The all-time worst fantasy football performances
So, with an eye toward fantasy failure, let’s highlight the absolute worst single-game performances in fantasy football in the Super Bowl era.
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While the Detroit Lions have never won a Super Bowl, they do have one claim to fame. They’ve served up the worst single-game performance in fantasy football history — an “honor” they share with the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Tennessee Titans.
Six days before Christmas 1993, the Lions welcomed Steve Young, Jerry Rice and the San Francisco 49ers to the Pontiac Silverdome. Today, that might sound like a blowout waiting to happen, but the Lions were actually in the middle of a pretty good season, with a record of 8-5 and on their way to an NFC Central title. Beside, in its previous five games, Detroit’s defense had surrendered just 63 total points — an impressive 12.6 per-game average. Sure, the 49ers were a game better at 9-4, but they had just lost in Atlanta while committing four turnovers.
There was every reason to play the Lions’ D/ST in fantasy against a 49ers team playing on the road for the second time in two weeks. Then the game started.
San Francisco scored on its first drive and on each of its drives in the first half. Three of those scoring drives took less than one minute. The 49ers built a 31-10 halftime lead. The score was 45-10 at the end of the third, by which time San Francisco replaced Young under center with Steve Bono. Little changed. The 49ers scored 10 more points in the fourth quarter with Bono at the helm for a 55-17 final score.
The 49ers put up 565 yards of total offense on Detroit that day. They never punted. They never made a turnover. They never allowed a sack. That gave the Lions’ D/ST a minus-12 fantasy performance for the week, tying the record the Eagles’ D/ST had set in a 62-10 loss to the Giants in 1972.
Why is minus-12 significant? Well, it is the absolute worst score a fantasy defense can achieve in ESPN standard scoring. It’s the gold standard of absolute failure … the Mariana Trench of defeat … the number that breaks your shovel when you hit rock bottom. Fantasy defenses “earn” a maximum of minus-5 points for giving up 46-plus points, and a maximum of minus-7 points for yielding 550-plus yards. Do both, while also failing to accrue any positive numbers via sacks, turnovers and the like (as the Lions did in Week 16 of the 1993 season), and a fantasy defense joins the exclusive Minus-12 Club.
It would be 18 years until we saw another minus-12. On Monday night in Week 13 of the 2011 season, the Giants gave up 577 yards to the Saints and lost 49-24. “We didn’t stop them,” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said after the game. “How much further explanation do you want?”
Well … none, I guess, Tom. So let’s move on to the most recent member of the Minus-12 Club — the fourth and final member: the 2013 Titans. This group was a classic Titans team — not good, not terrible. The defense was 14th in the league in yards allowed in 2013 and 16th in points allowed. Average. Mediocre. Middling. Whatever you want to call it. The Titans’ Week 14 opponent, Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos, was very much not that.
Manning was in the midst of a season that would go down as the greatest fantasy season in history for a quarterback (until Patrick Mahomes bested it in 2018). The Titans made sure not to stand in the way of history that day — and made some of their own by posting a minus-12, giving up 51 points and 551 total yards. For good measure, Tennessee even helped Broncos kicker Matt Prater set the NFL record for longest field goal with a 64-yard bomb before the half. Prater had 17 fantasy points in the game, resulting in him outscoring the Titans’ D/ST in fantasy, all by himself, BY 29 POINTS.
When it comes to historically bad individual fantasy performances, the list starts — or ends, depending on how you look at it — with Ryan Leaf. In Week 3 of the 1998 season, Leaf put up minus-9.74 fantasy points in a 23-7 road loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. His stat line: 1-of-15 passing for just 4 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, three lost fumbles and only a single yard rushing on four attempts.
Yes, that’s bad. Still, consider exactly how hard it is to achieve minus-9.74 fantasy points. A player has to play terribly, yet still manage to not get benched in order for him to keep piling up the negative points. It’s nearly impossible for a running back, wide receiver or tight end to achieve this depth of futility. A spot on the bench would be found for them long before four fumbles in a single game, let alone five or more. In fact, former Broncos RB/KR Andre Hall is the only RB, WR or TE in history to do worse than minus-4.1 fantasy points in a game. He posted a minus-4.7 game in Week 7 of 2008, thanks to fumbling twice and picking up negative yardage on the ground.
At the time of Leaf’s record-breaking performance, he was the Chargers’ franchise quarterback and was making just the third start of his career. He still had a long leash and, believe it or not, had actually won his first two starts — and shown some promise in doing so. There was good reason for him to struggle in Week 3, too. The game was played in the rain at Arrowhead Stadium. Leaf had been in the hospital (with the flu) just days before kickoff. Despite all that, he completed his very first pass of the game. He did not complete any of his final 14, however.
“He had a long day today,” Chiefs linebacker Anthony Davis said after the game. “A rookie is a rookie. But he’ll get better.” Unfortunately, that prediction did not come to fruition. Four Leaf passes were intercepted in his Week 4 start, and the career of a player who many experts felt would be better than Manning spiraled from there.
Oh, but the fantasy gods can be cruel to everyone, historic busts and Hall of Famers alike. While few fantasy managers (outside of the deepest leagues) were starting Leaf in Week 3 of 1998, Manning was still a popular fantasy quarterback in 2015. He had an ADP of No. 29 overall, the QB4. He entered a Week 10 home game against Kansas City having thrown for over 280 yards in three consecutive games, while the Chiefs’ defense was allowing opponents to score 27.5 PPG on the road for the season. Manning then proceeded to go 5-of-20 for 35 yards, no touchdowns and four interceptions. He was mercifully benched in the third quarter for Brock Osweiler, but not before putting up minus-6.6 fantasy points and single-handedly losing thousands of fantasy weeks.
That minus-6.6 is the fifth-worst single-game fantasy performance by any player in the past decade, behind only a minus-7 from Nathan Peterman in 2018, minus-6.8 points from John Skelton in 2012, minus-6.7 points from Sam Darnold last season in his infamous “Ghosts Game” and a minus-6.7 performance from Todd Collins in 2010. Peterman, Skelton, Darnold, Collins and Manning: not names you expect to be in a sentence together unless said sentence is about naming four people who have no similarity to Peyton Manning.
When you take into account Manning’s track record, start percentage and the resulting impact of his dud to fantasy teams and compare it to the same for Leaf, you could argue that the “worst individual game in fantasy history” is one of Peyton’s places. Similarly, while Hall’s minus-4.7 game is the worst ever for a RB, WR or TE, it’s hard to imagine anyone having started him in fantasy, especially in the pre-DFS age of 2008. No, as far as an awful single-game performance by a fantasy-relevant RB, WR or TE, former Carolina Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart is your man.
Stewart opened his career in 2008 and immediately became a TD-dependent flex or bye-week fill-in, vulturing scores from DeAngelo Williams. In 2009, Stewart finished as the RB14 in fantasy. His production then dipped due to injury issues and that ever-crowded Carolina backfield. Still, thanks to that RB14 potential, year after year, he was always an intriguing fantasy play — when he got touches. Flash forward to Week 9 of the 2017 season, Stewart got 11 touches. He used them to produce minus-1.9 fantasy points. It’s the worst game in fantasy history by any running back with double-digit touches in a game or any WR/TE with eight-plus targets. (Note: Targets began being recorded only in the early 1990s.)
Stewart’s stat line that day: 21 yards rushing and two lost fumbles on 11 carries, along with zero targets in the passing game. Somehow, Carolina actually beat the Falcons on the road despite Stewart’s play, thanks to rookie Christian McCaffrey stepping up with what was then a career-high 66 rushing yards and Cam Newton adding 86 of his own on the ground. Surely coach Ron Rivera saw the error of his ways and turned the run game over to McCaffrey from then on? That’s a no. One week later, Stewart got 17 carries, compared to just five for McCaffrey. In fairness, the Panthers won again. McCaffrey’s ascendance to fantasy royalty would wait until the 2018 season.
That same 2017 Panthers team managed to produce another all-time-worst fantasy performance later that season, this time in a Week 17 loss to the Falcons. Despite being targeted nine times, Greg Olsen finished with just 2.0 fantasy points, thanks to a single catch for 10 yards. No tight end with at least eight targets in a game has had fewer fantasy points. What made it worse for Olsen’s fantasy managers is that in his very next game, he put up 24.7 fantasy points on 11 targets. Unfortunately, that stellar outing came in the NFL playoffs and thus helped just about nobody in fantasy football. The lesson, as always? The fantasy gods hate us.
No recap of historic football failure would be complete without Daniel Snyder’s team, and so we end with Laveranues Coles, producer of the worst performance by a WR with eight-plus targets in a game. In Week 14 of the 2003 season — the fantasy playoffs — Coles had nine targets in Washington’s 27-0 loss to Dallas. On those nine targets he had zero receptions. That’s 0.0 fantasy points, of course. Sure, that’s awful. However, for good measure, Washington also gave him a carry in that game. It was a carry that lost a yard, meaning Coles finished with minus-0.1 fantasy points. Yes, minus-0.1 points in the fantasy playoffs from a receiver who was that season’s WR13. Not great!
Oh, and one week later? On one fewer target, Coles went for 28.4 fantasy points, helping exactly 0.0% of the fantasy managers who were bounced from the playoffs the week before. Again, the lesson is that the fantasy gods hate us. The only thing you can do is fill out the best roster you can each and every week, close your eyes and hope a minus-12 doesn’t leave your squad in tatters.