2022 Champions Profile - Peter Jennings

[Tom Kessenich]

It may seem impossible to take one entry and turn it into a national championship when competing against a few thousand teams in the NFFC. But as Steven Merrifield proved in 2021 it certainly was not when he won the Cutline contest with just one entry.

Peter Jennings had no idea that one year later history was about to repeat itself when he signed up for his only entry on Sept. 2 in this most unique of fantasy football contests.

But turn that single entry into greatness is exactly what Jennings did a year ago. Like Merrifield in 2021, Jennings took that single entry and toppled the entire field in 2022, besting them all to become the Cutline champion and winning the $100,000 grand prize.

Needless to say the outcome took him by surprise when the season came to an end.

“It was shocking,” he said. “These things are so hard to win and somehow I did it with only one bullet. In seasons prior I would have had at least nine teams but I had moved out to Las Vegas, so I was finally able to play DFS again so season long wasn’t really priority.”

For something that may not have been his primary focus in fantasy, the Cutline definitely ended up being quite rewarding.

He won the regular season title in his league, pocketing $350, and finished second overall in the contest in total points. That strong finish was due to an impressive draft, the likes of which would be impossible to duplicate today.

Consider the following players he drafted with his first few picks:

Round 1: Austin Ekeler (sixth overall)
Round 2: Travis Kelce
Round 3: Tyreek Hill
Round 4: Travis Etienne
Round 5: Patrick Mahomes
Round 6: Amon-Ra St. Brown

“I had the top quarterback, top tight end, four top wide receivers and three Top 20 running backs,” he said. “Winning quarterback and tight end I think was very important along with dodging bad injury luck. I always had all the starting spots covered by healthy players.”

His "The Fish" team fell to 93rd overall after Week 2 in the playoff round but survived the first "cut" and then was 33rd overall after the second "cut" of Week 14. The Fish rose to 7th after Week 15 and entered the final table of 12 in Week 17 after leading everyone through Week 16.

“I felt like I was in it the whole way until Mike Evans put up like 50 points in the morning games of the last week, then I thought I was out of it,” he said. “I made one defense switch from Bengals to Packers at the last minute before the late games on week 17. Then they scored two touchdowns, as did Austin Ekeler, which surprisingly put me in commanding lead to win. I had thought I must have had a 95%+ chance to win going into the final game.”

That defensive switch to the Packers proved pivotal. Jennings’ team put up the most points in Week 17 with 201.10 and that propelled him to the Cutline title.

A professional gambler, Jennings said he didn’t do “anything special” with the grand prize he won in the Cutline. However, he does plan to come return with more ferocity in the contest this year. A single entry won’t be enough to satisfy him in 2023 as he plans to invest more heavily as the defending champion.