Why Your Fantasy Football Team Stinks (A Field Guide to Roasting Your League)

Your fantasy football team is bad. This is not an insult. It is a scouting report, and it was filed by your league, who have been talking about you in a group chat you are very much in.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about fantasy football: the trophy is fake, the money is mostly symbolic, and the entire point is having a reason to text your friends every Sunday. The game is a machine for making fun of each other. If you are not getting roasted, you are not really in the league. So below is a field guide to the ways your team stinks. Use it to roast your friends. Then, when the group chat inevitably turns it around on you, take it like an adult. Or like a guy in a shirt that says he stinks.

Draft Day Mistakes: The Season Was Over Before It Started

Kicker and defense in Round 7. Every league has one guy who does this, proudly, as if he found a loophole. He did not find a loophole. He spent a real pick on a man whose entire job is standing still and then kicking once. Kickers and defenses can be streamed off the waiver wire, so drafting them early is a very expensive way to feel organized. Roast target: whoever just said "I like to lock those down early."

The autodraft. Maybe he was stuck in traffic. Maybe he "got busy." The autodrafter does not care. It handed him a roster of strangers, three of them injured, and a quarterback nobody has heard of. Every league also has one autodrafter who won the title, which is how this keeps happening. If the autodrafter is you, wear it before someone prints it for you: I'm an Autodrafter and It Shows.

Drafting on vibes and beer. A proud tradition, and a losing one. If your draft strategy was mostly conviction, Watch, Mock, Drink, Draft, Repeat is less a shirt than a confession. Bring one for the friend who mocked your picks all night. He is going to need it by October.

Waiver Wire Sins: You Had Options and Chose Chaos

The saved FAAB. If your league uses a free agent acquisition budget (FAAB), someone is sitting on a pile of fake money like it can be redeemed at the end of the season. It cannot. Nobody gets a trophy for finishing with $94 left. Spend it. The worst case is a bad pickup, and you already have those.

Chasing last week's hero. A receiver catches three touchdowns on Sunday, and by Monday morning someone has bid the whole budget on a man who will see four targets next week and finish with 2.1 points. The waiver wire is where you find who is about to be useful, not who was useful once. For the manager who treats the waiver deadline like a witness protection program, there is Waiver Witness Protection. For the rare one who actually pulls it off, there is Waiver Wire Wizard. Let him have it. He will be insufferable, and that is a gift to the rest of you.

In-Season Decisions: Self-Inflicted Wounds

The recency bias trade. His guy had two bad games, so he traded a Round 2 pick for a backup who had one good one. He sold at the exact bottom, to a person who had been waiting for this. That person is now texting the league that they "love trading with him." Screenshot it. Save it for the playoffs.

Benching the right guy. You checked three sources. You studied the matchup. You benched your best player for a "better matchup," and he scored 31. This is not a mistake in the usual sense. It is just fantasy football, and it will keep doing this to you. The honest response is Fantasy Football Is a Science and I Stink. Its mirror image, Fantasy Football Is a Science and You Stink, is what you send to the guy who benched his own 31.

The 9 AM international game. The NFL plays games in London on Sunday mornings, so lineup lock arrives while you are still asleep, or at a children's birthday party, or both. Your best receiver is on the bench. The game kicked off before you found your phone. Do not defend yourself in the chat. Nothing you say will be better than what they already sent.

Bad Luck: Not Your Fault, But the Group Chat Disagrees

Everyone has their best week against you. You scored 118 points and lost. In any given week, your opponent will have a season-high game specifically against you. If you are 3 and 6 with the second-most points in the league, congratulations, you are the league's best 3 and 6 team. Someone will tell you to "sort the league by points against." They will be right. It will not help, and you will deserve the screenshot.

The injury cluster. Your first-round pick is out, your second-round pick is questionable, and your third-round pick is "week to week." You did nothing wrong. Please accept Dude You Suck at Fantasy Football anyway, and send one to the person in your league who is 8 and 1 purely because of luck. Misery needs company, and so does smugness.

Know Your League: The Roasts Everyone Gets

Every league has the same cast. The overthinker with 14 browser tabs. The guy who forgets the league exists until Thursday night. The gut-feeling manager who ignores every number. And the one who built a roster as if it were a tabletop campaign, for whom there is Fantasy Football (DnD). Roll for initiative, then lose to a guy who set his lineup in the car.

You are one of these people. Your friends have already decided which one. The only decision left is whether you find out in the group chat or on a shirt, and the shirt, at least, can be dry-cleaned.

The Rules of a Healthy League

• Make fun of your friends. Specifically, with evidence. Screenshots count.
• When they make fun of you, reply with the laughing emoji and nothing else.
• Draft a kicker and defense last, and stream them after that.
• Set your lineup the night before, especially for early games.
• Spend your FAAB before the season ends.
• If you win, be gracious. If you lose, be funny. If you cannot do either, buy the shirt.

If you want more material, our roundup of funny fantasy football shirts covers the rest of the catalog, and if your league's group chat has a gambling problem too, there is a post on sports betting at work. And if you actually won, you are not exempt: I Won My Fantasy League and All I Got Was this Lousy Shirt exists for you, and the league has already decided your title was luck.

For background on how the game works and how long people have been losing at it, see the Wikipedia entry on fantasy football.