After hitting 6k last night I started reflecting on how I ended up in this fantasy football space.

I thought you might be interested in a bit of an unusual story.

It all started back in 2015. I was talking to one of my best friends about how my redraft team had performed in week 1. He mentioned that he had never been in a league and would love to give it a try.

I had always wanted to start a dynasty league but had no idea how.

I promptly called everyone that I knew that played fantasy football to see if they'd be interested in trying out a dynasty league.

We ended up finding 9 people and one friend said he didnt have the time, but that he would "draft" the team and we could find someone to takeover

At this point I was a casual fantasy footballer. I had never been on FF twitter, even as an observer. I had never read an article about redraft and I didn't even know there was dynasty content out there.

Needless to say, we did the draft two days later. My team was literally a comedy of errors.

Andrew Luck in the first round of a 10 team 1 qb league.....

A Draft capitalless CJ Anderson in round 2 coming off a hot 6 game stretch, etc.

My team was "meh".

The league shutdown for the off-season and we fired up again in redraft season with our rookie draft in August

I took what I would find out later was a "maybe-profile" Josh Doctson with my first round pick at 1.04.

There wasnt a single trade that first year.

Then about 3 weeks into the 2016 season I traded two players for one.

Sammy Watkins and Josh Gordon for Carlos Hyde.

I was certain that Watkins would be hurt forever and had no idea if Josh Gordon would play again.

And if you recall, my superstar RB was CJ Anderson. I was shocked he struggled in 2015 and wasnt great so far in 2016. I needed another RB to add to the stable.

This is the worst trade I've ever made. I had no resources, was just going with my gut.

This was the ADP of these players (not that I knew it at the time):

Watkins - 12
Gordon - 45

For:

Hyde - 58

That's right, I gave up the two best players to get the inferior one.

I was in desperate need of help both on my team and just in general.

In the midst of a second consecutive disappointing season I found this little website called:

@DynastyNerds

I read an article telling me that Devontae Booker was the truth based on some metrics (I cant recall the specifics) but I think it had to do with his size and college production...

I immediately went out and bought Booker as I had CJ Anderson already and was going to be damned if I was going to let someone else benefit from his backup taking over.

Yup, my RB core centered around Carlos Hyde, CJ Anderson, and Devantae Booker.

Seriously, Im really good at this, sign up for my patreon.

It wasnt long until I basically had a countdown set until the new podcast show hit each week. I couldnt get enough of @DynastyMatt and @DynastyRich

I even donated some money to the site and ended up winning a dynasty nerds T-shirt as a result.

@DynastyRich did his best to say my name on the podcast, I told him he did well attempting it. He kind of butchered it, but I didnt care.

I was officially a member of the #nerdherd

It wasnt long until I needed MOAR content. This lead to a few quick google searches of:

"how to not suck at dynasty fantasy football"

"how to git gud at dynasty fantasy football"

"I'd love to win a dynasty championship, but I'd honestly just settle for winning a matchup"

This led me to @DLFootball.

I was in heaven. Between DLF and Dynasty Nerds I think I had read every article that had been written over the past 3 years to that point.

But what was really missing was that Devontae Booker article. I NEEDED some more analytics in my lyfe. Also the weekly podcast from dynasty nerds just wasnt enough to satiate my thirst for all things dynasty

Enter - the filmmetrix podcast.

Sadly it no longer exists, but was fantastic in its time

This was a show by @_NickWhalen and @RotoHack

I went back and listened to every show they had made to that point.

But I didnt just listen, I had my notepad and I was keeping track of who checked the film boxes and who checked the analytics boxes. I wanted the guys that checked ALL of the boxes.

I was set.

Then they had a guest on the show one episode which was pretty weird to me, I couldnt recall the dynasty nerds having a guest. So I thought this guy must be pretty special.

The guest was incredible. The way he spoke was intoxicating. He was passionate, yet concise, and he wove such incredible anecdotes into his analysis... I needed much much more of this guy.

The guests name was Matt Kelley. @Fantasy_Mansion

I rewound (is that a thing you do in the digital age? maybe I restarted is a better way to say it?) the podcast back to the start so I could figure out who he was and where I could find him.

I think I spent the next three months locked in my parents basement looking up every player I could think of. (ok, I didnt live with my parents, my wifes basement? my own basement? it doesnt really matter, pick your favorite.)

I was in A basement. Thats the important thing.

The 2017 draft was fast approaching and I was going to nail it. THIS was the season that was going to set my team up for success. I was so sure of it I started anther league to put my new found skills to the test

And then I took over a couple of orphan teams too

To be continued

Matt Kelley was the prince that was promised. I bought everything he had to offer.

I bought his book, I bought the rankings, I bought the concierge service. If he had it, I bought it.

I was getting into the 2017 rookies when I had read something about how Evan Engram should switch to WR because he wasnt big enough to play TE.

This reminded me that in that filmetrix show, that Matt was a guest on, Nick had said something, along the lines that Engram was one of the top receivers in the class regardless of position.

I could be getting my story wrong, but I think Ty Montgomery had switched to RB by this point and I remembered Matt saying that when you switch Montgomery to RB, his metrics really popped.

So I had the concierge service from Matt, so I emailed him asking what it would look like if Engram was a WR instead of TE and I suggested that he should have someone write an article on it as it would be pretty interesting.

This is where my analyst story begins.

Matt replied that he would get me the data if I committed to writing the article. I was floored.

I had no idea of how to write an article, I had never written anything.

But I thought, what the the hell? Whats the worst that could happen!?

I spent MONTHS writing that first article. And looking back, it was pretty awful.

A few days after it published I had shown EVERYONE. I was so proud of my fantasy football article.

Then one of my colleagues at the accounting firm I worked at messaged me, "have you listened to the new podcast on @rotounderworld ? I think Matt is tearing you apart"

I dropped everything and turned it on. Matt was in fact tearing it apart.

I was certain he would never let me write anything for his site again.

It was fine, I had no intention of being an analyst at that time, I thought it was a cool experience that not many people have the opportunity to do and I did it.

So... #suckithaterz

Then a strange thing happened. The next summer I was on Matt's writers list. I started receiving group emails about article ideas etc.

So I thought, what the heck, it was pretty fun doing all that research. Ill give it a shot. After all, whats the worst that could happen?

So I did a bit more writing for Matt during the 2018 rookie season.

Then I started getting involved with Twitter as that seemed to be the place to be.

By the 2019 season I had found this guy named @pahowdy

He started retweeting me (i had about 100 followers at the time IIRC) so getting retweeted by the great Peter Howard was pretty special.

It wasnt long until Peter told @RyanMc23 about my ADP trend research I was doing.

This one tweet from Ryan shot my follower count up like 6x. https://twitter.com/RyanMc23/status/1118344034882326528?s=20

Then things really started to gain some traction. People actually saw things I was tweeting. Prior to that I was just shouting into the abyss.

From there I went onto write at @DLFootball .

They didnt have any spots available for rankers at the time and I had people asking for dynasty rankings. So I decided I would start a patreon.

There is nothing better than the group of patrons that I have. It is a substantially different experience than twitter or reddit or anywhere else for that matter.

We have disagreements but its civil disagreements. People have an open mind, they are open to new ideas, and the petty name calling and bs like that just doesnt exist.

And that is pretty much where we are today.

In short, due to the inspiration and support of people like @DynastyRich @DynastyMatt @_NickWhalen @RotoHack @Fantasy_Mansion @pahowdy and @RyanMc23 I've been able to carve out my own space in this world and I am forever grateful.