Nothing Left on the Bench

There was nothing on his bench. Not a point. Gosling's eleven scored 154.96 and his best available eleven scored 154.96 — the only perfect lineup anybody has managed in the two weeks on record, and the four changes he made after week one were the reason. Harrison Mevis and the Chargers gave him 1.00 and 1.00 in week one; Evan McPherson and San Francisco gave him 12.00 and 9.00 here. Dontayvion Wicks came in for Michael Wilson and beat him 12.40 to 3.80. Anthony Hill came in at defender for 10.00.

It was the third-best score of the week and went 9-2 on the all-play. It ran into the one team it could not beat.

Drew changed nothing at all — the only manager in the league who left his eleven completely alone — and was repaid by the quarterback who had cost him the week before. Matthew Stafford went 4.10 to 34.98 on 22 of 31 for 327 and four touchdowns. Amon-Ra St. Brown, who had been the one thing that worked in week one, took nine of thirteen for 142 and two more. New England's defense added 23.00 on four sacks, a touchdown and three points allowed.

Josh Allen threw for 248 and three, ran for 69 and two more, and finished on 45.82. Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught nine of eleven for 155 and three touchdowns, one of them from 82 yards, and finished on 42.50. They are the two biggest starts of Season XVIII, they came in the same lineup, and their combined 88.32 arrived from two roster slots. Javier's other ten starters — everybody but DeVonta Smith — managed 94.30 between them. Zoz needed his best seven to get there.

Schmidt is 2-0 in a league he joined a fortnight ago. He has also now left Patrick Mahomes on his bench in both of them — 25.66 in week one, 34.98 here, 60.64 unused across two wins. Nobody has ever been so comfortably wrong.

Javier lost this in the slots either side of DeVonta Smith's 28.70. Saquon Barkley played twelve snaps for 3.00. DJ Moore took one carry for minus a yard and was not targeted once in twenty-three snaps, which is how a starting receiver finishes a week on minus 0.10. Jordan Love's 16.80 and the Rams' 12.00 sat on the bench behind Lamar Jackson and Tampa Bay's 2.00.

These two have played 28 times since week five of 2009 — joint second-most in the league, behind the thirty Geenen and Yim have managed — and Hart now leads it 15-13. This was the closest game of the week by better than ten points and the 370th-narrowest of the 1,521 ever played.

It was also Hart's apology for week one. He managed the worst lineup in the league seven days ago — 68.9% efficiency, 61.26 left on his bench, Brock Purdy and Jalen Coker both watching. All three of his changes were right. Purdy started and went 20 of 22 for 287, two touchdowns and a rushing score, 32.48. Coker started for 14.60. Blake Corum took the flex for 9.20. Bo Nix, dropped, scored 16.12 from the bench and it did not cost him a thing: 94.4% efficiency, second-best in the league, from the man who was last in it.

Yim lost it by being flat. One starter cleared twenty — Jonathan Taylor's 29.20 on 24 carries and two touchdowns — and seven of the other ten finished between 6.50 and 15.74. Dallas Goedert's 1.40 at tight end was the worst thing in either lineup.

This was the game nobody wanted: two 0-1 teams, a combined projection of 260.70, the smallest figure on the Sleeper board. Geenen then changed one man in his lineup and went from 91.86 to 137.58.

He did it with four starters over twenty and nothing above 26.50 — Ja'Marr Chase seven for 75 and two scores, Dalton Schultz twelve catches for 140, Jaylen Waddle eight for 138, Joe Burrow 207 and two. Chase and Waddle had gone 3.20 and 1.20 in the same losing lineup in week one. Neither man moved. Both were simply worth starting again.

Ghost is 0-2 and 2-20 on the all-play, which is the joint-worst start any team has made in eighteen years bar two. Marvin Harrison Jr started and scored 0.00, which takes him to 4.30 from two weeks in a receiver slot. Detroit's defense allowed 41 points and 446 yards and returned minus 1.00. Jahmyr Gibbs gave him 23.30 and it was never going to be enough.

Jared Goff threw for 327 and four touchdowns and watched the whole thing from Orvieto's bench. Trevor Lawrence started, threw none, and returned 6.16. That one call was worth 29.62 — the biggest single benching of the season — and Orvieto won by 22.14 regardless.

He could afford it because Davante Adams caught eight for 195 and two scores and added a tackle for good measure, 40.50, a week after the note about seven snaps inside the ten and one of them his. Stefon Diggs, promoted from the bench where he had gone 15.50 unasked, returned 21.70. James Cook ran for 135 and a touchdown.

Dinsky's problem was the opposite of Orvieto's: he managed 90.7% efficiency and had nothing to manage. Caleb Williams, the highest-scoring player in the league seven days ago at 41.26, threw for 138 with an interception and a fumble and finished on 6.72. Kenneth Walker's 23.80 and Travis Kelce's 25.10 from the flex were the whole team.

First met in week one of 2018. Sixteen games later Dave C leads it 9-7, which is as close as a series this old gets. It has produced a 0.90 game in 2021 and a 61.00 game in 2018 and almost everything in between.

This one was 24.76, and it was decided by CeeDee Lamb, who caught eight of nine for 153 and two touchdowns for 35.30 — joint seventh-best start of the season. Nothing else in Dave C's lineup reached seventeen, and he did not need it to.

Zoz scored 100.56, the lowest figure of the week and the 2,391st of the 3,042 scores in league history. Dak Prescott went 26 of 31 for 279 and four touchdowns, 37.76, and the other ten starters managed 62.80 between them. Puka Nacua returned 0.00 from a receiver slot, Colston Loveland 1.30 from tight end for the second week running, and David Montgomery 4.40 after a week-one 28.90.