Fantasy Gazette

Earlier this summer, during a fateful night of bar crawling and poor decisions, “Aaron Bright” found himself stumbling home and playing around on the Sleeper app, a popular fantasy football platform. Full of beer and carnal instincts, Bright sent out a flurry of ill-advised trades to his leaguemates. It wasn’t until the next morning he realized what happened.

Mr. Bright, a lifelong Arizona Cardinals fan whose fantasy team was in need of additional running backs, sent out an aggressive trade offer for RB James Conner. Little did he know it would cost him his freedom.

Bright’s friend happened to be up late that night binging Obi-Wan on Disney+ when a notification popped up that Aaron’s team, “Ceedeez Nuts,” had proposed a trade to him (Bright didn’t even have CeeDee Lamb on that team). The friend jammed his finger pressing the accept button too hard.

Bright’s drunken trade binge led him to mistakenly offer an enormous value package for Conner, including QB Derek Carr, rookie Kenneth Walker III, WRs Gabriel Davis and JuJu Smith-Schuster, and a 1st round pick in 2023 from a team that has a pretty bad roster. All five pieces for the oft-injured back who just turned 27. The value was way off, and the leaguemate posted his giant win via screenshot all over social media, trying to seem like he was genuinely not sure if he won the trade, while knowing the entire time he would get heaps and bounds of online praise.

But the screenshot of the trade didn’t have Bright’s username crossed out, a massive infringement of privacy in the fantasy football community akin to a hate crime.

“I wish I played in your league,” said one clever analyst. “Why don’t I get offers like this?!,” said another. But a third analyst said the following that took the entire situation to a dark place (Trigger Warning: murder):

“I f*cking hate the guy that sent this trade. I even wish he would die. Let’s all hunt him down and maybe burn his house to a crisp. I know a way to make it look like an accident. Look, his Sleeper username is right there! Someone forgot to cross his name out. He shall die by my hand. I’m getting my Katana blades right now and I hope all of you reading this are as well.”

The instant bloodlust of online fantasy football players who were not involved or could be harmed by the uneven trade immediately started hunting down Bright’s IP address to burn his house to the ground for sending an unfair trade in a league they weren’t in. The Federal Witness Protection Program was forced to intervene and keep Mr. Bright at arm’s length, sending him into a remote location until the fantasy community went back to arguing about Engagement Farmers or Threads or some other bullshit regular people don’t understand.

Mr. Bright said he misses his family a great deal, second only to how much he misses the 2023 1st round pick he forfeited in the trade.