Fantasy Football Flashback: Tough Decision Leads to Epic Loss
In this story:
It is the playoffs of your fantasy football league and your player exits the game. You needed that player to just score 2 more points, and now you are lost. Is he coming back? Heads spin as you watch your fantasy dreams fly out the window. Everyone has surely suffered an event like this. I will bring you in a flashback to my most brutal moment just like that. But it could have all been avoided if I was playing my league on Renegade Fantasy Football.
The Situation
It is December 12th, the last week of the fantasy football regular season. Unfortunately, I have AJ Brown out injured, once again. With the Titans star receiver on my bench for what seems like the millionth time of the season, I must hit the waiver wire to replace him in the most high-risk high-reward move. My team is projected to lose by nearly twenty points, so I must push my chips to the center.
What I do here is sign Tre'Quan Smith to my team. Remember him? Deep vertical threat for the Derek Carr led Saints team. He did end the season with 448 Yards and 4 Touchdowns on just 10 starts. It was either him or Rashod Bateman versus the Browns. Bateman had done me no good all year, so I made the gamble with Smith.
The Events
I came into the final week here looking for one last win to put me in my fantasy playoffs. Admittedly, my team was not quite to championship standard, but anything was possible. I saw my friend get carried to a title one year because Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase went back to back games with over 80 combined points. The rest of his team was not good, but he got carried and so he hoisted the trophy.
As the day went on, I knew I would need someone to break out. My opponent had 31 points from Justin Herbert and 25 from Najee Harris. I had just 8 from Joe Mixon and -2 from the Bills defense. Surely, one big touchdown could revive me.
Fast forward to later in the day, the Saints are crushing the 3-10 Jets. Tre'Quan Smith did not go off by any means, but he had 3 receptions of 33 yards. However, as the 4th quarter began, the Saints punched the score up to 23-9. At this point, they had the game nearly secured against the incompetent Jets offense.
What followed was a Tre'Quan Smith benching. The team laid down and ran Alvin Kamara and Tony Jones Jr countless time. As the game ended and my fantasy matchup came to a conclusion, I would go on to lose by 2.16 points.
Tre'Quan Smith got me 4.8 points (Half PPR). As for Rashod Bateman? Tyler Huntley delivered him 7 catches on 8 targets for 103 yards. The fantast point total? 16.8. If only I could have swapped out Tre'Quan Smith upon his benching, I would have advanced. Substituting your fantasy players in real-time like on Renegade Fantasy is going to save a lot of fantasy football players from these type of epic losses.
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Thomas Carelli is a sportswriter based on Northern New Jersey. He is a massive New York Jets and Mets fan, but that is not where is sports fandom stops. He loves to watch and play golf, all things football, baseball, and much more. If he can watch it, he will. Thomas graduated from William Paterson University in 2018 with a Bachelor's Degree in Sport Management. He spent 4 years working at a local golf course, volunteered past PGA events, and spent some part-time experience with the New York Jets events team. His passions for sport runs deep and his articles show for it.