DFL 2017 Week 4: Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes

Well, here we are...  4 weeks in. The NFL seems to be actively flipping off all of our best prognosticators and for what? 

Pictured above:  The NFL.

Yeah, I'm a day late in the write up.  But it took a little while for me to wrap my head around things.   Yup.  That's right.  The good times are finally over.  Not only did my undefeated record get killed.  It did so by less than a point.  To freaking Skoot of all people.  I mean - really.

It's OK.  You can admit to it.  We're all feeling sad this week.

Really, I think that the only way that we, as a league can heal from this is to rise up and beat down the only undefeated team still remaining.  That's right.  It's time to initiate a total beat down of Ben.

I mean, really, how great would this feel?

And lest you think that I'm just being petulant here, I would like to point out that I *lost* this week getting an A as a weekly grade.  Ben won last week with a grade of F.  What do we think of that, Jeff?

Thanks, buddy.  I knew that you had my back...

OK I'm probably getting a little ahead of myself.  Let's take a look at the elimination league....

IT's properly named this week, as lots of strikes were handed out.  Ben and Josh took a strike because somehow Buffalo rose up against Atlanta, Marie took a strike by picking Jacksonville over the Jets.  (And lemme just say, kudos to Cudoc here.  That's ballsy trying to get a win with the Jags, even if it is against the Jets.) And last by not least, RA Dave took a strike by not picking.  Wait.  Did RA Dave AND Marie take a strike last week after I specifically called them out?  Do I have magic powers of making things happen through force of will?

Eh, worth a try...

Anyways, that means that Josh joins the "free time through no longer picking" club.  Welcome,sir!  That also puts all of the remaining players (Ben, RA Dave, Mike, Terri, Marie, and Patrick) at one strike each, going into probably the hardest week to pick that I've ever seen. 

I mean, seriously.  Take a look at the match ups.  We might just end this season
next week...

Pick 'ems....   Tightly clustered picks this week.  Josh was the lowest going 2-4, while Ben and Patrick both pulled in a respectable 4-2.  Phil, Mike, Terri, and Crutch all went even stevens at 3-3.  So, that leaves us looking like this:

Phil:  16
Ben:  12
Josh:  11
Patrick:  9
Mike:  8
Terri:  8
Crutch:  4

And once again, we have a sweep upset.  Every single of the picks went to McClennen over Kyle.  And every single one of those picks were wrong. So, that means that every week one team has been totally voted against and that team totally wins.  Or to put it another way:

Not entirely unexpectedly, McClennen has gotten this honor half
of the weeks so far...

But now, ;et's get to the meat and potatoes, shall we?  We'll go from top to bottom here:

Ben vs D.  Well, this game was predicted close and supposed to go the other way.  Nevertheless, Ben, for some reason, started Eli Manning.

I mean, well done, Ben.  But that's an insane move that somehow paid off...  With three other players kicking in double digit games, not only did Ben keep his record perfect, but he also administered the beat down of the week.  Well done, you magnificent bastard...

Skoot vs. Phil.  This was the only game where both teams exceeded expectations.  Sadly, Skoot exceeded just a bit more than I did and he walked away with a margin of victory of just under 0.75 points.  Though lemme just say this, Skoot.  With Gurley and Bell on your team, you really should have better than a 2-2 record.  Especially since 1 of those wins was kinda stolen...

Kerry vs. Terri.  OK, we all knew that this week would come and that that rhyming of the match up would just be too much.  So, let's all just chuckle to get it out of our systems.

OK we all good?  We all good. 

Big QB Games here.  BIG games.  Unfortunately for Terri, that's about the only player on her team to show up.  Kerry had two other double digit players, including her D, which outscored all of Terri's players.  For some strange reason, Kerry benched Cutler this week.  I mean look at his raw athleticism as he lines up at the bottom of the screen for this wildcat play:

Cutler describes himself as nailing this play.  No, really.

Patrick vs. Mike.  Patrick dominated this game.  Zeke is finally getting back to form, AJ Green knocked it out of the park, and the other Elliot is showing that he's pretty much got a golden leg.  Well done, Patrick.  Oddly in this game, neither actually started a QB.  Yes, the slot was filled, but combined the QBs scored less than 5.  The other news coming out of this game is that we still have our only other perfect team.  Mike is still siting winless.  To commemorate this, he has aptly changed his team name from IWILLWINEventually to Iwon'twinagain.  (And the real kicker here is that every benched player save one scored double digits this week.)  Damn, Mike...

Do you, like, need a hug, man?  Terri - you're on deck.

Josh vs. Crutch.  Josh dominated this game.  And I say that as derisively as I can.  I mean, Josh only threw down 63 points.  Crutch, on the other hand.... Dude I have no idea what is going on here.  On paper you should be kicking some ass.  But really, this is kinda how your season is going:

Yes,I know that this is arena football, but that's about where
Crutch is right now...

McClennen vs. Kyle.  With a whopping winning score of 55 points, you've gotta know that there was some serious under performing going on here.  Kyle is still going all in with the Pats, and when they have a bad week, he has a bad week.  And McClennen... well,I think that he is just happy to play.  Some people might think that these two teams are no longer in contention.  However, they arrogantly can respond:

So good luck heading into next week, chums!  Looking at the BYEs and the schedules, I think that we're all going to need some luck to get through...