Every year I go into this fantasy league convinced I'm finally winning the whole thing. I never do… I've decided to document the slow-motion disaster this season anyway: the draft, the weekly recaps, and whatever gets said in the group chat that probably wouldn't survive a subpoena. It'll stack up down below, week by week, starting before a single pick is in.
This league is old. North of ten years, probably closer to fifteen, I've genuinely lost count. Long enough that the group chat is less a fantasy league and more a support group with a scoreboard.
I don't have a team name this year yet, and I won't until I'm on the clock. I'm the one guy in this league who reinvents himself every season. Everyone else has run the same name since roughly the invention of the forward pass, a couple people have swapped once or twice, but that's the extent of the creativity. Me? Brand-new identity every year, usually a bad one.
As for the on-field arc, everyone already knows it. I came out of the gate on fire, won the whole thing early, made the playoffs basically every year, went to the finals a few more times and choked. Then the last five years or so I've been flat-out dreadful, a playoff appearance here and there, and when I get in, I get smoked. So that's my starting point this year: nowhere to go but up.
The rest of the field, quick version. #1 and #2 are the historical bullies, both perennially good, both with hardware. #3 is new blood, second or third year in, and he's already won the thing, which is rude. The Mag is the old juggernaut who ran the league for years, though the last two have been merely normal, which for him counts as a slump. #5 is the classic sleeper, always sneaky decent, never the favorite, always a problem. And 6 through 10 are the muck, which lately includes me.
As for the draft itself, we go the week of the first game, usually that Wednesday. With the openers getting shoved earlier this year, we might bump it up a couple days, but nothing's locked. Grades take a couple hours to do right, so those land as their own entry once the picks are in. For now everybody's undefeated, everybody's convinced this is their year, and at least one of us is wrong on purpose.