What’s going on, Big Leaguers!

Man, do I love football. This week was nuts! From the Bears’ implosion to the Colts OT victory over the Ravens; the Texans and Cards upsets over the Jags and Cowboys. Yet, there’s no way to talk about this week in football without talking about the historic 70-20 Dolphins performance over the beat-down Broncos. We’ll get into all this and more within the write-up, but first we visit the Maid for some…

Housekeeping:

1. As you can see, the “The League” tab is now fully operational! Many thanks to Matthew for combining his spreadhseet wizardry with graphic design. This should auto-update along with games as they go along. Within the divisions, teams are not in any particular order, but soon the Playoff Watch will be live and you can see how you stack up against your division mates.
2. This week, the latest roster to be submitted was 15 minutes after the morning slate! This is a huge success. Thanks and congrats to everyone on being timely league-mates.

That’s all the housekeeping for now! On to the re-cap!

Highest Scorer: Lannisters (177.16 points)

This is one of my favorite things to do as Commish of the league. Welcome to Fantasy Football, Dr. Lan and the Lannisters: you made it. The Lannisters rocked the league with a staggering 177 points. We’ll discuss the matchup in its entirety in the next category, but we can go ahead and give this team their flowers now. Only Godwin and Stevenson fell shy of 10 points for this lineup. Furthermore, five out of his nine roster spots scored over 20 points! It’s not difficult to perform an autopsy and find out why this roster was successful. Jordan Love is the #4 QB in scoring right now. LaPorta is #2 at his position. Kenny Walker is #3. And Mike Williams is #16. This was an all-star lineup from top to bottom. The coup de grace, without doubt, was the choice to roster the Buffalo defense against the pitiful Commanders’ offense. Here’s a quick list of achievements for the Buffalo D: nine sacks, ten tackles for loss, four interceptions, 15 quarterback hits, and, of course, a touchdown. This all was achieved while holding the team from Washington to a sole field goal. Geez. Lan’s roster even had the inspired, audacious moxie to roster Prater (the Cardinals’ kicker) against the stout Cowboys defense. The Lannisters had no chance of losing, but, by the afternoon games, it was clear that they were a shoe-in to be the Highest Scorer this week. Congrats and, again, welcome to the Big League.

Honorable mentions: Skid Marks (155.74), The Hens (156.74), She Sucks My Boswell (154.54)

Biggest Blowout: Lannisters vs. team Web (100.82)

Unfortunately, this blowout was foreseeable from a long way out. I knew a big lopsided matchup was going to happen from the moment I saw that team Web‘s running back corps was filled out by empty jerseys. Both Aaron Jones and Austin Ekeler were declared out well in advance of Sunday. (Reminder to always check your rosters against the injury reports!) However, this may just be team Web’s strategy! Coming into week three, they’ve rostered two 0’s in each lineup. Why break with tradition now? It is a shame though, because there are bones of a good roster here. Using A.J Brown is never a bad idea. Evan Engram is a solid tight end choice among the morass of players. And even George Pickens notched a 70-yard house call. But when you shoot not one of your own feet, but both, you suddenly have no legs to stand on. This roster was doomed by the time team Web hit submit. I say that, but, in fact, Webster would’ve beat two other teams. Sadly, he faced the hulking giant of Lannisters from Casterly Rock. And you know they always pay their debts. In this case, it looks like they owed team Web a solid hundred dollar bill. And they paid in full. With this, we are officially three weeks into the Biggest Blowout award given to a team that at least DOUBLED the opponents score. Time will tell if we will all face the wrong end of the stick. Time will tell.

Honorable Mention: Titan Your Butthole vs. Jalen “oh god yes it” Hurts (70.70 points)

Closest Matchup: Krusty Krab Pizzas Points vs. lansing leopards (6.9 points)

The Pizzas barely made it in by the skin of their crusts. To start, we must examine the potentially insane decision on both squads to roster two Broncos a pop (and they both opted for Mr. Unlimited as their quarterback). I do realize the hypocrisy in my criticism as a proud Russell Wilson manager in another Fantasy league. Down the line, the erstwhile players were either a heavy dose of mediocrity or a trip down memory lane. Tyler Boyd and Allen Robinson II were excellent wide receivers…..five years ago. Meanwhile, the leopards couldn’t even record five points between AJ Dillon and someone named Brandon Johnson. The lansing leopards did, however, make the interesting hedge to roster the Cowboys Defense as well as the prime Arizona target in Marquise Brown. This netted for 15.1 points between the two. I think we can narrow this close matchup down to one element: Justin Jefferson. Through the first two weeks of the season, Jefferson was lighting up the field, but somehow he hadn’t caught an end-zone pass. It was basically a statistical anomaly that he hadn’t…until this week when he finally scored. Take out Jefferson’s touchdown catch, and Rob’s Krusty Krab Pizzas are a hair behind the leopards. Sliding doors make for chance encounters. Now this places the Pizzas with a positive record, while being last in the Wario division for total points.

Honorable Mention: Just Setting Lineups So I Don’t Get Fined Points Saquon Deez Nutz (7.4 points)

Biggest Find: Raheem Mostert (45.2 points)

There were no poor choices for this coveted award. I could’ve chosen the Bills Defense (rostered by two teams) and described above. Keenan Allen (four teams) put on a clinic and even threw a bomb TD. But we truly have to honor the running back #2 on the week by talking about Mr. Must-Start on the Dolphins. If I showed you this stat line: 13 carries for 82 yards / 7 catches for 60 yards; you’d probably say “that’s a great running back performance!” But then if I told you that a quarter of the rushing attempts resulted in touchdowns and one of those catches was a touchdown, you might not have hair afterward. The Dolphins doused their gridiron in lard and lit on fire by the sparks of their cleats. Mostert’s longest run was only for twenty yards, but that could’ve fooled me. It looked like he was running on demand. The 31 year old veteran took a sledgehammer to the Denver defense, in what felt like a personal attack. But what’s craziest is that he was not even the story coming out of the day. No, De’von Achane has officially entered the chat, and will be a force to be reckoned with I’m sure. But his story is for another day. For now, we must praise Scrantonicity 5 and The Hens for having the foresight to pop Raheem in to the lineup and put their hands behind their head and relax. To finish, when watching Mostert all I could think of was this immortal clip.

Biggest Bust: Joshua Kelley (2.7 points)

If Mostert is a textbook example of taking your opportunity and sprinting with it, Josh Kelley is the antithesis: having your opportunity, subsequently tying cinderblocks to your feet, wearing beer googles, and crabwalking out of the snap en route to the end zone. Kelley had eleven carries for twelve yards. I almost don’t want to type any more words due to how pitiful this is. There are times when watching football where you say, “I could do better than that!”. Yeah, this was one of them. I don’t think I could take 11 snaps period, but I like to imagine I could at least average better than 1.1 per carry! You’d think that the primary ball-carrier for a prolific offense, in a tight game, could do something! Anything! Alas, no. Seven different teams befell the unfortunate disaster that was Joshua Kelley’s reign over the Charger’s backfield. And every single team LOST (aside from the two teams that played him against each other). This was your moment, Josh, and you blew it.

Weekly Oddity:

1. We now have three undefeated teams: The Realest, Drew Crew, and She Sucks My Boswell. The oddity here is that two of these teams are brand new to this league format. Well done.
2. At 3:18 CST both The Krusty Krab Pizzas and Scrantonicity 5 had the same exact win/loss, divisional wins, AND points. Of course, that didn’t maintain, but for a brief moment the stars aligned.
3. Returning to the glue factory (A.K.A Broncos @ Dolphins), both Tua and Russ completed 23 passes. They threw for 206 and 209 yards respectively. Mostert had 13 carries and Javonte Williams had 11. Tyreek Hill had nine catches while Cortland Sutton had eight. Smarter minds than I can tell you what this means in advanced football terms. But for me, I do find it hilarious that Mike McDaniel (the vaping meme-lord who goes on PMT for fun) did all of that and outscored future HOFers Russell Wilson and Sean Payton by 50 points.
4. Perhaps not quite an oddity, but I have to point out that Fisher’s Saquon Deez Nuts rostered someone named “River Cracraft” and somehow they scored only .4 points fewer than Joshua Kelley.

That’s all, folks! Have a great week and good luck on your matchups!