2025 Week 6: Rhythm is gonna get you
No lengthy preamble this week. I am in a hurry, so I don’t have time to get into my One Weird Thing™️ with the level of detail I would like.
But I’ll still tell you what it was.
You know the Brad Pitt introduction in Inglorious Basterds? The one where he talks about needing scalps?
Well, I had a whole thing about my obsession with the rhythm of how he talks, and I’ve spent too much time trying to convert his dialogue to drums, because I think it would sound super sick. He has this way of stretching one part of a sentence out, then unleashing the rest in a rat-a-tat explosion before slowing back down again. It’s fucking awesome.
I’ll post it in a second, but dial in on the way he does the bit from 1:19-1:50 where he starts with, “We will be cruel to the Germans.” Listen to how, rhythmically, it’s a whole song from that line, to the bop-bop-bop of “disembowled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us,” to the long notes of pause he leaves between the “sickened by us,” “talk about us,” and “fear us” lines. It’s amazing.
The scene is famous because he says a lot of cool shit and has a gnarly accent, but it goes from great to elite because Pitt contorts every line into a part of a musical composition. It fucking rules so hard.
That’s not the weird thing, though. The weird thing, that I cannot get over, is that at the very end of the coolest scene of the movie, it’s revealed that he’s wearing a pair of big yellow gloves. What the fuck? Why is he wearing those? I get that it’s part of the uniform, but Aldo does not seem like the kind of character to give two shits about proper uniform etiquette. No part of that speech felt like a “gloves-on” type of deal. That’s a bareknuckle speech, made by a bareknuckle man, to bareknuckle men. How did they not mention the gloves?
Tarantino does nothing by accident, so the gloves are supposed to say something, but I have no idea what that is. This guy just gave a fucking LEGENDARY speech about wanting 100 scalps per person. It’s insane that he’s wearing cartoonish yellow mittens that entire time.
SEASON Power Rankings
| Team | Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Kyle Luke | #1 | --- |
| Steve Keers | #2 | --- |
| Micah Thoman | #3 | ↑3 |
| JJ Bailey | #4 | ↑1 |
| Will Armistead | #5 | ↓-2 |
| Ryan Munson | #6 | ↓-2 |
| Andrew DeWitt | #7 | --- |
| Justin Childs | #8 | --- |
| Andres Santana | #9 | --- |
| Dan Resnick | #10 | --- |
| Jimmy Slater | #11 | --- |
| Lee Morehouse | #12 | --- |
Strength Of Schedule
| Team | Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Keers | #1 | --- |
| Ryan Munson | #2 | ↑1 |
| Andres Santana | #3 | ↑5 |
| Justin Childs | #4 | --- |
| Micah Thoman | #5 | ↑4 |
| Jimmy Slater | #6 | ↓-4 |
| JJ Bailey | #7 | --- |
| Will Armistead | #8 | ↓-2 |
| Andrew DeWitt | #9 | ↑1 |
| Lee Morehouse | #10 | ↓-5 |
| Dan Resnick | #11 | --- |
| Kyle Luke | #12 | --- |
Playoff Odds
| Team | Odds |
|---|---|
| Kyle Luke | 92% |
| Steve Keers | 90% |
| Micah Thoman | 73% |
| JJ Bailey | 71% |
| Justin Childs | 59% |
| Will Armistead | 54% |
| Andrew DeWitt | 52% |
| Ryan Munson | 39% |
| Dan Resnick | 27% |
| Andres Santana | 17% |
| Jimmy Slater | 14% |
| Lee Morehouse | 13% |
THE
GAMES
THE GAMES
Lee vs. Jimmy (96.1-89.4)
Look at Lee Morehouse. Won his matchup without breaking 100. True blue collar shit. Man of men.
I was at Lee’s house this weekend, having come in for the Mizzou/Bama game (no questions please). Because he is a kind host, he decided to make some guacamole for all the visitors. Unfortunately, the limes at his disposal had about one teaspoon of juice in them per fruit, so he REALLY had to work to get the requisite amount of liquid. Seriously, he was giving a full Homer-Simpson effort. Squeezing the shit out of those little green fuckers.
In the end, he got just enough to make it work, and the guac was delicious. I bring this up because after watching him work so hard for so long to coax the absolute minimum usable amount of something in real life, then watching him do it in fantasy 24 hours later, I think he might be doing a whole lifestyle thing. You know those dudes on Instagram who post about the “spartan lifestyle” or whatever? Maybe Lee got into that. Just out here crushing raw meat cubes and hunks of fat, running the same coffee grounds through the filter for a week, juicing limes two and three times before tossing em. Really getting back to the essentials, you know? Back when men were MEN.
Exactly one-third of his point total from a defense? ALPHA SHIT
14 from a punter named fuckin’ Jack Fox? GRINDSET PAYING OFF
19 from Brian Thomas Jr.? BRO IS THERE ANYTHING SICKER THAN A DUDE WHO IS SO FUCKIN CHOICE THAT YOU NAME A WHOLE OTHER DUDE THE EXACT SAME THING AS A MONUMENT TO HIM? KING MENTALITY
This is Lee now. Only the manliest of victories, no matter the cost. Join his forum of like-minded bros who just want to raise the next generation of men the right way. Go to HardEnoughToLast.com, and if you watch the full video about Low T, you’ll get a free Bosley subscription.
Jimmy falls to 4-8, largely because the forgettable stylings of Kendre Miller and Jeremy McNichols couldn’t save him this week. He wasn’t playing some BETA CUCK like Will this time, this was against LEE (he can make a name out of three letters, why does it take you so many?), so 8.7 points wasn’t enough. Ja’Marr Chase might be good again, though? Maybe? It wouldn’t be like Joe Flacco to go to a new workplace and cause people to set wildly unreasonable expectations based on his first day, would it? Has that ever happened before?
What a perfect grift this man has designed for himself. Float around and wait for a team to have a quarterback who becomes completely unemployable, then pick up the phone and say yes. Show up for a couple weeks, turn the offense into a minimum viable product, and ride off into the sunset with his big ass check, listening to a bunch of chuds yell about how that team “never should have let Flacco go.”
That’s the dream right there. Spend your life drifting in the wake of the worst possible version of something, so you always look great by comparison.
JJ vs. Munson (148.5-105.9)
The absolute best thing that can happen in fantasy football isn’t winning, it’s having the one player everyone in the league wishes they had. Sometimes it can be because that player is good- like when Saquon was putting 2,000 yards or DeAndre Hopkins was posting 150 and 2 every week. The best ones have talent AND a little something extra. A flare, a sparkle, a je ne sais quoi. And buddy, Cam Skattebo is one of those dudes.
It’s not that he’s a pretty great running back, which he is; it’s that he is both great and entertaining. He is the people’s champ, careening around like hyperviolent Roomba, designed to run into anything and everything until he gets where he’s going or dies. I love him. It’s like I have my own Bamm-Bamm Rubble except they let him do shit like this on national TV:
Justin cast him out and DeWitt traded him away, but my beautiful little dullard is finally warm and safe in a home that loves him. I have a rusty car in the back yard for him to fight, and a bucket of bricks for him to eat. I can’t wait to nurture him into a full-grown obelisk.
I’d love to continue to pat myself on the back, George Pickens is finally an elite fantasy receiver after all (just in time for that fraud CeeDee Lamb to ruin it), but we are in a hurry, and I can’t skip my favorite segment!
🤡Bo Nix’s Blunder Bonanza!🤡
Before we go on, I just wanted to let Munson know my hatred of Bo Nix is genuine. I filed my big weekly NFL story yesterday and while I can’t call Nix a fucking doofus for that particular publication, I still got to trash him.
Sean Payton will tell anyone with a microphone that he believes Bo Nix is a great quarterback, but he calls games as though he doesn’t trust the quarterback he’s selling. On third down and long (seven or more yards), Nix is throwing the ball less than 10 air yards more than 65 percent of the time. In the third and fourth quarters, that jumps to more than 72 percent of the time. Nearly all of the play calls in third and long are designed to be first-read dump-offs in the form of screens or flat passes. In Week 6, Denver ran the ball on 3rd and 10. Nix can scramble well and throws effectively on the run, but Payton doesn’t seem to trust him to operate without bumpers as a passer. A third of the way into Nix’s sophomore season, the Broncos are still leaning on RPOs, play-action rollouts, and dink-and-dunk plays on high leverage downs. It’s fair to worry they may have hit their ceiling if things stay the same against an awful Giants pass defense.
Wow. Tough, but fair.
Thank you. I am a very important professional.
…..
……………………………………………Bo Nix only threw one deep ball all day, and it was just buckets of ass.
God Da-
Cool.
Would you like to see it again, but from an angle that makes it even more embarrassing?
No.
Too bad!
Who the fuck was that supposed to be thrown to? Why was it thrown at all? What even is Bo Nix?
I don’t know, man. I just work here.
Did you know he went 3-for-7 under pressure?
No, I didn’t know that.
For 37 yards.
Mm.
His passer rating was 53.9.
I get it, he sucks.
He really sucks. Did you know 16 percent of his passes are screens? 25 percent of his passes are BEHIND the line of scrimmage. On third and long, nearly 25 percent of his passes are to a backfield target. I don’t think he can quarterback.
Why do we keep doin-
See you next week!
Will vs. Kyle (103.4-102.9)
I know Will is not having a good time. Like, at all. I know that. He’s trying very, very hard, and even when it pays off, it looks like this week. That’s rough.
But you know what?
If this were Andres, or Kyle, or even Justin, it would be very rude of me to feel this way. But this is the guy who has the most wins, the most points, the most playoff appearances, the most Top-3 finishes, and is tied for the most championships. Did he earn those? Certainly. Have the last 16 years of the league been way more fun for him than anyone else? Also yes.
It’s sort of like if a guy worked his way to being a millionaire but then had to be on Naked and Afraid. Yes, he earned the right to live comfortably, but don’t ask me not to enjoy watching him have to eat grubs for three meals a day. SOME of us have been grubbin’ for years in this jungle, my boy.
So the fact Will is up late on a Sunday night debating which MNF kicker will be his Hail Mary pickup is very enjoyable to me. He needs this. He needs to be reminded what it’s like to seriously consider picking up the Bam Knights of the world, not to stash them as lottery tickets, but because he fears he needs them. It’s important for him to spend some time in a toxic relationship with an Isaiah Pacheco. To be saddled with a Tony Pollard whom he can neither start, nor trade, nor drop. To spend Sundays acutely aware of and enraged by the million little misfortunes that seemingly act in concert against him; as though the universe turned the very NFL into a giant Rube Goldberg machine designed specifically to fuck over William Benjamin Armistead of Downers Grove, Illinois. These things build character. They toughen the hands. They remind us to appreciate the times when our plates are full of high-end cuisine and our toilets are cushioned and bidet-ed.
Will has been eating good for a long time. A few grubs won’t kill him.
Kyle, I don’t have time to get to you, but sorry about Emeka Egbuka, brother. He was very rad and being without him definitely will be difficult. Except you still have Nico Collins, so not sorry at all, actually. Turns out you get to experience what it’s like to not have Pro Bowlers at every fucking position. Enjoy your grubs. You can share from Will’s plate.
Justin vs. Steve (141.8-111.0)
Another week of two tight ends from Justin, and another week where they combine for more than 30 points. It’s outrageous. It should not work. It’s silly and terrible and wrong. But there it is, sitting there in front of my face, warping the very fabric of reality. I have to accept it.
Speaking of accepting things: It took more than a full calendar year, but D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears, FINALLY “got his.”
Avid readers will remember that in Week 2 of last year, Justin benched Malik Nabers for D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears, and watched as Nabers got 18 targets. Despite this, he defiantly claimed that “Swift will get his.”
Well, it took 22 games, but Justin was correct. Here we are. D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears, put up 32.5 fantasy points. Now the bulk of that was on one play, a 55-yard TD catch and run that was responsible for 18 total points (.5 for the catch, 5.5 for the yards, 6 for the TD and 6 in long TD bonuses). Here it is:
Thank goodness Quan Martin can’t tackle. Or even, you know, push someone three feet to the sideline.
But points are points, and D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears, scored them all the same. So long as he has an 18-point play every week, Justin is absolutely in business.
Good thing, because Saquon Barkley is all sorts of disappointing this year. Did you know he’s not on pace for even 1,000 yards? That’s fucking brutal. Let’s play a game. Here are 8 running backs. Without googling, which 4 of them have more rushing yards than Saquon Barkley?
Travis Etienne
Rico Dowdle
Breece Hall
Quinshon Judkins
Cam Skattebo
Tony Pollard
Jacory Croskey-Merritt
Jordan Mason
Do you need more time? Ok.
…
…
…
…
Surprise! The only guy on that list who hasn’t outrushed Barkley this season is Jordan Mason, and he’s only two (2!) yards behind him. Mason has been on the field for 178 snaps, Barkley’s count is 289.
That part is especially concerning because the other running backs with at least 280 snaps are Kyren Williams, Javonte Williams, Christian McCaffrey, and Jonathon Taylor, all of whom are top-10 fantasy running backs (9, 6, 3, and 1, respectively). But I’m sure it’s fine. Justin has Justice Hill on deck if Barkley can’t get it together.
Steve also started two tight ends, but got a more traditional result despite one of them being Tha Gawd Tyler Warren. He took the defeat thanks to the Bills expending the minimum possible effort, and managed to lose Puka Nacua in the process. His options to replace Nacua, who is the best receiver in fantasy by a mile, are:
Tee Higgins (quarterback is Joe Flacco, a fencepost with arms)
Jalen Coker (the Next Breakout Star infinity weeks running, also on IR)
Marvin Mims Jr. (quarterback is Bo Nix, who would have a better shot at hitting a deep ball if he used a slingshot)
End of List.
Not exactly the Next Man Up arsenal one would hope for. Also, before waivers, Steve had someone named Tory Horton on his team. That’s not a real person. Steve made that up.
Steve paid $17 for his imaginary friend three weeks ago, never started him, and then dropped him . Strange behavior.
Micah Vs. Andres (164.1-141.9)
Micah Weekly High Score
Know what my favorite weird stat is?
Derrick Henry has been, if not the best, one of the top five running backs in the NFL his entire career. Even early on, when they were limiting his work the first two years, he was still averaging about 4.5 a carry and had a success rate of 50 percent. Over 10 NFL seasons, he has amassed 2,443 attempts and 11,862 yards (five yards per carry). That’s 17th on the all-time rushing yards leaderboard at the moment. But that’s not the stat.
Henry’s 11,862 yards, amassed over 10 seasons, are still 262 yards short of what he ran for in high school. Think about that shit. He has six NFL seasons with more than 1,000 yards (one with 937). Four of those were more than 1,500. He has a 2,000-yard season and missed another one by 79 yards last year. He still hasn’t beaten his teenage numbers.
In four years at Yulee High, Derrick Henry ran for 12,124 yards. In his senior year, he ran for 4,261 yards and scored 55 touchdowns. He’s the only player to ever rush for 2,000 yards at every level of competition.
That’s fucking crazy. 4,000 yards and 55 touchdowns in a single season is FUCKING. CRAZY. Think about this:
Somewhere in Florida, a 17-year-old kid woke up on a Friday morning. He was a football player. A linebacker. Pretty good, actually. He had made all-conference as a junior, and was having a good enough senior year that he might even get a few offers. Nothing crazy, but it’s possible he could get a shot at an FBS school somewhere if he wanted it. But he wasn’t concerned about that on that particular morning. He was 17. Had the rest of his life to worry about the rest of his life.
What he really cared about was this girl, Amber. He and Amber had known each other since middle school, and they were always drawn to one another. Timing was never right, though. Different relationships, other concerns, stuff always seemed to get in the way. But lately, everything was lining up, and all this kid could think about was how excited he was to see Amber at school that day. They had three different classes together, and his stomach was already doing flips as he tried to guess what she’d be wearing when he saw her in first period.
So he got ready, did his hair just right, threw on his best fit, broke out his new shoes, and headed off. He made sure to thank his mother for reminding him about the assignment he’d left on the printer. Didn’t want to forget that- it was a big part of the grade.
He gets to school, and he sees Amber, and it’s electric. She gives him a 1,000-watt smile the second he walks in the classroom, and all his thoughts of trying to be cool are vaporized. He’s grinning, and blushing, and can’t believe how happy he is just to see Amber. And the day is just getting started. By lunch, he realizes he hasn’t thought about anything else. Even when people pump him up in the hallway about that night’s game, he politely thanks them and returns to the little pocket of his mind where he can imagine all the moments he and Amber will have. The little stuff- the way her hair will blow as they drive somewhere together, her frustrated giggle at one of his jokes, the smell of his sweatshirt after she borrows it, the face she’ll make as she leans in to kiss him goodbye at the end of a night. It’s all in front of him.
So after their last class, he decides to stop fucking around and just do it. He asks Amber to be his girlfriend, and she giddily says yes before he can even finish the sentence. They are together. The beginning of something big, he can feel it. Maybe this will help him choose where to go to school next year. Maybe he follows her to see where this thing goes.
School ends, and Amber tells him she’ll be at the game tonight. She says her parents are coming too- she can’t wait to tell them she and he are dating, because her mom always thought they’d be perfect together. So our player goes to the stadium, and gets ready, and when he takes the field, he sees his parents sitting with Amber’s, and his new girlfriend is next to them with some friends. She’s wearing that blue sundress that always makes his heart flutter. She winks at him, and her mom and his yell out his name, revealing they made signs with his number on them. He smiles, and in that moment, he realizes everything is absolutely perfect. He is the happiest he’s been since he was a child. The kind of happiness that makes it so you wish time would stand still, but you also can’t WAIT to get to the next moment. Imagine what it will bring.
So he puts on his helmet, and he’s practically floating as he takes the field. This is it. He’s going to play like an absolute all-star in this game, and afterward, he’s going to walk off the field into the arms of his true love. He can already hear the moms cooing about his and Amber’s postgame kiss. Here comes the first snap.
And then Derrick Henry ruined that kid’s fuckin LIFE. He ran for 400 yards and scored eight times, and every one of those monstrous lumbers began by turning the linebackers into goddamn gelatin. The stands watched in horror as he tossed those fucking guys around like dolls, popping off facemasks and cracking shoulder pads and leaving twisted, weeping human wreckage all over the field.
Parents were begging them to stop that game. They kept pleading for the refs to say it was enough. Our boy thought if he could just make one stop- one big HIT on Derrick Henry, he could salvage something from this. But that only made it worse. Derrick Henry saw him coming and lowered his shoulder, and after he scored his longest TD of the day, play had to stop because our linebacker had to be helped off the field, vomit covering his jersey.
At a certain point, Amber and her friends (and the moms) were no longer watching an underdog hero try his best; they were watching someone they championed get his dignity taken away, hit by hit, yard by yard, until there was nothing left of him to cheer for.
That kid was never the same after that game. He was forever diminished. He never got that scholarship offer because he didn’t have the same kind of heart in his game. He and Amber broke up before New Year’s. It’s hard to keep the magic alive after seeing something like that. He went to a small college upstate before coming home to work with his dad until he retired. Now he works in an office. He’s married, and she’s a lovely woman, but he never felt the electricity with her that he felt with Amber. He looked Amber up once. Just once. It was too painful to do it again; to be a tourist in a life not lived, the one he was supposed to have but now belongs to someone else. Easier to treat it like a dream. In the end, that’s all it was anyway.
Derrick Henry played 48 high school games. Think about the number of lives that man altered in the process of accruing 12,124 yards and `153 touchdowns over four years. That dude changed the very course of the universe by the sheer impact he had on teenagers playing Florida football from 2009-2012. None of those guys grew up the same as they were going to before they played Derrick Henry. Every one of them is different now.
DeWitt vs. Dan (126.8-109.4)
Daniel, I have to say I feel like a disappointed dad right now. Let me put on the voice:
You wanted this. You asked for this responsibility. You came to me and said, “Dad, can I please be a part of the fantasy league?” And I told, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that it was a big responsibility and that you had to take it seriously? Didn’t I say that?
Well, then why am I looking at a lineup with no tight end in it? That doesn’t seem very serious from where I’m standing. Don’t tell me about New Orleans, I don’t want to hear it. That’s life, son. It’s busy. Things get complicated. You still have to handle your business in a businesslike way. Your brother-in-law Justin had no problem starting a tight end. He even started two! You think Justin wasn’t busy? You had plenty of options, bud. Dawson Knox was out there- he caught a touchdown. Cole Kmet was there, too. I don’t care what their score was, it’s about making the effort. Hell, Bowers has been hurt all year. You could have grabbed Zach Ertz on Wednesday just in case and you’d be sitting here at 6-6 instead of 4-8.
I’m not telling you this because I’m mad at you, or to make you feel bad; I’m telling you because I expect more from you and I don’t want to see the same mistakes over and over when I know you’re capable of more. This is an important moment right here. We don’t always recognize them when they come, but you have the advantage of knowing you’re in one right now. You have a choice to make. What kind of player are you going to be? Are you going to learn from this and do better? Are you going to look back in a month and see this as the point where things changed for the better, and this mistake is a distant memory? Or are you going to look back and realize you never grew out of where you are right now? If you’re happy right now, then I guess this is it. But I don’t think you are. I think you know you don’t belong in this spot. But it’s up to you, son. It’s your choice. Let’s see what you do with it.
God, I hated those conversations. My dad was so fucking good at them. He would just wreck my shit. I always ended up feeling like all of society was talking about my behavior. Draft stock just tanking in the eyes of life scouts.
Now, as a dad, I prep for those chats like Daniel Day Lewis getting ready for his next role. Gotta get in the mindset. It’s a parenting boss fight, and I always feel like if I were to flub it, the results would be catastrophic. It’s like getting 10 lifetime at-bats, but the outcome of each one affects the batting average of everyone on your team.
Anyway, Dan- start a full lineup. DeWitt is already getting away with murder by having six wins with only 3.5 players. He doesn’t need help hiding the body too.
