News:

Week six appears to be the VandenBrink father and son edition of our little newsletter, with VDB senior continuing to hold his tenuous grip on first place and VDB junior joining us for the balance of the 2025/6 season (and possibly beyond). Welcome to Ayden, who is going to take the reins of “Jaydawgs” for the rest of the year and see if he can claw his way back up the standings.

In NFL news the injury story continues with some new and some familiar names joining the list of the walking wounded. I think Arizona is down to their 7th running back and Tampa may have lost the use of their top 3 or 4 receivers but you all know the drill – life goes on, next man up etc. etc.

Random thought of the week:

I’ll keep it short but yeah, it’s trade rumour season. Actual in-season NFL trades are a more common occurrence than they once were but only because they once were non-existent. As I see it, this is largely a matter of fans and reporters allowing their fantasy football and real football to get a bit jumbled together. When you blend those two worlds together, a Kamara or Breece Hall trade makes perfect sense but solely in the real world, trades are more likely to involve a corner or edge rusher or like last year, the big “DHop to the Chiefs” trade which was largely a nothing burger in fantasy.

I get it. I’d love to see Hall and Kamara traded – and it could happen – but it’s not as likely as we wish it was.

Shark move of the week:

Commish’s real life didn’t include any football watching this week but from a “box score” perspective, we have a number of honourable mentions. Brandon’s patience with BTJ was finally rewarded. Neil cashed in on some “right now” points with Rachaad White and Scott got a nice special teams week out of the Steelers and Dicker the kicker. For the award though, I’m going with Archie for sticking with Mayfield despite all his missing weapons and starting Kendrick Bourne for a cool 22.20 points. We all know Kendrick well because he’s likely churned on and off the end of every one of our benches over the past three or four years but here he is, back in San Fran and catching footballs.

Guppy move of the week:

In a rare “double crown”, Archie also takes the guppy award for choosing not to start a DEF in Week 6. Naturally my first thought was this was intentional. Perhaps he didn’t like his chances to win and didn’t want to drop anyone? Perhaps he thought a FA DEF could actually cost him points rather than give him points? Eh. Original projections were pretty close. Had it been me, I probably would have moved Scary Terry to IR and picked up a DEF.

Smack talk award of the week:

The topic of Neil’s fantasy ascendance made another appearance in the chat this week, as did our new manager. It’s been awhile since Piper took the weekly smack talk prize so I will claim runner up for my proposed wager of the first VDB to hoist the Plastic Helmet of Excellence and give the prize to Piper for working in a timely Dream Weaver reference, a reference that worked on a number of levels.

Perhaps on some astral plane Neil does win a championship? If so, he’s going to need to hire FF for Dummies as his co-pilot…

Welcome to fantasy hell award of the week:

If you found yourself on the wrong end of a match-up containing a player who was in the “Thirty Point Club” this week, consider yourself a runner up. To win the award, you needed to have a player in the thirty point club, be facing an opponent without a DEF yet have to watch Bijan rack up a near forty pounder against you to secure your defeat. That was hard to watch and must have been a lot harder to live first hand…