Devine picking himself back up after worst season of his illustrious career

JACKSON TWP., OHIO ­– Oh, how the mighty has fallen. And what a scene it was on his way down. For the first time in his remarkable, eight-year Tiger Township Fantasy Football career, David Devine watched the postseason from the sidelines last fall. In a season full of trials, consequences and repercussions, Devine not only failed to qualify for the playoffs, but his drastic fall from the top of the TTFFL food chain was simply stunning. After a championship in 2014, runner-up finish in 2015 and third-place performance in 2016, Devine went 5-8 in 2017, slipping all the way to 11th place in the final league standings. Quite a drop, indeed. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, especially with a sport like football,” Devine said in an exclusive interview with Chibby’s Corner. “I thought it would happen eventually with us going to six-man playoffs. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again soon because six-man is no joke. It didn’t make it any easier, but I knew it would happen.” No one can ever really sense when the “luck” is about to run out on him. Looking back, that’s a phrase that just about perfectly sums up Devine’s 2017 campaign. The former resident of “The Gates” certainly leaned on the services of quarterback Andrew Luck last fall. What he didn’t expect was that the gunslinger would never play a single snap for him. It was a setback Devine says he was never able to recover from. Still, he hung in there, keeping his head above water with early-season records of 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5. From there, though, he lost his final three games of the regular season, punching his ticket to the consolation bracket after a string of seven consecutive playoff appearances, tied for the most in modern-day league history. “I dug myself a huge hole (with Luck), and when you do that, you have to play almost perfect the rest of the way,” Devine said. “I didn’t make the moves that I needed to and just couldn’t climb out of that hole. Some of it is on me – I probably didn’t do my due diligence – but it obviously all turned out much worse than I anticipated.” Devine was never able to unload Luck before he was officially ruled out for the season. To fill the void, he forced quarterback Jacoby Brissett into action for much of the year before acquiring quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo later on. It wasn’t enough. Devine just didn’t have the necessary star power to compete. And because of that, he felt the end was near long before reaching the finish line. “I was shopping (Luck) pretty hard because I was beginning to get the sense that something was going to happen,” Devine said. “When people were no longer interested, I knew I had lost one of my only trade pieces to improve the roster. When I lost that, I just looked around the roster and just didn’t have the pieces to get better. When you don’t have that, I knew I wasn’t going to get much better.” Uncharacteristically, the Ashland University graduate finished last in the league in scoring and was largely unable to benefit from his usually tremendous player evaluations on the free agent market. Like all franchises that miss out on the chance to compete for a championship, Devine’s offseason has been a long one. However, he didn’t use much time to mope around. Instead, Devine, who still enters the new season ranked No. 1 in TTFFL history in total wins and playoff games played, went right back to work. Devine says he began his 2018 prep before the 2017 season ever ended. To him, it was about using his extra time to quickly reflect on the worst season of his career and start the turnaround process as soon as possible. “Since I was out of it so early, a lot of my stuff started right after the season while it was still fresh in my mind,” Devine said. “When things are going smoothly, you don’t really take a step back and look at the whole process. But the minute things go bad, you ask, ‘What do I have to do differently?’ I did stuff before the season was even over to give me a jump start on my research heading into August.” There’s really no debate on if Devine damaged his overall reputation with the happenings of last fall. After all, he’s still the most revered all-around fantasy owner in the TTFFL, and he has his name written all over the All-Sports Trophy to prove it. But on a personal level, Devine is hungry to get back to the top. No matter how quiet he remains during his preparation for the 2018 TTFFL Draft in Las Vegas this August, or how much he downplays the year he just went through on the gridiron, Devine is in his laboratory, creating some sort of grand concoction to use in 2018. And the rest of the league knows it, too. “There’s definitely more pressure; you don’t want to make a habit out of this,” Devine said. “It’s pressure to get it right on Draft Day. I have to start myself off on a better foot and probably won’t make that huge gamble because I just can’t go through that again. If you have a bad shoulder, you probably won’t be on the squad. If you have a bad knee, you probably won’t be on the squad.”