The BEN Fantasy Football Newsletter

NOTE: Any rankings appearing before names in this edition refer to ESPN power rankings, not my own rankings nor the actual fantasy standings. Additionally, last week’s ranking will be used to recap the below matchups, and the new rankings will be used near the bottom where the Power Rankings and the preview for this week’s matchups are.

Week 5 has passed, so let’s recap what happened.

The story of this week? Rico Dowdle coming in for Luke and dropping a nuke with 32.4 points. Who saw that coming? It was the catalyst that gave Luke another win! You can forget about Jameson Williams and Tyler Loop dropping 4.7 points combined. Jake Ferguson continues to make his case for finishing TE1, dropping 23.9 points. And stable production from everyone else was all he needed to secure the W. After a slow start to the season, his team is really ramping up! But can he sustain it?

Another week, another loss for Ryan. He currently has the most negative total point differential among all managers, its been that bad. After all the hype that Woody Marks got from last week, it was his running mate Nick Chubb that still was the main guy, and Marks only scored 2.4 points for Ryan. Kind of hard to believe considering the Texans put up 44 points against the Ravens. Unfortunately, the start was out of neccessity with Bijan Robinson on bye, so at least he can look forward to starting him again next week. And the rest of his team didn’t neccessarily perform bad, but didn’t perform enough to beat Luke. At this point, one has to wonder if making a move is neccessary for Ryan to potentially save his season and separate himself from the other two teams with the same record as him.

This time, Johnny is able to get back to back wins. He was the lowest scoring winner this week, but he got enough contributions from Josh Allen, Courtland Sutton, George Pickens, and Tetaiora McMillan. But really, the start of the show might’ve been his kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn with 19.1 points, proving once again that kickers have been transformed into a valuable role in our league.

And Mohit is absolutely reeling. After starting off 2-0, he has suffered 3 straight losses. The wide reciever room has to be figured out. After starting Keenan Allen and Quentin Johnston over Ladd, they combined for 17.7 points. The Chargers Offense was a complete mess. Jalen Hurts did as expected, and Ashton Jeanty relievingly performed as expected, but the disaster was James Cook, who only scored 4.9 points after having a dominant start to the season. It seems like there is always some disaster happening for Mohit in each of his 3 losses. What moves will he make to rectify the situation and potentially climb back into the playoffs? Or is this the beginning of the end? If there’s a silver lining, is that nobody else in the league can claim they have a 2-3 record, for better or worse.

WOW. We just saw undefeated #1 Patrick go down last week, which left Isaac as the only undefeated team left. That is no longer the case, as Sudais completely dismantled Isaac’s output and hands him his first loss of the season. Ja’Marr Chase went back to looking like how a #1 pick in Fantasy should look like, dropping 29 points. Deebo Samuel, Patrick Mahomes, and Jaxson Smith-Njigba all had over 20 points as well! Travis Kelce scored 19.1 points! The only weakness was Chargers Defense dropping only 2 points. Sudais is enjoying the wins right now, but is this high output sustainable?

And being undefeated also comes to an end for Isaac, just like it did Patrick a week ago. Despite scoring 135 points, there was just no stopping what Sudais had coming. Justin Fields had 26 points, and Jonathan Taylor continues to claim the RB1 throne with 31.6 points. Garrett Wilson and Puka Nacua combined for 43.6 points. The problem was the bottom half of his team. Brenton Strange scored 3.2 points before having to leave the game due to injury. And now he will miss time, so Isaac will have to find a replacement, such as Darren Waller. Jakobi Meyers only dropped 7.2 points, largely in part due to Geno Smith stinking it up in Las Vegas right now. The Eagles Defense only dropped a point. Despite what went wrong this week, this is one of those losses where you just have to tip your cap to the other guy and move on. No need to panic.

Patrick went back to his winning ways against an early rematch versus Eric. Javonte Williams got the start and it paid off, dropping 26.9 points. Justin Jefferson and Amon-Ra St. Brown combined for 37.3 points. C.J Stroud had 28.76 points. It didn’t even matter that the Giants defense dropped a donut, the teams contributions were more than enough to overcome the little resistance provided by Eric.

Make it three straight losses for Eric. Only 4 people on his team scored double digits: Bo Nix with 17.88, Saquon Barkley with 17.8, Davante Adams with 13.8, and J.K Dobbins with 15.4 points. Seahawks Defense dropped a NEGATIVE 5 points. Despite the struggles from everyone else, there’s not much else Eric could’ve done, his bench did not look promising either due to the bye weeks. Are there more trades due in the future of Eric’s team? One thing is for sure, because he only scored 92.78 points, he will have to answer to the press this week! AGAIN! It’s the first time this season a manager has had to do a press conference twice. And we’re only at Week 6.

We had a nailbiter here. The difference here was Emeka Egbuka continuing his dominant reign, scoring a whopping 31.3 points for Carson and giving him the win to climb above .500. It really made up for Zach Ertz dropping a donut, because that could’ve been a disaster otherwise. Christian McCaffrey had 27.9 points, and Jared Goff had 20.12 points. Omarion Hampton had 13 points before getting injured, and not returning to the game. He’s now on the IR, where he will miss at least 4 games (and early reports say he won’t miss more time than that). So despite the win, there is some concern on that front that Carson will need to monitor.

And the third 1-4 team, Caden suffers another pair of back-to-back losses. It’s been terribly rough luck for him, and it continued this week. Despite Kyren Williams and Rachaad White combining for 54.2 points, along with David Montgomery scoring 18.22 points, it wasn’t enough to inch Caden over the victory line. He might want to thank Justin Herbert only dropping 14.64 points for that. Or maybe how Vikings Defense only scored 3 points. Or how about how his kicker Spencer Shrader, who he just picked up this week, scoring only 2 points before suffering a season-ending injury. That’s brutal.

Week 5 of the Lucky Rankings are here. As a reminder, this is a ranking that tries to quantify how “lucky” is team over a season. As the season moves on, the more refined and accurate this data becomes. A reminder that if you end up being the most lucky team, you will infact get a trophy for it.

The farther away from 0 you are, the more lucky/unlucky you are. Alternatively, the more greener/redder you are, the more lucky/unlucky you are. 0 is the baseline, meaning your record is exactly what is expected at that point.

Let’s take a look at the ESPN Power rankings after Week 5.

Here is the Commissioner’s Power Rankings:

Here’s a visual of the ESPN Power Rankings so far:

As we move on to Week 6, let’s see the matchups:

Mohit is absolutely desparate to get back into the winning column, but this week it will have to be an uphill battle to get there. If there are no moves made, he faces the decision of trotting out the Chargers receivers again or diversify it. Can he trust James Cook to bounce back against a Falcons defense that is currently ranked #1 in Total Defense in the NFL? Can Quentin Johnston get back to dropping double digits? Can Ashton Jeanty take advantage of the Titans depleted defensive line?

On the other side, Carson is currently favored to win this week at 52% - 48%. Breece Hall is taking the place of Omarion Hampton. Stefon Diggs is getting the start after a big performance against the Bills. Can those guys keep it going for Carson this week? Can Terry McLaurin break out and deliver a big time performance? Is the struggle of Geno Smith going to limit Brock Bowers or not? Any point counts this week!

The other matchups include:

#4 Sudais (3-2) vs. #10 Ryan (1-4)#6 Luke (3-2) vs. #5 Johnny (3-2)#1 Isaac (4-1) vs. #8 Eric (1-4)#2 Patrick (4-1) vs. #9 Caden (1-4)

Make sure you submit a question for Eric to answer in his Press Conference! Each manager can submit a question, and the more people that send a question, the better. You’re limited to one question. You can send it in the fantasy group chat, or directly to me if you want it to be a surprise question (to be clear, Caden will know who sent what question, but the questions will not be revealed to him until close to when its time to answer them, giving him little to no time to prepare answers).

If you haven’t read last week’s edition, here it is:

Thank you for being in this league.

By participating in this league, you agree to follow the rules. The commissioner reserves the right to issue rulings regarding league matters so long as they don’t conflict with pre-existing rules or previously proposed, but rejected, amendments. These rulings include, but are not limited to: vetoing trades despite public vote, collusion, tanking, and inactivity.