There is a particular flavor of grief reserved for the Head Coach who benches the right man for the wrong reason, and this week the syndicate drank deep of it. Deebo Samuel, parked on benches in three different leagues like a rental car nobody wanted, put up 16.5, 16.5, and 15.0 in games that decided nothing except the fragile self-esteem of the men who sat him.

In BEERFL Dynasty, Its Gonna Be Maye rolled out Rashee Rice and Christian Watson, both of whom returned the statistical equivalent of a shrug (0.0 apiece), while Samuel racked up 16.5 from the pine. That is not a lineup decision; that is a confession. Over in D2: 2 Fast 2 Beerious, kpowers89 did Maye one worse, benching Samuel behind not one but three separate zeroes: CeeDee Lamb, Rome Odunze, and DJ Moore, a trifecta of nothing that still somehow lost by less than a point to JayP, 0.9 to be exact. Small mercies. In BEERFL 2026 proper, My Precious sat Samuel's 15.0 behind Tee Higgins' 0.0, because apparently the lesson does not travel between time zones.

Meanwhile, the numbers game keeps producing its usual crop of paper tigers, teams winning while scoring like they meant to lose. Molotov Cocktail Enema squeaked out a win in Dynasty on a bottom-40th-percentile 14.1. Fight Milk! did the same in D2 with a 14.8 that ranked in the bottom fifth of the league, and still had enough left over to edge Asahi Beer Silver Star by 0.7 in one of the week's tighter finishes. Felix in Exhibition 2026 turned in an 11.6 and walked away with a win anyway, proof that the standings do not care how you got there.

Which brings us to Asahi Beer Silver Star, the week's unluckiest name in print. Not content with the narrow loss to Fight Milk!, the Franchise Architect also benched Brock Purdy's 22.1 in favor of Kyler Murray's zero, and then, for good measure, lost in all three of the syndicates. Three leagues, three losses, one long ride home. Some weeks the ink writes itself.