Managers

BEAU

Let’s just get this out of the way. Beau won again last year. That puts his number of championships at 5, which is more than anyone else. We all need to take a good, hard look in the mirror, because Beau had no right winning last season. I will be the first to (begrudgingly) admit that his career has been impressive, but his last season was not. He shouldn’t have even made the playoffs. Here is how his championship season compares to the other championship seasons in the modern scoring era (since 2011):

· Worst record. In fact, he's the only champion without a winning record

· Fewest points/game

· Worst relative points rank (he only outscored 2 people)

· Worst “point for” to “points against” differential

· Worst regular season rank

· Smallest margin of victory

· Only champ to not have the high score of the week a single time

Now obviously this all sounds bad. And it is. I mean please remember that Matt won a championship, so all of the above worsts are worse than him. That being said, once he made the playoffs, he played like he deserved to be there. After averaging less than 96 points/game all season, he came alive and put up impressive and consistent totals. In fact, all 3 weeks of the postseason, he scored between 129 and 131 points. Please be nice to the commissioner because nobody else wants the job.

JARED

Jared’s 2024 season was unfortunately the mirror image of Beau’s. After week 1 Jared was in 3rd place, and that's the lowest his ranking would be the entire season. He spent the next 13 weeks in either 1st or 2nd place. He finished with over 100 points more than anyone else won his weekly matchups by an average of over 29 points, which was the highest in the league. While he by no means fell apart in the post-season, he didn’t kick it into high gear either and unfortunately (for all of us but Beau) was not able to pull out the win in the championship.

Jake

Relegated

MIKE

After seeing that Jake had just been relegated, Mike apparently decided it was the perfect time to put a target on his own back by not attending this year’s draft. The strange part is that this is the first draft Mike has missed in several years if not ever, so the timing is quite odd. His excuse was that we always draft on Labor Day weekend, which isn't even true. Literally just last year we drafted the weekend before Labor Day. He also confidently stated that he would have a game on Friday, which was also proven false by Bryan's impressive internet sleuthing. It's all very disappointing.

As far as fantasy goes, he’s still not very good and I don’t think he even knows all the rules.

CHRIS

After a strong start, where he was in 1st or 2nd place for the first 9 weeks of the season, things just kind of fell apart towards the end. He has three championships, which is second-most in the league, but he can no longer rest on his laurels. The rest of the league (mostly just Beau really) likes to point out that his last championship was in 2019 and in the 5 seasons since he’s only made the playoffs twice. But make no mistake, when he’s hot there’s no one better, as he has 6 of the 10 best weeks of all time. I could be biased, but this has all the makings of a Cinderella story in 2025.

KYLE

Another manager at risk of relegation, Kyle has only attended one live draft. Despite making the playoffs in 5 of his 7 seasons, he's only been able to translate that to a single top 3 finish. His postseason record is 1-5, which is a league-worst. His biggest standout metric is that he has the highest win percentage against a specific opponent of anyone in the league, in that he's won 83% of his matchups against Matt. But also it's Matt so...

BRYAN

It was yet another disappointing season for Bryan. For most of last season, Weeks 4 – 13, he was floating around between 8th and last place. And then came Week 14. At the time he was in 9th place and his playoff hopes were dismal. Chris was sitting in 5th and all but guaranteed a playoff spot, so long as in Week 14 he wasn’t outscored by Dave by 47, Adam by 75, or Bryan by 105. So Chris decided to drop his defense, who wasn’t playing until Monday, in order to pick up Khalil Shakir in preparation for the playoffs. On Sunday things got interesting. Josh Allen went off and put up nearly 58 points himself, and for a minute it looked like Bryan might be able to pull off a miracle. He ended up scoring the 2nd most points EVER (180.48) and was just 15 points shy of making the playoffs. He’d gone from having less points than everyone but Matt, to having the 4th most points in the league. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that in Week 4 he lost to Dave by just 0.24, which is the 4th closest game in league history. Had he won that game, coupled with his amazing Week 14 performance, he’d have finished the regular season in 4th and easily made the playoffs. As a result, this year’s draft weekend single, in stark contrast to last year’s anthemic “All My Friends Are Faggots,” will likely be a return to his early 2000s somber emo roots.

DAVE

Things have taken a sharp turn against the 2-time champion in recent years. He's the only person to finish last in back-to-back seasons (2022 and 2023). After being the beneficiary of a very easy schedule for nearly a decade, Dave just finished his 2nd consecutive season of not only having the most points scored against him, but having played against the high points scorer of the week more than anyone else. His 2024 season was looking good for about 30 minutes, meaning that at 1030am on the first Sunday he was at a 77% projected win rate vs Bryan while Josh Allen had -2.44 points. But as the great philosopher Ferris Bueller once noted, "Life moves pretty fast," and before he knew it he was on the receiving end of the biggest blowout of the week. With a little help from the scheduling gods and the extra time he'll have not campaigning and fundraising this year, he may surprise us all and return to YOB relevance.

ADAM

Another manager at risk of relegation this year is Adam, who is the only manager that's been in the league since inception and never won a championship. He only texts on very rare occasions, but when he does they're the length of a voicemail from your mom. Adam had the worst game of anyone last season when he put up just 47.66 in Week 5. It's a contract year for Adam and we're hoping that he understands the significance and brings his A-Game.

MATT

Having won the league in 2023, I remarked in last year’s note that “Only time will tell if we’ll see a repeat or a Buster Douglas-style collapse.” I now realize that comment was offensive….to Buster Douglas. Holy hell did Matt suck last year. At least Buster Douglas made it to Round 3 with Holyfield. Matt opened the season in 9th place, and he would alternate between 9th and last place for 13 of the 14 weeks of his season. The only outlier was week 12 where, probably due other people dealing with byes, he managed to claw “all the way up” to 7th place. But he then immediately fell back to last place where he stayed the rest of the season. In his best week of the whole season he scored just 3 more points than Jared’s season average. He is now just the 2nd person in league history to go from champion to last place (it doesn’t matter who the other person was). After a bizarre one year absence, Matt has unmistakably returned to his rightful homeland of Loser Island. Nature is healing.

CARL

And last but not least is the newest addition to the shitshow, none other than Carl Cassidy. Even though this will be his first year in the league, he's already logged more hours at a draft house than Adam. His text engagement has been promising as he's already been very "audible" on the thread. If you're betting that the addition of a sharp-tongued gambling addict will make the league less fun, I know a guy who would LOVE to take that action.

All THINGS Y.O.B.

The Managers - In order of 2024 Performance