WESTFIELD, N.J. – For those steeped in the traditions of fantasy football, the gathering in the backyard of Joseph Verga on the final Thursday of August would have felt familiar — at least most of it.
Verga and over a dozen of his friends and neighbors situated themselves around a few large tables adorned with a spread of spirits and wings. A large-screen TV was paired with a projection screen that streamed the results of their annual draft. Last year’s league winner, Jon LaConti, added his name to a monumental, enviable trophy. An auctioneer, Jeremy Rothfleisch, fielded bids from the league’s managers and, over the next several hours, helped steer the reason they are all present — to craft fantasy football rosters for the coming 2025 NFL season, and to remember the man that brought them all together.
Absent from the scene was one of the league’s founding members, Brad Coustan. This year’s draft marked the 10th anniversary of his passing after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
Brad Coustan (left) poses with his wife, Helene, and children, Victor and Ava. (Courtesy of Helene Coustan)
Now, Coustan’s friends and family, including his wife, Helene, and son, Victor, gather annually to celebrate his memory, the time they shared and the impact Coustan had on their lives and throughout the Westfield community. Before each league manager nominates their first player for the auction draft, they raise a special shot glass — clear with a translucent band inscribed with the league’s name, Bradstrong, and Coustan’s team name, Vandelay Industries — and offer a toast. Sometimes the toasts are nostalgic. Sometimes they’re humorous. But they are always sincere.
“You forget about mortality until something happens,” said Corey Singman, a friend of Brad’s who some call “The Mayor of Westfield” for how ingrained he is in the community.
During his toast before the draft, Singman succinctly summarized the occasion: “In the world of a game that’s fake, if there’s ever a meaningful version of things in football, it’s this. It’s just good in so many ways, and I’m honored to be a part of the league and love Brad, always.”
“This is not a blog about blood counts and bone lesions. This is a blog about who I am, what I appreciate most, and how fortunate I am to be surrounded by those who care so much. These are my feelings. I am intensely private, so my feelings don’t come out easily…. This blog is about finding one silver lining each and every day.” – Brad Coustan, Nov. 27, 2012
When Coustan was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, he started a blog to chronicle the journey. Once private and insular, Coustan decided to be public and vulnerable after his diagnosis and even became an ambassador for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.
“He got better with age,” his wife Helene said.
To hear his friends and family tell it, Coustan could do it all. He had a successful career in finance and a short acting career in theatre. A fierce competitor, he was an all-state third baseman at his Maryland high school. But he’s best remembered for his commitment to his family and friends.
“He wasn’t a good student, but he was Mensa smart,” Helene said. “He didn’t try in college, didn’t finish. But he had a very successful career after he decided he didn’t want to act and wanted to get married. Everything he did, every day of his life, he woke up because he wanted to provide for me and the kids, and that was his drive.”
Helene met Brad when they both lived in New York. When their relationship was fresh, he took her to Central Park, baseball and mitts in hand. He told Helene he was “just making sure that you can throw so we can play catch together.”
“Dude,” Helene said, recalling the memory, “I played softball and volleyball. I was a nationally ranked synchronized swimmer. I tried out for the Olympics in 1984. I am an athlete. Don’t mess with me.”
Helene said she “passed the test. … But in every sport, he would have to win.”
The first home the couple shared was Helene’s 500-square-foot apartment in New York City, which Brad moved into after three weeks of dating. “When you can love each other and still be happy in that small of a space, then you can be happy. You can make it anywhere,” Helene said.
In those early days, they lived paycheck to paycheck. (“I used to joke with him and say, ‘The cable check cleared today.’” Helene said.) But Coustan built a successful career and became the senior vice president of Steadfast Companies, a company based in Irvine, California. He eventually provided a comfortable life for his family as they moved to New Jersey.
“He’s taken very good care of our family, beyond what was needed; he worked so hard,” Helene said. Victor and their daughter Ava were just 12 and 10 when their father passed away. Now Victor is 23 and works for the New York Jets as a production assistant. Ava is a senior at the University of Miami. “He set us up for life, which is a gift. Not having to struggle financially when you’re grieving and trying to raise two children was a blessing.”
The tireless effort typified pretty much every aspect of Coustan’s life. Even as his cancer progressed, he always made it to his kids’ games, watching Ava play soccer and compete in cheer and Victor play baseball and basketball.
The Coustans attend a Multiple Myeloma Research fundraiser at Shackamaxon Country Club. (Courtesy of Helene Coustan)
During baseball season, “He was super sick, but he would sit in the car with the heated seat on and watch because he had so much back pain and couldn’t get out,” Helene said. “But he got to the games; he pushed himself on a level that I don’t know that anybody else could. And the day that they told us they couldn’t do anything else for him was the day that he died.”
Before his son Victor could even walk, Coustan was tossing baseballs at him. As he got older, he required his son to take swings off a tee daily to prepare for the season. When playing a backyard basketball game, Coustan never let Victor win.
Brian Kaplan, another league member, and Coustan bonded when they coached Victor’s basketball team together, and Kaplan took over the team when Brad could no longer physically manage it. Even then Coustan watched the team from the bleachers, cane in hand and wearing a backpack that provided his chemotherapy treatment. He joked that he looked like Dora the Explorer.
Coustan lamented a time when he lost his temper due to his cocktail of medications, which included steroids. He detailed his regret and the inner turmoil he experienced. Helene said that was one event that urged him to stop coaching, though Coustan’s actions afterward left an indelible impression on Victor.
Coustan’s son recalled the drive to practice the next day. “He told me, you see, coaches yell a lot, but there’s a time and a place.” Without mentioning steroids or treatment — without any excuses, Couston told his son, “That wasn’t the time; that wasn’t the place.” He explained to Victor how to learn from and handle mistakes.
“He gathered the team and apologized to everyone,” Victor said. “He sat there and took full responsibility. … One singular moment where he was weak, he handled correctly.”
I never even believed for a second that Cancer would take me, and I still don’t believe it now. I feel great. My energy is high. Other than my constant hip pain or femur pain, I feel well. So the Myeloma is raging – Bring it, I say. Bring it. I am tougher than Cancer. — Brad Coustan (Nov. 24, 2014)
Helene noted that Coustan – a strong-willed, competitive type – softened after his diagnosis. Several of his friends recalled poignant, quiet moments together, particularly when driving Coustan to his treatments in Philadelphia.
“We would have time in the car and just talk about life,” Rothfleisch said. “I don’t remember the details of those conversations, but I just remember being there for him and being with him.”
As a medical doctor, Rothfleisch understood Coustan’s diagnosis in a way perhaps others didn’t. When Coustan found out he had what’s known as the “Philadelphia chromosome” — an abnormality in chromosome 22 that contains a fusion of two genes that causes immature white blood cells to grow uncontrollably and build up in the bone marrow and blood — Rothfleisch knew the likelihood of survival was slim.
“It’s hard any time someone you care about deeply is facing that kind of battle. … It’s hard to put into words,” he said.
As Coustan continued his treatment, his friends and family rallied around him.
“When Brad got sick,” LaConti said, “I became so much closer to him … reading his blog every day, sitting with him in treatment, seeing how I could help Helene. And it wasn’t just me; it galvanized the core group.”
Verga, another friend and the host of this year’s fantasy league draft, said, “he took this journey and this opportunity to be so open, and it brought his friends closer to him. …
“He gave us a gift even though we were trying to be helpful to him.”
Managers in the Bradstrong league make their draft selections. (Photo: Jess Bryant)
Verga noted that Brad taught him “the benefits of being open emotionally and being able to talk and support each other,” which he has applied to tribulations in his own life as his father struggled with Alzheimer’s.
“I knew I could turn to Brian or Matt or Mike or Ross, certain guys in the league that I saw,” Verga said. “I knew that they would support me or that I could talk to them or they wouldn’t judge.”
Kaplan endured two cancer journeys at once, as his wife, Hilary, was battling breast cancer. Kaplan said he and his wife, now in remission, realized “there’s no reason to go it alone. And we basically had our entire friend group in the neighborhood raising our kids and supporting our family, and we did that incredibly openly. …
“This idea of supporting your friends and taking in the kids has been a part of our little community of friends for a little while.”
Those bonds provide the fabric of what makes the Bradstrong fantasy league unique.
The original league was formed in 2010, before Coustan’s diagnosis, and consisted of 10 managers, including Coustan, Kaplan, Verga, LaConti, Michael Rollins, Ross Katz, Matt Jarecki and Gary Constable.
In 2014, Coustan advocated for the league to expand to 12 teams and adopt an auction draft with a budget of $200 per team, because he thought it was more challenging than other formats, Rollins said. Rothfleisch joined as the league’s auctioneer, though he has no interest in the game (he identifies as a Jets fan).
And as he did with most everything else, Coustan came to win.
Kaplan told stories of Coustan bringing color-coded binders with notes on players and expected values to each draft. There were myths that he had an intern or assistant create the binder.
“He claimed it was interns,” Helene laughed. “But I think it was him.”
Victor said that following Sunday School, some of his father’s first words were about fantasy football. “Who should I start this week?” he’d ask his son. “He made me feel like I was part of the team, like we were together on it.”
When Victor was in fourth grade, early in Coustan’s battle with cancer, his father helped him start a fantasy league with nine of his friends. Coustan was the commissioner, making each draft an event and welcoming the kids to his food-stocked house. The first year, he handwrote every draft pick on a whiteboard.
Now, after his father’s passing, Victor helps Helene draft her roster after she took her late husband’s spot in the league.
Victor and Helene Coustan at the 2025 Bradstrong league draft. (Photo: Jess Bryant)
Unfortunately, this evening Brad lost his courageous battle against this horrible disease. It is with great sadness that I must tell you that he passed away peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by me and the kids. — Helene Coustan (June 7, 2015)
Helene said that close to 1,500 people attended Coustan’s funeral. Because there wasn’t enough room for everyone, some attendees watched on television screens.
“The funeral was on a Tuesday, and nobody went to school that day,” Helene recalled. “I was not aware of the impact that he had on people until he was gone because you become busy with life, and for three years he was fighting cancer, and that’s all we could do.”
After Coustan’s death, the league members discussed how they could honor him moving forward. Constable, a close friend of Brad’s and founding leaguemate, shared a story via email.
“League, I think the first time that Brad came to my house was about four years before he was diagnosed for one of my poker tournaments. He showed up with two bottles of Patron Silver. He took the head chair at my dining room table with one bottle for himself for the evening and gave me one for the house.
“He was the only person who showed up with a house gift. I insisted that it was not necessary. … He said, ‘No worries, Gary. It’s a regift. I got plenty at home, and Helene would not like it if I came to your house for the first time empty-handed.’”
Constable said he still had that bottle in his pantry and recommended, as a tribute to Brad, that the members chill the bottle, pour themselves a shot and pay tribute to Brad. Then came the purchase of the commemorative shot glasses that sat before each league member in Verga’s backyard in late August. That bottle of Patron has long since been drained, but the tradition endured.
Ten years later, surrounded by Helene, Victor and the rest of the members of the Bradstrong league, Verga raised his glass.
The league’s shot glasses, etched with Bradstrong on one side and each manager’s team name on the other. (Photo: Gary Constable)
“This is one of my absolute favorite days of the entire year. I really look forward to it … especially having Victor and Helene with us.”
To help commemorate the 10th anniversary of Coustan’s passing, via Cameo, Kaplan reached out to former NFL running back Stevan Ridley, one of Coustan’s favorites.
“As we all know, Brad said, ‘I’m diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer; I also have an unhealthy obsession with Stevan Ridley — sadly, this is also incurable.’”
Alas, Ridley was unavailable. Instead, Kaplan played a message delivered by Ridley’s replacement: Jon Gruden.
“We’re gonna always showcase tremendous mental toughness, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how hot it gets, how far we fall behind, what the losing streak is, we are gonna bust our ass because effort takes no talent, and we’re gonna do it just for our friend Brad,” the former Super Bowl-winner said, morphing into full coach mode. “You do it for him, you do it for yourself and you do it because you can do it. Now freakin’ A, let’s go, dang it! Have a great year.”
The speeches and toasts lasted nearly an hour. And with every tribute, the orator nominated a player to be drafted. With a gavel raised, the auctioneer Rothfleisch was in charge. Rosters were filled along with their hearts.
“This year is extra special for us,” Helene said when it was time for her toast. “It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since we lost Brad, but the more I reflect on the last 10 years, the more I am so thankful that he met you and that you guys were in our lives because you all enabled us to get to this day by being the friends you are. …
“To be standing here with my grown son, who loves football just as much as his dad, to be a part of this is magical. So, thank you all for being who you are. What you mean to us is beyond words. … Thank you for being the best friends ever.”
(Top illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Courtesy of Helene Coustan, Jess Bryant / The Athletic)