Phil

Jason

Alan

Brad

Clearly, this week was not as good to everyone as last week was. Half of the contestants finished either at or under 500. In the race to avoid last place, Ray and Cody try to spare each other to death as each underwhelms at 6-8. (Yes, you too can use the adjective "spare" as a verb!) On the other end of the chart, Ray's brother Phil maintains a share of first place. Jason lays claim to a piece of #1 after earning the week's best record, 10-4. Shyam and Alan also score that mark, both of whom missed only the week's big upsets, Cinci, NE, SD, and SF. Jason would have earned 11-3 if he had not picked Det, since he was the only one to pick SD over Clev. Oops! For Alan, his 10-4 record, com-bined with a recent couple of good weeks, helps him move into 2nd overall. Onto the genius/bonehead pick combos for the week. Jay alone nails the SF upset over TB, but flubbed the Dal/Det pick. And Joe looked cool with the only right pick of Cin over Balt, but negated that with a goof pick of Atl over NO. The race is still tight - be careful with the upset picks!

Replay Challenge #5:
The fantasy football picks really hurt a couple people. Jay and Jason both finished with less than 1 point thanks to bad defense picks. (Next year I might try to score this differ-ently, but I can't change the rules after the fact... sorry!) Cody earns the most points this week with 17, as his pick of Aaron Brooks was only 10 yards shy of the week's leader, Jake Delhomme (who of course no one picked), and his defense pick of Dallas was only 23 yards more than the week's lowest (NY Giants, who only Ray picked). The shake-up moves Cody from 13 to 3, and Jason from 2 to 9. The top 3 now are: Tony - 43.6; Ray - 40.8; Cody - 40.7. Click here for full details. (If you don't have MS Excel, click here for HTML version.)