News:

In the midst of the chaos, a relatively quiet and much maligned player emerges to claim first place. Will Mort’s hold on the top spot last or will he, like in the children’s game king of the hill, be disposed and cast back into the mosh pit of mediocrity? Stay tuned!

On The Red Zone they refer to the witching hour – where winners becomes losers and losers become winners. At the level of a fantasy season, I feel we’re approaching the point where our league is about to be sorted into an upper and lower half. When Week 14 is done and dusted and you look back at weeks 9 and 10, you will likely see where your fortunes started to turn for better or worse. Buckle up!

In the NFL, it’s as if everyone is hurt. Having a consensus starter on your roster that isn’t questionable prior to Sunday is a rare gift. How is 2026 going? Here’s a brief summary of things to note heading into the weekend:

• Drew Lock probably to start but been hurt too. Darnold is out
• Shedeur to start if Watson concussed
• Minshew in for AZ, Brissett traded to Balt
• Joe Fagnano in Balt tomorrow, but Brissett after that
• Joe Milton in for Philly, McKee benched

That’s the QB situation in Week 9 for five NFL teams and that doesn’t even include the trickle down effect on all the other fantasy relevant players on all those teams. It’s crazy.

Shark move of the week:

Honourable mentions go to Archie for capitalizing on the Jags DEF manhandling the Colts, the Piper benefiting from Tucker Kraft having a rare second straight fantasy relevant game and Mortley for guessing when Wan’Dale Robinson would be startable. For this week’s win though, I think I’m going with Brandon who stood by and started the emerging Jonah Coleman for a cool 20 points. He drafted him and he waited for his time. It looks like maybe that time is now.

Guppy move of the week:

Honourable mention goes to everyone who had an especially rough bye week and there were a few of us living on Kraft Dinner and calling ketchup a vegetable in Week 8.

The award however is shared by Neil, Andy and myself for getting the weekly QB coin flip wrong, with the cost being a weekly win. TLaw and MaHomie would have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and Neil finally nixed Bo in an attempt to quit while he was ahead but it turned out Penix forgot his blue pill against the Bucs.

Smack talk award of the week:

We had a quality over quantity week in the chat. We had a Mexican – Bostonian poncho and an actual appearance by Archie “The Golden Boy” McDonald with a BEAT update! Ken and Andy provided some injury updates and scoreboard tracking (sorry Doug and Neil) but the winner must be the news we received of the delivery of AOB’s three Helmets of Excellence!

Like my high school textbook, it is long overdue but like everyone else, Clan McDonald headquarters has been hit by cutbacks in recent years. There was a time we’d have hired famed accounting firm Ernst & Young to handle record tabulation and helmet delivery duties but in more recent times I’ve been using a Commodore VIC 20 and we found a former portal employee who works for Scotch. As we like to say in project management, cost, speed or quality – pick two.

Welcome to fantasy hell award of the week:

After missing three weeks, Lamar returned just long enough to get injured and wind up on the IR and Scott had Godwin going in a game where Tampa attempted just three passes and completed zero.

There’s weekly bad luck like that and then there’s seasonal luck and as I like to do now and again, I checked in on points for and against. Tops in points scored? Andy, Brandon and Commish. Tops in points against? Commish, Andy and Brandon. Weird eh?

Does that mean people bring their “A game” against us? Probably not since I think everyone does that every week. Ultimately I think it’s just as simple as the toast falling and landing jam side down a little more often than it probably should but there’s not much you can do except clean it up and get ready for this week.