Power Rankings: Week 4

Damn, is it October already? The fantasy season is flying along at an alarming rate, and I can’t believe it’s already time to update this week’s power rankings. Feel’s like just yesterday I was analyzing the rosters post-draft. Fast forward to now and certain teams are riding high while others are completely dismantled – with plenty of teams falling somewhere in-between. I hope you’re all wondering where your team falls. If you aren’t and are just scrolling through to find Jack’s latest LeagueStory or whatever the fuck he’s got drummed up for us this week, well I’m disappointed. But I digress. Anyway, here we go…

#10. Beans Corp – Brendan Cahill (Previous Ranking: 6)
Jesus Christ. Beans, I won’t blame you if you want to keep scrolling here. There’s not much to report other than that your team is I currently a complete dumpster fire. I mean seriously, your team is putting up early day Ryan performances. I knew it be tough sledding this week from the jump after CMC went down and you lost the bidding on Chubba Hubbard. Things only got worse as the Bengals defense Bungled and only scored 1 measly point Thursday night against Urban Meyer. Pathetic. Sunday did not prove much better. I’ll keep it short because I’m sure everyone is aware and doesn’t need the full recap – but Sunday was about as bad a fantasy day as we’ve all seen. Keep your chin up, these weeks happen. But for at least one week, we have a new team in pole position to the stand-up stage. Yuck.

#9. South Jersey 4^th & Schlong – Brad Peddito (Previous Ranking: 10)
Who was the biggest winner from Bean’s abortion of a week? Brad of course. Consider it an early wedding present from Brendan. Well Brad’s week 4 went about the same as his first 3 week, which in short means not good. But hey, you’re out of the #10 spot. What do you know!? The Giants blocked just well enough to allow Saquon to show off his massive quads and finally put up the big week we all know he’s capable of. 2 tuddies for the former Nittany Lion. Kyler was good again – leading his Cardinals to victory over Los Angeles – let’s see if history repeats itself on Wednesday (NL WC game reference for those who didn’t get it). Apart from that, more general badness plagued Brad’s team as he dropped his 3^rd straight. Forward looking, I’m comfortable having Brad over Beans since Saquon is looking more and more like what made him the #1 pick just a few short seasons ago, and Bean’s is just not healthy at the moment.

#8. The Norse Horse – Kris Blaine (Previous Ranking: 8)
Coming in at 8 for the second consecutive week is our Nordic brothen. Kris was the big winner of the Chubba Hubbard sweepstakes dropping 41 dunkaroos for his services (its fake money anyway, kind of like our national debt). Unfortunately, Kris couldn’t drop any FAAB on a win – losing a low scoring affair to the Maximillians. Again, the injury bug reared its ugly head as David Montgomery, who looked prime to have his breakout game of the season, went down with an apparent knee injury that’ll sideline him indefinitely. Josh Allen and Diggs connected for a nice 40 burger between them. But apart from that, not much else went right. Carson, ARob and Aaron Jones all mustered less than 10 – yucky. But the real story was Kris getting confused and accidentally starting the Clarkstown North Rams defense against Arizona, who rightfully got abused for -5 points. No wait, I’m told it was the real NFL Rams that played on Sunday – I could hardly tell the difference! Anyway, Kris, as a veteran of this League, you should have known better. And I expect better going forward.

#7. The Martians – Ryan O’Connell (Previous Ranking: 9)
Choo-choooooo! You hear that? That’s the Martian’s bandwagon rolling into town after a big victory over the Schlong’s. Four weeks, 2 wins for #PlayoffMarz – his best start to date in four years of The League. Russell Wilson, Scary Terrys and Diontae Johnson’s big weeks were more than enough for Ryan to secure the bag against a lowly Brad – but Gibson and Bucs D outscored their projections as well for good measure. I know I sound like a broken record, but I still hate Ryan’s RB room. Melvin Gordon going against a strong Ravens run d did what we expected, not much. David Johnson did even worse so at least Ryan played the right of his two shitty options. Davante and Mark Andrew had meh performances and CeeDee Lamb was just straight bad. Did he get hurt? I genuinely don’t know cause I paid zero attention to the ‘Boys game but 2.3 points is concerningly low. Anyway, if he did, its not like Ryan wouldn’t have the WR depth to stay afloat for a bit.

#6. Waller Nothing – Max Cohan (Previous Ranking: 7)
What can I say about Max? To put it bluntly, Max is a fraud 3-1. Middle of the pack sure and better than the teams lower down on the list, but his team has underperformed what his record indicates. Put it this way, of all the teams with multiple wins, Max is the lowest scoring by quite a bit. Still, you only must beat who you’re going against – so no Max will not be apologizing. However, he should be apologizing for making us all suffer through his long-winded ode to Mike Williams on the pod last week. Well, Mikey finally proved who we thought he was all along, backing up his boss’s shit talk with a stinker. More of that to come, I’m sure. A-A-Ron is back to playing like the incumbent MVP again so that’s good news. Kareem Hunt is also pretty good despite being the #2 back in a loaded Browns backfield. Outside that, not much was happening for our man. Didn’t matter though on account that Kris’s team stinks.

#5. Thomas and Friends – Andrew Vignali (Previous Ranking: 1)
Motherfucker. A steep drop this week for #BrentsCommish after a stinker vs Abie. You may say 130 points is nothing to sneeze at, but quite frankly, my team left a lot of points on the board. And I needed to take this one against an injury depleted 69ers team. This’ll sting for a while. Look no further than Dalvin Cook, Chris Godwin and Josh Jacobs who couldn’t get anything going on Sunday/Monday. I knew it was a tall order considering Cook and Jacobs were returning from injury but come on boys – I DEMAND better. Hell, even Matt Gay missed a 40 yarder, a 5 point swing! Jalen Hurts was rock solid and Clyde Edwards-Helaire is suddenly good? I’ll take it. Also my live on the pod waiver addition of Dawson Knox proved to be one of the best moves of the week, 2 touchdowns! Sadly, it was all in vain. Looking forward to having a bounce back performance against Kris this week or else I might be in serious trouble.

#4. Buffalo Bonez – Thomas Antonello (Previous Ranking: 5)
Whoah, who saw this turn around coming? Not me, that’s for sure. My man Tommy Too Hotty is not just hot aesthetically, but his fantasy team is currently roasting. 3 straight victories after a dropping his inaugural matchup with Brad has seen Bonez climb all the way to the top of the standings and in a three-way tie with Max and Abie. I think technically he’d be first in a tiebreaker. You might be asking yourself why is he only ranked fourth? Well, it’s my column so I make the rules. Let’s start with what went right this week, which to put short and sweetly was everything except OBJ (any maybe Mike Evans?). I must highlight the Buffalo Bills D – who honored their namesake Bonez with an outstanding 21 points. Austin Ekeler, Chase Edmonds and Najee Harris are a powerful 1-2-3 RB punch. Hell, he won and even played the wrong QB (only by .14 pts). Especially if you can consistently count on double digits points from Noah Fant, I don’t see many holes on this roster. Keep up the good work Bonez (hopefully Ekeler doesn’t get injured).

#3. Jonathan Taylor Thomas 2.0 – Jack Staub (Previous Ranking: 3)
Jack, the only negative thing I can say this week is that for your sake, you probably wish you didn’t waste this week’s performance on Beans. In the law of averages, you’re bound to put up a stinker eventually, so you might as well have cashed in on Bean’s anomaly this week with a slightly less of a stinker yourself and saved your 166 big ones (and this weeks high score) for a more worthy opponent. That’s even counting the Saints D’s -3! Someone check the data, but this may be the first 100+ point margin of victory in LeagueStory. The story of this week was the WMD that Tyreek Hill, Deebo Samuel and Cordarelle Patterson dropped on Beans Corp. 105 combined points for the trio – more than enough to take down Beanso themselves. To top it off, Jonathan Taylor finally played like a first round pick and sniffed the endzone for the first time on the season. It really didn’t matter that Tom Brady, Jamarr Chase and George Kittle sucked – this one was a laugher from the get-go.

#2. The Flandrew’s – Brent Gotkin (Previous Ranking: 2)
Remember last week’s Monday Night Massacre? It happened again, and Brent was victimized for the second week in a row. Not gonna lie, I kinda love to see it. 150 tall boys wasn’t enough to take down the hottest name in fantasy. Still, Brent’s the highest scoring League member through 4 weeks, so respect must be put on his name. This matchup came down to what is so often does, the defenses. The Broncos couldn’t get it done against Baltimore, and the 21 points Brent surrendered to Thomas’s defense was enough to ensure defeat. Naturally the Cowboys’ triplets had another monster game. Its scary to think that maybe Zeke is back. If Zach Wilson continues to play like he did on Sunday (hopefully for my sanity he does) than Corey Davis becomes an automatic weekly starty. Cooper Kupp finally had a pedestrian game, but you can’t really complain there, he’s still WR1. Unfortunately, Joe Mixon went down with a knee injury late on Thursday’s game, another reason why short weeks just suck in general. Anyway, Brent will look to end his 2 game losing streak against the rival Martians in what may be this weeks game of the week. Stay tuned.

#1. HOCKEYPRO69 – Abie Leider (Previous Ranking: 4)
Congrats Abie, you bettered me. Defeating the previously ranked #1 team is grounds to shoot up the board into this week’s #1 spot for the third time in 5 weeks. Not even my perfectly constructed team could match up with the greatest QB in NFL history, Pat Mahomes, who anal raped the Eagles secondary all Sunday long with five tds. At least one of them went to CEH. James Robinson and Derrick Henry also decimated the lowly Bungals and Jets defenses, each scoring a touchdown and adding an additional 20+ points. Tyler Bass added 16, Ravens D had a late pick in the endzone (a four point swing in our matchup) and Renfrow tacked on 13.5 Monday Night. All pretty good performances. Going forward, you’d like to see more from big names like DHop and TJ Hockenson. All in all, at full strength, the 69ers are just the best team on paper. And being 3-1 despite all the injuries shows you what a behind the scenes genius our boy Abie is – the early frontrunner for Coach of the Year.

Biggest Rise: HOCKEYPRO69
Biggest Fall: Thomas and Friends/Beans Corp

The pod should be an angry one this week so stay tuned. Anyway, I gotta sit down and watch the Red Sox hopefully lay the beat down on $324 million-dollar man Gerrit Cole, a nice little baseball break during the week as the NFL season rolls on. We also have to look forward to a decent TNF football matchup for once as the Rams visit the Seahawks. Both will be looking to keep pace in a loaded NFC West. Hopefully Jamal Adams does something embarrassing. I’m rambling so I’ll leave you all with the sweetest two words in sports…

Go League!