2024 Week 5 Dynasty Recap: A Shift in Power
Storm Surge remained at 1, and NUKEM and the Fantasy Fairies kept their 9th and 10th rankings, but everyone else either moved up or down. Shenron’s Wish and Michael Style moved up two spots to 2nd and 5th, my Space Rangers moved up five spots to 3rd, Fear Itself fell one to 4th, Kade’s Dawgs and the Ferocious Felines each fell two spots to 7th and 8th, and ay_Bilat tumbled four spots to 6th. It was quite the tumultuous week, and the outcome for basically every game, coupled with NUKEM winning puts them right back into the playoff bubble, keeping things very interesting as we enter week 6. Buckle up people, I have a feeling we’re in for a crazy remaining season. Here are your week 5 results:
Michael Style 124.00 over Ferocious Felines 112.40
It’s fitting that these two had the closest outcome this week after Fred deemed this his rivalry week. These two have been going at it since their Frogger competitions in middle school, and that’s carried all the way over to fantasy football as adults. After last week Alex referred to his team as the “All Bench Team”. But he got it pretty much completely right this week and he was rewarded with a win. In that same vein, Fred could’ve swapped out one of two players and played Brian Thomas Jr. in their place and he would’ve beaten his biggest rival. Hindsight is the worst.
NUKEM 104.52 over Fear Itself 91.24
The streak is over and Rob can breath again! It’ll go down as the third longest losing streak in league history. Not the longest though and that’s what matters! The projections were fluctuating all day Sunday, Jayden Daniels and Justin Jefferson helped put NUKEM out in front, well that and the Texans defense limiting Josh Allen. And then in the second set of games Brandon Aiyuk finally showed up for a game and he helped push NUKEM a bit further out while stealing plenty of looks from Fear Itself’s Deebo Samuel. And on Sunday night Najee Harris and Pitt’s defense made sure Boswell couldn’t pull their first win of the season out from under them.
The Empire 133.12 over ay_Bilat 117.14
Jackson’s 29.42 points led The Empire to their first win over ay_Bilat since week 3 of 2022, and took him straight to the top of the MVP race! That Nico Collins injury isn’t great, even if it is short-term, but Bryar’s team is playing so well they may not even notice. Silver lining for Trey in this loss, this is the best his team has looked to date. Kelce didn’t lead his team, but he hit double-digits for the second straight week. You never hope for injuries to any player, that said, Kelce has certainly profited off the Rashee Rice injury.
Storm Surge 151.86 over Fantasy Fairies 89.06
Malik Nabers and Saquon Barkley on bye, only starting QB playing the Jets defense, you’d think Storm Surge was due for a drop-off. Instead, obvious heroes like Darnell Mooney and Tucker Kraft, helped them to their highest scoring week yet. The Fantasy Fairies final tally wasn’t great. However, there were a few player performances that would’ve resulted in big points if they had just gotten more touches. For instance, Gibson averaged over 8.5 yards/carry and Ford was over 5, yet they both only received single digit carries. In other words, the Fairies fell victim to game-flow. It would’ve taken a ton for them to make up 62 points, but even just 10 more carries for each of those two would’ve likely put the Fairies over 100 points, and had Ryan feeling a lot better about his team.
Space Rangers 165.48 over Kade’s Dawgs 102.14
Mike Evans and Younghoe Koo started off the week with huge Thursday night performances that had me expecting to see the rest of Curt’s players explode on Sunday. Thankfully, it was the opposite. We are five weeks into the season and Ja’Marr Chase (36.50) just became the first non-RB to take home Player of the Week honors! One more Burrow to Chase touchdown and I would’ve taken down Bryar’s game scoring record three weeks after he set it…shame. Curt, if you’re going to have a down week, better it be the same week your opponent blows up, than a week you only lose by a few. Also, not cool starting Minnesota’s defense against me. I don’t like seeing “Andrew Van Ginkel pick six” pop-up on my phone just to do a fist-pump and couple it with a sinking “oh, no” feeling.
Here’s a look ahead at next week:
Storm Surge (5-0) vs NUKEM (1-4)
Dad vs Pastor Dad. The #1 pick vs the #2 pick (in both the first and second round?). Rob just cut his losing streak off at the knees, and now he’ll look to end another streak. This one isn’t his own though, Storm Surge is looking to become just the second team in league history to start a season 6-0, the other team being 2022 Fear Itself who made it to 7-0. Side note, now that Storm Surge hit the 5-0 mark, I think it’s worth mentioning that the other three teams to start a season 5-0 all won the championship that same year.
Space Rangers (3-2) vs ay_Bilat (3-2)
There are only two teams that own me in this league and Trey’s team is one of them, he’s currently up 6-2. Last year I ended his five game win streak over me when I beat him in week 14, which also officially ending his chances at winning the West. Then I lost to him in the third place game. I’m not looking to see a new streak start up again.
Fear Itself (3-2) vs Michael Style (3-2)
Nathan leads Alex 5-2. Both of Alex’s wins were from last season with the second being in the championship game! Is Alex about to start a win streak, or will Nathan exact a little revenge? This is Nathan’s first time starting 3-2 since year 2. He finished that season really well, but that was also the year he became the only #1 seed to lose in the second round of the playoffs. You’ll probably just want to focus on the finish the season strong part.
The Empire (3-2) vs Fantasy Fairies (0-5)
Ryan’s best record against any coach is this matchup, he currently leads the series 3-1. However, all three of his wins came from their three matchups two years ago. Can he pull off the biggest upset of the season (highest scoring team vs lowest scoring team)?
Kade’s Dawgs (2-3) vs Ferocious Felines (2-3)
Fred leads 5-4 in this one. This is the most intriguing matchup of the week to me. Both teams are two of the last three to have made the playoffs in every season so far. So…it’s time for Fun Stats with Lance!
11 teams have started a season 2-4, only 3 of them have made the playoffs. That’s not all though. Each of those teams made it in separate years, and in each of those years there were 2 other teams that also started 2-4.
If you’re keeping track that’s three years where 3 teams started 2-4 and one of those three made the playoffs.
That leaves two seasons where only 1 team started 2-4 and in both instances that team missed the playoffs.
Why am I stressing that. Well one of these teams is going to start 2-4, and the only way another team gets to 2-4 is if NUKEM upsets Storm Surge, which would make this the first season two teams started 2-4 thus putting us in uncharted territory. Either way, the loser of this game will face a major uphill battle to keep their playoff streak alive.
That’s all for this week, good luck to you all in week 6!