Hey, you win some you lose some (especially me, roller coaster season huh), but what really matters is to move on, to drive forward progress, grow, develop, mature. In the name of maturing, I'll happily welcome you all to my favorite (least favorite?) week of the season:

Austin Hate Week!

That's right, its Austin Hate Week! That special time of year where we can all put our differences aside and bond over the fact that we have a villian of the league, a snake in the grass that we all want to stomp out. There's no shortage of vile, dispicable things that Austin has done to us in the many years we've known him, but I'll call out some of my favorite (least favorite?) moments:

• Made a mockery of our Weekly Challenges by benching all his starters to try and win the Top Bench Scorer challenge (Puka put up 41 on his bench)
• Sabatoged a system designed for fun by trading for multiple top-picks (no one else traded more than once)
• Abandoned the League in 2014, after having made the playoffs the year before, creating a owner vacuum and general chaos
• Having the audacity to rejoin the league the NEXT YEAR, creating more chaos
• Orcestrated an attack on the World Trade Center, set to happen in October 2001 (change of plans happened shortly before)
• Told his dad I flipped them off

I could go on for hours, of course, but I think the point is made, he's a snake, an enemy of the state and the league, and his success should be met with vitriol. On that point, I hope I can count of all of your support this weekend, thank you and goodnight.

Show Up or Shut Down

So there I am, sitting down on a Thursday night ready to enjoy Amazon's production of a game that was certain to be stupid (Amazon is incapable of getting normal NFL games). Steelers Bengals, should be fun right? Six plays in, six touches for Jaylen Warren and DK Metcalf, both opponents of mine this week. 8.4 points on the FIRST DRIVE, here we go again. "I swear, whenever I play Tmo his team just goes off against me". We've all been there. PTSD and vivid distinct memories of games passed. But are they true? How many people truly just hammer the same people over and over?

Seems like a great prompt for some analysis, right? Who steps up to beat someone over and over? Or, the opposite but perhaps equally as fun, who chokes against the same team every year? Well to measure that, I compared a everyone's scores vs opponents as a difference of their average for that season. For example, if John Luke scores 120 against Mike, but John Luke's average PPG that year was 130, then he put up -10 against Mike. We've all played each other at least 10 times, some of us up to 30 times, so the sample size seems legit enough.



So how do you read this? Find your name on the left, then the number in the column is the average points above/below you score against that person. Ryan, for example, tends to show out for Austin, scoring 10 points more than his usual when he plays him. John Luke, however, is King Choke artist against Nathan, just comes out super flat every time. Another thing to look at is the "Total" number. Higher numbers mean that people tend to do better against that opponent (TK man... the universe is seriously out to get you). Collin, you may win a lot, but perhaps some of it is just people refusing to actually score against you, hmm?

So was I right? Does Tmo constantly just ball out against me? Well, sort of? He does perform above average when we match up, 2.2 points, but I actually tend to perform MUCH better when I play him (except this week, apparently), 7.7 points. So we both step up for our face-offs... nice! Good for us! What other games are there where both teams show up to play?



John Luke and TK have, in their 27 games, both stepped up to the fight, moreso than any other group (Austin vs Nathan is a higher number, but Nathan actually drags that number down). Mike and Nathan also tend to get hype, fighting for family pride I'm sure. Collin and Nathan, however, wow. Yall just go full limp-dick in yalls games. In fact, people just have wild swings when they play Nathan for some reason. Take that however you want, Nathan.

Bank

Seven weeks in, how are we doing on the cash front? No weekly challenges means I've only been doling out Hamiltons for top scores, which has been very evenly spread out this year. Here's where we are:

• Austin ($10): Week 7
• Nathan ($10): Week 6
• Collin ($10): Week 5
• Jake ($10): Week 4
• John Luke ($10): Week 3
• Mike ($10): Week 2
• TK ($10): Week 1

Recaps

I gave yall a lot this week, I'll spare you the per-game recaps, but fuck the Bucs.

Power Couples

Our first match between partners was... sad for me personally, but at .500 Tmo and I are squarely in the middle. Collin and Garrett still own the top spot, Austin and JL (really just Austin) are on thier tail.

There's a whole slew of Lovers' Quarrels this week, Collin and Garrett play, so they'll be stuck at 9 wins. The bottom two teams, Nathan/Ryan and Mike/TK, also are playing their respective partners, so it's really just a showdown of Jake/Tmo and JL/Austin this week. A 2-0 sweep either direction would be huge.