Week 4

Another week, another limited showing of 100+ point scores. Turns out the whole return yardage and other yardage bonuses thing didn't pump up our scores as much as I'd hoped. We might as well start talking about the whole PPR option for next season now! Okay, so I guess that would be a bit premature. This year is gonna be what it is - and that doesn't mean it'll be without some excitement, as we saw in this 4th week. Let's run it down:

Jared v. Dustin

I know, I know. From the outside - it looks like a pretty amazing week for Jared and a crappy week for Dustin. But consider this: Dustin was without week 2 stud WR Michael Crabtree - plus perennial points machine Julio Jones left his game prematurely with a hip injury. And Jared - well, he didn't even draft his own team! I mean that in itself is... uh... well, you know...

Yeah, you're right. I'm not buying it either. This was legitimately an amazing week for Jared... and a terrible week for Dustin. Just a couple weeks removed from a high scoring matchup where he (almost) kept pace with Billy - Dustin was virtually a non-starter in week 4. He only had two double digit scores on his entire roster, for crying out loud! If you added his bench points to his starting lineup's points - and then multiplied it by two - he STILL would've lost to Jared. That's just... sad.

And, yes, Jared did auto draft. (Again.) But that highway robbery of Nick for Todd Gurley was all him. (Well, okay, maybe I was the instigator of that one. Sorry Nick.) Gurley put up another 100+ yard day and recorded a whopping 32 points and Bilal Powell made the most of Matt Forte's absence with an idiotic 163 rushing yards and a TD for 29 points of his own! Those two guys beat Dustin - but Jared wasn't done yet. Jordy Nelson added 19 points to the pile, the Houston D feasted on the Tennessee Titans with 24 points and then Terrelle Pryor and Travis Kelce made it even worse on MNF with 14 and 19 points, respectively. By the time the dust settled, Jared had racked up 156 points all together. (That's 2nd highest point total in Sports history, for those keeping track at home. The only person to score higher was some guy called "Tim" who put up 159 points in December of 2013.)  That means Jared takes home the Strong Like Abe award for most points this week, the Mark Henry Award for highest weekly total of the whole season, the Pitcher award for his 98 point win over Dustin AND the Boot award because that margin is (obviously) the biggest win of the whole season. That kind of accomplishment warrants a trophy of it's own - so I made one: The Ultimate Warrior. (Note: Dustin took home the Catcher and the mudhole, but did not have the most pathetic score in our league this week - so he avoided any more negative hardware.)

Looking ahead to week 5 - Jared draws another seemingly easy win versus Eric while Dustin will just hope to compete against Earl. Good luck with that one!

Bill v. Kevin

Our second highest scoring matchup was only one point shy of Jared & Dustin's total - but the teams involved carried a much more even share of the load.

Poor Kevin had his highest score of the season but, unfortunately, was up against one of the three teams that scored more than him. (Bill seems to be making a habit of dashing people's hopes like that.) Finally getting an RB1 worthy week out of Lamar Miller (24 points) certainly helped, as did continued solid play from WRs Chris Hogan and AJ Green (12 points each). But a premature end to QB Marcus Mariota's day (14 points) and another disappointing showing from WR Jamison Crowder (0 points) stalled Kevin's engine and made him fall short of getting his first win of the season.

And what more can we say about Bill that hasn't been said already? His 118 points in week four made him not only the last remaining undefeated team in the league but also the only team in the league to break the 100 points threshold in every week of this young 2017 season. Even though Kareem Hunt (14 points) was held out of the endzone on MNF (his lowest score of the season) and Gronk put up a relatively pedestrian (for him) 8 points, Bill was able to get a huge bump from the Seattle D (24 points) who scored 2 TDs against Indianapolis on SNF (Big up to Matt for dropping the defense he wasted a 9th round pick on!) and a much more Zeke-like 25 points from Ezekiel "Please Suspend Me" Elliott. The only silver lining for those of us who hope to maybe beat Bill at some point this season is that the first of his injury prone players, Jordan Matthews, is now out of the lineup indefinitely with a thumb injury/surgery. Otherwise Bill's first championship is looking more and more like an inevitability.

The road doesn't get any tougher for Bill in week 5 as he faces a suddenly sputtering Jeremy. Kevin also matches up with a very beatable opponent - as Tim has yet to win a game on odd numbered weeks.

Earl v. Eric

Our third matchup was a showdown between a couple of teams that started off strong in week one before hitting the skids with consecutive losses in weeks two and three. Earl righted the ship while Eric... didn't.

To be fair - Eric just can't win in the injury department. After losing WR Julian Edelman before the season even started, Eric lost another decent WR (Kevin White) in week one. He made a shrewd pickup in RB Chris Carson a short time later, and it looked like he may have righted the ship... until Sunday night when Carson got a high ankle sprain and broke his leg on the same play.  (He's done for at least the next eight weeks.) Add to that list RB Ty Montgomery, who fractured several ribs early on in Thursday night's game against the Bears, and there's definitely a theme forming. (I won't even mention Jordan Reed - because OF COURSE he's hurt.) I guess it also doesn't help to have second round WR Amari Cooper put up a big fat goose egg. All of this makes getting 30 points from QB1 Jameis Winston and 32 points from bench QB DeShaun Watson seem trivial at this point, to tell you the truth.

Earl actually experienced a small taste of the Eric treatment himself as he got a strong 24 points out of Philip Rivers but also lost Derek Carr for several weeks with a fractured vertebrae. (Ouch.) Luckily for Earl, though, LeVeon Bell is back in the building! Bell put up a very LeVeon-ly 32 points to compliment yet another impressive (19 point) showing from rookie RB Leonard Fournette, propelling The Upper Deckers on to the victory. (Not mentioning any other names here because there literally weren't any other high points on Earl's roster.)

In the end, Earl breaks even on the season @ 2-2 and starts what now amounts to an eight game push to stay in the win column, if he wants to make the playoffs. He'll start that push with a pretty soft matchup against Dustin in week 5 while Eric takes his losing record into what is shaping up to be another tough test against Jared. At this point, Eric's just hoping to not lose any more players... and maybe that Jared's boy Todd Gurley is exposed as a fraud when he has to play against an actual NFL quality defense? Time will tell.

Tim v. Jeremy

As we hit the bottom half of the order, we (not surprisingly) find Tim and Jeremy - the second and third lowest scoring teams in the league, respectively. Going into week four - Tim had pretty much admitted defeat before the first game had even started (he did get the Butthurt Monday for a reason in a week 3, you know.) But thanks to actual solid play from some of his speculative adds, he managed to steal a win against Jeremy - who looked much more like himself than he did in his week 3 victory over Earl.

Jeremy's season has sort of mirrored that of keeper Tyreek Hill. For every 24 point outing (week 1), there's a 5 point outing (week 2). For every 15 point outing (week 3), there's a 3 point outing (this week.) On the hopeful front - QB Russell Wilson (22 points) had a second consecutive strong fantasy outing, despite his continued lack of pass protection. And TE Charles Clay (13 points) looks like he might finally be hitting his stride as the kind of player people have said he "should be" for the past few years. Unfortunately, it looks like the same can also be said of his former Buffalo teammate Sammy Watkins - though not in a positive way - as he followed up a "break out" 24 points in week 3 with a 1 point stinker in week 4. Jeremy has a lot of potential, but it just wasn't firing consistently in week 4 and Tim took advantage of it.

Not to say that Tim is a picture of consistency by any means, of course. He just had a couple of extra cylinders firing. One misfire was that Tim cut ties with disappointing QB Cam Newton - who then proceeded to score more than his first three weeks combined against the formerly vaunted New England D. But at least Tim got a respectable 20 points out of new de facto starting QB Dak Prescott? WR DeAndre Hopkins (18 points) also didn't disappoint, for a change, thanks to strong play from the previously mentioned DeShaun Watson along and possibly a few more open looks thanks to the return of Houston teammate Will Fuller - who put up 14 points of his own on the CTP bench. Tim's only other double digit score from a starter was the thus far underwhelming RB Christian McCaffrey - who only put up his second straight double digit score thanks to punt return yardage. But, hey, it was good enough to lift him over Jeremy and even both teams out with 2-2 records.

Looking forward to week 5, I want to say that Tim should be able to beat Kevin... but I'm not gonna say it. And Jeremy - I don't want to say he could potentially beat Bill... because I'm almost positive that's just not true. But we can all hope - right?

Andrew v. Nick

Ahh. Remember the good old days? You know, back in week one when Andrew only scored 42 points and Nick had 3 decent running backs? Sadly, times change.

Nick was probably already kicking himself for trading away Todd Gurley... even before he lost rookie sensation Dalvin Cook to a torn ACL in week 4. Now? He definitely is. At least he was able to secure Duke Johnson as a free agent this morning, even if he isn't exactly ideal for a non-PPR league. Still, Johnson had a double digit score (11 points) on the waiver wire in week 4, and that's more than anyone not named Devonta Freeman (13 points), Dalvin Cook (11 points) or Denver D/ST (11 points) on Nick's roster could say. Pretty much everyone else on the Pig Skins was a complete miss and, after going 3-0 to start the season, now Nick's season looks in danger of fizzling.

Speaking of danger, Andrew also likes to live... dangerously. (That was an Austin Powers reference, for those of you who are too young to recognize it... or have good taste in movies.) After his miserable week one, Andrew had actually won two straight coming into this matchup with Nick. He started week four off with a decent 10 point score from Randall Cobb but then spent his day on Sunday getting sub-par single digit totals from everyone except the Cincinnati defense (whom he spent 11 dollars on). It all came down to Monday night football. Would Kirk Cousins be the single digit wonder of his first two weeks, or would he be the thirty point beast we saw in week three? Luckily for Andrew - it was closer to the latter as Cousins posted 20 points and Andrew handed Nick his first (but probably not last) loss of the season.

Moving forward, Andrew will look to extend his winning streak to four with a bye week... I mean matchup against James in week 5 while Nick will hope to stop the bleeding with a similarly "challenging" matchup against Matt.

James v. Matt

"I'm glad to be here with you, Samwise Gamgee. Here at the end of all things." That's right, my nerds. Mordor has nothing on week 4 of Sports league: James actually won a game! (Albeit with just 68 points to his name - a pathetic winning score the likes of which hasn't been surpassed since... week two when Jeremy beat James with a score of 63.) But a win is a win! Let's look at the two or three highlights!

Matt has Aaron Rodgers (21 points.) Other than that, LeSean McCoy and Jacquizz Rodgers barely had double digit scores @ 10 points a piece. And that's about it. Well, I mean, he did trade for Devin Funchess (19 points) earlier in the week - but opted to go with Robert Woods (1 point) as his 3rd WR instead. Good move. On the bright side, at least he had TWO defenses on his roster that each recorded a negative score! Gross.

On James' side: Drew Brees (17 points) continued to be (sort of) Drew Brees-ish, despite his advancing years. Jordan Howard (12 points) looked none the worse for wear from his recent shoulder injury. And, oh yeah, Tyrell Williams (22 points) put up his first double digit score of the year with 115 yards and a TD against the Eagles. Can he keep it up? Not sure, but he does play for an NFL team at least! (Jonathan Williams put up another zero from his living room couch.) I don't know if we can really say this win will turn things around for James - but every revolution has to start somewhere. And Stranger Things Have Happened, right? (Like Andrew winning a championship... even though he sucks. Get it?)

Seems like the best way to continue the revolution for James is taking out Andrew in week 5. (Yup. Hold your breath for that one.) But Matt could find easier sledding against Nick and his suddenly flaccid pig skin... or not.





Whew. Sports.