I play fantasy football. If you’ve seen my Twitter, you know I get caught up in the moment when the games are going. That said, there’s a certain degree of respect to have when playing fantasy football. On my end, most of my fantasy posts are meant to be nothing more than a joke, meant to gain cheap laughs at how absurd everything can get. If you find yourself getting legitimate anger at a player costing you money or rooting for a devastating injury to an opposing player, you might want to rethink your priorities.
49ers tight end George Kittle has felt the brunt of it. In fantasy-land, Kittle was seen as a middle of the pack option to start the season — boom or bust, really. But as the season went on, he’s become the third or fourth best tight end in the league, and 2018 has not been kind to tight ends as far as fantasy concerned. He was on Ian Rapoport’s podcast this week to talk about this and his love of wrestling, but what is both awful and hilarious at the same time is what some fantasy owners have done to him. No, not the teams that own him, the teams that have to play against him:
“It ranges from, “Thank you, I’ve had a great week,” to the exact opposite, “I hate you, you screwed me over.” I’ve gotten Venmo requests from people for knocking them out of their league. That was a big one last week with the Denver game. I got a request for like $5000 from multiple people. I denied those, though. That’s not my problem,”
I have Kittle on my team (the undisputed champions as of last Monday, El Pato’s Birds and Bees). I also have Travis Kelce (arguably the best tight end in 2018). So Kittle was relegated to trade-bait (I almost pulled the trigger on a trade for Le’Veon Bell, thank God I didn’t) or a flex play. As the season went on and Kittle’s points accumulated, I felt stupid for not putting Kittle in the flex spot, and I didn’t feel more stupid than against the Broncos where he had his coming out party.
Yes, I benched Kittle for a game he got 210 yards and a touchdown. I still won, but that week was causing heart attacks as I won by a meager four points. Had Kittle been in there, I could have popped open the champagne for the playoffs by the second quarter. Now, I was crying because he was on my bench, think of what owners were like when Kittle breaks out and demolishes them. His single performance could have won it for a team that had a roster of underachievers.
Regardless, sending him a Venmo request seems like really crossing the line.