The Archive
Seasons
18 seasons, 2008–2025.
| Year | Size | Playoff Field | Scoring | FAAB | Champion | Runner-Up | Highest PF | Avg PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 12 | 6 | PPR (17-wk season) | $1000 | Jack | Matt | Jack (1802.16) | 115.23 |
| 2024 | 12 | 6 | PPR (17-wk season) | $1000 | Randy | Pat | Randy (2001.94) | 118.31 |
| 2023 | 12 | 6 | PPR (17-wk season) | $1000 | Matt | Shaun | Shaun (1965.34) | 119.44 |
| 2022 | 12 | 6 | PPR (17-wk season) | $1000 | Chester | Pookie | Pookie (1952.00) | 116.60 |
| 2021 | 12 | 6 | PPR (17-wk season) | $1000 | Joe | Chester | Jack (1930.44) | 119.33 |
| 2020 | 12 | 6 | PPR | $1000 | Shaun | Marco | Randy (1805.30) | 120.05 |
| 2019 | 12 | 6 | PPR | $1000 | Matt | Jack | Matt (1844.60) | 119.85 |
| 2018 | 12 | 6 | PPR | $1000 | Nate | Matt | Nate (1876.60) | 124.13 |
| 2017 | 12 | 6 | PPR | $1000 | Randy | Jack | Chester (1823.30) | 111.80 |
| 2016 | 12 | 6 | PPR | $1000 | Jack | Vose | Jack (1827.94) | 120.21 |
| 2015 | 12 | 6 | PPR | $1000 | Joe | Vose | Vose (1909.60) | 119.36 |
| 2014 | 12 | 6 | Non-PPR | — | Joe | Mike | Shaun (1319.92) | 91.70 |
| 2013 | 12 | 6 | Non-PPR | — | Brent | Joe | Vose (1265.00) | 89.55 |
| 2012 | 12 | 8 | Non-PPR | — | Vinny | Chester | Vinny (1292.00) | 90.62 |
| 2011 | 12 | 8 | Non-PPR | — | Pat | Matt | Mike (1369.00) | 90.91 |
| 2010 | 10 | 8 | Non-PPR | — | Vinny | Brent | Pat (1317.00) | 91.97 |
| 2009 | 10 | 8 | Non-PPR | — | Shaun | Joe | Joe (1307.00) | 91.18 |
| 2008 | 10 | 8 | Non-PPR | — | Vose | Joe | Jack (1330.00) | 83.94 |
Playoff Field, Scoring, and FAAB are that season's ESPN league settings — see the change log below for what actually moved year over year.
Rule Changes by Year
The league's rule book has changed a lot since 2008 — 12 teams instead of 10, decimal PPR scoring instead of flat categories, no kicker, FAAB instead of priority waivers, a tighter 6-team playoff field. Every entry below is derived from ESPN's own mSettings snapshots for the league (one per season, 2008–2026, no gaps) rather than from memory or the league's narrative change-log alone — see docs/settings-history.md for the full season-by-season diff this section is built from. Six of the eighteen year-over-year transitions on record (2008→2009, 2016→2017, and four of the five most recent seasons) had no detected change at all and aren't listed individually.
2009 → 2010
Dormant budget fields appear
- Acquisition budget field switched on from $0 to $100, but isUsingAcquisitionBudget stayed false — configured, not active (real FAAB was still five years away).
- Draft auction-budget field set to $200, but draft type remained SNAKE, not AUCTION — also dormant.
2010 → 2011
League expands to 12 teams
- League expanded 10 → 12 teams, matching the narrative log’s "Added Ian; Added Chester" note.
2011 → 2012
Trade review window shortened
- Trade review/lock window cut from 48h to 0h — trades began processing immediately.
2012 → 2013
Playoff field cut 8 → 6 teams
- Playoff field cut from 8 teams to 6 — half the league now misses the playoffs instead of a third. Not mentioned anywhere in the league’s own narrative change log; recovered only from the ESPN settings diff.
- The dedicated RB/WR slot was removed and replaced by a broader RB/WR/TE FLEX slot (starter count unchanged at 9) — two years before the "PPR overhaul" the narrative log dates to 2015.
- D/ST Fumble Return TD repriced 0 → 6 pts flat.
2013 → 2014
The "decimal scoring" season, and the move off ESPN’s live draft
- Yardage-based decimal scoring introduced for the first time: passing yards (0.04/yd), rushing yards (0.1/yd), receiving yards (0.1/yd), interceptions thrown (−1), fumbles lost (−2) all appear for the first time — confirms the narrative’s "Added decimals" entry exactly.
- Three unidentified flat 1-point stats were removed the same offseason, plausibly absorbed into the new yardage formulas.
- Waiver window shortened 48h → 24h (still priority waivers, budget still inactive).
- Draft mechanism switched from a live ESPN snake draft to offline/manual entry — the league moved its draft off the ESPN platform this year, which is why draft_picks sourcing splits into "espn" (2008–2013) vs "clickydraft"/"both" (2014+) in the site data.
2014 → 2015
The PPR / roster overhaul
- Full PPR added (1.0 pt/reception) — confirms "Changed to PPR," and confirms it was full PPR from day one, not a 0.5 half-PPR ramp.
- Kicker removed: all FG/PAT scoring categories and the K roster slot were dropped simultaneously — confirms "Removed Kickers."
- 3rd WR added, replacing the departed K starter slot 1-for-1 — confirms "Added 3rd WR"; total starter count stayed at 9.
- FAAB switched on: isUsingAcquisitionBudget flips true, budget jumps straight to $1000 — not a gradual ramp from the dormant $100 field seen in 2010. Flat at $1000 every season since.
- IR slot removed (1 → 0); stayed at 0 through 2019.
2015 → 2016
Cosmetic only
- Division relabeled "Division 1" → "Division 2" (league stayed single-division, 12 teams).
- Trade review window cut 24h → 0h.
2017 → 2018
The D/ST scoring overhaul (ESPN platform migration)
- Kicking scoring categories reappear in the settings JSON — but no K roster slot returns (it stays at 0 permanently from here on); this looks like ESPN restoring default template line items platform-wide, not a real kicker comeback.
- D/ST scoring restructured wholesale: points-allowed tier values changed, a new upper points-allowed tier flipped from a bonus to a penalty, and an entirely new 8-tier yards-allowed scoring dimension was added.
- Interceptions Thrown penalty doubled: −1 → −2 pts.
- Blocked Kick and Interception Return TD became flat 6-pt stats for every position (previously D/ST-exclusive).
- The largest single-season scoring diff in the league’s history (18 individual line-item changes) — lines up with ESPN’s well-documented 2018 platform redesign, not a deliberate league vote.
2018 → 2019
ESPN’s own "is this PPR?" label catches up
- No scoring-item change, but ESPN’s metadata flipped playerRankType from STANDARD to PPR — four seasons after the league had actually been full-PPR (since 2015). A naive "was this league PPR in 2016?" query keyed off that field alone would have answered wrong.
2019 → 2020
Kicking tier split; IR expands for COVID
- Kicking distance tier "FG 50+" split into two new tiers, FG 50–59 and FG 60+, both at 5 pts.
- IR slots jump 0 → 4 — a COVID-era roster-flexibility change, invisible without diffing the raw settings JSON (not mentioned in either narrative doc).
2020 → 2021
Regular season extends to 14 weeks
- Regular season extended 13 → 14 weeks, matching the NFL’s move to a 17-game schedule. Playoffs stayed a 3-week, 6-team bracket, so total season length went 16 → 17 weeks.
2021 → 2022
IR reverts; "Added Fat Pat (co-owner)"
- IR slots reverted 4 → 0 — the COVID-era bump was temporary, two seasons only (2020–2021).
- Fat Pat (Patrick L.) joins as co-owner of Pookie’s franchise, per the season’s own rule_changes note — the franchise is informally known as "LLC" (Lucas-Lee Coalition) from this point on.
2022 → 2026
Stable
- Roster, scoring, schedule, waiver, trade, draft, and finance settings are byte-for-byte identical across all five of these seasons in ESPN’s own settings snapshots — no rule changes detected. In particular, no second FLEX slot was ever added (an apparent "second FLEX 2023–24" signal elsewhere in the raw CSV exports turns out to be a label-spelling artifact of the same slot, "FLEX" vs "RB/WR/TE", not a real roster change).