The long wait has ended: The Rad Dynasty is officially back in action. Week one was an unpredictable, up and down affair for many teams. It was a week filled with unfortunate injuries, some disappointing play from big players, some big weeks from surprise players, and a LOT of points left on the bench for many teams.
Before we get to the recap, let's crown our player of the week: Josh Allen for Dynastic Dan! I finally get a player of the week for my team, go me! Hopefully it is a sign of good things to come. What is funny is that Baker Mayfield outscored Josh Allen in fantasy, but was left on My Team's bench. Oh well. As a result, Allen takes home the honors with his 35.18 fantasy points. Allen overcame a slow start to throw for 2 touchdowns and rush for 2 more in Buffalo's win over Arizona. He also was a big part in propelling Dynastic Dan to his first 1-0 start ever.
Dynastic Dan (1-0) 160.88 vs Teflon Don (0-1) 125.61
Week 1 kicked off with a battle of the Rad brothers, with Dynastic Dan and Teflon Don squaring off against each other.
Things started out in a promising fashion for Teflon Don, as Mark Andrews only scored 2.4 points in the Thursday night game, allowing Teflon Don to take an early lead. And then AJ Brown had a big Friday night game with 20.4 points. Teflon Don was up big. Things looked even worse for Dan early Sunday, as Josh Allen had negative points after the first quarter of his game and Jaylen Waddle left his game early due to an injury. The rest of the team was off to a slow start as well. Dan, who had been predicted to score 150+ points, was now predicted by Yahoo to only score 115 or so. I thought to myself: SIGH, here we go again. Don't you just love fantasy football?
But then Dan's team suddenly kicked itself into overdrive. Achane had a big game, Josh Allen scored 4 touchdowns. Jaylen Waddle came back and had a nice game. The biggest surprise was linebacker TJ Edwards scoring 22.25 points. All of a sudden, Dynastic Dan was finishing higher than their predicted average.
The promising start quickly crumbled away for Teflon Don. Dak Prescott, Evan Engram, and Chris Olave combined for a total of 16.56 points during the Sunday games. Ouch. They were simply not going to recover from that.
With the win, Dynastic Dan moves to 3-0 all time against his brother Chris. Dan will take on TDs or Bust in what should be the game of the week in week two, while Chris will look to rebound against Show me the TDs.
Alice in Horns (1-0) 120.21 vs The Killing Fields (0-1) 109.89
This is one of the matchups I was most looking forward to this week. These two teams finished tied in the standings last year. They even went 1-1 against each other during the regular season. This year, they seem to have pretty evenly matched rosters, so I was curious to see how it would play out.
It ended up as a pretty close game. Alice was led by Alvina Kamara (19.5), David Montgomery (15.8), and Tyrel Dodson (15). Alice's 11 point win probably should have been bigger, but Joe Burrow (8.06), DK Metcalf (4.4), Travis Kelce (4.9), and Puka Nacua (6.2) all had really quiet games. To make matters worse, Puka is injured now and is going to be hitting the IR for at least 4 games, or so I've heard. Ouch! Hopefully Alice can rebound from the loss of one of her star players.
On the flip side, TKF had a pretty bad week. Some very poor performances up and down the roster, led by Brandon Aiyuk (3.8), D'Andre Swift (5), and his tight end duo of Jonnu Smith and Gerald Everett, who combined for 1.6 points between the two of them. Foyesade Oluokun (15.25), James Connor (17.8), and Ezekiel Elliott (11.9) exceeded expectations for this team.
Next week, Alice looks to move to 2-0 against My Team (more on this team to come), while TKF has a tough matchup with defending champ ned's rollers.
Alright, now let's get to to that super fun matchup I've been DYING to talk about.
TBone's Terrific Team (1-0) 109.3 vs My Team (0-1) 88.73
The battle between two of last year's most uninspiring teams kicked off our season in a very spectacular fashion. Spectacularly bad, that is.
As poor as My Team's 88.73 point performance was, it actually was not the worst performance this week (that honor goes to Bluth Company, who we will be getting to later). But even though this team was facing TBone, the team with the worst record in the league last year, they still could not eke out a win.
TBone's week one victory would not have been possible without Tyreek Hill (22.5), Brian Robinson Jr (16.4), and Harrison Smith (11.25). The rest of the team was absolutely atrocious. What happened to Kirk Cousins (8.2) and Amon-Ra St. Brown (4.05)? St. Brown's performance was even worse when you consider the fact that the only reason he reached his point total is because he also had a tackle in the game. Luckily for TBone, these bad performances will likely not be replicated. Hopefully he can patch up some glaring holes on his roster (like at TE and IDP) and he can be a decent contender this year.
On the other side of things, My Team would have had a chance of winning if he had not left so many points on the bench. It was more about who was left out of the game (Tony Pollard with 16.9 points, Rashee Rice with 15.05 points, Baker Mayfield with 37.66 points) than it was who actually was in the game. I mean, I suppose you can't fault him for starting Goff (13.38) over Mayfield, but that's beside the point. I do not think all hope is lost for My Team. Please don't give up, Uncle Pete! You have a solid roster, you just need to fix up those IDP spots that are filled with bench warmers (they combined for 7.75 points, ouch). There are plenty of quality defensive players on the waiver wire. If you can do that, and make sure you are putting your productive players in the lineup each week, you can win some games and turn this thing around. If not, you may be looking at the #1 pick next year. I guess we'll see what happens.
TDs or Bust (1-0) 169.28 vs Show me the TDs (0-1) 154.17
This was another matchup I was really looking forward to in week one. Not only is it one of two playoff rematches from last season, but I also predicted these two teams would make the playoffs again here in 2024. It turned into the highest scoring matchup of the week, as the two teams combined for well over 300 points.
In the loss, Show me the TDs was led by Tua Tagovailoa (20.62), Deebo Samuel (16.2), and Justin Jefferson (13.9) offensively. His IDP and kicker also had big showings as well. Unfortunately, it just was not enough as he was going up against the highest scoring team of the week. It will be interesting to see how this team handles the Isaiah Likely situation going forward. Likely had a surprisingly big week one, outscoring teammate Mark Andrews by 19 fantasy points. What will Sean do with him in the upcoming weeks? Continue to leave him on the bench, or put him in over David Njoku or Trey McBride? It's a tough situation that I am sure most of us TE depraved teams would love to be in.
TDs or Bust, like I said, scored the most points in the league this week. The team was led by Cooper Kupp (25), Breece Hall (15.8), and Jahmyr Gibbs (15.4) on offense. But it was the kicker Chris Boswell who saved the day for this team with 26 points. Without that big outburst, it would have been a much closer game.
ned's rollers (1-0) 139.17 vs BDB's Jet Setters (0-1) 126.36
This was not technically the closest game, or even the highest scoring one, but it may be the game of the week overall. It was very close, very back and forth all weekend long. At one point, BDB's team was massively favored to win because of the lead they'd built up behind Saquon Barkley and his 32.2 points on Friday night. But as the weekend unfolded, ned's team crept closer and closer, and ended up pulling out the win in the end.
This was a good win for ned, as he led off the season not only with a win as defending champion, but also by beating BDB for the third time in four games (2-1 last year, including playoffs and 1-0 this year).
Aside from the aforementioned big performance by Saquon Barkley, BDB was led in defeat by Stefon Diggs (18.9), Aaron Jones (17.9), and Travis Etienne (10.9). Ned's win was fueled by Chris Godwin (18.3), Ken Walker (17.9), and Isiah Pacheco (14.8).
Fergalicious (1-0) 140.17 vs Bluth Company (0-1) 82.51
Our final matchup was one of the most shocking games of week one, as Fergalicious (formerly known as Thunder Thighs) absolutely walloped Bluth Company by 58 points. Fergalicious is looking tough this season after starting last year 0-7 and finishing with the second worst record in the league. Look out, here comes Mike, everyone!
What went wrong for Bluth Company? How did the second highest scoring team in the league last year manage to set an all time Rad Dynasty record for fewest points scored in a game? The team underperforming was the biggest obvious factor. I'm going to rattle off some bad performances: Drake London (2.5), Christian Kirk (3.5), Gus Edwards (3.3), Dalton Schultz (3.1), Michael Mayer (1.9), Younghoe Koo (4), Danielle Hunter (2.75), and Camryn Bynum (4) were the low scorers in the game. Combined, they scored fewer points in total than Josh Allen, who Bluth traded away in the offseason. The game was already decided come Monday night, but Christian McCaffrey was benched at the last minute and Bluth was stuck with him and his goose egg in the starting lineup. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. Luckily, it is a very long fantasy season.
Fergalicious was clicking on all cylinders. Lamar Jackson set the stage on Thursday night with his 27.12 point performance. The rest of the team had strong performances as well. Nico Collins (14.7), Devonta Smith (13.15), and safety Julian Love (22.5) led the way in the win.
Fergalicious looks to move to a surprising 2-0 next week as they take on BDB, while Bluth has one of the best possible teams to rebound against with TBone's Terrific Team.
Week one is in the books!
You can't really predict too much from the standings after week one. Some teams had bad weeks but will probably rebound. Some teams overperformed and will come back to earth. Some teams looked good but have injury problems. Plus, you never know who could get hurt on any given day. But I think we have a rough idea of what to expect going forward: another hard fought season with 12 teams fighting and scraping for just 4 playoff spots.
As always, I will include a photo of the standings before I sign off and wish everyone good luck in week 2.
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