasy-catastrophic as some recent weeks, but still, if your success to date has depended largely on Ja’Marr Chase or Joe Mixon, well, hopefully you’re sitting comfortably within your league’s Top Three, or you have a helluva lot of back-up firepower.
Let’s take a look at the final FAAB run of the 2021 RazzBowl, shall we?
The Waiver Report
It was the final run, so hopefully everyone spent every cent they had left. Most players were picked up for $1-$2, no surprise given the $10 total budget and everyone’s dwindling FAAB bank accounts. However, a few players garnered $3-$5 bids in a few places: Pat Freiermuth, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Adrian Peterson, Jeremy McNichols, Jordan Howard, and Devonta Freeman. The Freiermuth pickups look like good use of late FAAB, but it’s hard to get too excited about most of those runners and receivers.
And that’s it, every team in the RazzBowl is, now, what it is. No more waivers. No more FAAB. What you have is what you’ve got. And that’s all she wrote. Although… it’s not all I’ve written. This column is not yet done.
Rising and Falling
The big rising star in the RazzBowl this week is Fantasy Alarm’s James Grande, whose squad put up a tournament-leading 197.4 points on the week. It was enough to pop him 79 spots up the overall standings, from 195th to 116th. But more crucially for James, he moved up from 9th to 6th– just above the Wildcard Bracket Cutline– in his league, thanks largely to the Week 9 pops from Justin Herbert, Nick Chubb, James Conner, and “Hollywood” Marquise Brown. His hold on the 6th spot in the league is tenuous, however, as he is just 8 points clear of 7th.
On the flip side this week, four different teams scored between 70 and 79 points on the week. The lowest score belongs to Dynasty League Football’s Jaron Foster, whose squad featured just four players who could muster 10 points or more (just one player 12+ points) and netted a couple of goose eggs en route to 70.55 points. But the largest drop down the Overall Standings belonged instead to fan Steffen Anderson, whose team lost 51 spots in the Overall, tumbling to 152nd overall, while maintaining a not-good-enough 8th place in his league. One last week to turn things around, Jaron and Steffen!
The Top Ten
Oh man. I have been looking forward to this. Oh yes, yes I have.
First, the usual suspects still dominate the Top Ten of the Overall Standings, names anyone familiar with this column will recognize. The Top Three remained the same, with Robert Goldman, Kenyatta Storin, and Kev Mahserejian still 1-2-3. Tim Heaney and Andy Hall, as a pair, swapped places with Bobby LaMarco and Kurt Brown, so that’s the order now, 4-5-6-7. Stephen Johnson slipped one spot from 9th to 10th.
In 8th place, fan Kevin Strutz is in the Top Ten for the first time (I believe), moving up 7 spots from 15th. A very well-balanced performance got him here this week, as none of his players scored fewer than 16.3 points, while none of them scored more than 28, either. Joe Mixon, DeVonta Smith, and Tim Patrick led the way.
And finally, last but by no means least, in 9th place and in the Top Ten for the first time, dear readers, is YOURS TRULY. I’ve been in the top 20-30 for most of the season, but this week my squad jumped from 19th to 9th with the 7th-highest score in the tournament this week. Teddy Bridgewater, Joe Mixon, Elijah Moore, and Keenan Allen led the way for my team.
So that’s the Top Ten. Remember a few things folks: one, you need to be in the Top Three in your league to make the Championship Bracket. If you finish 4-5-6 in your league, you will make the cut into the Wildcard Bracket. If you finish 7th through 12th, well, it’s been a nice season, good luck next year!
Also: starting next week, that is, for the games of Week 11, you need to set your lineups as the RazzBowl will no longer be best ball format in the post-Cutline portion of the tournament.
I’ll try to scream that last point far and wide on Twitter after the games this week. Hopefully no one in the Championship bracket, at least, will be caught unawares!
Good luck to everyone fighting the Cutline! See those of you who make it in the Championship Bracket next week!
