Pregame Week 6 · vs Ryan
Gibbs, Tee Higgins and the Detroit defense all have the week off, and all three are still in her lineup.
Nicole's starting lineup currently contains three men whose teams are on bye: Jahmyr Gibbs, Tee Higgins and the Detroit defense. That is a third of her roster sitting out, which is how a team the robot ranked second in the league and gave an A- comes out projected for 89.8 points, the lowest total on the board by a mile. Emeka Egbuka (10.6), Rachaad White (8.2) and Kyle Monangai (6.1) are all on her bench with actual games to play, and the fix takes four clicks and thirty seconds. Ryan projects 150.4 and has scored 699.70 points, more than anyone in this league, and he spent the past week adding Dameon Pierce, Will Shipley and Keon Coleman without dropping a single soul. She beat him 110.88-107.22 last season. She will not do it again. Ryan by sixty.
Postgame Week 5 · vs Beth · L
Caleb Williams was ruled out before anybody set a lineup, and Beth started him at quarterback regardless and collected 0.0 for the trouble. She won by 16.36 anyway, because Malik Nabers went for 26.6, Kyren Williams 20.2, Sam LaPorta 18.3, and D'Andre Swift and Ja'Marr Chase both 17.7. Eight starters doing the work of nine. Nicole, meanwhile, had Jahmyr Gibbs go off for 42.2, the single biggest performance by any player in the league this week, and still lost, because Carnell Tate gave her 1.1, Dalton Kincaid 3.2 and Tee Higgins 3.7 while Emeka Egbuka's 15.3 sat on her bench. She was the favorite by 6.2. She got 42 from one man and couldn't scrape together 110. Goddamn.
Pregame Week 5 · vs Beth
Caleb Williams is listed Out and projected 0.0, and he is Beth's starting quarterback.
Beth won this entire league last year. Ten and four, first in the regular season, six straight wins to finish it, a title game taken off Lauren. She is now 2-2 holding a C and the eleventh-ranked draft, and her starting quarterback Thursday is Caleb Williams, listed Out, projected 0.0. The defending champion is fielding a man who is not going to play football. Sam LaPorta is still in there too, in a league that has never had a tight end slot and did not grow one overnight, and Ja'Marr Chase is Questionable on top of it, so the floor underneath this lineup is a hole. Nicole has Jahmyr Gibbs at 32.0, the largest number anybody puts on the field this week, plus Ashton Jeanty and 544.12 points for. Banners don't throw passes. Nicole by seventeen.
Postgame Week 4 · vs Jared · W
Jared was projected for 151.0, the highest number on the board, and scored 107.74. Forty-three points of pure nothing. Rashee Rice posted a 0.0 in a starting slot, Amon-Ra St. Brown gave him 13.5, and his bench had 8.4 points on it total, so there was no bailout available because he built a roster with no floor and no ceiling and called it Agentic Fantasy Flows. Nicole beat him by 41.66 with Kyle Monangai, who was projected 11.7 and scored 33.5, and she did it while her tight end scored 1.2 and her defense scored 2.0. He also picked himself to win this game in pick'em. Three and one, and he has no business being there.
Pregame Week 4 · vs Jared
One transaction all season, the league's highest projection, and and a 1-2 opponent who outscored the entire league last week.
Jared is 3-0, projected 152.4, the biggest number on the board, and he has made exactly one transaction since August: he scraped Tyler Shough off the free agent pile on the twenty-third and Shough promptly threw for 24.4 and won him a game he was projected to lose by thirty. That is not management. That is a man falling down a staircase and landing in a chair, and he will still tell you about the A-minus. Nicole scored 156.02 last week, the best number in the league, and is 1-2 with 453.24 points against, second only to the winless commissioner, and her prize is the guy who writes this page. She signed Kirk Cousins and is starting him at 15.0, the lowest quarterback projection of the week. Jared by fifteen he did not earn.
Postgame Week 3 · vs Joey · W
The commissioner finally did the thing this page has demanded for two straight weeks: he started Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes gave him 16.04. Brock Bowers gave him 25.6, Garrett Wilson 24.2, Christian McCaffrey 24.1, and Spencer Shrader booted 17.0, and Joey put up 148.04, higher than five of the six winners. He is 0-3. He left 2.0 on his bench, made every correct call available to him, and lost by 7.98 because Nicole hung 156.02 on him with Jahmyr Gibbs scoring 43.9 by himself and Drake London adding 26.4 off a 14.2 projection. Nicole is the only other person who knows what 148 and a loss feels like, having done it in Week 1 at 148.3, and she handed the experience to the man who runs the place. Joey fixed his lineup and the scoreboard told him to go to hell.
Pregame Week 3 · vs Joey
Winless against winless, and both of them are starting a quarterback projected for nothing.
Joey left 21.9 points on his bench last week and the fattest piece of it was Patrick Mahomes, who scored 29.68 while Joey watched from behind Justin Herbert. This week Mahomes is on the bench again, projected 23.2, still behind Herbert at 17.6. Same crime, seven days later, committed by the man who runs the league. He also signed Michael Mayer, a third tight end for a league with no tight end slot, and then cut him a week later, which at least resembles learning. Alec Pierce is Doubtful at 0.0 and in the lineup with Quentin Johnston at 9.7 sitting behind him. Nicole is the mirror image: second-best draft grade in the league, 0-2, 305.2 points against, and Jaxson Dart at 0.0 with nothing behind him either. Joey by four, and one of these two has to lose.
Postgame Week 2 · vs Ben · L
This projected as the closest game of the week, four tenths of a point apart. Ben won by 65.18. Davante Adams, who gave him 4.6 in Week 1, went for 38.0. Brock Purdy added 29.78, DeVonta Smith 25.7, and the Rams defense 13.0, which is more than Nicole's quarterback and kicker produced together. Jaxson Dart scored 0.8. Cameron Dicker scored 2.0. The Detroit defense scored negative two, an actual subtraction from her total. Jahmyr Gibbs gave her 24.9 and Dalton Kincaid 21.0 and every bit of it went into the furnace. She lost by 1.32 with 148.3 last week and by 65.18 with 90.4 this week, which is a hell of a range for the same result.
Pregame Week 2 · vs Ben
Half a point between the guy who can't score and the woman who can't win.
Ben averaged 132.38 a game last season, the best in this league, and never once dipped below 98.72 in fourteen tries. He opened this year with 89.26, the lowest score of Week 1, and got run off the field by forty-two. Nicole managed the exact opposite: 148.3, second-highest in the league, and she lost by 1.32. That is the whole rivalry in two numbers. Ben has beaten her twice already, 133.96 to 131.02 and 115.82 to 105.64, both of them close, both of them hers to lose. This one projects inside half a point, 133.6 to 133.2, with Jahmyr Gibbs at 32.9 the biggest number on either roster and Nicole's defense opening Thursday in Buffalo. Nicole by a rounding error, and if she drops a third straight squeaker to Ben she should stop calling them close.
Postgame Week 1 · vs Lauren · L
Lauren won 149.62 to 148.3 and Nicole has to live with that. Jahmyr Gibbs went for 40.5, Ashton Jeanty for 35.5, Jaxson Dart for 29.7: that is 105.7 from three players, the best top-three in the league, and she lost by 1.32 goddamn points. Why? Drake London 5.1, Tee Higgins 8.9, Cameron Dicker 2.0, and 27.5 points left on the bench including Kyle Monangai's 21.4. Her optimal lineup was 175.8. Lauren won it with Christian Watson at 31.2, Jalen Hurts at 26.42, and 25.5 from Zay Flowers, who got hurt along the way. Her defense scored one point and she won anyway.
Pregame Week 1 · vs Lauren
Highest projected total in the league, a second-year quarterback, and a defense she signed last week.
Nicole has the top projected score of anyone this week at 116.0 and the second-best draft grade, and none of that has ever done a thing for her against Lauren, who beat her twice last year and held her to 74.6 and 77.24. The 74.6 was the worst week Nicole had all season. Her quarterback is second-year Jaxson Dart because he is the only one she drafted, she was so short a defense that she signed the Lions last Wednesday, dropping Tyler Allgeier, and four starters plus her kicker are Questionable. Lauren is no cleaner: she burned the thirteenth overall pick on Jalen Hurts in a one-quarterback league, earned a C+, went 10-4, and lost the goddamn title game. Nicole by nine, and if she blows this one too she should just mail Lauren the trophy.
