Week 2
Postgame

Last week's recap closed by asking Chris to go fill his two empty starting slots. He did not. He played Week 2 with seven men again, no kicker and no defense, and lost by sixty-eight hundredths of a point. Any kicker in America wins him this game. Jonathan Taylor went for 33.1 and Kenneth Walker for 27.7, which is 60.8 from two running backs, and Chris still couldn't clear 81, because Kyler Murray was projected for zero and delivered exactly that and Nico Collins matched him. His optimal lineup was 97.7. Jarrod won this by doing nothing at all: 80.78 on a 108.4 projection, Jared Goff's 30.08 dragging a corpse, Puka Nacua sitting on his bench for 0.0.

Jared called this one by thirteen and won it by 29.02, and he gets to write the page about it, which is the whole problem with this arrangement. Amon-Ra St. Brown went for 33.2 and Jaylen Waddle for 20.8 while his kicker and his defense combined for 6.5 points, so let's not pretend this was craftsmanship. Beth handed it over. Caleb Williams gave her 9.72. Malik Nabers gave her 0.6. Michael Wilson gave her 3.3. Three starters, 13.62 points, less than Jake Ferguson scored alone on her bench at 18.8, with TreVeyon Henderson's 16.2 parked right next to him. The defending champion is 1-1 and her lineup is a suggestion box.

Last week Holli hung 150.6 with two slots empty. This week she filled every hole on the roster and scored 65.76, the worst number in the league and 76.44 points under her projection. That is not variance, that's a haunting. Bijan Robinson: 12.2 on a 28.8 projection. Javonte Williams: 7.7 on 23.3. The Kansas City defense: one point. Her kicker outscored five of her eight other starters, and Stefon Diggs put up 20.2 on the bench, more than anybody she actually played. Morgan didn't have to be good and obliged: 106.5, David Montgomery at 4.0 on a 22.4 projection, and Harrison Butker at 17.0 as her second-leading scorer. She's 2-0 because a kicker is carrying her.

Ryan scored 177.36 and his top three, Jaxon Smith-Njigba at 40.5, CeeDee Lamb at 33.8 and Dak Prescott at 31.16, outscored Joey's entire lineup by eleven points on their own. Final margin 83.08. And Joey did it to himself in precisely the way he did it last week: Patrick Mahomes scored 29.68 on his bench while Justin Herbert started and coughed up 8.18. Same crime, seven days later, nothing learned. Twenty-one point nine left sitting there, the most in the league, and Spencer Shrader, a kicker, was the second-best thing on his roster. Brock Bowers contributed a clean zero from the bench for flavor. The commissioner is 0-2 and his team name has never been more accurate.

The preview had Lauren by thirty-four. Lauren lost by 19.66 and did not make one wrong decision doing it: she left 0.0 points on her bench, the only manager in this league to play a mathematically perfect lineup, and it bought her absolutely nothing. Ally beat her while starting Jordyn Tyson, who is on injured reserve, for a clean 0.0. Second straight week, same man, same zero, still zero transactions all season. Josh Allen went for 45.22 and Travis Kelce for 23.6 and that was the entire plan. She also had Matthew Stafford's 27.38 rotting on the bench, a second quarterback in a one-quarterback league, alongside a second kicker. It keeps fucking working and it shouldn't.

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.