The Oldest Fixture, Dead Level

They first played in week two of 2009 and they have played twenty-nine times since, more than any other two teams in this league. Geenen has won fourteen. Yim has won fourteen. Twice — in 2013 and again in 2016 — they finished level, which no other pairing in eighteen years has managed once, let alone twice.

It arrives with the two of them going in opposite directions. Yim is scoring 148.85 a week, fourth-best in the league, and is 1-1 because she ran into Hart's best-managed week of the season. Geenen is scoring 114.72, worst in the league, and is 1-1 because he finally got four starters over twenty in the same afternoon.

Neither man has touched his lineup. Geenen has the eleven that went from 91.86 to 137.58 without a single change, and Yim has made the one swap that cost her last week: Bryce Young in for Jayden Daniels, seven days after Young scored 30.08 from the bench and Daniels 15.74 from the slot.

Schmidt has been in the League of Champions for a fortnight and is 2-0, having won by 0.14 and then by 35.62. Drew is 1-1 and is scoring 153.39 a week, third-best in the league. They have never played.

Schmidt arrives having got 88.32 from two roster slots — Josh Allen's 45.82 and Jaxon Smith-Njigba's 42.50, the two biggest starts of Season XVIII — and having left Patrick Mahomes on his bench for the second week running. Mahomes has scored 60.64 there across two Schmidt wins. Nothing in the lineup has moved since.

Drew has not changed a starter in three weeks, which is either conviction or indifference and has so far looked like conviction. He left his eleven alone after a week-one loss and it returned 176.78, the highest figure of week two. Matthew Stafford went 4.10 to 34.98 in the space of seven days without anybody doing anything about it.

Jared Goff threw for 327 and four touchdowns on Orvieto's bench in week two. Trevor Lawrence started, threw none, and returned 6.16. The 29.62 between them is the biggest benching anybody has managed this season, and Orvieto won by 22.14 anyway — which appears to be the lesson he took, because Lawrence is in again and Goff is out again.

He has also benched Stefon Diggs, who scored 21.70, for Zay Flowers, who scored 0.00. Orvieto is 2-0 with the most points in the league and the worst lineup management in it: 76.6% last week, 60.52 left on his bench across two weeks.

Dave C has done the opposite. Tyler Shough threw 23.38 from his bench while Drake Maye started for 8.02, and this week Shough starts and Maye sits. Josh Downs comes in for Alec Pierce on the same reasoning. He is 1-1 and has left 52.04 on his bench in two weeks, more than anybody except Hart and Orvieto.

Ghost is 0-2 and 2-20 on the all-play, which only two teams in eighteen years have bettered for awfulness. He has also averaged 118.17 a week, which is bad but not 2-20 bad, and he has been beaten by a 176.46 and a 137.58 in consecutive weeks.

He has made one change and it is the obvious one: Marvin Harrison Jr, who has produced 4.30 from a starting receiver slot across two weeks, comes out for Xavier Worthy, who scored 13.50 on the bench last week. Detroit's defense stays in, seven days after allowing 41 points and 446 yards for minus 1.00.

Hart is 2-0 having scored 268.02, the 22nd-lowest 2-0 start of the 51 on record. He has not touched his lineup, which is a new experience for him: he left 61.26 on his bench in week one and 7.80 in week two, going from the worst-managed team in the league to the second-best in seven days.

Gosling is scoring 140.84 a week and Javier 139.28. Nothing else on this board is inside ten. Gosling is 0-2 and Javier is 1-1, and the difference between them is that Javier's 155.56 landed in week one against the only team he could beat that day, while Gosling's 154.96 landed in week two against the only team he could not.

That 154.96 was a perfect lineup — the best available eleven, to the cent, the only one anybody has managed this season — and it lost by 21.82. Two weeks in, Gosling's 281.68 is the third-highest-scoring 0-2 start in eighteen years. He has not changed a thing, and has not yet named a defense.

Javier has been going the other way. He started DJ Moore for minus 0.10 last week — one carry for minus a yard and not a single target in twenty-three snaps — and has dropped him without yet naming a replacement. Tampa Bay's 2.00 comes out for the Rams, who scored 12.00 on his bench.

Zoz leads this series 12-4 and has won the last three, the most recent of them 170.72 to 121.80 in week three of last season — the same week of the same fixture. Dinsky has beaten him four times in nine years.

It arrives with Zoz 0-2 and scoring 119.28 a week, third-worst in the league. He went 0-11 on the all-play last week, the only team to lose to everybody, and put up 100.56, the lowest figure of the round. Dak Prescott's 37.76 was more than half of it; the other ten starters managed 62.80.

Dinsky is 1-1 with 155.29 a week, second only to Orvieto, and the two halves of his fortnight could not look less alike: 189.36 in week one, the 49th-best score in league history, then 121.22 when Caleb Williams went from the highest-scoring player in the league to 6.72. Neither man has changed a starter.