Week 3, or a middling week after two big ones

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 (148, 3-0) vs. Scrote Squad (103.5, 0-3)

The week Scrote Squad attempts to make your Commish look silly after calling his team not good, he breaks 100 for the first time and would have beaten more than half of the league’s teams. Unfortunately, he went up against the week’s highest scorer in Hardcore. Scrote stacked Deshaun Watson and Will Fuller to the tune of 41.5 combined points, and Run CMC scored another 21 points this week, but it just wasn’t enough to compete with the highest score in the league so far. I mean, how do you compete with a Drew Brees who has both 1) an extra quarter to rack up stats and 2) gets two rushing TDs (including the game winner)? The answer: you probably can’t.

Death Valley Driver (117.5, 2-1) vs. Iron Ryan (85.5, 0-3)

Iron Ryan, man….he’s gotta change his name to Brittle Ryan. His guys just can’t seem to stay healthy. Two injured guys on his bench (Baldwin, Fournette), one “injured” guy on his bench (Josh Gordon), and then an injury in the first quarter to Evan Engram and….damn. Also doesn’t help that Tom Brady has looked damn near mortal this year. (See the “Somewhat Random Thought” below.) Driver, meanwhile, has very few injuries, and a bench stacked with talent: literally every guy on his bench scored double digit points this week. Ryan Fitzmagic tried like hell to become Fitztragic Monday night, but dug himself out of that hole. But it didn’t matter against the Not-Goodness (and bad luck) of Brittle Ryan.

Panic Time Squad (111, 2-1) vs. Released Dix On Boobies (68, 1-2)

Tale of Two Teams: Panic Time thought his season was over when his team underperformed in Week 1. Boobies (heh) thought they were sitting pretty after dropping 143.5 points in Week 1. Now the situation has reversed. For Boobies (heh), it starts with the Brady/Gronk Connection that hasn’t been there for the last two weeks, and an injury to Jay Ajayi. Plus, he’s still got DJ Chark on his bench and his -0.5 fantasy points on the season. For PTSD, the injury to Devonta Freeman seems to not have mattered, and neither has the basic ineffectiveness of Kenyan Drake. He had a solid day all around.

Pedro Pickles (95.5, 1-2) vs. Team Provost (93.5, 1-2)

Now we get to the games that were most directly affected by the Monday Night Shootout. Pickles trailed going into the matchup, but then Fitzmagic pulled out his magic wand, and expelliarmus-ed the Steelers awful secondary, Mike Evans had a big night, and gave Pickles the two-point victory. Provost got a total of 11 points from his WR slots, which certainly didn’t help. And speaking of guys on one’s bench that should have been dropped long ago: Cordarrelle Patterson and his 5.5 fantasy points.

Dancin’ Dennis Nedry (99.5, 3-0) vs. The Jeff Fisher Effect (98.5, 2-1)

Talk about a way to ruin your night: wake up with your 1-month old son, check your fantasy score to learn you’ve lost by 1 point because of bad JuJu. Or good JuJu from the point of view of Dancin’ Dennis. Each team had a reasonably solid day, and could have made a change or two to boost their score but…. Sometimes it just works out this way. DDN is sitting pretty at 3-0 with good starters, a decent bench and squeezed out a win with a bad day from his wideouts. JFE is 2-1, and starting to hit the panic button a little bit with Joe Mixon out.

Show Him The Money!

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 is this week’s Tidwell Award winner. It’s Tim’s second ever Tidwell Award.

Shoulda Started That Guy

Death Valley Driver’s BENCH scored 102.5 points this week. That would have beaten 6 teams this week. Maybe he shouldn’t have started those guys (I mean, he won anyway), but his team be deep, yo. (I know I have the ability to remove that ridiculous sentence, but I’m gonna leave it in.)

Somewhat random thought

You guys remember years ago (not sure you’re all Red Sox fans?) when the world was convinced that David Ortiz was washed up when he started slow for the first couple months, and then he became David Ortiz again? I’m wondering if that’s happening to Tom Brady. Boston Media thinking the guy is done, and then toward the end of the season, he’s the guy we’ve always known. Or maybe, Alex Guerrero is full of shit and the TB12 Method is a total crock.

Week 2, or The One That Should Have Been Week 1

Ahh, Week 1. The start of the fifth season of Smarter Than Phil Simms. The one week when everyone thinks they have a chance (even though everyone else knows Crobi doesn't).

Wait a minute… this is Week 2? Right. Sleep deprivation kicking in. I guess since it's Week 2 (heading into Week 3), now even Crobi knows he doesn't have a chance.

Actually, it's Cusick who doesn't have a chance.

Let's do some long awaited recaps, shall we? We shall!

Panic Time Squad (129, 1-1) vs. Pedro Pickles (121, 0-2)

Well, perhaps Panic Time Squad (PTS) changed his name too early, because this week offered very little reason to panic. It's a major tough break for Pedro, who sat there as Patrick Mahomes was throwing 6 TDs, "No way my QB gets outscored!" and then his QB was outscored. By the other QB in the same game (Ben Roethlisberger). Interesting tidbit: both of their defenses lost points this week. Pickles is the most consistent team in the league, scoring 122 and 121 points, but he’s been a hard luck loser twice. His team is much better than his 0-2 record.

The Jeff Fisher Effect (118.5, 2-0) vs. Scrote Squad (90, 0-2)

This one came down to the lack of strength at wide receiver for Scrote. It's going to be hard to compete with teams trotting out Robert Woods and Marvin Jones. It's also a stroke of bad luck when your kicker goes down in pre-game warm-ups (Greg Zeuerlin). JFE caught a break with Melvin Gordon who had about 50 total yards in the game, but scored three touchdowns. JFE might be in trouble with the injury to Joe Mixon.

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 (83.5, 2-0) vs. Released Dix On Boobies (65.5, 1-1)

This game looked a lot like the Sunday Night Giants-Cowboys game: shitty. Not ONE of the starters in this matchup reached 100 scrimmage yards (QBs not included), which explains the insanely low scores. Hardcore had a big week last week, but this week beat the only team he could have. David Johnson could be lost in that putrid Cardinals offense, but if he and Antonio Brown have days, look out. Boobies (heh) got some TDs from his RBs, but Gronk was virtually shut out by the Jags defense. I’m not sure what he’s going to do when (if?) Lev Bell comes back and James Conner becomes superfluous.

Dancin' Dennis Nedry (147, 2-0) vs. Death Valley Driver (126, 1-1)

It's funny what happens when you have the same team as the previous year's champion: you win. Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs and Todd Gurley carried DDN for the second straight week. Now, this is not disparaging to DDN; you draft good players, you win games, and score lots of points. Death Valley is just a hard luck loser this week, since they would have beaten almost any other team this week. Make no mistake, if you're looking for the top teams to this point, I'd be looking at this matchup.

Team Provost (118.5, 1-1) vs. Iron Ryan (85, 0-2)

It’s a different year, but once again, Iron Ryan is more like Brittle Ryan. His team just can’t seem to stay healthy. With no Doug Baldwin or Leonard Fournette, his team is not very deep. Plus he’s got that Irish Dancer Alex Collins, who’s just...well….not good. Provost will be able to go as far as Saquon and Zeke will carry him. This week felt like the ceiling for his guys, with all his skill position guys achieving double digits. It’s a nice ceiling and will get him a lot of wins, but may not carry him far into the playoffs.

Rod Tidwell Award

Dancin’ Dennis Nedry is the Tidwell Award winner for the second straight week. In Week 1, he won the prize by half a point.

Housekeeping and Hodge Podge

Matt Breida (DDN) was the Benchie Award winner this week. He had the most points, non-QB division on the bench. Kirk Cousins had 33 points on the bench as the highest scoring QB on the bench. Shockingly, he WASN'T the better play for his owner (Pickles had Mahomes and his 37).

Death Valley Driver had the highest scoring total bench of the week.

Just a reminder of our new IR roster spot. Only players with the little red "IR" next to their name are eligible to be used in that spot. Technically, ESPN allows other players to be used in that spot, but we established the spot only for IR'ed players (see: Dancin' Dennis Nedry and Panic Time Squad for proper use).

I WILL be putting together a spreadsheet like last year with week-by-week totals, positional points and all that. I'm still working on building it, so stay tuned for that. You know, in my copious amounts of free time.

Until next week, League mates!