This isn't a retirement post, this isn't meant to stir up drama, call this a small reflection of what a wild ride this has been for me. A league I didn't even know existed less than a year ago has now become a part of my life. People I never would have known have had a massive impact on me for various reasons.
I still remember reading that reddit post from slm just over 7 months ago now. I still see people that I remember seeing comment in that thread (Hey Opera and Net). Frankly, I was intimidated. I knew my way around forums, I've been a member of various game forums as well as being part of forums for clans in World of Tanks, EVE Online and other games. But this somehow seemed... Harder. Authentication in stuff like EVE Online was a bitch to set up but it was pretty set it and forget it. Once you were in, you were in. Updates? TPE? Training? Point tasks? What the fuck is going on? Why is all this shit so hard? Why did I have to do so much? All of this seemed so hard. But, I wasn't very good at stuff like fantasy football and this seemed fundamentally different. So what the hell, let's give it a shot. I played RB in high school, so I decided to run it back and go back to what I knew.
Man, it seemed difficult to create someone. Even with the player creator being a rather simple tool to use, I had no idea what I was doing, so I decided on speed back, cause speed always is best. It works in Madden, why wouldn't it work now, right? Thankfully that was the right decision. Regardless of that, everyone seemed really cool. I felt like being a rookie in the locker room again, whether or not that's the idea it still felt awesome that I could potentially make an impact in this league. I'm counting my days down till draft night, thankfully I got out of work at 6pm so I would be able to watch the entire thing. Interacting with all the big names before that was really cool. Isa, Bex, Bacon, all of these guys, we were all chomping at the bit to be drafted.
Everyone knew Bjorn was going 1st overall. Dude was a machine in those days and churned out media at a fucking incredible pace. Seriously, the man was putting the fastest journalists in the world to shame. Draft night came, and man did I have to wait. Several rounds went by with only a single running back coming off the board. Did teams just not want me? I thought I had been pretty active coming into the draft, was it my answers to the survey questions? I did say I was going to be like a 7 or 8 activity wise. Considering I would soon be heading back to college and I currently had a job, I thought that level was pretty fair. I wouldn't be at the top of the top for earners, but was that all they wanted? More rounds passed, more picks, nothing. What the hell had I done? I was active, I was interacting with the fellow rookies and GMs in the rookie discord, did I do something wrong? Finally, pick 33 in the middle of the sixth round, the announcers called Mathias Hanyadi. I would be going to the San Antonio Marshals. They were the only team that interviewed me through Discord, at least they were the only one I could actually find. So they had some confidence in me, at least, which was nice to see.
Getting into the San Antonio locker room was a rather wonderful experience. We had a maxed QB in Jim McMahon, we had some solid veteran defensive pieces and we had a bunch of young offensive players like Biggums, Ruff and myself. I actually learned about the Marshals drafting Ruff shortly after I joined the locker room, and while I was initially against the idea, I thought saying no would put a bit of a damper on my reputation, so I agreed. It was a pretty good thing all around for the both of us, since the San Antonio rushing attack in S17 of the DSFL was the best by a decent margin. Though we lost to Tijuana, spirits were high for us as the NSFL teams were starting to do their rounds. I got messages from all but two teams who if I remember correctly were Chicago and New Orleans, but I could be wrong. This was a rather long time ago and most of those DMs are buried deep within discord. I was really excited talking to these teams. My top destinations were probably Yellowknife, Baltimore or Arizona. BigRed was the GM for Yellowknife at the time and seemed like a really genuine person to be around, so going there sounded pretty cool. Baltimore was going to be taken over by Duilio, so following him to a brand new team sounded somewhat enticing. And I had heard good things about Arizona, so they sounded like a solid team overall.
Draft night again. All that stuff in the DSFL was just a warm up. Now, we go to the big leagues. We’d lost some big names on the way (RIP Trae, always miss you homie), but plenty of us still waited eagerly to hear our names called. I didn’t have to wait as long this time around, but it kind of felt worse getting called earlier, if that makes sense. I was the third running back off the board that night. Ruff, I kind of got. He was a beast in San Antonio, probably the better of our duo. But Toriki? She was active, sure, but I must have missed a lot of stuff that she was doing. I knew San Jose had a need at running back, but at the time I thought you could find some better options compared to her. (no offense, Bex. (and, well, I’m guessing they wished they chose differently that day as well but that’s neither here nor there)). I’d be sent down for one more season in the DSFL since Yellowknife still had the corpses of Marshall and Canton to trot out onto the field for one more season. That was fine by me, I still hadn’t quite maxed my speed yet and wanted to hit that mark before jumping into the NSFL.
My second DSFL season was unexceptional, to say the least. With McMahon position switching to Wide Receiver, we had a new rookie quarterback with Zack Vega. Some file errors in the beginning of the season had us doing some weirdness with our playbook, (something about opposing defenses having plays they normally shouldn’t have access to? I can’t remember.) But it meant that I was well behind my peers in terms of rushing numbers. And… We lost again. Despite having a solid run in the playoffs, we’d fall short in the big game for the second time in my career, which was frustrating. But, I couldn’t look back on that for too long. I was getting my call up, so it was time to say goodbye to the Marshals and focus on getting myself ready to play for the Wraiths.
It was an exciting time for me. I had a LOT of TPE banked up since I hit 250 about a quarter of the way through my second DSFL season. I was max speed the day I got the call along with a good bump to endurance and hands. I was going to take the league by storm, I was gonna get an award this year, because there was no way I was going to win any other year with guys like Bigby and Torenson ahead of me.
But that was not the case at all. I was terrible. I didn’t crack 800 yards the entire season, in fact, I was the worst starting running back in the entire league by a huge margin. Hell, I was only slightly better than my backup in Orien Drake. I blew my only chance to make a splash in the league, at least until Bigsby hung up his cleats and the team had to rely on me since our quarterback would still be raw. Even when you included my receiving yards, I was terrible. I feared this would be the story of my career in the NSFL; A complete bust of a prospect who hampered his team more than he helped it.
Well, turns out I’m not right about everything. Who knew? Season 20 was an absolutely wonderful year for me, despite the ending being rather sour. If I had to choose one season that was my breakout year, it has to be S20, especially after pretty damn bad rookie year. With 1500 all purpose yards as well as 15 touchdowns, RBoTY was almost guaranteed for me and getting OPoTY to boot made it all the sweeter. Hell, with an extra touchdown or two, I could realistically be in the conversation for MVP that season. The Ultimus loss stings, but surely I’ll win eventually. Right?
Well, let’s table that question because it hurts and just move on to the present. Another failure in the playoffs, but another season of dominance for yours truly. Over 1700 all purpose yards, 11 touchdowns and even some special teams play during the season. I once again swept what awards I could with RBoTY and OPoTY as well as earning my third pro bowl nod. I think it’s safe to say I’m the best running back in the league at the moment. Some may disagree with me on that, but the accolades say otherwise, even though the lack of a ring hurts.
Of course, I didn’t do all of this alone. Like all the bushy tailed prospects before me, I had a lot of help getting me through my first season, especially considering I was a complete sim league newbie. My first GMs were Shady and Duilio, back when the Ducks were called the Marshals. I struggled a lot adapting to the forum based format of the league and they were really a huge help in helping me get my feet wet and understanding everything I needed to know about the league. Woelkers and Rev came in after them and did a bang up job as well, though I didn’t need much guidance anymore. Despite never winning a ring with San Antonio, I still have very fond memories of the team and I’ll never forget my time there.
Moving onto Yellowknife, BigRed and Shady were the GMs as I landed on the team. They did an incredible job of making me feel welcome in a locker room filled with a ton of league veterans, and I’ll always thank them for that. After S18 however, BigRed stepped down and flyeaglesfly came in. Both of these duos have been just straight up excellent for the team and have been great to work with, both in the general locker room and in the war room. There’s a reason I re-signed with the team, and the GM’s I’ve had while I’ve been here are part of that reason.
Now to recognize people who I’ve interacted with along the way. Ruff Ruff, one of the guys drafted with me to San Antonio, was an absolutely awesome team mate while he was active. Shame he’s not around much anymore, maybe he’ll come back some day. Virtanen has been one of the best guys I’ve interacted with in the league, so I’m very happy to have him as a team mate here in Yellowknife. I mentioned BigRed before as a GM, but as a user he’s one of the most wholesome people in the league and an excellent presence in the locker room. Timeconsumer, when he’s around, has also been awesome to see. He’s extremely knowledgeable when talking about the sim or the league in general, and he was a great help when I needed to research for my Elysium article. Everyone else I didn’t mention in the Yellowknife and San Antonio locker room by name, I massively appreciate all of you. All of you have made this league an incredible experience that I hope I never have to walk away from.
So, one more thing for me to mention that’s sort of related to the rest of this. I’m riding Hanyadi until he can’t run anymore, however long that is. It might seem very strange and very early to say what I’m about to say, but Hanyadi is currently on a Hall of Fame pace (probably). Shady actually made a little chart comparing a bunch of running backs like Marquise Brown, Gump, Torenson and a bunch of other HoF names. I am on pace to finish 3rd all time in yards from scrimmage, and with some extra luck and sim love, there’s potential I could tie Mike Boss for most OPoTY awards with 3. Owen Taylor will likely still hold the record for RBoTY awards, but maybe I can come close to that too. Safe to say, I’m not going anywhere. Hanyadi will run until he can’t anymore, which team he runs for is still a matter of debate. I still have a lot of years left in me, but I’ll get there when I get there.
Tl;dr: I’m in it for the long haul, wherever that takes me. I hope to stick around after Hanyadi finally hangs up his cleats, but until that happens, there’s still a lot of fake football left for me to play.
I still remember reading that reddit post from slm just over 7 months ago now. I still see people that I remember seeing comment in that thread (Hey Opera and Net). Frankly, I was intimidated. I knew my way around forums, I've been a member of various game forums as well as being part of forums for clans in World of Tanks, EVE Online and other games. But this somehow seemed... Harder. Authentication in stuff like EVE Online was a bitch to set up but it was pretty set it and forget it. Once you were in, you were in. Updates? TPE? Training? Point tasks? What the fuck is going on? Why is all this shit so hard? Why did I have to do so much? All of this seemed so hard. But, I wasn't very good at stuff like fantasy football and this seemed fundamentally different. So what the hell, let's give it a shot. I played RB in high school, so I decided to run it back and go back to what I knew.
Man, it seemed difficult to create someone. Even with the player creator being a rather simple tool to use, I had no idea what I was doing, so I decided on speed back, cause speed always is best. It works in Madden, why wouldn't it work now, right? Thankfully that was the right decision. Regardless of that, everyone seemed really cool. I felt like being a rookie in the locker room again, whether or not that's the idea it still felt awesome that I could potentially make an impact in this league. I'm counting my days down till draft night, thankfully I got out of work at 6pm so I would be able to watch the entire thing. Interacting with all the big names before that was really cool. Isa, Bex, Bacon, all of these guys, we were all chomping at the bit to be drafted.
Everyone knew Bjorn was going 1st overall. Dude was a machine in those days and churned out media at a fucking incredible pace. Seriously, the man was putting the fastest journalists in the world to shame. Draft night came, and man did I have to wait. Several rounds went by with only a single running back coming off the board. Did teams just not want me? I thought I had been pretty active coming into the draft, was it my answers to the survey questions? I did say I was going to be like a 7 or 8 activity wise. Considering I would soon be heading back to college and I currently had a job, I thought that level was pretty fair. I wouldn't be at the top of the top for earners, but was that all they wanted? More rounds passed, more picks, nothing. What the hell had I done? I was active, I was interacting with the fellow rookies and GMs in the rookie discord, did I do something wrong? Finally, pick 33 in the middle of the sixth round, the announcers called Mathias Hanyadi. I would be going to the San Antonio Marshals. They were the only team that interviewed me through Discord, at least they were the only one I could actually find. So they had some confidence in me, at least, which was nice to see.
Getting into the San Antonio locker room was a rather wonderful experience. We had a maxed QB in Jim McMahon, we had some solid veteran defensive pieces and we had a bunch of young offensive players like Biggums, Ruff and myself. I actually learned about the Marshals drafting Ruff shortly after I joined the locker room, and while I was initially against the idea, I thought saying no would put a bit of a damper on my reputation, so I agreed. It was a pretty good thing all around for the both of us, since the San Antonio rushing attack in S17 of the DSFL was the best by a decent margin. Though we lost to Tijuana, spirits were high for us as the NSFL teams were starting to do their rounds. I got messages from all but two teams who if I remember correctly were Chicago and New Orleans, but I could be wrong. This was a rather long time ago and most of those DMs are buried deep within discord. I was really excited talking to these teams. My top destinations were probably Yellowknife, Baltimore or Arizona. BigRed was the GM for Yellowknife at the time and seemed like a really genuine person to be around, so going there sounded pretty cool. Baltimore was going to be taken over by Duilio, so following him to a brand new team sounded somewhat enticing. And I had heard good things about Arizona, so they sounded like a solid team overall.
Draft night again. All that stuff in the DSFL was just a warm up. Now, we go to the big leagues. We’d lost some big names on the way (RIP Trae, always miss you homie), but plenty of us still waited eagerly to hear our names called. I didn’t have to wait as long this time around, but it kind of felt worse getting called earlier, if that makes sense. I was the third running back off the board that night. Ruff, I kind of got. He was a beast in San Antonio, probably the better of our duo. But Toriki? She was active, sure, but I must have missed a lot of stuff that she was doing. I knew San Jose had a need at running back, but at the time I thought you could find some better options compared to her. (no offense, Bex. (and, well, I’m guessing they wished they chose differently that day as well but that’s neither here nor there)). I’d be sent down for one more season in the DSFL since Yellowknife still had the corpses of Marshall and Canton to trot out onto the field for one more season. That was fine by me, I still hadn’t quite maxed my speed yet and wanted to hit that mark before jumping into the NSFL.
My second DSFL season was unexceptional, to say the least. With McMahon position switching to Wide Receiver, we had a new rookie quarterback with Zack Vega. Some file errors in the beginning of the season had us doing some weirdness with our playbook, (something about opposing defenses having plays they normally shouldn’t have access to? I can’t remember.) But it meant that I was well behind my peers in terms of rushing numbers. And… We lost again. Despite having a solid run in the playoffs, we’d fall short in the big game for the second time in my career, which was frustrating. But, I couldn’t look back on that for too long. I was getting my call up, so it was time to say goodbye to the Marshals and focus on getting myself ready to play for the Wraiths.
It was an exciting time for me. I had a LOT of TPE banked up since I hit 250 about a quarter of the way through my second DSFL season. I was max speed the day I got the call along with a good bump to endurance and hands. I was going to take the league by storm, I was gonna get an award this year, because there was no way I was going to win any other year with guys like Bigby and Torenson ahead of me.
But that was not the case at all. I was terrible. I didn’t crack 800 yards the entire season, in fact, I was the worst starting running back in the entire league by a huge margin. Hell, I was only slightly better than my backup in Orien Drake. I blew my only chance to make a splash in the league, at least until Bigsby hung up his cleats and the team had to rely on me since our quarterback would still be raw. Even when you included my receiving yards, I was terrible. I feared this would be the story of my career in the NSFL; A complete bust of a prospect who hampered his team more than he helped it.
Well, turns out I’m not right about everything. Who knew? Season 20 was an absolutely wonderful year for me, despite the ending being rather sour. If I had to choose one season that was my breakout year, it has to be S20, especially after pretty damn bad rookie year. With 1500 all purpose yards as well as 15 touchdowns, RBoTY was almost guaranteed for me and getting OPoTY to boot made it all the sweeter. Hell, with an extra touchdown or two, I could realistically be in the conversation for MVP that season. The Ultimus loss stings, but surely I’ll win eventually. Right?
Well, let’s table that question because it hurts and just move on to the present. Another failure in the playoffs, but another season of dominance for yours truly. Over 1700 all purpose yards, 11 touchdowns and even some special teams play during the season. I once again swept what awards I could with RBoTY and OPoTY as well as earning my third pro bowl nod. I think it’s safe to say I’m the best running back in the league at the moment. Some may disagree with me on that, but the accolades say otherwise, even though the lack of a ring hurts.
Of course, I didn’t do all of this alone. Like all the bushy tailed prospects before me, I had a lot of help getting me through my first season, especially considering I was a complete sim league newbie. My first GMs were Shady and Duilio, back when the Ducks were called the Marshals. I struggled a lot adapting to the forum based format of the league and they were really a huge help in helping me get my feet wet and understanding everything I needed to know about the league. Woelkers and Rev came in after them and did a bang up job as well, though I didn’t need much guidance anymore. Despite never winning a ring with San Antonio, I still have very fond memories of the team and I’ll never forget my time there.
Moving onto Yellowknife, BigRed and Shady were the GMs as I landed on the team. They did an incredible job of making me feel welcome in a locker room filled with a ton of league veterans, and I’ll always thank them for that. After S18 however, BigRed stepped down and flyeaglesfly came in. Both of these duos have been just straight up excellent for the team and have been great to work with, both in the general locker room and in the war room. There’s a reason I re-signed with the team, and the GM’s I’ve had while I’ve been here are part of that reason.
Now to recognize people who I’ve interacted with along the way. Ruff Ruff, one of the guys drafted with me to San Antonio, was an absolutely awesome team mate while he was active. Shame he’s not around much anymore, maybe he’ll come back some day. Virtanen has been one of the best guys I’ve interacted with in the league, so I’m very happy to have him as a team mate here in Yellowknife. I mentioned BigRed before as a GM, but as a user he’s one of the most wholesome people in the league and an excellent presence in the locker room. Timeconsumer, when he’s around, has also been awesome to see. He’s extremely knowledgeable when talking about the sim or the league in general, and he was a great help when I needed to research for my Elysium article. Everyone else I didn’t mention in the Yellowknife and San Antonio locker room by name, I massively appreciate all of you. All of you have made this league an incredible experience that I hope I never have to walk away from.
So, one more thing for me to mention that’s sort of related to the rest of this. I’m riding Hanyadi until he can’t run anymore, however long that is. It might seem very strange and very early to say what I’m about to say, but Hanyadi is currently on a Hall of Fame pace (probably). Shady actually made a little chart comparing a bunch of running backs like Marquise Brown, Gump, Torenson and a bunch of other HoF names. I am on pace to finish 3rd all time in yards from scrimmage, and with some extra luck and sim love, there’s potential I could tie Mike Boss for most OPoTY awards with 3. Owen Taylor will likely still hold the record for RBoTY awards, but maybe I can come close to that too. Safe to say, I’m not going anywhere. Hanyadi will run until he can’t anymore, which team he runs for is still a matter of debate. I still have a lot of years left in me, but I’ll get there when I get there.
Tl;dr: I’m in it for the long haul, wherever that takes me. I hope to stick around after Hanyadi finally hangs up his cleats, but until that happens, there’s still a lot of fake football left for me to play.
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