The Guillotine League is a battle royale, free-for-all, elimination fantasy football league. There are no matchups, and at the end of each NFL week, the team with the lowest point total is eliminated, and all their players are dropped into the waiver pool. It is cutthroat and it is unforgiving, and you don’t ever want to see yourself getting near the Guillotine. The Guillotine cares not for what you’ve been through, what injuries you’ve had, or what your projected point total was. All it cares about is eliminating the team with the lowest point total each week. The Guillotine demands sacrifice.

 

The Championship

 

At long last, we’ve made it to the finals. What started as the deepest league I have personally ever played in, a 16-team league, has ended in the shallowest league I’ve ever seen, more akin to a DFS lineup than a real fantasy football lineup. Week after week we were eliminated, our players sent to the waiver wire, and our FAAB spent.

Ryan Kruse and Matthew Bevins had very different paths to the final. You are probably familiar with Bevins’ name, as he came up in these articles as a candidate for execution a number of times. Going back through the week by week totals, I found Bevins near the bottom in over half the weeks, including when he beat me out by 1.5 points to send me packing in Week 11. Kruse, on the other hand, hardly ever found himself near elimination. Part of that was smart drafting by Kruse, he picked Christian McCaffrey, Aaron Jones, Amari Cooper and DJ Moore with his first four picks, and all those players had not just productive years, but consistent ones, never truly letting Kruse down. He also had some clutch transactions early on, getting George Kittle after his bye week, and snagging Davante Adams and Lamar Jackson after week 7. Pretty much all of these aforementioned players ended up in his starting lineup for the championship week, with only Cooper not getting to start. Of the 8 starting offensive players, Kruse had acquired 6 of them prior to Week 8.

Bevins had a bit of a different approach to building his roster, although I’m sure he would have preferred to do it the way Kruse did. Bevins did have a good start to his draft, getting Dalvin Cook in the first round and Tyler Lockett in the third (47th pick), which gave him a nice floor most weeks and allowed him to stay in the league even when Patrick Mahomes went down with his knee injury. But Bevins had to rely a lot more on the waiver wire, with only one of his starters acquired prior to Week 12 (Cook). Nick Chubb, Ezekiel Elliott, DeAndre Hopkins, and Chris Godwin were all scavenged off of my roster for Week 12, Travis Kelce was picked up for Week 13, Michael Thomas for Week 14, and Drew Brees picked up just for the championship game.

 

 

As you can probably guess from seeing the lineups above, Kruse got out to a huge lead early thanks to the monstrous game that Lamar Jackson had on Thursday Night Football. His 47 points led the way for all scorers in this matchup, and not far behind was McCaffrey’s 37 point performance. Bevins didn’t get full games out of Godwin or Cook due to injury, and all that led up to a big deficit going into Monday Night Football. However, Bevins was the only one with players on Monday, and he had Drew Brees and Michael Thomas. Brees was looking to take the record for most passing touchdowns in a career, and who better to throw them to than Michael Thomas? Kruse could only watch in horror as Brees kept firing away, amassing 307 yards and 4 touchdowns, and Thomas was a willing recipient of 12 catches for 128 yards and a touchdown. They just couldn’t miss. Between the two of them, they scored 67 points, about as good of a performance as you could have asked for, but alas, it wasn’t enough. Bevins still fell 18 points short, and Ryan Kruse was left as the only man standing.

 

Congratulations Ryan, on your Guillotine League Championship! May your head always remain on your body, and may you be eliminated first next year so you know how it feels!

 

Before we go, I just want to give a huge shout out to all the guys who signed up for this weird, and weirdly intense, league. This was a lot of fun, and I look forward to doing it again next year. And winning. Hopefully. So with that said, thank you to (in order of elimination):

Alex Tran

Kenny Hyttenhove

Daniel Adams

Colin Weatherwax

Mike Bourg

Ryan Amore

David Fenko

Josh Gleason

Justin Paradis

Nathan Mills

Matt Thomas

Mike Miklius

Rich Holman

Matthew Bevins

Ryan Kruse

 

I couldn’t have done it without you guys. See you all next year!