This story was produced in partnership with Empowerment Avenue, a program that supports incarcerated writers.
Although the NFL playoffs promise more excitement on the road to the Super Bowl 59, the fantasy football league at Washington Corrections Center wrapped up at the end of the regular season with plenty of drama and thrills for the incarcerated managers.
As I explained in a previous article, fantasy football in prison provides a regular space to laugh, crack jokes, and feel “normal,” an opportunity for bonding as well as a reminder of life on the outside. The competition was spirited, but as we finished the season, I was grateful for the camaraderie with my fellow prisoners.
With that said, let’s go to the scoreboard. Bud Fraser dominated the PPR Superflex league with 5,943 points, while Brandin Thomas grabbed second place with 5,670 points. The league's two co-founders, Steven Marshall and Derrick Myers, battled for third place alongside Dwuan Spraggins, with Myers taking the bronze with 5,346 points.
Fraser was typically modest in explaining his win: "I'm just a phenomenal manager!" More seriously, he said, "I think I won because I wasn't married to any big-name players. I simply watched and studied players that were and were not performing well. I didn't care if they were superstars."
Fraser's strategy was evident when he unexpectedly traded Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins for Denver Broncos rookie QB Bo Nix in Week 11. Surprisingly, Nix was 28-for-33 with 307 passing yards and four touchdowns that week, putting up a whopping 82 fantasy points in Denver's 38-6 win over Atlanta. In previous games, Nix averaged 40 points at best. Some managers attributed Fraser's trade to luck, which he emphatically rejected: “It was nothing of the sort!"
Brandin Thomas, who at the beginning of the season had bragged that he obviously was the league's best general manager, held firm when asked how he felt about his second-place finish. "Sometimes the best fall short," Thomas said. "Even Tom Brady couldn't win them all."
Thomas said that he did not follow the conventional wisdom of mainstream NFL analysts. "I paid close attention to the stats and player matchups," he explained. "I watched for players like Darnell Mooney, who thrives in zone defenses, which is why I added him to my roster after Cooper Kupp got injured." Thomas didn’t capture the top spot, but his strategy was solid enough to put several hundred points between himself and the third-place finisher.
Myers, the league's co-commissioner, was less concerned with his team's performance and more interested in the experience.
"There was so much pressure in the war room," Myers said, referring to the gray steel tables where the incarcerated managers made their weekly trades. "Sometimes you just don't know what players to drop and what players to pick up. When it's your turn to make adjustments to your fantasy team, everybody has their eyes on you.” Make a silly decision, and the jokes start pouring out, making the trading process both hectic and hilarious.
Thomas reminded me that this reporter was sometimes the butt of those jokes. "Week after week, he [he’s referring to me] would stare at the Sports Illustrated as if he were going to make some grand trade, only to make no trade at all,” Thomas said. “Eventually, I had to explain to him that eyeballing the paper wouldn't help him win the week.” Because everyone secretly felt the same way, laughter broke out around the table.
For manager Joseph McClain, the jokes were fun but didn’t take the sting out of his players’ injuries.
"Injuries decimated me from the beginning," McClain said. "I never would have anticipated that Christian McCaffrey, my No. 1 overall pick (who led the league in fantasy points last season), would be ruled out five minutes before the season opener against Kansas City.” McClain also explained that his third-round pick, Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott, consistently underperformed before he suffered a season-ending injury, a partially torn hamstring in a Week 9 loss to the Atlanta Falcons. "I dare not talk about Nico Collins," McClain said, shaking his head.
So how did McClain bounce back from the wave of injuries? "I didn't—I ended up in last place,” he said with a sigh. Then, he regained his sense of humor. “On the bright side, I won four weeks out of the 18-week season."
Along with the normal ups and downs of fantasy football, the incarcerated GMs also had to decide what to do with fantasy teams left behind by incarcerated managers who transferred to different areas of the facility. Should those teams be frozen, meaning that no one could access the players on those rosters, or should those players become accessible to other managers through trades?
The majority of managers voted on the latter solution, but not before Fraser slipped in and adopted an entire team consisting of Pro Bowl players like Lamar Jackson, CeeDee Lamb, and Ja'Marr Chase. Those pickups helped Fraser take first place and outperform the entire league by nearly 300 points. Because no rule had been established at the time, his bold move was accepted by the others.
When asked about his strategy, Fraser cackled. "It was a genius move," he said. "Others draft, and I run the team. What can I say?"
Win or lose, the incarcerated managers all agreed that playing fantasy football brought them together and allowed them momentarily to escape the depressing conditions of prison.
Marshall, the other co-commissioner, summed it up nicely. "Fantasy football takes our mind off the daily struggle of being behind bars. It gives us something to genuinely look forward to," he said. "So, when people ask me why I do this, I explain that I do this for us. I do this because this game brings people together, allowing us to set our differences aside by focusing on the one thing we all enjoy: football.”
