My father used to say that in August you find out who drafted a team, and by October you find out who got dealt a hand. He was talking about poker, but he coached youth football for thirty years and I never once heard him separate the two. He'd have loved Week 4 of this league, because somewhere in these six games is the difference between the men who built something and the men currently living off the house's money.
Let's start with the obvious. Ryan Weaver sits at 3-0, and I want to be fair to him before I'm not: an all-play mark of 30-3 is not a mirage. That is a man who would be 3-0 against anybody's schedule, in any year, in any league that still remembered how to start studs. He hosts Brian Jones and the Cameron Crazies this week, and Jones arrives having won two straight of his own. I like Jones here more than the record suggests — a man with three runner-up finishes on his résumé, and a title already on the shelf, does not panic in October. But Weaver's points-for sits nearly fifty points clear of the next-best scorer in the league, Justin Waitt's Diamond Dogs. The standings don't lie, and neither does an all-play ledger that lopsided.
Now the other 3-0 team, and here's where I earn my hate mail. Trent Harley's ParmBijan Cheese is undefeated with an all-play record of 18-15 and a luck delta of +0.455 — the single gaudiest number in this fact pack. That is not a team. That is a man who has been handed three favorable matchups in a row and is about to find out what happens in Week 4 against Evan Sinn, who despite sitting at 1-2 has won his last one and has the pedigree — two championships, one runner-up finish elsewhere in his career — to know a paper tiger when he smells one. I'll say what the spreadsheet boys won't: luck runs out. I'm picking the upset.
Then there's the game I can't stop staring at. Kevin Jones, a three-time champion drifting to 2-1, hosts Ben Cunnion's bcunnion — and yes, I will keep calling that team name exactly what it is, a login, not a franchise, the same complaint I've been lodging since Week 1 and will keep lodging until somebody fixes it. Cunnion carries three championships of his own on that résumé, which makes his current slide harder to square: 1-2, a game under water, with a luck delta of -0.212, among the shakier marks in this week's slate. Three rings ought to buy a man more discipline than that. I've got Kevin righting his own one-game skid here.
Elsewhere: John Penney, a former champion himself, gets Ollie Simmonds at 0-3 with the ugliest all-play line in the league, 6-27. I don't see the mercy in Penney's heart for that. Justin Waitt's Diamond Dogs, for all their one-game stumble, still own a 26-7 all-play mark and should have no trouble finding the only other winless team in Elliott Simmonds, who is 0-3 with a -0.273 luck number of his own — the worst in the whole slate this week — meaning somebody in the Even Ducks is simply not supposed to be playing fantasy football yet.
And then the login bowl: TacoDreams against ArabMamba6, Nick Inman against Ryan El Masri, two men whose team names I've been begging them to retire since the app took over this league. Inman's lost two straight. El Masri just snapped a skid of his own. I'll take the man with the winning streak, reluctantly, same as I take all of this — reluctantly, until somebody names a trophy after me.