Fantasy Football: 2018 Least valuable player award

The Fantasy Football season has been full of disappointing players and performances, but only one has earned the award for Least Valuable Player. Of those who actually saw the field, who has been the most disappointing?

This past week was an ugly one for a number of elite fantasy performers, and it was the worst possible timing. In the midst of the semifinals matchups in most fantasy leagues (and the finals themselves in two-week playoff formats), Patrick Mahomes put up his second-worst game of the season. Saquon Barkley had his worst game of the year. Tyreek Hill had one of his worst games. Drew Brees did absolutely nothing. Adam Thielen was the worst he has been. Etc. etc.

But putting up one bad performance at a terrible time doesn’t make someone a flop. The least valuable fantasy football 2018 players surely pushed their owners out of the playoffs entirely much earlier than Week 15. So who are the least valuable players in fantasy football this season?

Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate Fantasy Football 2018 in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

I must throw out the necessary injury caveat. Jerick McKinnon would obviously have been a terrible early round selection for those who drafted early in the summer. Of course, non-injury still leaves the door open for a pair of very rare occurrences that are specific to this season.

Le’Veon Bell has to technically be the LVP. He was a consensus first-round pick and delivered zero points despite not being ruled out for the year until Week 12. It was a worst-case scenario. And what about Kareem Hunt, another consensus first-round pick? Hunt was gone from the league heading into Week 12 despite being good for the first dozen games.

We also have semi-injury disappointments. Dalvin Cook was a first-round pick who was a bust for a dozen weeks until he got healthy. Now he has been stellar the past month, but it’s likely too late for his owners. Leonard Fournette is in the same boat. He missed months, but in Week 10 he blew back onto the scene with three-straight 20+ point performances.

All those guys are fine picks for LVP. I would throw Rob Gronkowski on there too if the tight end position wasn’t so terrible around him to mask his shortcomings. If you want to throw out some of those technicalities, my least valuable fantasy player comes down to two guys: David Johnson and Jordan Howard.

Johnson was disappointing yet playable all year. He didn’t live up to his draft stock by any means but still had to be in lineups, especially in PPR leagues. He finished as the 11th-ranked running back thanks to availability alone pretty much. Howard is the biggest healthy bust. He was drafted as a top 30 player on average and played in every single game this season. Scoring categories vary, but he essentially had zero breakout games and at least half a dozen terrible games. After being drafed 29th overall, he ranks as the 29th running back. For a non-injury and non-special case, things couldn’t have been worse than Howard.

Dan Salem:

Injuries can’t simply be ignored when determining the least valuable player in Fantasy Football 2018 for one simple reason. Your fantasy team doesn’t care about injuries. There is no five point injury safety net for a given week, your player is in your lineup and scores zero. No matter the reason behind zero points, the result is the same.

High value before the season which led to multiple weeks of zero points is very disappointing. This makes Le’Veon Bell the biggest bust, but owners all knew the risks. When considering players who actually saw the field this season, while not completely ignoring injuries, we still end up with a running back as least valuable.

Did you know that New York Giants quarterback Kyle Lauletta “scored” the fewest points of the season, based upon ESPN scoring, among active players with an impressive -2.2 points on five pass attempts? His stat line includes an interception and one rush for a loss of two yards. Go Kyle! As for players who actually had preseason value, but still let us all down, Jordan Howard is tough to beat.

I’d like to throw Michael Crabtree‘s hat into the ring. While receivers don’t exactly hold the same value, Crabtree entered the season as the 25th ranked receiver. His name value alone garnered him interest from owners, and he had previously been the primary receiver in Baltimore’s offense. Yet he sits right behind Gronkowski in scoring, with a little over 550 yards and only 3 touchdowns this season.

There are several players like Crabtree that fell way short of being good. My vote is for David Johnson, however, because of his high value before the year. Johnson was the second best player overall before the season. Needless to say, his production has not lived up to those levels.

Both James White and Joe Mixon have had better fantasy seasons. Johnson’s team is very bad, but that isn’t supposed to hold back the best backs in the league. He’s been the least valuable, considering he should have been the lynchpin of most teams. Yet next season will be interesting, since I imagine his preseason value will drop accordingly.