History of the LOD
2024: Significant Rule Changes; Puka-gate; Wings’ Second Championship and Boring-gate; LOD Discord
After an eventful 2023 season, the stage was set for several rules changes that needed to address the challenges provided by both Breidagate and Tiegate. This offseason also saw another consecutive year of no changes to the lineup, with all 10 teams returning for 2024.
Breidagate Investigation
The LOD opened a formal investigation into the “Breidagate” incident after the 2023 season, reviewing Anthony Perez’s roster moves during Weeks 13 and 14. The investigation concluded that while Ant acted alone and was cleared of collusion, he deliberately attempted to throw both matchups in order to secure a higher draft pick, actions that indirectly attempted to influence playoff-relevant matchups involving Ryan, Wings, Erik, and Nauch. League members raised disputes following the Week 13 incident, and the Commissioner attempted to address the situation with Ant before Week 14, but Ant continued to make lineup decisions aimed at losing, including starting backup or lower-utilization players despite stronger available options. The Commissioner ultimately locked Ant’s roster during Monday Night Football of Week 14 to preserve the integrity of the matchup; despite the attempted throw, Ant won the game and the final playoff standings were unaffected.
Nevertheless, the League determined that Ant’s conduct constituted an attempt to gain an unfair advantage and therefore fell under Article XIII.1 of the Official Rules. Exercising the authority granted under Article XIII.3, the Commissioner announced a resolution that would lock Ant’s roster until the 2024 draft and confiscate his 4th round (two picks) and 5th round (three picks) selections, as well as any unused 2nd or 3rd round picks should he decline to assign keepers to those rounds. Ant was offered the opportunity for a reduced punishment contingent upon issuing a formal apology to the League. If accepted by Nauch, the Commissioner, and three additional members, this apology would reinstate the 5th round picks and lift the roster lock for the period between the keeper deadline and draft day.
Following the announcement of the punishment, Ant immediately appealed the decision. His appeal argued that the rules did not explicitly prohibit starting any active NFL player, that the Commissioner had no clear authority to impose draft pick penalties or roster restrictions, and that the League standings were ultimately unaffected by his actions. In support of Ant’s position, Chuck Cassidy attempted to organize the LOD Players Association (LODPA) as a group intended to represent Ant in the dispute with the Commissioner.
After further discussions between Ant and the Commissioner, a joint statement was published on March 20 resolving the matter. Ant formally acknowledged wrongdoing in attempting to throw matches and accepted a reduced penalty consisting of the forfeiture of one fourth-round pick (4.3) and one sixth-round pick (6.2). Ant was also permitted to resume roster moves and trades but was restricted from acquiring any 2024 draft picks in rounds 1–4 or round 6. Ant additionally agreed to issue a final statement to the League prior to the draft.
With the matter formally closed, Breidagate was widely viewed as the culmination of a long-running debate over tanking and competitive integrity in the league’s keeper era, prompting plans for clearer rules governing match throwing and the Commissioner’s disciplinary authority going forward.The informal appeals process also granted more power to League Members to directly challenge the Commissioner’s decisions, which would impact future incidents.
LOD Madness
Concurrent with the Breidagate investigation, Chuck also introduced a new offseason activity, a March Madness bracket challenge (called LOD Madness), that saw participation of 6 of the League’s Members. This gave some more life to what was typically a dead period in the League’s offsesason.
Trophy Presentation
The 2024 offseason saw another much longer than usual gap between the conclusion of the season and the formal handoff of the LOD Trophy. While Gio and Nauch were both in the Inland Empire, Nauch seemed uninterested in doing the handoff on his own and this issue extended well into the Spring and Summer.
The Commissioner, while based in Oakland, knew he would need to make the handoff himself to ensure this did not drag on any further. With plans to return to the Inland Empire in June for Chuck’s bachelor party, he asked his brother, Daniel (known to some leaguemates as Soundcloud), to pick the Trophy up from Gio and begin the new nameplate process. This also saw the continuation of the #Plaqueontheback tradition, with this season’s plate commemorating Joe as the loser of Tie-gate.
The formal Trophy handoff occurred on June 28, 2024, in Las Vegas during Chuck’s bachelor party, which also included a brief ceremony for Nauch.
2024 Rules Changes
2024’s rule change cycle began in July, with several landmark changes being voted on in response to Breidagate, Tie-gate as well as other longstanding issues with the League:
- Kickers were attempted to be abolished for the third time, which failed 6 votes to 4. After this vote, the Commissioner dropped his long vendetta against kickers and would instead focus on reforming scoring for the position in the 2025 cycle
- The roster was changed, with the third WR spot being converted to a Flex, which would give more flexibility to teams and boost the value of Tight Ends as well as lower-tier Running Backs
- After QB scoring was changed, there was a vote to see if any reductions were to be made, both proposals failed by a large margin
- The Commissioner’s Cup was made permanent by unanimous decision, with changes to the payout structure also approved- giving cash prizes to the top 3 finishers
- The 8-trade limit, which stood for 4 seasons, was abolished and was now unlimited once again
- Free Agency was modified so that after waivers cleared, free agents would not be allowed to be picked up until 9AM PT the following day (Known as the 9AM rule), in an attempt to make this system more fair
- In response to Breidagate, the League formally codified rules that specifically forbade match throwing, this decision was unanimous
- In response to Tie-gate, formal rules were approved that defined playoff tiebreakers being determined by head-to-head regular season record
- The #plaqueontheback was formally codified into the rules
- A last-place punishment was formally codified into the rules, as a measure against tanking for the top pick
- Bryan was officially made the Vice Commissioner of the LOD
Draft picks and trading came under heavy scrutiny
- Joe, who had amassed more picks in the top 10 than roster spots, resulted in a vote that any leftover picks after rosters filled were designated as “throwaways”
- Draft pick trades were now limited to the offseason, in direct response to end the League’s tanking problem once and for all
3 specific rules changes were contentiously passed that would have comprehensive ramifications to how the League was played:
- The Free Agent system was changed from the longtime Rolling System in place since the Sleeper Era, a 5/5 tie broken by the
- Commissioner formally introduced FAAB as the new format. A budget of $150 was set to be used during the season and FAAB dollars were allowed to be traded
- The 6 seed was converted into a “Wild Card” system, which granted a playoff berth to the bottom-5 team with the highest PF, rather than W-L record. This passed by a 6/4 vote and would be seen as another anti-tanking measure
- In a shock 7/3 vote, the League agreed to end the Keeper system after 2024 and the League would revert to redraft for the 2025 season and for the first time since the ESPN era. Despite this majority, those who voted no were very very mad about it and made a big fuss.
Launch of Discord 3.0 and The Commissioner’s Podcast
One of the final major events of the offseason was the resurrection of a League Discord channel, this time being spearheaded by Chuck. The Discord was intended to replace the usual League chat as well as being the central hub for blogs. The Commissioner was also on board, who saw the potential for live video chat to be a replacement for the in-person Football Sundays of the Trap House era. Wings also attempted to host this very League History in the channel.
With Chuck and Ant remaining on Blogger Duties, Wings also revived his old weekly podcast which now would be full video on YouTube, it was titled The Commissioner’s Podcast and ran the length of the 2024 season. The first episode debuted on August 6, 2024.
2024 Season Results
The 2024 Draft took place on August 18, held remotely via Zoom. This draft was especially notable with not only a large volume of trades before and during the draft, but also limitations placed on Ant after Breidagate and Joe with the rules governing how he could spend his extra picks.
Chuck picked up right where he left off the previous year and was the undisputed powerhouse of the regular season. With 7 of 14 weeks as the top scorer, he wrapped up a back-to-back Commissioner’s Cup title by the end of Week 11 and broke several records including most wins in the Sleeper Era (tying Joe’s 12 in 2018) most 200 point games (Tying Gio’s 5 in 2020), and most points in the regular season. Joe would recover from Tie-gate very well, securing the second bye and securing a 10-win season, his best finish in the Sleeper Era and the first time the League saw two double-digit-win teams in one season.
Ant & Wings would also see strong finishes scoring-wise, being second and third in PF respectively, though bad matchup luck resulted in Ant being the 6 seed versus Wings at the 3. This would set up the teams entangled in Breidagate for a Round 1 meeting in the playoffs. Ant’s performance was good enough to keep himself well above the rest of the field in the new Wild Card format, and also saw him as runner-up in the Commissioner’s Cup.
The rest of the League, aside from Bryan, was fairly close together in the scoring department, with 20 PF separating 4 teams. The fate of this group came down to pure matchup luck. Rob & Gio, who both came in at 5th and 6th in PF, would end up missing the playoffs entirely at a 4-10 record each. For Gio, this was his first time missing the playoffs since joining the League in 2018 and an effective end to his period of dominance in the first half of the 2020s. Rob’s miss was especially disappointing, as he had made strong efforts to line up a contending team that ultimately failed to materialize in a return to the postseason. Ryan and Nauch, at 7 and 8 in PF, would make the playoffs at an 8-6 record. This was Ryan’s first playoff berth since 2022 and Nauch would have the opportunity to defend his title.
Bryan’s season was notably bad relative to the rest of the league, being last in scoring and record, as well as clinching the inaugural last place punishment as a result. This team would also find itself at the center of the biggest scandal of the 2024 season.
Puka-gate
With trade limits and keepers abolished, there was a steady volume of transactions throughout the regular season as well with only the current season being a priority for teams. This also saw a return of Chuck making deals that many of the League saw as shady.
On November 12th, 2024, Bryan completed a trade that sent Puka Nacua, a top-tier wide receiver, and DJ Moore to Chuck in return for receivers Darnell Mooney, Tank Dell and $50 FAAB. This trade was met with widespread criticism from the rest of the League and included accusations of Collusion given how late into the season it was and the standing positions of both teams. Bryan insisted this was not collusion and doubled down on believing this was a fair trade. As the season continued, Chuck would continue to dominate as the top team in the regular season and Bryan would end up taking the last place title with ease.
2024 Postseason
Nauch played Ryan in round 1 of the 2024 Playoffs, which ended in a blowout for the Defending Champion behind a 91-point performance from Jared Goff, the highest single point total from a player in postseason history (only eclipsed by a 92-point performance by Josh Allen the week before). The Breidagate Bowl between Ant and Wings was a much closer affair, with a 71-point performance from Josh Allen being the X-factor for Wings to again advance to the next round.
Both semifinal matchups were closely contested. Top seed Chuck had an off-week by his team’s standards, with an injury to his star QB Jalen Hurts leaving him vulnerable despite a solid performance from the rest of his team. Unfortunately for Nauch, he could not capitalize on this and lost by a 10-point margin to end his bid for back-to-back titles and Chuck would advance to his fourth Final matchup, tying Gio for most appearances in the Championship all time. Joe and Wings would have an even closer contest that went all the way to Monday night, with the key play being a fumble from Running Back Rachaad White that would hand Joe another heartbreaking loss in the postseason after being the victim of tie-gate the year before. After a 6-year drought, Wings would make his return to his first final in the Sleeper Era.
Boring-gate
The LOD Championship would be only the second postseason meeting between Chuck and Wings. Chuck was the heavy favorite to win and, due to the schedule of games for week 17, would remain in a dominant position heading into Sunday, even with Jalen Hurts still sidelined due to injury and Drake Maye being called up to start. For the Sunday slate of games, Wings made the decision to be completely off the grid for the morning and afternoon games and leave his fate in the hands of the fantasy gods.
As the Sunday slate progressed, Chuck’s remaining players would significantly underperform and Wings rapidly would see his odds of winning increase. The turning of the tides against Chuck, combined with Wings’ lack of participation in the chat throughout the day, would lead to an all-time crash out from Chuck starting, who began to call Wings out for making the final “boring.” This would lead to the matchup eventually being labeled as Boring-gate. With Chuck’s team done playing and Wings having 2 players left heading into Sunday night, a final performance from WR Drake London would clinch the Championship for Wings and, rather than run up the score, decided to sit his Monday night player Jameson Williams to bring the season to an end. Despite the approach, Wings would win his second LOD title and join Chuck and Gio as the only teams to have accomplished this feat at the time.
2024 Season Legacy
The lasting legacy from the 2024 season was the continued domination of QBs after the scoring changes enacted the season before. At the end of this year, 6 of the top 10 all-time scoring performances belonged to QBs from this season, and another 3 being from 2023. This led to a renewed discussion of modifying their scoring to make the position a bit less overpowered which would carry into offseason discussions.
With this also being the last season with keepers, Wings would set his sights on taking advantage of this to try and push expansion and bring the LOD to 12 teams, which the League was very divided on doing.