News:

Apologies for the late newsletter. I was in Toronto yesterday and by Thursday morning I feel like the week should already be over.

2026 continues to look like a series of M.A.S.H. episodes. It used to be our biggest decisions were who do I start? Now it’s more like who can I start? With Thursday games, Sunday morning games, Sunday night and Monday, tracking who is practicing or not almost becomes its own hobby. On the bright side, with the Eagles it’s faster to just note who is practicing.

Interestingly, fantasy scoring overall doesn’t appear affected in a really noticeable way. Archie led the way this week with 170 pts and all the way down to commish having the “somebody do something” week. Beyond the healthy stars that remain, finding weekly heroes is a lot harder.

Shark move of the week:

Some strong candidates this week. First off in the ‘It took guts’ category are Brandon and Neil.

The Giants RBs situation turned into a bit of a soap opera last week and I don’t know how much confidence Brandon had thinking they would go back to Skattebo the way they did – or that he would respond the way he did either.

Neil decided to stick with Bo Nix. Perhaps it was intuition, perhaps a bit of stubbornness. Either way we found out his ankle isn’t the reason he’s averaging 5 yards per attempt.

This week though, we’re going with the youngin’. Ayden had a nice “pickup and start” with Fannin and a surprising but effective call with the Bucs DEF. Tampa has played better on offense recently but there was really no clear signs they would shut down Carolina. Shut them down they did though and that put him in the winner’s circle.

Guppy move of the week:

Not sure if this is guppy or fantasy hell but Andy and I were sort of neck and neck this week for having too much invested in teams that did not show up this week. Carolina looked awful, as did Hubbard, Young and Coker. I avoided the Chiefs DEF against Seattle but still thought Mahomes would have a “Mahomes game”. Instead it was a “No one’s home” game.

Smack talk award of the week:

Neil broke the silence this week to comment on the silence. Yep… guilty as charged. Quiet was the kind of week I had with CMC leaving the game mid way and seven of nine starters with 10 points or less. Silence is deadly.

Lloyd Christmas may have famously said, “So you’re sayin’ there’s a chance!” but by 4:30 on Sunday I knew there was no chance. You can’t fire 17 players and you’re not going to fire the coach, so you just go have a beverage.

Welcome to fantasy hell award of the week:

The longer I play, the less I’m convinced drafting to avoid too many players with the same bye week is a winning strategy. With injuries, adds, drops and trades, I almost wonder if you’d be better off getting absolutely shelled a couple of weeks versus limping along for multiple weeks.

Anyway, we have a lot of red Qs and a lot of blue squares with player news. And none of that news is good news.