Last week this league had three unbeaten teams entering Sunday. After this week it has two.
Charlie Koepsell moved to 3-0 with a 135.98-133.76 escape act against Sean Gibbins, George Kittle putting up 29.2 to bail out a Jonathan Taylor line that produced 9.2. Elliott Simmonds also stayed spotless, keyed by a monster day from Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who went for 35.36 in a 130.16-116.78 win over Hunter Koepsell, who is now 0-3 and owns a 13-26 all-play record. Both Koepsell and Simmonds sit at 3-0 with matching win streaks, and both are going to be very hard to catch if this keeps up. Simmonds' luck delta of 0.308 says he's getting a little help from the schedule. Koepsell's 33-6 all-play record says he'd be fine without it.
The third unbeaten entering this week didn't survive the trip. Brian Jones took a 130.82-143.9 loss to Jamie Sinn, whose Ja'Marr Chase (24.8) and Tyler Warren (19.2) did the heavy lifting while Brock Bowers put up 32.6 in a losing effort for Jones. A choice was made somewhere on that Jones roster to ride Bucky Irving (7.8) and Jalen Coker (3.8) as the low end of the lineup, and it did not pay off. Sinn is 2-1 and quietly humming, winners of two straight.
The winless club is unchanged and getting louder about it. Ryan Weaver fell to 0-3 in a 109.56-92.28 loss to Kevin Jones, and his all-play record — 6-33 — is second-worst in the league, ahead of only Joe Hamm's 5-34. Hamm is also 0-3 after a 118.94-92.06 loss to Ben Cunnion, and did it while starting two quarterbacks who both landed around twenty points and still lost by 27. Lamar Jackson (20.44) and Marcus Mariota (20.42) were nearly identical, which is impressive in its own way, and irrelevant in every way that matters. Per league sources, that roster construction was not an accident. Cunnion, for what it's worth, got 27.6 out of Harold Fannin and 24.8 from Tyler Shough and is now 2-1 on a one-game win streak.
The week's best score belonged to Justin Waitt, and it wasn't especially close. Wisconsin Weezy put up 170.04 in a rout of Evan Sinn, and the number has one name attached to it: Jahmyr Gibbs went for 41.4. Sam Darnold added 29.66 and Michael Wilson chipped in 25.9, and even with Brian Thomas managing just 1.8 and Oronde Gadsden getting shut out entirely, the final was 170.04-125.48. The defending champion is 2-1 now, on a two-game win streak, and looking considerably more comfortable than his empty rookie draft class suggested he'd be in March.
Then there's Chris Boyle. The Epitome of Brutality put up 144.78 — a number that would have won five of the other six games played this week — and lost anyway, falling to Tareq Hafza's Shadynasty, 164.94-144.78. Bijan Robinson went for 35.3 and Juwan Johnson added 27.3 for Hafza, who is now 2-1 on a one-game win streak of his own. Boyle is 1-2, on a two-game losing streak, and his all-play record has slipped to 24-15 after opening the season with the league's best mark. Nobody in this league office will comment on the commissioner's fantasy team, on the record or otherwise. That has been true for three straight weeks now, and it is getting more interesting every time.
The standings still have Koepsell and Simmonds up top with matching 3-0 records and nothing but daylight behind them. Everyone else is jockeying for position in a league where the gap between second-worst and first-place is one bad Tuesday waiver claim. Weaver's 6-33 all-play mark is brutal on its own. It just happens to be the second-worst mark in the league. Joe Hamm's 5-34 says there's always someone worse off, and right now that's the only thing keeping Weaver's mood afloat.