Each week, I will be breaking down all the pain and punishment that transpires in our very own BWW Punishment Eliminator League.

While 18 contestants will enter, 17 of them will leave with their tails tucked between their legs as they are forced to face a season-ending punishment.

BWW Punishment Eliminator League

Well, we did it. The Fantasy Life team drafted an 18-team best ball league. And it was the most stress-inducing, anxiety-riddled three days of my f*cking life.

I’m calling HR!

I’m starting to think that the ultimate punishment is actually the gut-wrenching anticipation that comes with knowing that 17 people will be eliminated one by one, week after week, all while being forced to complete a random punishment from our Punishment Generator. 

Or maybe the true punishment is the friends we made along the way <3

Below, I'll break down the league specifics, all of the living and laughing and loving that transpired during the draft, and the Week 1 punishment lurking in the distance. And don’t worry, I’ll be sprinkling in quotes from the group chat throughout so that you can feel like you were truly there with us.

I’m falling apart, boys and girls. This is going to be a long season, so I hope you enjoy it.

18-Team Best Ball Breakdown

If you’re new here, you’ll want a breakdown of what’s happening. (It’s me. Hi. I’m breaking down.)

This ain’t yo momma’s work league. This is Fantasy Life’s insane concoction aiming to punish us all. Well, punish all but one.

League specifics

• Teams: 18
• Scoring: PPR
• Format: best ball
• Eliminations: 1 team, weekly
• Punishments: 1 punishment, weekly

How punishments are decided

• Generate a random punishment with our Punishment Generator
• Announce the punishment to the league prior to kickoff each week
• Get a “Woo! I love this league!” (hopefully) in the group chat
• Boot the loser from the league once that week's games have concluded
• Collect Proof of Punishment (PP)
• Expose everything in the newsletter and on FantasyLife.com

The Draft

Just to be absolutely clear, I do not condone leagues bigger than 12 teams, because nothing felt good about this draft. Absolutely nothing.

Draft Order

I would love to say that our draft order was decided by some extreme feats of physical strength and that I smoked all these boys in a race, but we just used the handy dandy “randomize draft order” button.

But if you want to pretend with me for just a moment, then it was definitely decided by our 40-yard dash times.

At first glance, you might think, “Wow, coot! You got to snipe Matthew Berry all draft long!”

Listen, kid. Let me remind you that nothing felt good about this draft. Nothing.

Here's what I learned after drafting an 18-team league:

• There’s no rosterbating here.
• Reaching isn’t real.
• Everything feels like a snipe when you have to wait 18 to 34 picks until your next selection. 

Strategy (if you can call it that)

As the draft kicked off, it was clear that a few people had entered the draft with a specific strategy in mind…kind of. You see, strategies can fall apart really quickly when you’re looking down the barrel of a never-ending draft board.

Jake Trowbridge summed it up nicely after his Cooper Kupp pick:

Here are some fun facts about how the draft unfolded. In the first three rounds (54 total picks):

• Five teams did not draft a RB
• 10 teams drafted their QB1
• One team started with three straight WRs

The last team to:

• Draft their WR1: Waz at 5.09 (pick No. 81 overall)
• Draft their RB1: Eliot Crist at 6.15 (pick No. 105 overall)
• Draft their QB1: well…let’s elaborate on this one below for fun

League Lore: Who needs a QB?

There was one specific strategy that stood out to everyone in the group chat. For context, this is a 1QB league. But with it being so deep with 18 teams, there was no judgment when Patrick Mahomes was the first QB drafted at 1.07.

Remember, reaching isn’t real when you're waiting 18 to 34 picks between selections.

Because of QB scarcity, though, there was a terrifying QB run in Round 2. And even more QBs flew off the board in Rounds 3 to 6 as everyone scrambled to draft a backup QB.

But it wasn't until another big QB run in Round 7 that everyone noticed the zero QB elephant in the room.

Out of 18 teams, Matthew Freedman was the only one who still didn't have a single QB on his roster. By the time Freedman was making his seventh-round pick, 31 QBs were already off the board, and 14 of 18 teams had already drafted a second QB.

At the 7.17 pick, Freeman still remained without a QB. I could tell you how the QB options looked at that point, but I'd much rather just show you. This, my friends, is what we call a blessing in the group chat. A true roast. Art, even. Hell, hang it in the Louvre:

As you’d probably expect, the group chat was firing on all cylinders. There were even accusations of tanking. There was genuine concern that maybe he hadn’t read the rules. 

But Freedman truly brought us all together when he finally did the unthinkable and drafted his QB1 at the end of the seventh round. Everyone applauded, and all the “Will he? Won't he?” finally came to an end.

Freedman’s Punishment

Whoops! Sorry, I mean the punishment. We technically won’t know who has to do the punishment until all the Week 1 games conclude on Monday night, but my money's on Freedman.

Regardless of who it's going to be, we do know that someone is going to have to channel their inner Rupi Kaur or Walt Whitman. The Punishment Generator has spoken, and…drumroll please…

That’s right, the team with the lowest score from Week 1 will have to write a poem, take a video of him or herself reading it aloud, and submit this fine piece of literary work for potential publication.

Stay tuned for an update next week after the loser submits their Proof of Punishment (PP), and we kick them from the league.

If this sounds like a fun league to you sickos, you don't have to feel left out. You can make your own punishment eliminator league!

Don't be shy, it's easy to create some fun (maybe not so fun for the loser) punishments. Whether it’s an end-of-season last-place punishment or a weekly side bet, we’ve got you covered. Just input your settings, generate, and let fate decide!

You can check out Fantasy Life's Punishment Generator for FREE here!