The 2018–19 yearbook. First season in this archive, ESPN, no Sleeper. Jake won it. Neil went 11–1 and did not. Andy drafted Le’Veon Bell first overall. The notes are weekly power rankings plus one awards-and-playoff-preview post. There is no championship recap and no posted Slutler box score.
Finals · Regular season · Who won the draft · Won the week · November · Wire & trades · Playoffs · Slutler · Team portraits
The hardware
| Finish | Manager | Team | How they got there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🏆 Champion | Jake Bowen | House on Tyreek Hill | 8–3, #3 seed in the final ranks. Hill, McCaffrey, Ebron. Beat Ian in the semis preview. Hall of Champions: first title. |
| Regular-season title | Neil Calvert | Saved by the Conner | 11–1. Conner at $3 the day after the draft. Clinched, champagne parade, rested the last week. The ring went somewhere else. |
| Playoffs | Ian / PJ | Darnold Duck / Touchdown My Pants | Ian 7–4, riding a high-scoring streak. PJ squeaked in as #1 in points and a 5–6-ish record. Semis: Neil vs PJ, Jake vs Ian. |
| Slutler | Andy, most likely | Rick n more tds | #10 in the final ranks, ~3 wins, Bell at 1.01. The notes never print the word on a winner. They print the curse. |
Regular season
The final power rankings on the season page are the standings. Neil clinched first and sat. The last playoff chair was Joel vs PJ: Joel wins and he’s in; Joel loses and PJ is in with a win. Both drew bottom-feeders. Joel had just traded Cam for McCoy. PJ was first in points and allergic to wins. PJ got in. Seif needed a miracle and did not get one.
| Manager | Team | What the notes say | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Neil | Saved by the Conner | 11–1. Regular-season champion. Conner, Kamara, Chubb, then Cam via Joel. |
| 2 | Ian | Darnold Duck | 7–4. Clinched on his highest-scoring week. Fournette back to RB1 form. ~145 on a late streak. |
| 3 | Jake | House on Tyreek Hill | 8–3. Highest-scoring team the week of the preview. Hill, McCaffrey, Antonio Brown, Ebron. |
| 4 | PJ | Touchdown My Pants | Squeaked in. First in points, middle in PA, could not get the W’s until it mattered. |
| 5 | Joel | Take Mahomes Tonight | 6–5, fighting, then the Cam-for-McCoy trade. McCoy: under 6 points the last two weeks. Cam: 47, QB4. |
| 6 | Seif | Saquona Matata | 5–6. Defending champ (2017 House Trubisky). Saquon and Mixon on paper. Never strung weeks together. |
| 7 | Tony | Miller-Time / Hunt for a Playoff Miracle | Hopkins room that Jake secretly feared. Identity crisis heading into 2019. |
| 8 | CJ | The Johnson Fitz (II) | Old Fogies. Good moves, cylinders never fired the same week. A stretch at last place in week 11. |
| 9 | Kris | *uck you / Luck You | Luck, Gronk, Gurley in the same graveyard. Least active, still a spoiler. |
| 10 | Andy | Rick n more tds | The Curse of Le’Veon Bell. Active in the chat, three wins, last. |
Midseason snapshots wander: Andy was 8th at 3–7 in one week-11 table, CJ 10th the same week. The final obituaries put Andy at 10. The records above are the end-of-year ranks, not a Sleeper table.
Who won the draft
No pick list. The awards are blunt anyway.
Won the waiver, which is the draft: James Conner, $3, the day after the draft, Neil. MVP “by a longshot.” Hill, McCaffrey, Kamara, and Brees all had cases. Conner is the value sentence. The other nine managers are in the “how dumb” clause.
Lost the draft: Andy. Bell at 1.01, McCoy in the 3rd, Landry in the 4th, Olsen in the 5th. “Doomed before the season started.” Jake’s own scar is trading Ertz “for literally nothing (and Jones but to a lesser degree).” Joel’s is believing in McCoy.
Brightest future: Trubisky and Saquon, both from Seif’s squad, Trubisky already on his second tour of the wire. Andrew Luck honorable mention. The “end of the road” aside was Brady no longer a QB1 and Rodgers going on-and-off — with a note that next year you might draft Jackson and Mayfield over both.
Won the week
No weekly high table. A few Sundays lived in the ranks:
| When | What the notes saved |
|---|---|
| Playoff-clinch week | Ian’s highest-scoring week, the same week he clinched. Jake also “locked up the highest scoring team this week” in the preview — Ebron, Brown, and Hill tied for the league lead in receiving TDs. |
| McCaffrey streak | Named in the Jake-vs-Ian preview as the other reason the 3-seed was not scared. |
| Late Joel | McCoy under 6 the last two weeks after the trade; Cam 47 for Neil in the same span. |
Who lost the season in November
Joel, in public, with a receipt. Two weeks left, needing both wins, he traded Cam Newton to Neil for LeSean McCoy. McCoy took a bye, then the Jags, then Joel’s bench. Joel started Jameis the week it mattered. The notes asked Seattle friends to check on PJ if he missed. PJ did not miss. Joel did.
Andy had already lost the season in August. The November version was “too little, too late” on a 3–7 with nice waiver activity. Seif never got a two-game streak. Kris was “technically still alive” and not really.
The wire, the wallet, the trades
Best moves: Neil, and not only Conner. He acquired McCoy and flipped him for Cam. Kittle and Dalvin Cook for an IR’d Jordan Howard and a Tate who had already been cashed. The Cam-for-McCoy deal is the one “the league is still investigating.” It made Neil’s QB room and ended Joel’s season.
Andy’s best moves are in the same awards section as his worst ones. He flipped Bell into Ertz and Jones (who then went to Jake), flipped McCoy for Breida. Those three won him a game. He finished with three.
Waiver crumbs the ranks bothered to name: Dak $12, Dede Westbrook $1, Marquez Valdes-Scantling $7, Dez $1 (PJ), Jets D $6, an RB for Ian at $19 when he needed one.
Worst moves, again: Andy’s draft. Jake trading Ertz. Joel believing in McCoy. The 2019 awards page still listed all three as last year’s graveyard.
Playoffs
Two-week rounds. The notes preview the semis and stop. Hall of Champions says Jake.
| Matchup | The preview |
|---|---|
| #1 Neil vs PJ | Jake picked Neil −15. Conner vs Kamara, Chubb vs Zeke, Kittle vs Olsen, Evans vs OBJ. “Ryan or Roethlisberger slips and Newton thrives.” |
| Jake vs Ian | Jake picked himself −11. RB2/flex was the swing: Michel / Kerryon / Telvin / Josh Adams vs Mack / Lindsay / Ekeler / Ito. “Lots of TDs from McCaffrey, Brown, Hill and Ebron.” |
Who met in the final is not in the archive. The champion is. House on Tyreek Hill, first plaque on the wall that is not Seif’s 2017.
Slutler
The notes do not run a Slutler preview in 2018 the way they do later. They run a 10th-place obituary:
Andy, Rick n more tds, the Curse of Le’Veon Bell. Brooklyn Dodgers, wait ’til next year. Three wins. Active, chatty, doomed in August. A week-11 table had him 8th and CJ 10th; the final ranks put Andy last. If someone else wore it, the archive does not say. This page will not invent a different name.
Team portraits
Jake Bowen — House on Tyreek Hill — Champion
First title. Hill in the team name, McCaffrey on the roster, Ebron surprising the league, a traded-away Ertz in the awards shame column. He wrote the season. He also won it.
Neil Calvert — Saved by the Conner — 11–1
The regular-season champion. $3 Conner, Cam via Joel, Kittle, Cook. Champagne parade, last week off, no ring. The first great “won the year until January” team in the notes.
Ian — Darnold Duck — semis
7–4, a 145-point streak, Fournette alive again, $19 on a dart RB. The other half of Jake’s preview. Still in the league through 2021.
PJ Hardcastle — Touchdown My Pants — semis
First in points, last into the bracket. The notes told Seattle to check on him. He was fine. The title took two more years.
Joel Hernandez — Take Mahomes Tonight — 5th
Mahomes was a football god and a spectator. The McCoy trade is the 2018 cautionary tale, cited for years. Fortnite skins mentioned. Jameis started.
Matt Seifert — Saquona Matata — 6th
Defending champ, talking shit, Saquon on the roster, never a two-game run. The notes promised he would be back. He won it the next year.
Tony — Hunt for a Playoff Miracle
Hopkins room, no identity, 7th. The team Jake did not want to play and then did not have to.
Chris Johnson — The Johnson Fitz (II)
Old Fogies. Last place for a week, 8th at the end. The notes guessed he would go younger in 2019.
Kris — Luck You
Luck, Gronk, Gurley. Least active, still a spoiler, 9th. The gal-with-Gurley-and-Gronk joke is in the awards.
Andy — Rick n more tds — last
Bell, McCoy, Landry, Olsen. Then the good trades that won him one of three games. The notes said if he keeps showing up he could be a dark horse. He kept showing up.
Sources: the 2018 season notes on this site (weekly ranks, awards, playoff preview) and the Hall of Champions. No Sleeper league. ESPN league 759568 is the waiver-report link. Two-week playoff rounds. The archive ends before the championship box score.