The last time you heard from me discussing 2022 Omnifantasy results was in the fall, with several sports left to conclude. So let’s talk through how the 2022 season ended, including talking through the winner for the inaugural Omnifantasy Cup.
When we last checked in, the only sports yet to finalize were the World Cup, which was just about to start, and the two football sports, as well as tennis seeing its final event played in January. For the other events that finalized in the fall, I broke down in that previous writeup where the winners came from in terms of ADP, and I did similar earlier last year when I recapped the earliest events, which is just meant to be helpful as you look ahead to planning for 2023 drafts.
I probably won’t have an opportunity to update my sport by sport look at where winners have come from in past seasons, but you can easily pair last year’s rundown with the recaps from this year’s sports to get a good idea. As always, all of these posts about strategy/results and also how the site works and what you need to know to start your own Omnifantasy league can be found at omnifantasy.substack.com, this free newsletter that delivers each new edition to your inbox but also houses an archive of all past editions of the newsletter at that URL.
As I break these sports down, keep in mind the numbers in parenthesis refer to the Average Draft Position within that sport for the picks, as determined by an average of the 12 Omnifantasy Cup leagues, all of which were 12-person drafts.
World Cup
At last writeup, I noted Argentina (WC6) had risen from sixth-highest-drafted World Cup team in the winter to second in current odds just before the tournament started, and they backed up that shift in the market by taking down the title.
In draft season, there was a group of about nine favorites, with Portugal (WC10) sort of on the borderline, but it was known that one of them or Italy (WC8) would miss the tournament altogether due to a spring playoff (Portugal made it, and finished as a quarterfinalist). France (WC2) finished as runners-up for 50 points from that group of favorites, as did all four quarterfinalists who earned 20 points — Portugal, Brazil (WC1), England (WC3), and Netherlands (WC9). But there were big misses as well, with Spain (WC4), Germany (WC5), Belgium (WC7), and the aforementioned Italy all scoring zero points.
The two nations that exited the tournament as semifinalists for 30 points were both dark horses, with Croatia (WC12) being one of the most popular non-favorites. To emphasize that gap between favorites, note that as the 12th-drafted nation, Croatia’s average ADP of Pick 175.4 was nearly 100 picks later than Netherlands’ 80.6 ADP, which made them the ninth-selected nation.
Morocco (undrafted), meanwhile, was a true dark horse, undrafted in all 12 Omnifantasy Cup leagues before advancing to the knockout round and ending the runs of two favorites in Spain and Portugal en route to their 30 points.
NCAAF
College football seemed to wind up like it always does, with a few dark horses earning points, but one of the favorites winning the whole thing. Georgia (NCAAF2) took down the title, with fellow top picks Alabama (NCAAF1) and Ohio State (NCAAF3) scoring 20 and 30, respectively. Clemson (NCAAF4) was the clear fourth-highest drafted school, and earned zero.
Of the next bunch with much later ADPs — in the 100s, while the top three favorites all had ADPs in the top 20 overall, with Clemson at 48.8 — Michigan (NCAAF7) was also a semifinalist, while schools like USC (NCAAF5) and Texas A&M (NCAAF6) didn’t finish in the points.
In fact, of the other four point-scoring schools, Penn State (NCAAF20) was drafted just three times in the Omni Cup, and TCU, Tennessee, and Washington were all undrafted across all 12 leagues. As a Washington alum who went with a late-round NCAAF strategy but for some reason took the fraudulent UW — Wisconsin — I have only myself to blame.
ATP
At last update, tennis was a four-horse race with one event to go, and the knowledge that the final event would decide things. Here’s how it stood, with Rafael Nadal (ATP3) holding a one-point lead on breakout star Carlos Alcaraz (ATP8), who held a one-point lead on Casper Ruud (ATP16) and the top-drafted and always-dangerous Novak Djokovic (ATP1):
Unfortunately for Omni and tennis fans alike, Alcaraz was unable to play at the Australian Open due to injury. Not only did that prevent him from making a run at the 80, it also prevented him from making a run at the 50 when both Nadal and Ruud were eliminated in the second round and didn’t add any additional points.
As it turned out, Djokovic needed to merely reach the semifinals to take down the 80, but he’d go on to win the whole event. Meanwhile, Stefanos Tsitsipas (ATP4) salvaged an otherwise forgettable Omni season by finishing as the runner up to take down 20 points toward the larger tournament, and Karen Khachanov (undrafted) and Andrey Rublev (ATP11) also both rode strong Australian finishes to get into point-scoring range.
Jannik Sinner (ATP10) finished off a balanced season where he reached either the Fourth Round or quarterfinals in each tournament, but never got deeper, and he lost out on a tiebreaker to Tsitsipas and Rublev as a result (the tiebreaker is best result, then next best, etc., meant to prioritize the stronger finishes like Tsitsipas’ finals run in the Australian when there is a tie).
Also falling out of point-scoring range since last update thanks to not adding anything at the Australian were Cameron Norrie (ATP15) and Frances Tiafoe (undrafted). The biggest miss for Omni drafters was Daniil Medvedev (ATP2). One major concern with Medvedev was potential bans for Russian-born players, but that wound up occurring at only Wimbledon, with both Khachanov and Rublev overcoming missing that event to finish in the top eight. Medvedev, a preseason favorite for any tournament he was able to play in coming off his win at the 2022 Australian Open, surprisingly finished well behind both of his countrymen over the three tournaments they were able to play, as he failed to make even a single quarterfinal.
Here were the final results for everyone scoring at least two “Tennis Points”:
NFL
And the final event on the calendar was, as always, the NFL. Pretty amazingly, the Buffalo Bills (NFL1 at an ADP of 30.7) and Kansas City Chiefs (NFL2 at an ADP of 30.8) were separated by just a tenth of a pick in ADP last winter. With the Super Bowl win, the Chiefs obviously backed up the faith put into them by drafters, while Bills’ backers I’m sure look back at the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the canceled game in December that may have cost them the No. 1 seed. Sure, they got their game with the Cincinnati Bengals (NFL7) at home in the playoffs and still lost, so it’s a little tough to make a strong case things would have gone differently, but obviously every football game is a unique event and it would have been better to have had the actual result, obviously. Had the Bills won the No. 1 seed in that fictitious world, they may have never seen the Bengals in the playoffs, as Cincinnati and Kansas City would have likely met in the Divisional Round.
The Bengals were a fascinating one last draft season, because after finishing as Super Bowl runners-up the year prior, their odds were not particularly favorable, and they were drafted seventh highest. They obviously backed that up, finishing as semifinalists. The San Francisco 49ers (NFL4) were the other semifinalists, while the Philadelphia Eagles (NFL16) were the true smash pick in NFL this year, with an ADP of 183.8 as the lowest-selected NFL team among the 16 teams that were selected in all 12 Omnifantasy Cup leagues (i.e. every team with an ADP lower than there’s went undrafted in at least one league).
Joining the Bills as quarterfinalists were the Dallas Cowboys (NFL6) and then two teams that went undrafted in all 12 Omnifantasy Cup leagues, the New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars. Of the 32 NFL teams, a full 26 were selected in at least one Omni Cup, so our sample of ostensibly NFL-savvy drafters managed to miss pretty epically here, with only six teams completely ignored and two of them being point-scorers.
That said, five of the other six point-scorers were all drafted within the top seven NFL options. Of the more regrettable picks, the Los Angeles Rams (NFL3) take the cake, but the Green Bay Packers (NFL5), Baltimore Ravens (NFL8), Los Angeles Chargers (NFL9), and Tennessee Titans (NFL10) were the other highest-drafted teams to take zeroes.
Omni Cup champion
At last update, Evan was holding onto his Omnifantasy lead with 500 points on the nose, though he had some tough paths to additional points and could even lose a few in tennis. Unfortunately, he fell victim to Carlos Alcaraz missing the Australian, both of his NFL picks (Chargers, Bucs) lost out in the Wild Card Round, his World Cup pick USA fell a round short of points, and his NCAAF pick Utah won the Pac-12 Championship game over USC and was a bowl win away from assuredly securing 20 points, but lost to Penn State in the Rose Bowl. In other words, after an epic start to his Omni season where he was parlaying positive results, a flip switched, and he parlayed a bunch of bad beats to close it out, ultimately finishing in a tie for third at 480 points.
That left the door open, and Anthony burst through it, with 12 point-scorers overall, including five champions, four of which came from the final eight sports on the calendar, capped by the Chiefs. Anthony’s 570 total points put him clear of the field by a whopping 50, making him a deserving winner of the inaugural Omnifantasy Cup, which we’ll eventually commemorate in some kind of digital Hall of Fame if we ever get the site to the point to piece that together. Here’s his draft:
Anthony also hit on Croatia as a late-round semifinalist in the World Cup, which he paired with an earlier Portugal pick for 50 WC points. He made his true push in NASCAR, nailing two of the final four drivers, including the winner, for 110 points there.
After soliciting some ideas from the group about prizes, I’ve settled on two tickets to a sporting contest of your choice (with a bit of a cutoff on price there). Hit me up Anthony and we’ll get that taken care of.
Also deserving of a shoutout is Ryan Granger, the only other drafter in the contest to finish with over 500 points. Ryan had a sublime start to his draft, hitting on finalists with each of his first four picks, and then nailing another winner in Round 6 with Argentina. He’d add point-scorers in each of the six rounds after that, as well, but was unable to find any late-round point-scorers in the final third of his draft. He did have Jannik Sinner in those late rounds, and Sinner was live for a strong tennis finish had he made a deeper run at the Australian.
Ryan finished with 520 points; amazingly, the person he drafted right next to, Zane, came in a tie for third place overall with the aforementioned Evan at 480. Setting aside what you other 10 drafters in that league were doing, Zane did hit on the late-round picks, totaling 130 points across his three picks from Round 15 to Round 17, possibly because he’s a Philadelphia homer, although sometimes these things just happen.
I’ll have more information on Omnifantasy Cup 2023 soon, but the short version is drafts start Monday. If you haven’t signed up yet and want to participate, you can do so at this Google form.
Ship Chasing Cup
Before I go, I also have to give a big shoutout to Ship Chasing Cup champion Kyle Robert. In that event, we had just three 12-team leagues, using the same settings as the Omnifantasy Cup. That didn’t stop Kyle from posting a sick 550-point team that wouldn’t have topped all 144 teams in the Omni Cup had he not started with Lewis Hamilton in the second-overall slot.
Kyle finished with nine of his 19 picks reaching at least the semifinals, including two of the four semifinalists in two different sports — NHL and World Cup.
Alright, that’s it for this final recap of the 2022 Omni season. You can always draft your 2023 Omnifantasy league at omnifantasy.com, and I’ll be back soon with more information on the 2023 Omnifantasy Cup.