Here is something that almost never happens: every team that won this week outscored every team that lost. All six winners cleared 162. All six losers finished under 155. There is not a man in this league who gets to sit down tonight and claim he put up a number and got mugged by the schedule.
Across 253 full slates in league history that's happened seventeen times. The last was Week 7 of last season. So it's not unheard of — it just means the entire genre of Sunday-night grievance email has been confiscated for a week. Find a hobby.
Also back after a seven-year absence: divisions. The league ran quads from 2019 through 2025 and we're two divisions again, East and West, for the first time since 2018. Every Week 1 game was intra-divisional, so everything below already counts twice.
Ryan led the league on the back of a very tidy afternoon. Jefferson caught eight for 92 and two scores in Minnesota's 39-22 win — 32.7. St. Brown went 10-67-2 for 29.7. Trevor Lawrence threw four touchdowns on twenty-three attempts against Cleveland for 28.6. Three stars played like stars. Sam Darnold threw two passes, completed one, and contributed 0.7, but at that point it hardly mattered.
James, meanwhile, watched 100.9 points sit on his bench — more than the entire Red Hornets starting lineup managed. Isaiah Likely caught eight for 78 and two scores for the Giants and put up 33.8 in a suit.
Which would be a story about James if the man he started ahead of him weren't Ja'Marr Chase. Nobody benches Chase. Chase went out in a game Cincinnati won, saw four targets, caught two of them for twelve yards, and turned in 3.7 while Mike Gesicki — Mike fucking Gesicki — posted 78 and a touchdown in the same offense. Tee Higgins had 59 on three grabs. The best receiver in football did less than Drew Sample.
It's also the first thing Ryan has taken off James since 2022. Jesus had won three straight in this series and sat on a 17-15 lead going in; it's 17-16 now. Worth remembering that the Longshanks won the first six meetings these two ever played and were up 6-0 as late as 2010, which tells you roughly everything about the sixteen years since.
Nolan won by 80.35 while starting Kyle Pitts, who caught zero passes for zero yards and scored a clean 0.0, and the Titans defense, which mustered 1.0. Two deliberately empty roster spots cost about a point of margin. Pitts has been doing this to people for years now and we all keep acting surprised.
Caleb Williams did the heavy lifting — 21-of-29 for 269 and two scores, ten carries for 65 and two more on the ground, in Chicago's 59-37 dismantling of Carolina. Forty points on the nose.
Dan's 93.1 is the lowest score of the week by eleven.
Nineteen seasons in, Nolan has never won a division. Not one Jared's Goblet. He does own a Limousine — 2010 — which somehow makes it worse.
Ian got 41.0 from Josh Allen and 36.2 from Ashton Jeanty. Seventy-seven points from two men. Lost by 8.35.
Here's how. He started Kyler Murray, as would every sane person alive, and Murray threw five passes in Minnesota, completed three for eighteen yards, gave one to Green Bay, posted a QBR of 1.6, and was watching from the sideline before most of us had finished lunch. Carson Wentz cleaned it up — 12-of-19, 133 yards, three touchdowns, every Minnesota passing score in the game.
Two of those went to Justin Jefferson. Who was in Ryan's lineup. The exact substitution that gutted Ian's quarterback slot is the one that produced the highest score in the league.
Jacoby Brissett scored 19.3 on Ian's bench, which is not a thing anyone gets criticized for. That's just how it fucking went.
Pete opens 1-0 with four Court-Ordered Limousines and six division titles behind him, and Kenneth Walker III going 23-173-1 in Kansas City for a league-best 40.1.
Adam streamed the Houston defense against Buffalo. Bold. Josh Allen went 20-of-29 for 334 and two touchdowns, the Texans generated two sacks and not one takeaway, Buffalo hung 36, and Adam's defense returned negative three and a half points. He won by nearly 35 anyway, which tells you what the rest of the roster did.
Namely: he bought the entire New Orleans passing game. Tyler Shough went 35-of-56 for 410 and three scores — 27.3. Chris Olave caught ten for 182 without sniffing the end zone and still posted 31.7. Fifty-nine points out of a team that lost by one in overtime.
Alex's leading man was Bryce Young at 37.05 — 361 yards, three touchdowns, one pick, fifteen scoring plays, ninety-six combined points. Everybody with a stake in that game had a hell of an afternoon except Panthers fans and Alex, whose best player did all of that and still watched him lose by 34.7.
Lannie got 37.8 from Derrick Henry (24 carries, 144 yards, three scores) and 36.2 from Christian Watson (six for 147 and two, one from 81 out). Seventy-four points from two men, and he lost by 33.4, because behind them Jaylen Waddle managed 1.2 and the Denver defense turned in a 2.0. Dallas Goedert sat on the bench for 28.2.
Nate's Dinos are nine seasons old and won back-to-back Limousines in 2022 and 2023. Lannie has nineteen seasons, five Jared's Goblets, one Jared Bowl appearance, a Surrendered Keys, and no Limousine — the single most Lannie sentence anyone has typed this year.
The all-time series was tied 16-16 going in. It is not tied anymore.
Jason had Jahmyr Gibbs go 29-156-2 in Detroit's 31-30 overtime win for 40.1 — tied for the best score in the league — and D'Andre Swift add 33.9 out of the Chicago demolition. He lost by 31.15, in part because Colston Loveland caught nothing at all and the Rams defense gave him 3.0.
One last note for the record. That Saints-Lions game, the one settled by a single point in overtime, fed 212.8 points into seven of the twelve rosters in this league. Functionally, a Sunday afternoon in Detroit was JADDL Week 1.