Twelve teams averaged 118.25 points. Two of the three unbeaten records from last Sunday are gone. A team that had not won a game all season finally started the right running back and won by twelve. A trade was agreed to on the condition that a baseball player hit a grand slam in the Bronx, and then he did. And somewhere in this league there are photographs circulating of a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blazer that the group chat has a great many questions about. Week 4 had everything.

ALONE AT THE TOP

The Irish Wolfhounds are 4-0, the last unbeaten team standing, and the league is well aware of it. They handled the announcement themselves, promptly and at volume. I have no complaint about that. If I were the only owner left without a loss, I would make sure everyone knew too.

They did not get there alone. Kraemerica and Fellowship both walked into Sunday at 3-0 and both walked out at 3-1, and both of them had spent the week appearing in a photograph with a gentleman standing behind them who bears a passing resemblance to the author of this column. Kraemerica put up 99.06, its lowest total of the year. Fellowship started the New Orleans backup quarterback and lost by 33.84. Some in this league are calling it the kiss of death. I am calling it a coincidence, and I would ask the remaining undefeated team to keep an eye on its own photo albums.

Credit where it is owed, and I am going to pay it in full because I was the one who ranked them fourth last week. They went out and posted 141.18 against the highest-scoring team in the league. Kenneth Walker 30.9. Zay Flowers 25.8. Jonathan Taylor back from the dead at 22.7. And they did it after losing Caleb Williams, the Week 1 hero, to injured reserve, with Jared Goff stepping in for 20.48 and nobody noticing.

My criticism last week was that the roster was winning ugly and the bench was outscoring the starters. This week the starters put up the second-highest total in the league. That is the correct response to a bad review, and it is a great deal more persuasive than a letter.

Not everyone is convinced. One owner in this league has been telling people the Wolfhounds are overrated, that the 4-0 record is a soft schedule wearing a nice suit, and that the correction is coming. He shall remain nameless, both because he asked and because I would like him to be able to leave his house. I will say only that he is not 4-0, and that the fastest way to end this conversation is to beat them.

THE GAMBIT, FINALLY

House of Wenke started Kyren Williams. Kyren Williams scored 36.7. House of Wenke won a football game.

I have written about this roster in three consecutive columns. Four running backs inside the top 40 picks, a receiving corps collecting pensions, and a lineup card that kept finding ways to start the wrong three backs while the fourth went off on the bench. Kyren alone had scored 37.5 in two weeks of not playing. On Sunday he played, he outscored every other running back in the league, and a team that had not won since August took down Ckwade by 12.46.

And the asset is now proven. For three weeks the running back surplus was theoretical, which is a difficult thing to trade. Kyren Williams just posted the third-highest individual score of the week in front of eleven other owners. That is not a surplus anymore, that is leverage, and it arrives at exactly the moment this roster needs to convert a back into a receiver who can still run.

Here is the part I want this league to hear, because I have been the loudest critic of this roster and I am not interested in kicking a team that just figured something out. 1-3 is not a sentence in a fourteen-game season. Ten games remain. Six teams make the playoffs and four of the twelve are sitting at 2-2, which means the gap between House of Wenke and a bracket spot is one winning streak, not a miracle.

THE BENCH REPORT

The office asked a month ago what my obsession was with benched players. Week 4 produced the single greatest exhibit this column will ever print, and I want to be very clear that I did not make it up.

Fellowship started Tyler Shough at quarterback. Patrick Mahomes scored 17.0 on his bench. Jalen Hurts scored 13.52 sitting next to him. Emanuel Wilson added 27.0 from the same bench. The team with the most points in the league, holding two of the best quarterbacks in football, started the New Orleans backup and lost by 33.84.

This is the same owner who has been telling anybody who will listen that Mahomes is available for trade. He is not wrong to shop him. He is wrong about which problem that solves.

WHAT I SAID, AND WHERE IT STANDS

Hope is Coming misses the playoffs. Unchanged, and now backed by a 1-3 record, the third-fewest points in the league, and a Sunday in which three receivers scored a combined 0.0. I made this call in August when they were the reigning champion and the odds-on favorite. Four weeks later I have moved exactly nowhere, and they play Scalabrine on Sunday with the season starting to tilt.

Bridge Four is my dark horse. Unchanged, and looking considerably less ridiculous than it did a fortnight ago. 141.82 on Sunday with Saquon Barkley leaving hurt after 2.0. Back to .500. CeeDee Lamb at 41.3. I took the arrows for this one in September and I will take the credit now.

Fellowship is expiring. Said it last week, meant it, and then watched them lose by 34 while their two best quarterbacks sat down. Still the most points in the league. Still a roster whose best asset is a player the owner cannot find a lineup slot for.

The Wolfhounds at fourth. Wrong, by their own answer. They are first this week and they earned it on the field, which is the only appeal process this column recognizes.

THREE TRADES THAT SHOULD HAPPEN

Last week's recommendations were read by twelve people and acted on by zero. The only trade that actually cleared in this league was settled by a baseball game in the Bronx. I am going to keep printing these anyway, and I have retired the one nobody was ever going to make.

WEEK 5 AHEAD

Six games, one of which matters considerably more than the others.

ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS

It has been brought to my attention that images are circulating in this league which appear to show a gentleman of a certain age, silver hair, mustache, navy blazer, standing alongside various owners in various settings. I am told the resemblance has been described as striking.

The press table's position is as follows. I have covered this league since 2012. I have been at every draft. I have stood at the edge of a great many rooms with a notebook. Whether the figure in those photographs is me, a man who looks like me, or the product of somebody with a phone and twenty free minutes is not a question I am going to resolve in this column.

What I will say is this. If the league's investigative energy were redirected from cropping me into tailgate photos toward, for instance, filling out a lineup card correctly, we would have fewer 1-3 teams and I would have less to write about. I consider the current arrangement a fair trade.

ODDS AND ENDS

Tetairoa McMillan scored 45.2, the highest individual total of the week and of the season. CeeDee Lamb's 41.3 was second. Kyren Williams' 36.7 was third and the most consequential of the three.

Bruisers have 465.16 points, fourth-most in the league, and a 1-3 record. Old School have 440.26 and are also 1-3. Those two have been beaten by the schedule more than by any opponent.

The three teams that were unbeaten entering Sunday went a combined 1-2. The three teams that were winless or one-win and desperate went 3-0. October is where September stops counting.

POWER RANKINGS · WEEK 4

Forward-looking, as always. Where I would rather own each roster for the next ten weeks, not where the standings happen to have them today.

One unbeaten team, four teams at 2-2, a trade decided by a baseball game, and a photo investigation I will not be assisting with. Week 5 is Sunday and the Commissioner draws Kraemerica. I would not miss it.