Eight Years of Lutes Fantasy Football
In fantasy football, eight seasons is an eternity. Nathan opened our league with the only undefeated regular season ever. This year, he finished with the worst record in history. Connor entered 2025 with just four first-place weeks to his name — he left with a championship and seven more. Since 2018, every matchup, every draft pick, every heartbreak and triumph has been recorded. This is that story.
Want to explore the data yourself? Ask the Lute Legion Fantasy Analyst
Season Champions
Eight seasons. Seven different champions. From BC's inaugural title to Connor's wire-to-wire dominance in 2025, every season has its own story. Click any year to relive the drama on ESPN.
All-Time Achievements
Championships get the glory, but they don't tell the whole story. Nathan and Max each have 3 top-3 finishes without a title. Kell and the other newcomers are still searching for their first. James won it all in 2023 — but that's the only year he's even sniffed the winner's bracket. Here's how everyone stacks up.
2025 Season Recap
The 2025 season will be remembered for its extremes. Connor dominated from wire to wire, leading the league in scoring in both the first and second halves and cruising to a championship. Nathan, meanwhile, hit rock bottom — dead last in points in both halves, posting the second-worst regular season average in league history. Two managers. Opposite trajectories. One unforgettable season.
2025 Deep Dive
Let's take a closer look at how the 2025 season unfolded week by week.
Weekly Rankings Heatmap
A week-by-week snapshot of every team's performance. Toggle between rankings and raw points, or switch to "Opponent Rank" to see schedule luck.
- Connor sealed the deal with back-to-back top-scoring weeks in the playoffs
- Ryan knocked on the door all season — 6 top-3 finishes, but never #1. It was his first season every without a top week.
- Team Jacobster caught fire down the stretch, finishing top 2 in 4 of the final 6 weeks
- Cam was Mr. Consistency: a league-best 10 weeks in the top half
- Max had the easiest path — his opponents finished bottom 3 six times
- BC had the toughest luck, facing opponents who averaged a top-5 finish
- Nathan's 2018 — top 4 every single week en route to an undefeated regular season... then a heartbreaking semifinal exit
- Jacob's 2019 — opened the year with 4 straight weeks at #1, a record that still stands
But rankings only tell half the story. What about the actual scores?
Score Distribution
Each dot represents a single week's score. Teams are sorted by average, with the dashed line marking each team's mean. View all seasons to see scoring trends over time, or toggle to include playoffs and see how that impacts your avg.
- Nathan is the only manager ever to not break 100 in the regular season — though he somehow managed it in the final matchup, saving himself from the Sacko
Now let's see how those scores translate to wins. What if you played every team every week? No schedule luck. No soft matchups. Just you against the entire league, week after week. The theoretical matchup matrix reveals who would truly dominate — and who's been hiding behind a favorable schedule.
Head-to-Head Matchups
Theoretical records if teams played every week. Rows show your record against each opponent. The "All" column shows your overall win rate against the entire league.
- Nathan in 2018 had the highest cumulative win rate ever at 86%
- Nathan in 2025 now owns the lowest ever at just 17%
- The most lopsided matchup among consistent managers: Connor over Shane, with Connor owning the theoretical head-to-head 70-42
First Place Weeks
First place weeks are the currency of dominance — and now, literal currency too. You can't win a championship without them, but having a lot doesn't guarantee anything either. Here's who's been on top most often.
- Connor entered 2025 with just 4 first-place weeks all-time, but added 5 more during the regular season.
- He tacked on 2 more in the playoffs to finish with an impressive 7 weeks on top
- Jacob still owns the single-season record: 6 first-place weeks in the regular season (2019), 8 including playoff weeks.
- James has the fewest regular season first-place weeks among core managers.
- However, he actually has more first-place finishes in playoffs than in regular season play (more on his playoff performance later)
Last Place Weeks
If first-place weeks are glory, last-place weeks are shame. Nathan's 5 basement finishes in 2025 felt historic — but he's not alone. Sam, Cam, and Joey have all hit that mark.
Bottom 3 Weeks: The Real Story
However, Nathan had 10 bottom-3 weeks — which, apart from Joey who replaced after his one terrible year in 2018, is the worst ever.
Top Seasons by Average Points
Nathan's 2025 wasn't just bad. It was historically bad — the second-worst regular season average in eight years of league play. For context: in 2018, Nathan posted the 2nd-best season ever. Eight years later, he owns the second-worst. That's a 50-point swing per week. Click below to see where you stack up against the best seasons ever.
Highest Weekly Scores
These are the boom weeks — the performances you tell stories about. Notably, 2025 was a quiet year for explosions. Not a single score cracked the top 20. Even Connor's championship run was built on consistency, not fireworks.
Beating Projections
Every week, ESPN tells you what your team should score. Most managers fall short. A few beat the number. And in 2025, almost everyone underperformed — except for one.
- Connor was the only manager to beat his projections this year.
- The three biggest underperformances in league history? All from 2025 — Nathan (-13.2), Shane (-12.5), and Kell (-11.3).
- Jacob holds the single-season record, averaging +7.6 points above projection per week in 2019.
- Ryan is the only manager with a positive career average vs. projections (+1.8 per week across 7 seasons).
Playoff Performance
The regular season is a marathon. The playoffs are a street fight. Some managers elevate when it matters most. Others fold like lawn chairs.
- James averages a staggering +22.3 points more per game in playoffs vs regular season — the biggest jump in the league. Too bad most of those were in the consolation bracket.
- Ryan and Max are the biggest underperformers when it counts, dropping 9.4 and 8.4 points per game respectively.
2025 Draft Value
Every championship starts in August. The draft is where you build your roster — or doom it. In 2025, some managers found gems in the mid-rounds. Others burned high picks on busts. Here's who got value and who got burned.
Each dot represents a player — the x-axis shows what you paid, the y-axis shows what you got. Diagonal lines show increasing tiers of value. Hover for details, filter by position or team to explore.
Fantasy Favorites
Every manager has their guys. The players you draft too early. The ones you start even when you shouldn't. The names that define your fantasy identity. After eight years and hundreds of roster decisions, here's who each manager has trusted most. Who takes the crown as the most started player by a single manager?