Saw this on Grantland yesterday. It's by Bill Barnwell article who usually writes about real football but decided to try and describe JC's gretness using fantasy football stats. Pretty great:
Charles in Charge
It's good that you probably weren't watching the Chiefs-Raiders game Sunday afternoon, because the things that Jamaal Charles was doing to the Raiders shouldn't have been broadcast on television before the safe harbor. With the Oakland defense either unaware that running backs can catch passes or uninterested in learning from its mistakes, Charles caught a bevy of screens and swing passes amid a truly monstrous day. While Charles only ran for 20 yards on eight carries — by far his lowest rushing output of the season — his eight catches yielded a whopping 195 yards, tying him with DeSean Jackson as the day's leading receiver. In all, Charles finished with five touchdowns, four of which came through the air. In a traditional scoring system, Charles produced 51.5 fantasy points.
Of course, fantasy points are even more meaningful these days. Charles's huge day came in Week 15, which is right smack-dab in the middle of just about every fantasy football league's playoffs. I suppose there are some people who had Charles in their lineup this week and lost, but I'm guessing that the 50-spot Charles posted won a lot of people a lot of playoff games and a whole lot of money. Given the high stakes, was it the most clutch fantasy football performance … ever?
Football crack — also known as pro-football-reference.com — has game logs for individual players dating back through 1960. For the purposes of this analysis, let's just assume nobody was playing fantasy football before 1960.4 The website also tracks the fantasy football points generated by each offensive player from those game logs. The figures don't include fumbles, but Charles didn't fumble on Sunday, so that won't matter in comparing him with the greats from the past. I want to compare Charles's performance to other great playoff performances from the past, but just about every league I've ever seen has different playoff rules, so let's keep things simple and just consider performances that occurred between Week 14 and Week 16.
As it turns out, Charles's game against the Raiders on Sunday was the third-best performance during the fantasy football playoffs over the past 53 years. He came in one-tenth of a point behind a Corey Dillon game from 1997. The record belongs to Clinton Portis, who generated 55.4 fantasy points during a 2003 Broncos game that saw him score five touchdowns while producing 254 yards from scrimmage. Three of the top 10 performances in fantasy playoff history came from running backs under Mike Shanahan in Denver, which should be part of Shanahan's Hall of Fame argument someday. Charles is the first guy over 40 points in a fantasy playoff game since Jerome Harrison's 286-yard game against the Chiefs in 2009.
Charles was pretty good in Week 14, too: He produced 27.8 fantasy points with two touchdowns and 158 yards from scrimmage in the blowout win over Washington. The Colts and their 25th-ranked run defense loom in Week 16. With 79.3 fantasy points under his belt through the first two weeks of the playoffs, could Charles be on pace to be the most valuable player in fantasy football playoff history?
Absolutely. The best three-week performance from Week 14 to Week 16 since 1960 belongs to Charles's predecessor as the Kansas City starting halfback. Larry Johnson produced 95.4 fantasy points over that three-week stretch during the 2005 season, accruing a total of 441 rushing yards, 93 receiving yards, and seven touchdowns. For fun, he threw in a 222-yard, three-touchdown performance in Week 17 for leagues that abhor the light.
Charles already has the third-best performance in fantasy playoff history. To top Johnson's 2005 and set a new playoff record, Charles will need to generate 16.2 fantasy points. A touchdown and more than 100 yards from scrimmage would get the job done.
Back here in real football, though, the Chiefs need to seriously start thinking about how they want to manage Charles's workload heading into the playoffs. As amazing as his performance on Sunday was, the Chiefs were right to keep him out toward the end of the game to get backup Knile Davis touches while attempting to keep Charles fresh for the playoffs. He'll obviously suit up next week, but if the Chiefs lose to the Colts and get locked into the fifth seed in the AFC with a Broncos win, Andy Reid should absolutely bench his star halfback in Week 17 in what would be a meaningless game (for the Chiefs, at least) at San Diego. Charles is more essential to his offense, arguably, than any other non-quarterback in football; it's impossible to imagine the Chiefs going far in the playoffs without him around, so it will be critical for Kansas City to get him as fresh as possible. The Chiefs would like to see the Charles who won so many fantasy football playoff games yesterday help them win an NFL playoff game or two this season.
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