MATT
It took twelve seasons, but Matt finally won a championship and now we’ll never hear the fucking end of it. Last season I remarked that Matt was delusional for thinking he had a chance, and now he's saying that I am therefore a contrarian indicator. It should be noted, however, that in week ONE, after putting up a meager 47 points, Matt himself texted “For me I’ve gone past my prime whenever that was if there ever was one,” so his confidence is not quite as unshakeable as he would have you believe. He had the easiest post-season of any champion in history, with his opponents (Jake, Bryan and Adam) averaging just 75.63 points/game. Matt actually had what turned out to be the best pick of the entire draft, which was taking Sam LaPorta, who finished the season as the TE1, in the 14th round. However, in true Matt fashion, immediately after the draft, literally at 12:47pm on draft day, Matt dropped LaPorta to pick up Mecole Hardman, who went on to score 10.7 fantasy points the entire season. But he did have the best week of the season against Beau in Week 5 when he scored 171.36 points, which is 6th all-time. Matt will graciously be hosting those of us who will still be in the league next season at Chateau Matt-eau for the annual draft. Only time will tell if we’ll see a repeat or a Buster Douglas-style collapse. And don’t even get me started on his goofy, sideways-hat-wearing friend Nate who took all our money in Super Bowl squares…
ADAM
Always a bridesmaid, Adam is coming off his second consecutive 2nd place finish. Despite having nine post-season appearances, he is one of now only four people to have never won a championship. His season did not get off to a great start when he, much to the chagrin of the league and especially the Commissioner, failed to remove Travis Kelce from his lineup in the season-opening Thursday night game, despite the fact that Kelce sat out with a knee injury. We can only assume that he was too busy putting together an absolute banger of a slide deck. He had a good season, collecting $60 in weekly high points scores, which was more than anyone else, and securing a bye with a second-place regular season finish. Things were looking promising for Adam after a commanding victory over Beau in the semifinals, but then he went on to have the 3rd worst finals appearance ever against Matt with just 80.88 points.
BRYAN
After spending the past 3 seasons in 8th or 9th place, Bryan ended the regular season in first place, but finished in a disappointing third. Lovingly referred to as the autodraft champ, his many misguided sit/start decisions make it abundantly clear that he could use some assistance with his in-season management. Bryan had a very impressive draft, snagging the top 2 receivers (Tyreek and Lamb), 3 more top-21 WRs (Metcalf, Addison and Hopkins), 3 of the top-9 RBs (Etienne, Mixon and Montgomery), and even the 6th highest scoring defense (New York Jets). But allow me to illustrate with his Defensive choices how he just can’t seem to get out of his own way: His very first transaction of the season, at 630am on Sunday of week 1, was to drop Tua Tagovailoa (in favor of starting Justin Fields) and pick up and start the Seattle Defense. That first week Fields and Seattle combined for 13.54 points while Tua (the highest scoring QB in week 1) and the Jets (2nd highest scoring DEF in week 1) combined for 54.14 points. Had he simply started Tua and New York he would’ve beaten Mike and collected a cool $20 in the process. The following week he started the Jets for zero points while Seattle (who he’d already dropped) put up 13, and he ended up losing to Dave by 12.82 points and starting off 0-2. I wish I could tell you that it ended there, but of the 7 weeks that he had 2 Defenses on his roster, he started the higher scoring one just once. And in the 10 weeks that he started the Jets, they averaged 5.8 points/game, while in the 6 weeks he sat the Jets they averaged 13.5 points. Who knows, maybe this year he’ll adopt the George Costanza “do the opposite” strategy and destroy us all.
BEAU
Everyone is aware of Beau’s fantasy football achievements: 4 rings, most fantasy points, longest win streak, blah blah blah. But after an impressive 5 year run he's currently coming off of his worst season since 2017, and I would be remiss if I did not take advantage of this opportunity to shit on him a little bit. Sitting comfortably in 3rd place with a 6-4 record going into Week 11, he proceeded to lose 4 straight and squeaked into the playoffs in the #6 spot. 2023 also saw the 2 lowest scoring weeks of his career when put up 53.34 and 58.54 in Weeks 9 and 14, respectively. Although to be fair he still had some great weeks too. In fact, he had more weeks over 115 points than anyone else. Additionally, in Week 5, he and Matt had the 3rd highest-scoring matchup in regular season history, and 5th highest of all-time. Unfortunately for Beau his 130 points in Week 5 was no match for Matt’s 171 and, for the 6th time (league record) he lost his matchup with the the 2nd highest score of the week. Then just 3 weeks later it happened again against Bryan. Beau is the Katie Ledecky of losing with the 2nd most points.
JARED
Self-proclaimed “most competitive” but lambasted by critics as “Mr. Regular Season,” Jared was once again unable to capitalize on a post-season appearance. He has made the playoffs a league-high 12 times and only twice finished the regular season with a losing record, but he’s only been able to translate that into a single finals appearance and three top 3 finishes. He had the lowest scoring week of the season and his own personal worst in Week 4 when he scored 40.04 points against Jake. But to be fair his #1 draft pick did have his knee completely mangled in Week 2. Maybe 2024 is the year that Jared finally breaks down and drafts a wide receiver in the first round. Regardless of who he drafts, I’m sure he’s eager to get the post-season monkey off his back (and yes, I realize Jared is going to say something racist right now).
Jake
Last season I noted that Jake was basically middle of the road in every metric, which left me with really nothing remarkable or interesting to point out, and that 2023 was his year to show what kind of manager he really was. So what did he do? He finished the regular season in 5th place and overall in 6th place, literally better than 4/worse than 5 in one and worse than 5/better than 4 in the other. Unbelievable. I did accidentally stumble across something interesting though when looking at past matchups. In 2020, while Dave and Kyle were battling for the championship, Jake quietly put up a 182.32 point week when Alvin Kamara went absolutely nuts and scored 6 TDs and 53.2 fantasy points. Unfortunately, for him, he didn’t make the playoffs in 2020 and this was in the consolation bracket for Yahoo’s 7th place. Had this been a legitimate matchup it would’ve been the second highest score of all time.
MIKE AKA BIG D
Oh Michael, what are we going to do with you? Another year, another season wrapped up by early December. I’d love to say that if Mike could just make the playoffs then things could be different, but out of 9 post-season matchups he’s only won 1 of them. In fact his average points score in the post-season is nearly 13% less than his average in the regular season, which is the largest drop-off of anyone in the league. Mike’s early draft of the Dallas defense seemed to pay off when in Week 1 they scored 42 points and carried his team to a victory and a high score of the week (with Bryan’s help). He also went out on a high note with his 3rd best week ever (143.38 points) in Week 14 against Dave. This was actually clutch because going into week 14 he was in last place, but the difference between 7th and 10th at the time was just 33 points (all had just 5 wins). That performance catapulted him from 10th to 7th and gave us our first back-to-back loser.
KYLE
Now with six full seasons under his belt, Kyle has only managed to crack the top 4 one time. Kyle finally came alive at the end of the season, but it was too little too late after averaging 82 points/game through week 10 and not even breaking 100 until week 11. He was the only manager to not have a weekly high score last season. His late-season burst did keep him out of last place though, despite finishing with the fewest total points (Jared’s 74 point performance in Week 14 certainly helped). Kyle traded more than anyone else last year and at one point was even trading for kickers for some reason.
CHRIS
It was another lackluster for year Gang Green, finishing in the bottom 4 for the 3rd consecutive season. The season got off to a rocky start as he found himself in last place at the end of Week 1 after scoring a pathetic 46.96 points. The really crazy part though is that after Week 1 he was also less than 1 point away from 8th place as Matt and Dave had scored just 47.84 and 47.28, respectively. This was the first time in league history that more than 1 person scored under 50 points in a single week, and here we had 3. With his #1 draft pick ending up missing the 1st 4 weeks and his third pick getting injured in Week 10 just as the battle for playoffs was heating up, he was never able to find his stride. Despite not making playoffs, his week 14 matchup against Adam would still have fantasy implications for the 1st round bye and last place positioning. It ended up being the closest matchup of the season, decided by just 0.44 points. Given how long ago you read Adam's bio and how far down you had to scroll to get to Chris’, you can probably guess which way it went. The only bright spot of his season is that he beat Beau both times he faced him (sadly accounting for 40% of his total wins) and maintains the honor of being the only person to have a winning record against him.
DAVE
Dave now has the dubious distinction of being our first ever back-to-back last place finisher. His league-mates are worried that his brain has become so saturated with bisque that it has begun to affect his cognitive function. After an abysmal 3-11 record in 2022, the political insider once again shit the bed and came in last. In fact he was already offering a fire sale of his entire roster in Week 1 after scoring just 47 points. Dave was sitting in 7th place heading into week 14, but as previously mentioned the only difference between him and Mike (in last at the time) was 33 points. He had the opportunity to put the final nail in Mike's coffin in their Week 14 matchup, but the pressure proved to be too much. He had his worst performance since Week 1 and got absolutely manhandled, losing by nearly 73 points in the biggest blowout of the week. His implosion, combined with a miraculous win by Kyle and Chris outscoring him by 27 points, was enough to sink him all the way from 7th to last place in the final week of the regular season. Last place is last place, but this was arguably the most competitive season to date, with this being only the second time in league history that the loser had 5 wins, and having the smallest range ever between most and least points (just 185). He also had the most points scored against him last season and the misfortune of playing against the weekly high points scorer 5 times, which was more than anyone else. If things don’t turn around in 2024, he might as well just take his own advice and drive over to Costa Mesa to get high (Schallhorn, 2022).
Works Cited
Schallhorn, K. (2022, October 12). OC Register. Retrieved from The Orange County Register: https://www.ocregister.com/2022/10/05/david-clifford-huntington-beach-city-council-candidate-election-2022-questionnaire/
PAST MANAGERS
Throughout the years YOB has been home to seven other managers, primarily Jared's super cool coworkers. All have helped YOB become the league that it is today.
FUTURE MANAGERS
Life is unpredictable and the only constant is change. Failure to pay dues in a timely fashion and/or set lineups may result in expulsion from the league.