First there was Christmas. Then there was the New Year. Then there was getting back to work.
I could say that I wanted to give myself some time to reflect on the season. Really, though, I needed time to deal with my unfathomable grief.
Your 2014 Royale with Cheese fantasy football champion is Dolphins of Old!
For that great honor, this wonderful picture will be forever* enshrined on the right side of this page.
Dolphins of Old beat Jeff Fisher's Mullet -- and I kid you not, this is the first time I've looked at the final score -- 108-72 in the championship game.
Why hadn't I looked at the score before now? Because after Andrew Luck laid the biggest egg of the season (of his career?) I didn't even want to know how bad the Dolphins were going to beat the Mullets. Dolphins had two running backs playing Monday night. To feel any kind of safe, I needed a solid performance out of Luck. Nope. Good ol' Neck Beard just crapped all over the bed.
But that's enough of me complaining. Let's focus on what Dolphins did to win.
Dolphins had to be the hottest team coming into the playoffs. After staring 0-3, they lost just twice more all season. In Week 12, Dolphins scored 148 points and in Week 13 they scored 153. Even in their loss at the end of the regular season (to the Mullets), Dolphins scored more than 100 points.
The Dolphins also deserve credit for playing the waiver wire well. They picked up Denver running back C.J. Anderson, who, starting in Week 10, only scored less than 19 points twice the rest of the season.
They also grabbed the Bengals' Jeremy Hill, who had a 28- and 27-point performances in the second half of the season.
Players like those two kept Dolphins in matchups when Drew Brees had a bad game, and he had some bad games there at the end of the season.
The Gronk and Dez Bryant were solid performers throughout and the Rams defense even showed up some, scoring 27 points in the league's season finale.
Dolphins of Old breezed to their first RWC finals appearance with a 126-77 win over Cant Be That Hard in the semifinals.
After another easy win in the final, Dolphins became the league's fourth different champion in four years.
@RoyaleWCheeseFB YES!!!!!!!!!!!
— Doug Inscoe (@DougInscoe) December 23, 2014
Turn Down for Watt won the third-place game 93-71 over Cant Be That Hard.
@RoyaleWCheeseFB Oh hey, forte. So glad you decided to show up and play this week. #oneweektoolate
— Evelyn Ann Greene (@eagreene) December 21, 2014
@RoyaleWCheeseFB For the playoffs this year, I turned in my 2nd and 4th worst performances of the season. #1 was going up against Courtney
Academic Probation won the consolation bracket 89-75 over The Reservoir Dogs.
And the highest scorer of championship week was Big Kahuna Burger, who scored 115 points in a win over Big Poppa in the seventh-place game, the least important game of the week. Well, maybe it was important in that household.
And that's it! Here's how the final standings looked:
I'm going to take this time to put out a call for any year-end award nominees, like the season's Jameis Winston Award for Poor Decisions winner (I know who I'd pick ...).
Also, I'd like to do a Super Bowl party again this year. More information about that to come.
There will also be a blog post coming about possible changes in the league for next year. Nothing too drastic.
Finally, I just want to thank all of you for playing in the league this year. Thank you for reading this blog, for getting on Twitter and talking trash before, during and after the games, for watching (and participating in) the videos, and just helping make this league a whole lot of fun.
I hope you all come back next year. Now go Panthers!
Corey
