I don’t even know where to begin.

That was maybe the worst week against the spread I’ve had since 1977 (when I was six years old), and I lost 75 cents to my grandfather when all the favorites lost, and come to think of it, I didn’t even have to give him points.

It’s not the 2-8 mark that jumps out — I’ve done that before — it’s the margin of wrongness. It’s one thing to lose on a two-point conversion or pick six, quite another to think the Bills were laying too much (6!) on the road in a game they won 37-3, or liking a desperate Denver team to cover the six points on the road, and they lose by 50! I also had the Bears getting 12.5 against the Chiefs (41-10) who pulled their starters up 41-0 in the fourth quarter. And the Jaguars -8.5 who lost *lost* by 20.

If you were this out of sync in the real world, you’d still be masking outdoors and lining up for your fifth booster.

. . .

Aside from the ATS disaster, the week was bizarre in other ways. Like everyone I had De’Von Achane on my bench, but unlike everyone I had a preseason premotion about him and didn’t act on it. Lest you dismiss my preseason premonitions, I had one about “The Hound” (Chris Bassitt) in baseball that panned out pretty well.

This year, my pick was up in the RotoWire Dynasty Draft, and my instinct was to take Achane who I had already drafted in the first two BCLs. Because I’m not at all a college football guy, I put a poll out on Twitter:

This was the ensuing conversation from the poll:

So Seslowsky told me to take Zay Flowers, but Stopa used a word that got my attention: He said Achane would have to be a historic “outlier.” As I posted on Twitter, I was just that day drafting a piece entitled Outliers (which I didn’t publish until a couple weeks later.)

Its argument was we should always be looking for outliers, rather than dismissing them as anomalous as we’ve been trained to do. Because while outliers are rare, finding them makes all the difference — and this is true in any endeavor, not just fantasy sports.

So I ask who to take, and people give answers, but Stopa gives the answer for which I was really looking with the words (conditional though they might have been) “historic outlier.”

Of course, I was a total nutless monkey and took Flowers, and Seslowsky even patted himself on the back for it in our last video, saying something like, “Aren’t you glad you took Flowers,” and like a donkey I agreed I was glad.

Now, Flowers has been fine for a rookie over his first three games and looks the part of a future star. And Achane has had only one good game in a bizarre blowout. But it’s not only the size, but the magnitude of the sample that counts, and this magnitude was 10-plus on the Richter scale. How many running backs have gone 18-203-2, 4-4-30-2? I don’t have a subscription to pro-football-reference.com, but I’m going to guess it’s less than five, and he might be the only one.

So the lessons in this episode are the following: (1) Look for outliers; (2) trust your instincts; (3) heed your premonitions; (4) If you fail at 1-3, make sure you have someone else to blame; and (5) Reverse jinx the entire process by declaring the magnitude of the one-game sample sufficient enough to conclude your premotion was correct.

. . .

It used to be the dumbest announcer stat was, “Team A is 20-2 when running back B rushes for 100 yards” as a way of explaining why it was important to hand the ball to B. No shit, when B gets enough carries to crack 100 yards, A is likely to win because they only do that when they’re chewing clock, and they’re only chewing clock when they’re ahead. It was a confusion of cause with effect.

But the new dumbest stat is “They can’t afford to start 0-3 because 0-3 teams have only a three percent chance to make the playoffs.” That stat is generated by searching 0-3 teams and seeing how many made the playoffs historically. Wow, it’s only three percent. That means if the Joe Burrow Bengals lose tonight, they’ll have a three-percent chance!

No. There are two reasons 0-3 teams rarely make the playoffs: (1) Being 0-3 is bad for your chances; and (2) Most teams that are 0-3 have bad players and coaches, which is why they’re 0-3. The announcers are conflating (1) and (2) and chalking it up to (1), as though the Joe Burrow Bengals (should they lose) belong in the same pool of teams as the Justin Fields Bears.

Plainly if Burrow were 100 percent recovered from his calf injury, the Bengals would have a far higher than three percent chance to make the playoffs even if they were to lose Monday night.

. . .

I’m just going to jump around randomly and not cover every game. I was boring myself too much by doing that, and I don’t need to recite to you the stats of the players because you know them already. I’m the boss of this newsletter, after all, so why I am doing something I don’t want as though I’m obligated to do it that way?

. . .

The Broncos were so close to contending — they had a good defense, good skill players, all they needed was a quarterback. So they traded a king’s ransom for Russell Wilson and signed him to a ruinous contract. That didn’t work because the coach was terrible, so they traded the Saints first, second and third round picks for Sean Payton and paid him roughly $20M per year! And they’re still on the hook for $12M to Nathaniel Hackett over the next four years. Now all they need is a new coach, a new quarterback and a new defense, but unforunately all their recent draft picks have gone to the Seahawks and next year’s will go to the Saints.

The Cowboys kept running the ball in the red-zone down two scores with four minutes left, as though they had all the time in the world. The Dak Prescott pick made it moot, but Mike McCarthy is still out to lunch.

I had the Chiefs defense going, and they were pitching a shutout until Blaine Gabbert came in, the announcers praised his career as a valued backup and he immediately threw a pick that was returned inside the Chiefs’ 30. Even then I had a chance to keep the shutout, as the Bears were set to go for it on 4th-and goal from the four, but Justin Fields got hurt, so they instead opted for the field goal. (The Bears scored again later, but I had stopped watching.)

One tiny bright spot of my week (and you have to hold onto these or fall into an abyss of insanity) was starting Clyde Edwards-Helaire in my high stakes Primetime league in place of Saquon Barkley. CEH scored a TD, got 12.7 points, which is roughly what I would have expected from Barkley against the 49ers this week anyway.

Justin Tucker was just short on a would-be game-winning 61-yarder and that hurt, but this Gay dude really showed him up, kicking four field goals of 50-plus including the actual game winner in overtime. Matt Prater also hit a 62-yarder, and Chris Boswell drilled a 57-yarder yesterday. Golden age of kicking.

I don’t like two Monday night football games. No one has time to be in front of the TV 24/7, and I say that as someone who will be watching the “40-minute” edited versions in the morning. (It’s worse now because 40 has become 48, as for God knows what reason they leave in all the replays. I’ve got to watch the Raiders stuff Najee Harris from three different angles now. I get it, the man on the defense met him in the backfield as Harris was sluggishly trying to get his feet moving and brought him to the ground. It was routine. I don’t need to waste my precious time on planet earth with this shit.)

I got Jerry Jeudy with the last pick in the sixth round of my Primetime, and he missed only one game. What a steal! Except Wilson still sucks, only has eyes for Courtland Sutton (who lost two fumbles), and Jeudy had a TD called back. Jeudy actually did fine, but when you think about the expected garbage time for receivers in a 70-20 game, it’s like a cleanup hitter going 2-for-4 with a run scored when his team scores 10 runs.

The problem with this game was while Achane was scoring harmlessly on everyone’s benches, Raheem Mostert (13-82-3, 7-7-60-1) was wrecking people who faced him. I can’t see him holding up, and Jaylen Waddle will presumably be back to take some targets, but Mostert/Achane isn’t Ingram/Kamara it’s Kamara/Kamara, if Kamara ran a 4.3.

When Gene Steratore or Dean Blandino come on, I flip to a different game, but I’m tempted to kill myself and flip to a different realm.

Maybe I posted this in prior weeks, but if I were picking three receivers in NFL history to have on my team, I’d take Jerry Rice, Randy Moss and Tyreek Hill.

People are sleeping on the Browns. Deshaun Watson was maybe the second-best player in the NFL (after Mahomes) before he got accused of sexually assaulting every masseuse in Houston.

I can’t believe the Chargers won that game. It was exactly the type they almost always lose. I agree with the decision to go for it up four in their own end to seal the win. The Vikings still needed a TD, and if the Chargers convert on 4th-and-1, they win.

I’m real sick of Keenan Allen (20-18-215-0) and Davante Adams (20-13-172-2). I want some of my receivers to get 20 targets in a game. Instead I have CeeDee Lamb (7-4-53-0) and Garrett Wilson (9-5-48-0.)

Maybe the Panthers should have taken CJ Stroud.

I drafted Kenneth Walker (18-97-2, 3-3-67-0) in two leagues this year because “he passed the eye test” last year, and apparently my eyes weren’t lying. There’s a new trend toward lighting quick and fast running backs, and Walker is as nimble and hard to catch as any of them.

QB1 is a lover, not a fighter. The announcers kept talking about what a bond he has with Aaron Rodgers, and I thought, “That’s because they can wingman for each other in the middle-age singles scene.” Sadly QB1 is probably not long for the league.