We did it; we finally really did it. We’ve been playing fantasy football since 1994, although the rules then were “Rotisserie baseball” based. The head-to-head format we all think of now as the norm for fantasy football didn’t catch on, for us, until the 1996 season. This year marked the 29th season we’ve played the H2H format, with varying rules in numerous leagues, and we finally achieved perfection: a undefeated title.

Yes, that’s right: one of our teams—and we admit we usually play in at least four or five leagues a season, and sometimes during peak years (2004-2014) we played in as many as ten leagues a year, at least—finally did the improbable. Only once before in our experiences did we have a team get through the regular season undefeated, and that team ended up losing in the first round of the playoffs, of course. But not this time.

We estimate we have played over 220 online fantasy-football seasons combined over the last 29 years, primarily on ESPN and Yahoo. We used to cover fantasy baseball for CBS Sports, but we rarely bothered with doing the same for fantasy football, because it was such a luck-oriented game. We’d played in numerous leagues where an owner missed the draft, never made one move/transaction, and yet still won.

Those were ridiculous moments of frustration for us and luck for others. That one prior undefeated, regular-season team went 12-0 in an ESPN league about a dozen years or so ago; the league had a two-week playoff matchup in the first round, and our guys just died/disappeared. That was soul crushing to get so close and then crash/burn right away. This year in a Yahoo league we’d played in off and on for 20-plus years? Perfect.

This is how it went: our Yahoo draft recap suggested that our roster “managed to secure an impressive A+ draft grade despite picking last in the draft order. With a projected record of 12-2-0 and a first-place finish on the horizon, this team is set to conquer” the league. We knew the potential was there, if we only didn’t screw it up with micromanagement of the roster on a weekly basis, etc. We ended up going 14-0, of course.

But it wasn’t easy: some weeks were better than others, of course. In Week One, we won by 60-plus points; in Week Seven, we won by a whopping 122-plus points. The closest call was in Week Thirteen, where our team escaped by just 3.5 points thanks to Cleveland Browns wide receiver Jerry Jeudy having a career night on Monday Night Football against his old team (the Denver Broncos). That was a huge moment, it turns out.

With a 14-0 record, our league granted our team a bye in the first round of the single-week playoff matchups, before beating a 7-7 team in the semifinals by “only” 34-plus points and a 9-5 team in the finals by 38-plus points. In fact, in the finals, we had the matchup clinched before the MNF game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Detroit Lions, with Jahmyr Gibbs and George Kittle still to play. We poured it on.

Interestingly enough, the team we barely beat in Week Thirteen finished with the third-most points scored in the league—thanks to Saquon Barkley and Kyren Williams—but ended up finishing 11th in a 12-team league. That’s what we mean by the luck factor in this “game” we all love to play every fall; it just doesn’t have a lot of rhyme or reason to it, and yet we come back every year as gluttons for the punishment in store.

So, who were the team’s players? Yes, we figured you’d want to know. Here were the draftees, in order, from that 12th spot in a snake draft: Derrick Henry, Gibbs, Lamar Jackson, Jaylen Waddle, Kittle, James Connor, Chris Godwin, Xavier Worthy, Kansas City defense, Caleb Williams, Brock Bowers, Jake Moody, Jaleel McLaughlin, Mike Williams, Derek Carr, Detroit defense, and Greg Zuerlein. Shocking!

Waddle was waived midseason, and we picked Jeudy off the waiver wire. Godwin got hurt; we ended up dropping Caleb Williams and grabbing Jordan Love off waivers when he was hurt. He started Week Fourteen when Jackson was on bye. We used a few different kickers while Moody was hurt, and we still had both the K.C. and Detroit defenses at the end of the season, although we rolled with the Miami defense, too.

Not conventional, per se, but clearly Jackson, Henry, Gibbs, and Connor carried this team most of the way, with Bowers and Kittle playing strong roles as well. Other guys we picked up who made a difference? Kareem Hunt and DeAndre Hopkins. Checking that waiver wire every week multiple times is always an absolute must in fantasy football, because every week is a chess match, sadly, that you usually lose to fate.

Overall, in the regular season, this roster outscored the second-place team by 368 points, an average of 26.3 points per week. That team was the one we beat in the finals, as well, so that was sweet. Our team was pretty dominant; yet even so, it took a miracle performance by Jeudy, an NFL journeyman and waiver-wire acquisition here, to save the season and get it into the record books. We will love him forever, truthfully.

Editor’s note: The interesting thing was that this season we also had an ESPN team in a new league start out 11-0 before sputtering to a 12-2 finish and first-round playoff loss. Shit happens, and the fantasy gods are cruel. But this one time, they shined their lights on us, and we will never ask for another fantasy football favor.