Week 4
Pregame

Morgan has not made a single move this year. Not one add, not one drop, nothing since draft night, and she sits 3-0 having allowed 236.74 points, the fewest anybody has given up by sixty. The robot handed her a B-minus and ranked her seventh and she has not acknowledged it once. Jarrod, meanwhile, has spent eight days frantically managing: Drake Maye dropped for Rashod Bateman, Isaiah Likely dropped this morning for Dontayvion Wicks, a whole week of clicking. It has him 1-2 with 293.86 points for, eleventh out of twelve. His season so far has been decided by 0.68 one week and 0.38 the next, which is over a point of total margin and nothing to show for it. Justin Jefferson and Puka Nacua are both Questionable. Morgan by fourteen doing absolutely fuck-all.

Ryan has 443.16 points for, nearly fifty clear of the field, and he is 2-1 because Jared beat him by 3.4 in a game where a kicker was Jared's fourth-best starter. That loss follows a man into October. His response this morning was to drop Dallas Goedert and add nobody at all, plus swapping out the Philadelphia defense that gave him a clean 2.0 for Minnesota's. Beth is the defending champion of this entire league and she won last week by thirty-eight hundredths of a point, which is not a win so much as a clerical error. She has made zero moves in eight days, still carries the C and the eleventh-ranked draft, and is still starting Sam LaPorta in a league that has never had a tight end slot. Ryan by eighteen and it should be thirty.

Four weeks. Zero transactions. No kicker, no defense, the same two empty starting slots that have been empty since the season began, 0-3, 257.84 points for and dead last in a twelve-team league. And Chris is the favorite in this game. Read that again, Lauren. A man fielding seven players is projected to beat you by six. He also has Jalen Coker at 15.6 and Matthew Golden at 13.2 rotting on his bench while Courtland Sutton starts at 10.7, the third straight week of the identical mistake, and he is still favored. Lauren's last outing produced a Green Bay defense that scored negative two and a kicker who managed 1.5. She has since made five moves, including signing a tight end, and it bought her one win. Chris by six with a hole where his kicker goes.

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.

Ben dropped De'Von Achane this morning. One bad Sunday, 2.5 points on a 20.6 projection, and a second-round running back is on the street for Keaton Mitchell. The result is a starting lineup with an empty slot in it and two tight ends in it, George Kittle and Trey McBride, in a league that has never started a tight end and will not be starting one Thursday either. That is 118.1 projected, and the only manager below him is starting an empty jersey on purpose, from a 2-1 man surviving entirely on other people's incompetence. Holli is at 140.0 and spent her own week churning the same useless position: Dalton Schultz in Sunday, Schultz out Wednesday for Juwan Johnson. Two transactions to fix a problem this league does not have. Holli by twenty-two, and Ben gets to watch a blank slot score zero.

The man who runs this league signed the Cincinnati defense on Sunday and cut it on Monday for Ollie Gordon, so Joey takes the field Thursday with an empty starting slot, which is the exact goddamn crime this page has been screaming at Chris about since the first week of September. Joey is 0-3 with 343.58 points for and 465.04 against, more incoming fire than anyone has absorbed, and last week he scored 148.04 and lost. Ally is in week four of starting a receiver on injured reserve, Jordyn Tyson, projected 0.0, in her lineup every single week of this season. Still zero transactions all year. Chuba Hubbard sits at 20.2 behind Tony Pollard at 13.0. Joey beat her 133.14 to 39.22 last season. Joey by twenty-nine and it still won't feel like winning.