The 2024 Weekly Bender Fantasy Football Awards

Mon Dec 30 10:19pm ET
By HOWARD BENDER
Fantasy Writer

What a crazy 2024 fantasy football season it’s been. Sure, there are some monsters out there who force you into playing all or part of your championship in Week 18, but for us normal folk, the fantasy football season has come to an end and it finished up as wildly as it began. We witnessed some iconic performances by some players, watched helplessly as names were piled onto the NFL injury report like a mountain of dirty clothes in a laundry room and found a number of hidden gems who went from zero to hero in the blink of an eye. It is now time to recognize some of them – the good and the bad – in an unusual way.

May I have the envelopes please…

The “I’m Never Doing That Again” Award – Christian McCaffrey at the 1.01

When he’s healthy, he’s the best player on the field and has proven it with points galore over the years. Unfortunately, this was the fifth season in six years that McCaffrey failed to appear in at least 16 games and those who drafted him were hit hard right from the start. Of course, who is really to blame here? McCaffrey was sitting out the preseason due to a calf issue so most people who did take him already knew and chose to ignore the risk. That’s probably the last we will see of the 49ers running back in the first round.

The “I Should Have Retired” Award – Aaron Rodgers

What in the wide, wide world of sports was this season? Seriously? When the football gods struck Rodgers down with a torn Achilles in 2023, they were telling him to stop playing football. It was a hell of a run in Green Bay, but all good things must come to an end. Go out on top, get your gold jacket in a few years and ride off into the sunset. Nowhere in the script did it ever say, “Go play for the worst franchise in football history and see if you can turn them around.” Well, it did at one point, but Brett Favre showed us that it just doesn’t work. Now we have this Hall of Fame quarterback who will forever be remembered, not for his stellar play on the field, but for being a huge doucher and the only person in the world to have ever done ayahuasca and come out less cool on the other side.

The “Over-Draft” Award – Marvin Harrison Jr.

When are people going to learn to stop falling for the rookie hype that comes each and every year? Kudos to the 2024 consensus No. 2, Malik Nabers, who despite having a pile of turds at quarterback, managed to produce top-10 numbers for his fantasy owners. But for those who opted to reach for the stars in Round 2 of their drafts, and selected Harrison, you got a nice, swift kick to the huevos rancheros and probably wish you could have had that pick back. Some might want to blame Kyler Murray and they wouldn’t be completely wrong, but let this serve as a reminder when you see a bunch of fantasy analysts who pray at the Church of NCAAA elevating a player’s draft capital for little to no good reason.

The “People Still Don’t Trust Me” Award – Sam Darnold

This guy averaged 260 passing yards per game with 35 touchdowns and just 12 interceptions and fantasy owners were still asking if they should start Darnold in their fantasy championships. The guys had two, maybe three, bad games all year and was coming off a six-game stretch where he tossed 15 touchdowns to just one interception and he was benched in favor of Jordan Love, Bo Nix, Kyler Murray, CJ Stroud, Caleb Williams and Matthew Stafford, all of whom scored fewer fantasy points than him in Week 17. No, seriously. He was. I have the emails and tweets to prove it. Now I’m not one of those people who thinks the Vikings should give him millions of dollars and tell J.J. McCarthy to go hold the clipboard for another couple of years, but when are people going to stop with the preconceived notions and actually watch what is happening. He’s not the be-all, end-all of quarterbacks, but if he’s consistently producing at a high level, you need to pay attention and stop with the nonsense.

The “Energizer Bunny” Award – Derrick Henry

See? Not all of these awards are bad. If you’ve seen Cool Hand Luke, then you know the line, “Fifty eggs! No man can eat 50 eggs.” Well, it was no different than just a few seasons ago when people were looking at Henry with his 300 carries per season and saying that the wheels were going to fall off the wagon if you keep giving him this heavy of a workload. Well, maybe the wheels did fall off in 2021, but Henry has now seen more than 300 carries in two of the last three seasons and he hasn’t missed a beat. In fact, this season he’s almost up to 1,800 yards and he still looks like the Juggernaut from the X-Men movies.

The “Don’t Doubt Me” Award – Josh Jacobs/Alvin Kamara

Our first tie and the only reason I couldn’t pick one over the other is because I should share in this award as much as these two elder statesmen of the running back position. Scheme and opportunity. How many times do I have to tell you? Every year in the Fantasy Alarm NFL Draft Guide, I write articles in which I break down every single team’s offense. I tell you what the offense is going to do and I tell you who the players are that will thrive in the system. I cited Jacobs’ change of scenery and the run-first tendencies of Packers head coach Matt LaFleur and I cited Klint Kubiak and Rick Dennison bringing their famed zone-blocking scheme to New Orleans for Kamara. I told you to draft hem both. I said don’t doubt the coaches, the players or me. If you listened, congratulations. If you didn’t, maybe you should think about buying the draft guide next year.

The “Underappreciated Rookie on Draft Day” Award – Brian Thomas, Jr.

In 2020, no one wanted to draft Justin Jefferson because he was dropping passes in camp. In 2021, no one wanted to draft Ja’Marr Chase because he was having trouble picking up the football in camp because there were no stripes on the ball. Every year, the groupthink in fantasy circles gets dumber and dumber. This year, it was Thomas. Why? Because he couldn’t possibly be a standout No. 1 receiver, could he? He only looked good in Malik Nabers’ shadow at LSU and with Christian Kirk and Gabe Davis in-house, he wasn’t going to see the targets he needed to succeed. Did his opportunity grow with the injury to Kirk? Sure, but he was already out shining every other receiver on that team from Week 1 on. Just something to keep in mind when Fantasy Twitter is telling you who the best rookie receiver in the draft will be.

The “Say My Name” Award – Andrei Iosivas

It’s pronounced “Yo-SEE-Vah-shh.” Say it 1,000 times. Now say it 1,000 times more. And the name you just mispronounced 2,000 times is Iosivas.

The “Fleeting Moment” Award – Jerry Jeudy

How many times do we have to hear some idiot refer to a player as a “league winner”? Someone does something good one week from out of nowhere and suddenly that’s the player who is going to deliver a championship to your front door. That’s exactly what happened when Jameis Winston took over as the Browns starting quarterback and he locked onto Jeudy for double-digit targets and turned one of the most overrated receivers into this year’s league winner. Six catches for 142 yards and a touchdown? Yum. Six for 85? Not bad. Nine for 235 and a score? He’s the greatest wide receiver in the history of wide receivers. Every week, the hype got even crazier and then BOOM!! The Browns benched Wintson during the fantasy playoffs and Jeudy was a league-winner no more. Yes, he showed up for Week 17, but either no one played him or they were already bounced from the playoffs the week before. You were almost there, people. Almost. Probably should have invested in…

The “Old Man’s Still Got It” Award – Adam Thielen

He’s 34-years old, he missed seven games with a hamstring injury and came back in Week 12 to average seven targets, six catches and 77 receiving yards per game over the final six games of the fantasy season/playoffs. He also had four touchdowns in that span, three of which came in these last two games. That, my friends, is what a league-winner does.

The “Fantasy Turdies” (one at each position – no explanation needed)

Daniel Jones
Javonte Williams
Deebo Samuel
Kyle Pitts

I’m sure, as the NFL playoffs wrap and we crown a new group of winners from the variety of post-season contests, we’ll have more to recap and more awards to dish out. For now, we’ll just take a step back, focus on the next several weeks of fantasy deliciousness and then look to next year. The 2025 NFL Draft is just around the corner!

Bender out.

The 2024 Weekly Bender Fantasy Football Awards

The Paur Report