The Tape

01 · THE HONEST STANDINGSThree teams at 3–1, and the two best are tied on every measure

Record next to all-play — your record against every team, every week. Luck is real wins minus the wins your scores earned.

Alex and Andrew both lost, both fell to 3–1, and they are now tied at 27–9 on all-play. Eight points of scoring separates them over four weeks. The page has been pointing at their Week 5 meeting since Week 1 and it could not have set it up better.

Natchez is 3–1 on a 16–20 all-play, which is the same record off eleven fewer earned wins. Logan is 2–2 on a 7–29, having beaten fewer teams than anyone except Pat. Both carry +1.22 luck, the largest gap between record and performance in the league. Pat is 0–4 with the fewest points for at 450.94 and the worst all-play at 6–30 — he is not unlucky, he is last.

02 · WEEK OVER WEEKAlex fell seven places. Louis climbed six.

Weekly scoring rank, and the move from Week 3 to Week 4.

Alex has scored 168.06, 157.22, 154.54, 114.46. He is the only team that has lost ground every single week, and he is still 3–1 because he banked the wins while the scores were falling. Week 4 is the first time all season he has finished outside the top two.

Louis is the mirror. He went 86.66 in Week 3, the worst score anyone has posted this season, then 150.42 — a 63.76-point swing and six places in one week. Pat fell from seventh to tenth, and he is the only one of the four teams that dropped who was not near the top to begin with.

03 · THE COACHING TAXAndrew set the cleanest lineup again and lost anyway

Points left on the bench: your optimal lineup minus what you actually started.

Andrew left 2.90 on the bench, the cleanest lineup of the week, after leaving 1.82 the week before. Two weeks of near-perfect management and he is 1–1 across them. Brent left 26.48 and scored 162.08 anyway — he had Kyle Monangai, the fifth-best running back of the week at 32.00, sitting down.

Jerome left 32.90, the most of anyone this week, in a game he lost by 18.70. Logan left 30.80 and lost by 24.96, so his bench was worth more than the game — the second time that has happened to him this season.

04 · THE BIG ONE, REVISITEDThe draft-slot effect is still fading

Correlation between where a team drafted and what it scored, week by week.

Week 1’s −0.85 looked like the scariest number in the league and would have justified a custom draft order. Three weeks later it reads −0.15. The early slots outscored the late ones by 12.15 this week, which sounds like something until you remember that Alex drafted first and just scored 114.46.

No correlation section this week: correlationExposure returned broken shares on the Week 4 box and rather than print a number this page cannot stand behind, it is left out. It comes back when the function is fixed.

05 · WEEK 4 PERFORMANCESThe best of it, and the worst

Every starter and bench player on a league roster, ranked.

Two of the ten were on a bench. Kyle Monangai went for 32.00 while Brent started Jaxon Smith-Njigba for 12.60, and Drake Maye put up 29.16 while Michael started C.J. Stroud for 23.58. Michael still won by 24.96, so the tax cost him nothing, but Maye was the best quarterback in football this week and he watched it from the bench of a team whose season-long weakness is quarterback.

Brent’s 162.08 came with McMillan at 45.20 in the flex and Javonte Williams at 33.80. He beat the team that had just posted the highest score of any week this season.

06 · POSITIONAL EDGEWhere each team wins, season to date

Points above or below the league average at each slot, Weeks 1–4 combined.

Alex’s +85.2 at running back is the best position on the board. His −59.6 at receiver is the second worst, behind only Logan’s running backs. Four weeks in, that shape has not moved: he is the only team with a slot the model calls a strength in every single week. Pat at tight end, Jerome at receiver and Logan at running back carry weaknesses just as persistent.

Logan’s −62.4 at running back is the largest single-position deficit in the league, and he is 2–2. Louis has the best quarterback in the league at +40.9 and has still scored less than everyone except Pat, Logan and Natchez. Michael is −26.9 at quarterback with the league’s best defense at +27.6 — and benched the week’s top quarterback. Pat is below average at six of seven slots.

07 · BY REQUESTJerome wanted the top ten at every position

He asked, so here it is — every position, this week and the season, straight out of Yahoo under our scoring. Tap a position to open it. Red means nobody in this league owns him.

Twenty-two of the sixty slots below belong to nobody. Tight end is the hole: five of the ten best were unowned this week, including the best of them, T.J. Hockenson at 24.90. Season to date the pattern is sharper still — every one of the top ten running backs, receivers and tight ends is on a roster, while six of the ten best kickers and seven of the ten best defenses are not.

Want something in here next week? Text Logan. Jerome did.

08 · AVAILABILITYWho’s missing for Week 5

Status as of Monday night, before waivers run.

Pat started Week 4 with Justin Jefferson, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert all out and scored 108.74. He is 0–4 with the fewest points for in the league, and the schedule has not been the problem. Andrew goes into the biggest game of his season without Breece Hall.

09 · WEEK 5The one this page has been waiting for

Yahoo’s projections for lineups as they stood Monday night, before waivers. A starting line, not a forecast — last week these were wrong by 30.55 points a game.

Four weeks of buildup and the projection says it is not close. Andrew at 88.21 is the lowest number recorded in this page’s preview file, and it is Monday night — waivers have not run and Breece Hall is out. Treat it as a hole he has five days to fill, not a forecast.

Everything else is tight. Brent and Pat are 3.43 apart, which is the closest call this page has made all season.

10 · PREVIOUSLY ON EPSOFFThe season so far, one thread at a time

Every thread carries the week it opened. Nothing retires the week it resolves.

Two threads closed and two opened. “Can anyone beat Alex” ran four weeks and ended the week before he plays the other 3–1 team, which is the best possible timing for it.

11 · WHAT TO WATCHThree open questions

The things Week 5 actually settles.

Is Alex falling or regressing? 168.06, 157.22, 154.54, 114.46 — down every week, the only team in the league that can say that. His running back corps is still the best position on the board at +85.2. If the receivers stay at −59.6 the slide is structural, not variance.

Does good management beat a good roster? Andrew has left 1.82 and 2.90 on the bench in consecutive weeks and gone 1–1. He plays Alex projected forty points down. If he wins that, the thread closes in his favour.

Does anyone read the new table? Twenty-two of sixty top-ten slots were unowned this week, five of them at tight end. Pat is −40.3 at the position for the season and has the fewest points for in the league. The waiver wire runs Wednesday and the page will be counting.