2021 League Champion: ATWATER

For the first time in five years we have a new champion in our league. Let me be the first to offer a sincere congratulations to Atwater for staying the course and finally coming out victorious!

This year has been uniquely challenging given the frequency of Covid inactives and the uncertainty and headache this created for us all.

What impressed me most:

In my beginning of the year analysis, you were in the group of teams that I thought had a chance at this thing, but had to make quite a few moves to put it all together. The season started out difficult going 2-4 and probably had you feeling mediocre at best 6 weeks in. What is interesting to me as I looked back at your season is eve at that point there were signs of who would be important for you. I had no idea that Cooper Kupp was going to go bananas and basically carry your team all on his own some weeks. Talk about a record-setting performance and the type is guy you need to put together a championship run. Patrick Mahomes, AJ Brown were guys we knew should play well and generally did. Hunter Renfrow Is a guy that was easy to target in a PPR league but I don’t think I gave him enough credit. He’s become one of my favorite players to watch in the NFL. He’s fun isn’t he? I had a suspicion that Javonte Williams would produce at the end of the year and true to form was huge in the last few weeks of the season (before laying an egg in week 17.)

Another thing that stands out to me is this wasn’t your best season record wise and may not have been your most impressive roster. It's funny how that works but you made the right moves at the right time and found ways to get production in key spots such as trusting the Chiefs defense and generally making the right moves at the right time in the superflex spot and getting production from Tannehill, Josh Johnson, and Justin Fields. Take a bow sir! You deserve it!

Make sure you let me know what jersey you want and I'll get it out to you!

Heartbreak: Snickle Frits

Bradley! You started out 1-7. ONE AND SEVEN!!! And you finished down the stretch 5-1 to sneak your way into the playoffs and force your way into the championship game. This is your third consecutive season finishing in second place. That's both impressive and heartbreaking. Accomplish that feat one more year and I'll accept you as an honorary Bills fan as one who knows the pain of 4 consecutive championship game losses. As a Bills fan myself I know the impressive feat you pulled off given how your season started. You deserve major kudos for not giving up. Despite what NFL.com analysis had to say, I thought your team was going to really struggle. You did. But you kept plugging away and found a way with generally the same roster as you started with. That's to me the most impressive thing to me. You trusted your team and it worked.

Final thoughts:

I enjoyed the superflex position and am a supporter of keeping it around going forward.

What a weird week to week season we had. There were major fantasy producers but it seemed to me that the fantasy studs had more than a few weeks with real stinkers that made it hard to trust who was going to win matchups for you. It was one of those seasons that if you overthought things, you would drive yourself crazy.

I'm looking forward to the actual NFL playoffs because I just don't think there are any dominant teams this year. I could legitimately see a matchup like Eagles vs Bengals this year. I would have never imagined that to begin the year.

Here is my prediction for how the playoffs will end up:

WildCard:

Bengals over Raiders

Bills over Patriots

Eagles over Bucs

49ers over Cowboys

Chiefs over Steelers

Rams over Cardinals

Divisional Round:

Chiefs over Bills

Bengals over Titans

Packers over Eagles

Rams over 49ers

Conference Championship:

Chiefs over Bengals

Packers over Rams

Superbowl Prediction:

Aaron Rodgers sits out the game in protest of COVID protocols and... just kidding. Rodgers dominates and Packers defense make just enough plays to get the win to solidify Rodgers place as one of the greatest QB's of all time.