Week 7: Kevin Will Take Any Slump at All

Thinh's slump lasted exactly one week, which was long enough for Kevin to find it. The list now reads: Nate at 0-3, Dashon at 0-4, Patrick off two losses, Thinh off one. By Week 8 Kevin will need an opponent who has merely had a bad afternoon.

The odd part is how hard Thinh tried to make it close. He set the least efficient lineup of the week and left 40.36 points on his bench, the most in the league. Joe Burrow, whom we recommended last week if he was available, was available, and scored 36.88 on the bench. Brock Purdy started and scored 14.02, the low end of a slide that has gone 20.16, 19.36, 14.02. Thinh's best possible lineup, 170.88, would have been the high score of the week. He won by 22.22 anyway, which is the kind of thing you can do against Kevin lately.

Kevin, to his credit, took our advice. Last week we said Juwan Johnson's recent starts spoke clearly. Johnson is no longer on Kevin's roster. He is on Thinh's, started at tight end against Kevin, and scored 1.20. Kevin's own lineup was fine, and even his best one would have lost by 14.60. He is 2-5. He was 2-5 after seven weeks in 2014, 2021 and 2023, and finished ninth, tenth and ninth. Thinh leads the series 20-10-1, and the 1 looks better every year.

For five weeks John scored between 131.88 and 134.38, and last week we wrote that he would presumably score about 133. He scored 165.24, his best since Week 1, when he scored 173.52 and lost to Tony. Eight of his starters reached double digits, the most in the league, and Omar Cooper Jr. scored 20.00 on his bench, which nobody will mention again. John is 64-8 when he clears 150. Only two teams before him had gone from 0-2 to 5-2: Kevin in 2015, who finished third, and Thinh in 2019, who won the title.

Andrew's problem is the schedule. He has played the week's highest scorer three times in seven weeks: Jonathan in Week 2, Patrick in Week 3, and John now. No team in league history has drawn it more often through seven weeks, and his 1037.04 points against lead the league. He did not help himself. Jalen Coker, the man the team is named after, started and scored 1.40, with Devaughn Vele at 13.90 on the bench. It would not have mattered; Andrew's best lineup loses by 51.02. A week after going 9-0 in the all-play, he went 1-8. He is 2-5 a year after going 12-3, and what he needs is an opponent having a bad week. We know a guy.

Football moved in two directions this week, and Jonathan's lineup moved in both. Quarterbacks fell 20.88 points across the league's lineups, and Jonathan accounted for 19.00 of it by himself: Jayden Daniels did not play, and Patrick Mahomes scored 6.00, half of what Will Reichard kicked. Running backs rose 85.80 across the league, with 100-yard rushers going from two to nine, and Jonathan's rose 48.00, more than half the league's gain. He started four running backs and a quarterback his kicker outscored, and posted the second-best score of the week.

It also ended something. Patrick had won the last four meetings, including a 2024 consolation game, and the defending champion still sets the most efficient lineups in the league. That stopped mattering at 163.10. Patrick's best possible lineup would have lost by 26.64.

Then there is our receiver advice. Last week we told Jonathan to play Germie Bernard, who had scored 20.20 on the bench in his first week on the roster, and to stop starting Rome Odunze. Jonathan started both. Bernard scored 4.20. Odunze scored 8.90, his best start of the season. Caleb Douglas, in his first week on the roster, scored 20.00 on the bench. Jonathan's lineup now has a standing opening for a new receiver who scores 20 on the bench, and for two weeks running it has been filled by the latest arrival.

Last week we noted that Daniel's season looked a lot like last season, and that last season fell apart in Week 7. In 2025 he was 4-2, lost in Week 7, and won one of his last nine games. This year he won Week 7 by 51.50, the second-biggest margin in the series behind Nate's 102.04 in 2024. He is 4-3, exactly where he was a year ago, but this time he got here going the right direction.

He also ignored us. We told him to stop starting Dak Prescott, whose scores had dropped every week since Week 2, down to 13.02. Daniel started Prescott, who scored 29.28. Bryce Young scored 7.42 on the bench. Daniel used 98.4% of his best lineup. We are out of the Prescott business.

Nate's week was built around the one instruction we gave him, which was to start players who will play. Last week Emeka Egbuka started while listed Out and scored 14.30, so Nate tried it again. Egbuka did not play. The Eagles defense scored -4.00. Cam Skattebo, benched after a 0.00, scored 18.60 on the bench while Aaron Jones played 15 snaps for 3.10. None of it decided anything: Nate's best lineup would have lost by 28.30. He has posted the week's lowest score three times this season, the last two in a row. He is 1-6, as he was a year ago, which makes him the first manager in league history to start 1-6 in back-to-back seasons.

For the second straight week, the only perfect lineup in the league belonged to a team with nobody to choose from. Last week it was Nate. This week it was Tony, whose six bench players did not play, a group that included Josh Allen, Mike Evans and David Montgomery. Tony started the only eleven people available and got 100% out of them. For the season he has left 129.10 points through legal lineup changes, the most in the league, and he is 6-1. Nobody told us efficiency was optional.

He also won with the sixth-best score of the week. Tony has won the last five meetings, and Dashon's series lead is down to 12-11.

Dashon, for his part, has stopped managing from last week's box score. Alvin Kamara scored 13.90 on his bench last week, and this week Dashon left him there. Kamara scored 9.70, which was 1.40 more than J.K. Dobbins, and Dashon set the third-best lineup of the week. He lost anyway. We would like the record to show that the one week he stopped listening to us, the advice was not the problem.

Kevin's program requires a team on a losing streak, and his Week 8 opponent has won five straight. History has a view. Kevin has faced a team on a five-game winning streak four times in the regular season and lost all four, the first of them John in 2015, who was on nine straight at the time and got to ten before Dashon stopped him.

John leads the series 19-10, though Kevin owns its biggest win, by 70.20 in 2024, and the closest game, a 0.60 loss last season, was close enough to count as a moral victory. Kevin's decision is the flex. Jaylin Noel started this week while listed Questionable with a toe injury and played 19 of 61 snaps. A player who is listed Questionable and plays a third of the snaps is a player to watch on Wednesday, not one to start on reflex. John's decision is whether to score 165 again or go back to 133. Either would have beaten Kevin in most weeks this season.

Patrick and Tony last met in the 2025 championship, which Patrick won, 134.80 to 121.36. It was Tony's second straight loss in a final. Patrick has won the last two meetings and four of the last five.

Tony is 6-1 for the first time. All seven teams that were 6-1 before him reached the top four. Two made the final and both won it: Patrick in 2012 and Thinh in 2024. History likes Tony's record and has also watched Tony in finals. Patrick is 4-3 with the league's most efficient lineups, which is a good habit and has not been a winning one lately. Tony's health is the question. Montgomery and Evans are listed Out and Kincaid is Questionable. Tony will start whoever is left. Last week that was perfect.

Thinh has a winning or even record against eight of the nine managers in this league. The ninth is Jonathan, who leads 18-11 and won the last meeting. The best game between them was a 2021 semifinal that Thinh won 191.76 to 185.30, which gives a sense of what it costs him.

Thinh is 6-1 for the third time. In 2012 he finished fourth, and in 2024 he won the title. The decision that could cost him is the one he made this week. Burrow scored 32.60 in his last start and 36.88 on the bench; Purdy has gone 20.16, 19.36 and 14.02. That is one quarterback rising and one falling. We pointed it out last week, which Thinh may take as a reason to do the opposite again. Jonathan's question is simpler. He has a receiver spot open, and every week somebody new auditions for it from the bench.

Andrew has drawn the week's highest score three times this season. Nate has posted the week's lowest score three times, the last two in a row. Andrew finally gets the other kind of opponent.

Nate's two in a row is not a streak by his standards; in 2019 he had the week's low score four weeks running. Andrew leads the series 14-8, though Nate won the last meeting, 127.96 to 107.90. Nate's lineup question is who will be on the field. Egbuka is listed Out with a concussion again and Lamar Jackson is listed Out. The correct number of players listed Out to start is zero, and we say that knowing our record.

Dashon leads the series 5-1. Daniel's one win came in Week 8 of 2024, by 3.24, which is also the closest game they have played. So Week 8 belongs to Daniel, on a sample of one.

Dashon is 2-5, and history is unkind to that record. Of the 28 teams that were 2-5 after seven weeks before this season, one reached the top four: Dashon, in 2013, who went on to play in the final. Kevin and Andrew are 2-5 as well. Only one of the three knows the way, and he has stopped taking our advice. We are taking that personally, and we suspect it is working.