The Sandusky Tribune

Last season’s championship game was replayed this week, and Mitch won it again. That is the most Mitch sentence this paper knows how to print.

He should have lost. The FAAB King opened the season with a tight end plan best described as a committee: Harold Fannin Jr. in Round 8, Isaiah Likely in Round 15, and, when two did not feel like enough, Dallas Goedert off waivers. With three to choose from, he started Fannin, who scored 4.1. Likely scored 27.8, the best tight end game in the league. Goedert scored 23.7, the third-best. In 2024 Mitch was in Montreal for the northern lights and did not see them. On Sunday he missed Isaiah Likely from considerably closer.

The rest of the roster scored anyway, because it always does. This is the same manager who forgot to change his keeper in August and gave up his first-round pick for it. Derrick Henry, 32, ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns and passed Marcus Allen for third on the career rushing touchdown list. Justin Jefferson caught two touchdowns. Jalen Hurts, Javonte Williams and DJ Moore each cleared 20. Puka Nacua, the keeper in question, scored 12.4 in the Rams’ 27–7 loss in Australia.

Jordan, a former champion who still campaigns as the underdog, got 35.66 from Josh Allen, who threw and ran for 357 yards and four touchdowns as Buffalo beat Houston 36–31. Nico Collins caught a touchdown for Houston and scored 21.2. The league’s official Collusion Expert had starters on both sides of that game, and no inquiry has been opened. Chase Brown added 18.8 and the Jaguars defense 14.

The Rohirrim rode in on Monday night. Kenneth Walker put up 34.1 and pulled Jordan to 154.76, the second-highest losing score in Week 1 history. He finished 9.16 short, about a quarter of what Mitch had left on his bench, or two Harold Fannins and change.

Jordan will not enjoy this paragraph. Jaylen Waddle started at flex and scored 1.2. Mike Evans scored 16.9 on the bench, a rare case of Jordan giving something away for free. With Evans in, Jordan wins by 6.54. Jaxson Dart, the last pick of the draft, was off Jordan’s roster by kickoff and threw three touchdowns on Sunday night for the waiver wire.

The two teams combined for 318.68 points, the second-highest-scoring Week 1 game in league history. Mitch is 8–2 in openers, the best record in the league and the most irritating statistic this paper publishes. Jordan still leads the series 11–8. Mitch plays Carl in Week 2 and is expected to start a tight end. Jordan plays Thomas.

Two Week 1 records fell on Sunday, and Cliff was on the wrong end of both. Kyle scored 175.80, the highest opening-week total in ten seasons, clearing Mitch’s 173.78 from 2018. The margin, 76.08, is also a Week 1 record. The previous record, 60.12, was set against Cliff too, so he now holds the old mark and the new one.

Seven of Kyle’s starters reached double figures. Four of Cliff’s did, and one of those was a kicker. D’Andre Swift led Kyle with 32.4, Amon-Ra St. Brown scored 28.7 and Trey McBride 24.5. Jaxon Smith-Njigba added 26.2, including a 45-yard touchdown on fourth-and-1 that tied Seattle’s game with New England. The Steelers defense, drafted with Kyle’s final pick, intercepted Cooper Rush twice and scored 19.

Kyle’s bench scored 96.40 on its own, 3.32 points short of Cliff’s entire team. Christian Watson scored 32.7 there, more than any receiver in the league, and Kyle Monangai added 20.4.

Cliff, a practicing dentist, will recognize his lineup as a mouth with one healthy tooth. Jahmyr Gibbs gained 186 yards and scored twice for 33.6. Kyle Pitts, in his fourth season on Cliff’s roster, caught nothing; the Tight End Desk has the full account. Drake Maye threw three fourth-quarter interceptions in Seattle and finished with 9.82. A.J. Brown had 5.6, and Tetairoa McMillan and James Cook combined for 20.4.

David Montgomery scored three touchdowns from the bench, where Cliff had put him. De’Zhaun Stribling, the biggest reach of the draft, visited the medical tent in Melbourne and scored zero on another continent. Cliff’s best possible lineup was 132.82. It still loses by 43. Sanjay, the YouTube adviser the franchise is named for, could not be reached for comment and is not aware he is involved.

Cliff is 0–1 for the seventh time in ten seasons. At this point Week 1 is less a game than an annual appointment. He is 8–11 against Kyle all-time and plays Drake next. Kyle plays Dite, who has been warned.

Thomas Leagh named his franchise in honor of Rob, who is alive. On Sunday the memorial did something Rob’s teams failed to do in five of their last seven openers and won, by 30.10, in Thomas’s first game in the league.

His keeper argument is settling itself. In August Thomas made the case that Chris Olave was fourth-round value at a tenth-round price, and Olave scored 28.2. The Moth Observer’s preview also passed along a rumor that Thomas took draft advice from other managers. If so, he asked the right ones. Jonathan Taylor scored twice for 25.1. Breece Hall added 19.8, Travis Etienne Jr. 14.8, and CeeDee Lamb 15.4 in Dallas’s loss to the Giants.

Trey Smack, the Packers rookie Thomas took 119th, made a 59-yard field goal on his first NFL attempt, the second-longest in Packers history. He then missed an extra point, because the Packers were involved. Green Bay led Minnesota by 12 and lost 39–22, two weeks before this league travels to Lambeau to watch them in person. The Rams defense, another Thomas selection, flew to Melbourne and scored 1 point.

Thomas started Justin Herbert (13.26) over Jayden Daniels (17.66) and benched George Kittle, whose 3.2 nobody will miss. None of it cost him. He scored 139.46 of a possible 143.86, the most efficient lineup in the league. New members are not supposed to lead that category.

Carl started the best player in the league and lost by 30. Caleb Williams scored 37.26 as Chicago beat Carolina 59–37 in the highest-scoring opener in NFL history. In that same game, Colston Loveland played more snaps than any other Bears pass-catcher and caught neither of his two targets, which is hard to do when 96 points are being scored around you. Ja’Marr Chase, Carl’s first-round pick, had two catches for 12 yards, his lowest receiving total since November 2023. Garrett Wilson did score 13.9 in a Jets win, and Carl, author of the league’s first recorded profanity directed at the Jets, will have to live with that.

Carl’s second-best player was a kicker he found on waivers. Evan McPherson scored 19, more than Chase and Saquon Barkley combined. The Seahawks defense intercepted Drake Maye three times in the fourth quarter, and Seattle’s winning field goal came off the foot of Jason Myers, whom Carl drafted and no longer employs. His best possible lineup scored 126.66 and still loses. The Tin Man opens the season in Unlucky and Bad, his customary address on the matrix, and plays Mitch next.

The commissioner believes in special teams. In Round 10 he took Brandon Aubrey, the earliest kicker selection in six years. In Round 11 he took the Houston Texans defense, a full round before anyone else in the league decided a defense was worth a pick. On Sunday, Aubrey scored 2, and the Texans gave up 36 points to Buffalo and scored −4. The Tribune’s house philosophy holds that it’s all zero if you don’t think about it. Drake’s special teams finished below zero, which takes real effort.

Drake won anyway, 115.46 to 106.06, on Ashton Jeanty (32.7), Zay Flowers (26.0) and a Monday-night 9.9 from Rashee Rice. Christian McCaffrey and De’Von Achane, the first two picks of his draft, combined for 24.4. The Emporium kept its usual inventory of second receivers on the shelf: Ladd McConkey, Terry McLaurin, Brian Thomas Jr. and Michael Pittman Jr. all sat, and Chuba Hubbard outscored every one of them with 23.7. By all-play Drake had a 3–4 week and a 1–0 record, the widest gap between merit and result in the league.

The −4 is not a record. The record is −11, set by the 2021 Jets defense, and it also belongs to Drake, so the commissioner is improving. His Jets beat Tennessee 23–10 on Sunday, and with the Giants’ win both New York teams opened with a victory for the first time since 2009. Drake’s preseason power rankings, compiled by the league’s self-appointed Historian and Best Player, had Drake first. He is 1–0. He will call that vindication. The all-play table calls it 3–4.

Dite did most things right. Bijan Robinson gained 173 yards and scored 31.3, including the only touchdown Cooper Rush threw all day, making him the rare Falcon to profit from Tua’s absence. Lamar Jackson added 24.96, and Kyren Williams scored the Rams’ only touchdown in Melbourne on his way to 15.5. Drake London and Davante Adams combined for 11.1.

The lineup is where it went wrong. Matthew Golden scored 15.5 on Dite’s bench. Start him over London and the final is 116.06 to 115.46, and this becomes a story about a commissioner losing to the man he replaced. Brock Bowers, drafted early by Dite once again, opened the season on injured reserve. The Chargers defense scored zero. Quinshon Judkins had 7.0 as Dite’s Browns lost 34–10, on the same afternoon the Packers blew a 12-point lead, a hard day for Thomas’s campaign to convert him.

Drake and Dite also work at the same company, which this league has formally classified as a war profiteering operation. The Emporium and the Chubby Chasers are funded by the same conflicts, and the loser has to see the winner at work. Their series is tied 9–9. Drake plays Cliff in Week 2. Dite plays Kyle and should check his bench first.