At 6:45 on Sunday evening this newspaper reported that Michael trailed Nick 119.48 to 66.20 with three starters left and needed 53.28 from them. He got 90.28. Davante Adams scored 39.5 on Monday night, Patrick Mahomes 26.98 and Kenneth Walker 23.8 on Sunday night, and Mike’s Merry Mates finished at 156.48 — the highest score in the league this week, the 63rd-highest of the 3,413 team-weeks played since 2010, and 1.08 points short of Michael’s own career record, the 157.56 he scored in Week 6 of 2021. He has played 241 games. This was the second-best of them. It came against the four-time champion, who scored 133.88 — a total that would have won 1,448 of the 1,705 games decided in league history before this week, and the sixteenth-highest losing score ever recorded. One week earlier, mike’s 141.60 became the seventh. The Smith House has produced two of its sixteen highest losing scores in the first two weeks of this season.

Nick is 0-2. He has started 0-2 four times before — 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2020 — and 2-0 five times, most recently last year. His 248.52 points are the fifth-most in the league. His 297.64 points against are the most, by 22. The champion’s problem is not his lineup; it is the schedule, which has handed him Sean’s 141.16 and Michael’s 156.48 in consecutive weeks.

The week

Fourteen teams scored 1,446.42 points, an average of 103.32, down from 117.98 in Week 1. Four teams finished under 70. The widest margin was Jeff’s 65.06 over Owen; the closest was Tim’s 3.60 over mike, decided on Monday night when Jaxson Dart (0.8), Puka Nacua (0.0) and Isaiah Likely (8.3) gave mike 9.1 of the 12.7 he needed. mike is 0-2 having lost with 141.60 and with 64.70 — the seventh-highest losing score in league history one week, the second-lowest score in the league the next.

Jonathan 150.24, John P. 102.92. The Magicians are 2-0 with a league-best 285.70 points, and 150.24 is the eleventh-best score of Jonathan’s 253 career games. Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s 42.5 was the week’s top individual line; Amon-Ra St. Brown added 35.2 and Stefon Diggs 21.7. Jonathan also left 70.3 points on his bench, the most in the league. John P. left 61.06 on his, including both Matthew Stafford (25.98) and Bryce Young (22.08) behind Drake Maye’s 5.02. He trails the all-time series 10-9 — it was 10-8 — and is 0-2 with an aggregate losing margin of 47.74 across two games that were decided by 0.42 and 47.32.

Michael 156.48, Nick 133.88. Covered above. The series is 15-7 Nick. Michael’s bench scored another 56.68.

Jeff 133.92, Owen 68.86. Josh Allen 37.82, Dalton Kincaid 22.5, and 22 from the Patriots defense, which outscored Owen’s three wide receivers combined (Harrison 0.0, Hollins 3.8, Shaheed 5.9 — 9.7). Jeff is 2-0 for the first time since 2013; he had started 0-2 in five of the twelve seasons in between. Owen’s 68.86 is the 49th-lowest of his 226 career games. The series is 11-5 Jeff.

Kevin 119.82, John E. 75.86. Jonathan Taylor’s 29.2 on Sunday night settled what the afternoon had left in doubt. Kevin is 2-0 for the third time in his sixteen seasons (2016, 2020) and leads the all-time series 11-10; it was 10-10 when the week began. John E. — 134 regular-season wins, most in league history — is 0-2 for the second time; the other was 2020. Trevor Lawrence gave him 4.16 and DJ Moore −0.1 on Thursday night.

Timothy 117.66, Josh 78.88. Dak Prescott 27.76, Dalton Schultz 26.0, and Saquon Barkley 3.0 in a winning lineup. Timothy is 2-0 and leads the series 10-4. Josh is 0-2 for the third consecutive season.

Sean 110.52, Anthony 64.38. Anthony’s 64.38 is the eleventh-lowest of his 248 career games and arrived one week after his 145.16 led the league — a swing of 80.78 points. Justin Herbert 1.88, Malik Nabers 1.1, Dallas Goedert 1.4. Sean — CeeDee Lamb 35.3, Chris Olave 22.6 — is 2-0 for the third straight year and did it with Caleb Williams (3.72) starting over Brock Purdy (28.48). The series is 13-8 Anthony.

Tim 68.30, mike 64.70. The lowest-scoring game of the season so far. Tim won with a zero from Brock Bowers and −1.0 from the Lions defense; mike lost with a zero from Puka Nacua. Tim leads the series 11-5.

Standings

Three teams are 2-0 in the Smith House and two in the Magic Castle. Points for are shown because they will decide the playoff seeding in December and because they tell a different story than the records: Nick (0-2) has outscored two of the five 2-0 teams, and Michael (1-1) has the third-most points in the league.

Magic Castle

Smith House

Records and streaks

The book was touched four times this week. Michael’s 156.48 is his second-highest score ever and the 63rd-highest in league history. Nick’s 133.88 is the sixteenth-highest losing score, joining mike’s 141.60 (seventh) from Week 1. Kevin’s win over John E. breaks a 10-10 series that had been level since the two first met; it is the only series played so far this season that entered the game level. And Jeff’s 2-0 start is his first since 2013, ending the longest active wait for one in the league; Owen, whose last 2-0 start was 2018, now holds that distinction. Owen, meanwhile, avoided a fifth consecutive 0-2 start by beating Josh in Week 1; he had opened 0-2 every year from 2022 through 2025.

Transactions

Nine moves between the Thursday waiver run and Sunday kickoff. No FAAB was spent; every claim cleared at $0 and every budget remains at $100. Owen made three of the nine, swapping Ja’Kobi Lane for Malachi Fields, adding Demond Claiborne, and replacing Darnell Mooney with Mack Hollins, who started and caught 3.8. Nick released Isiah Pacheco outright. John P. dropped Travis Hunter at 8:03 a.m. Sunday for Chris Brooks. Kevin’s pickup, Devaughn Vele, scored 11.4 on his bench.

Power ranking

Market value, not results: 70 percent the FantasyCalc value of each roster’s best legal lineup, 30 percent the value of the whole roster, compared with where each team stood the morning after the draft. The market and the standings disagree in both directions. Anthony is 1-1 with the week’s worst score and still owns the most valuable roster in the league. Kevin is 2-0 and twelfth, with the second-thinnest starting lineup by value. Jeff’s rise of eight places is the largest, driven by the market’s repricing of Dalton Kincaid (925 to 2,646), Josh Allen (5,570 to 6,940) and Derrick Henry (6,506 to 7,558) since draft night. Owen and Kevin fell five apiece; Timothy fell four while going 2-0.

Values from FantasyCalc redraft, 14-team, 1QB, full PPR, pulled Tuesday morning. Best lineup = QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, TE, FLEX by value; kickers and defenses carry no market value. Draft rank = the Ledger’s post-draft power ranking of September 9.