They were the fifth-best scoring team in the league and they lost three in a row down the stretch, which is not how this story is supposed to start. Christian A.'s SMOKERS spent the autumn being carried by a quarterback and a defense. Deshaun Watson went over thirty points seven times. The New England Patriots, an actual team defense, led the roster in scoring three separate weeks and put up 197 points between weeks two and eight. Then it stopped. Weeks eleven, twelve and thirteen came and went without a win, the last two by 8 and by 4, the kind of losses that follow you home. And nobody, not one person in this league, saw Kenyan Drake coming. Six of his first seven starts produced under eight points. In the semi-final he went for 39. In the final he went for 30.
Across the way was the best team in the league, and it is worth being precise about that. Sweep The Leg scored 1,762 in the regular season to the SMOKERS' 1,601, first of ten against fifth of ten. Dave H.'s team averaged 126 a week for fourteen weeks. They had beaten the SMOKERS by 46 in week five. In the one game that decided the season they scored 76.
It was over before most of the league had finished dinner on Saturday. Six SMOKERS played that night for 58 points; Sweep The Leg had exactly one man on the field, Will Fuller V, for 1. They never led, not in a single kickoff window, and by four o'clock Sunday the back half of the lineup had turned in Zach Ertz 3, Amari Cooper 2, Tyler Lockett 1. Christian McCaffrey, who returned more value that season than any other man in the game by half again, scored 17 and went home. The 58-point margin is the second-largest in a final in league history. The largest, 61 in 2017, also belongs to Sweep The Leg.
Week 16. Lineup order is points scored in the final. Both scales are capped at the 90th percentile of this game, PAR 12.2 and points 28, and shared across all twenty ribbons: never normalised per row.
5 different players led the roster across 16 weeks. The most any one man led was 7 (Deshaun Watson). A defence led the team 3 times.
| Wk | Led the roster | Pos | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 34.40 |
| 2 | Patriots | DEF | 46.00 |
| 3 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 30.35 |
| 4 | Patriots | DEF | 30.00 |
| 5 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 46.00 |
| 6 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 34.20 |
| 7 | Patriots | DEF | 28.00 |
| 8 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 30.55 |
| 9 | Kenyan Drake | RB | 24.20 |
| 10 | Matt Ryan | QB | 17.40 |
| 11 | Michael Thomas | WR | 17.40 |
| 12 | Michael Thomas | WR | 16.10 |
| 13 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 30.20 |
| 14 | Deshaun Watson | QB | 33.00 |
| 15 | Kenyan Drake | RB | 38.60 |
| 16 | Kenyan Drake | RB | 30.40 |
| Player | Pos | Starts | Points | PAR | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deshaun Watson | QB | 14 | 351 | 30 | |
| Matt Ryan | QB | 2 | 30 | -10.7 | |
| Kenyan Drake | RB | 9 | 127 | 20 | |
| Patrick Laird | RB | 1 | 9 | -2.1 | |
| Marlon Mack | RB | 13 | 148 | -4.9 | |
| Kalen Ballage | RB | 1 | 5 | -6.2 | |
| Jeff Wilson Jr. | RB | 1 | 3 | -7.6 | |
| Gus Edwards | RB | 1 | 2 | -9 | |
| Jordan Wilkins | RB | 1 | 0 | -10 | |
| J.D. McKissic | RB | 1 | 0 | -14 | |
| Raheem Mostert | RB | 4 | 33 | -16 | |
| Damien Williams | RB | 7 | 42 | -37 | |
| Michael Thomas | WR | 15 | 222 | 83 | |
| Julian Edelman | WR | 15 | 155 | 17 | |
| Cole Beasley | WR | 2 | 25 | 7 | |
| Auden Tate | WR | 2 | 16 | 0 | |
| Chris Conley | WR | 1 | 6 | -4.6 | |
| Marvin Jones Jr. | WR | 7 | 59 | -5.2 | |
| Preston Williams | WR | 1 | 3 | -5.3 | |
| Paul Richardson | WR | 1 | 1 | -5.6 | |
| Tyrell Williams | WR | 6 | 43 | -13 | |
| Emmanuel Sanders | WR | 7 | 32 | -36 | |
| Tyler Higbee | TE | 3 | 33 | 11 | |
| Jared Cook | TE | 6 | 47 | 3.5 | |
| Vance McDonald | TE | 3 | 12 | -7.8 | |
| Noah Fant | TE | 4 | 12 | -10.6 | |
| Harrison Butker | K | 15 | 158 | 34 | |
| Austin Seibert | K | 1 | 12 | 3.9 | |
| Patriots | DEF | 13 | 260 | 102 | |
| Colts | DEF | 2 | 23 | -1.6 | |
| Chargers | DEF | 1 | 4 | -6.3 |
The champion finished fifth of ten in points scored. A title does not require the best offence and this season is the proof of it.
The regular season. Best week 144 in week 5, worst 83 in week 12. The narrowest win was week 4, by 0.9. They never posted the league's highest score in a single week all season. A champion that never led the league for one week is one of the quieter facts in this archive.
The runner-up. Sweep The Leg, 8-6, 1,762 points, averaged 126 a week in the regular season and scored 76 in the final, −50 off their own pace.