It was set up last week and it played out exactly as advertised: Charlie Koepsell and Elliott Simmonds, both 3-0, both undefeated for a reason, meeting in Week 4 with first place and a perfect season on the table. Simmonds put up 164.54, the kind of number that ends arguments before they start. Javonte Williams went for 31.3, Romeo Doubs and Malik Nabers each cleared 23, and DELAWARE CHICKEN FARMER'S moved to 4-0 with an all-play mark of 40-12 that would lead most leagues outright. It doesn't even lead this one — more on that in a minute.
Koepsell didn't do anything wrong. Joe Burrow threw for 25.72, Jonathan Taylor went for 22.7, George Kittle chipped in 19, and 132.18 points is a number that wins most weeks in this league. It just wasn't this week. Long Hair Dont Care drops to 3-1, still owns the league's best all-play record at 42-10, and will spend the week staring at a luck delta of -0.058 that suggests the standings haven't caught up to how good this team actually is. Per league sources, that's cold comfort in October.
Meanwhile, the Epitome of Brutality quietly won a football game, and the league office — which is to say, Chris Boyle's own roster — is 2-2 after back-to-back losses that two straight headlines on this site declined to let go of. Kenneth Walker put up 30.9, Carnell Tate added 21.5, and Boyle beat Evan Sinn 128.1 to 126.36 in a game that came down to decimal points. A choice was made somewhere on Evan's bench, and it cost him.
That choice: CeeDee Lamb went off for 41.3, one of the best individual lines in the league all season, and it still wasn't enough, because Evan started Ladd McConkey, who scored zero, and Dalton Schultz, who managed 3.9. Evan Sinn falls to 1-3 with the worst luck delta in the league at -0.288 — translation, his points-for would be competitive in most men's leagues, his record is not, and this week he lost to the commissioner by 1.74 points with a zero sitting in his lineup. Somewhere Topher McBoyle is already drafting the exclusive quote from Boyle about how 'the better team won.' I'll let my readers form their own opinions about who decides what 'better' means in this league.
If Evan's week was bad, Ryan Weaver's was worse, and that's saying something for a man who's been 0-4 since the opener. Tetairoa McMillan put up 45.2 points for Bock Bock Bitch, one of the single best performances by anyone in the league this week, and it got buried because Weaver's lineup also featured Baker Mayfield and Justin Jefferson, both of whom scored exactly zero. Two zeros, one roster, same week a receiver went off for 45. Weaver lost 121.96 to 85.8 to Brian Jones and ShitCo Summer, and his all-play record is now 6-46, the worst in the league. There is no spin on that number. There is only the record book, which Costanza will one day inherit and which will remember this week for what it was.
Elsewhere, the race for the league's luckiest record continues without comment from the man living it. Kevin Jones improved to 3-1 on the strength of Emanuel Wilson's 27 and Zay Flowers' 25.8, beating Hunter Koepsell's 95.14 with 107.34 of his own. Bannermen's all-play mark sits at 16-36, dead last among teams with a winning record, and Kevin's luck delta of +0.442 is the highest in the league by a wide margin. Hunter, for his part, drops to 0-4 with a four-game losing streak and the league's third-worst all-play mark. Joe Hamm sits right next to him at 0-4, with the second-worst all-play mark in the league, despite Quinshon Judkins going for 21.6 against Sean Gibbins, who got 36.7 out of Kyren Williams and didn't need much else.
Ben Cunnion keeps climbing quietly — 3-1, a win over Justin Waitt's Wisconsin Weezy behind Nico Collins' 30.8 and Tee Higgins' 26.7 — and Tareq Hafza's Shadynasty is now 3-1 and riding a two-game streak after Bijan Robinson and Puka Nacua both went for 27.7 against Jamie Sinn. Nobody's talking about either of them yet. They should be.
Five teams sit at 3-1 behind Simmonds' lone unbeaten record, which means the rest of the season is going to be decided by tiebreakers nobody wants to think about yet. I've requested comment from the league office on the state of the race. I expect the usual reply: none.