Chief sheikh

Let's do the quarterback timeline, because I think it's a record. Week 1 through 2: Justin Herbert. Week 3: Jordan Love, with Sam Darnold picked up at 10:48 AM and benched. Week 4: Darnold, with Love benched. Week 5: Kyler Murray, picked up Thursday after Mustafa cut him, with Love scoring 25.28 on the bench. That's four different starting quarterbacks in five weeks, with the benched one outscoring the starter twice, which is the kind of thing that would get a real NFL coach fired and gets a fantasy manager a $100 check. Kyler scored 18.26. Kashir scored 148.36. He's 3-2.

The rest was a highlight reel. Jaylen Warren ran for 33.8. Parker Washington — the Week 1 flex emergence, still emerging — caught 27.4. Trey McBride 17.1, the Texans defense 15.0, and Justin Jefferson, activated from IR this week and dropped into the flex like nothing happened, 15.8. He beat Haroon by 9.36 in the game Haroon billed as the "real 2 juggernauts" bowl, which means Haroon was right about the matchup and wrong about which one of them he was.

The Sunday-night subplot deserves its own paragraph. Asim, trailing Kashir for the weekly high: "Hey bud can you relax I want the weekly too." Kashir: "Haroon gonna get it not me." Haroon didn't. Kashir did. Asim finished 0.80 short of both of them and I'm told he's fine. Kashir cashed his first hundo of the season, which puts him at $100 against a $367 buy-in, and spent the rest of the week offering Justin Jefferson to Bilal "for 20 one piece packs from Japan." (I've reread that offer four times. It might be the fairest trade proposed in this league all year.) Up two, to fifth. Week 6 sends St. Brown, Jefferson, Kyler AND Love to the bye in the same week, because this roster was built entirely out of Vikings and Lions. Next is Ivan.

Kashir scored 72.82 and lost to Arfan by 54.3. It was the worst total in the league this week, 0-11 against the field. Sam Darnold started (13.32), Jordan Love sat (13.08), and it didn't matter either way. Jaylen Warren's 14.1 led the team. Justin Jefferson is on IR until roughly Week 8, Justin Herbert was cut on September 23, and the Chiefs defense Kashir added on Thursday scored 1.0. He has made 11 roster moves, third-most in the league.

Kashir's week was spent as the chat's football conscience. He fought both trades ("Bro what are these terrible trades yall deadass not watching games"), told Haroon in capitals that Purdy had no receivers, proposed the full reform slate again ("fix trade votes / reduce bench spot / do FAB waiver wire"), and delivered the line of the month to the commissioner: "Rameel become commish one year and league about to be destroyed." Sunday, he blamed the loss on Bilal's evil eye.

The drop is three spots, and it is almost entirely the week. Chief sheikh is still 25-19 against the field, fourth-best. But the roster without Jefferson is thin, and the formula no longer carries anyone on reputation. Ceiling falls to No. 8. Next is Haroon, who has Josh Allen now, which Kashir predicted would ruin the league.

At 10:48 AM Sunday, Kashir picked up Sam Darnold. At noon, he started Jordan Love. Love scored 18.48; Darnold scored 27.66 on the bench. It didn't decide the game, since Team MBK won by 29.66, but after two straight weeks of correct quarterback calls, this one went the other way. Love's 18.48 also came in a 35-14 loss to Drake London's Falcons. On Friday, Kashir had filed his only prediction of the week: "I'm glad Drake London decided to Show up the week I played you." London scored 23.9.

The real damage is Justin Jefferson's ankle. He left after two catches, and the projection is a return around Week 8. With Amon-Ra St. Brown held to 9.9, this receiver-built team is suddenly one receiver short for a month. The all-play record still says contender: 25-8, second-best in the league. He lost this week at 7-4, which is bad luck, not a bad team.

Kashir also spent the week as the league's reform caucus: cut bench spots from seven to five, switch waivers to a FAB bidding system, and "High key we need to reduce the bench spots." He even diagnosed Bazaan's roster through it: "FAB would gave u a chance." The commissioner's response, Tuesday morning: "I aint changing no rules." Next is HNFNR, the only undefeated team, without Jefferson.

Kashir spent Sunday evening posting "Man wtf is goin on with the chargers" — an ordinary fan lament, except he'd already answered his own question by benching his Charger. Jordan Love started over Justin Herbert and returned 13.8 to Herbert's 7.88, while Bazaan diagnosed the underlying condition in the chat: Herbert is "too focused on beer than ball," a scouting report involving a TikTok girlfriend that the desk is not equipped to verify.

The rest was clean: Amon-Ra St. Brown 30.7, Trey McBride 14.1, and Brandon Aubrey — the round-9 kicker the frozen grades mocked — banking 17.0. Last week Kashir won with negative-two combined from his kicker and defense and the desk called it luck. This week he went 10-1 against the field. That's not luck. That's the second-best team of the week playing like it.

He's 2-0 with 233.96 points, and the history is worth restating plainly: two Finals appearances, 2023 and 2024, zero titles. Fast starts have never been his problem. December has.

Here is a sentence the desk did not expect to file in Week 1: Kashir won by nine and a half with his defense scoring negative four. The Texans D/ST — round ten, cornerstone of the special-teams agenda this column has litigated since August — was detonated by Josh Allen's 35-point evening. Allen belongs to Asim. One Killaz roster nuked another Killaz roster's defense below zero, and the league simply contains that now.

None of it mattered, because WR University held classes as scheduled: Jefferson 27.2, Amon-Ra 23.7, McBride 20.0, and Parker Washington adding 16.8 from the flex like a walk-on outplaying his scholarship. Brandon Aubrey kicked two points. Two. The round-nine kicker and the round-ten defense combined for minus two in a comfortable win, which is either total vindication of the stars or the most vivid proof yet that those picks were spent in the wrong aisle. The desk rules: both.

The two-time runner-up is 1-0 and up two spots. Corum watch, week one: 5.4 points. It is not yet time.

Kashir has played in two of the last three finals and lost both — to Bilal in 2023 and to Ivan in 2024. Last season he slid to tenth, and Asim's postmortem still named him someone "who could have won the whole thing." His response was to draft the best receiver duo in the league, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Justin Jefferson, assembled by pick 15, and then a kicker in round nine.

I keep coming back to it. And here's the honest part: ESPN priced Aubrey at 87, so pick 106 wasn't even an overpay. The problem was never the price. It's that a ninth-round pick is a lottery ticket, and Kashir spent his on the one position where the jackpot is four extra points, with starting running backs and quarterbacks still on the board. He followed it with the Texans defense at 10.03. The agenda was special teams, and it was pursued with total conviction.

The rest is a superteam funding a shelter: Skattebo, Jaylen Warren, Corum, Braelon Allen, Bigsby, Blue, Pacheco. Seven running backs, no locked starting job among them. The stated plan for Corum, per the chat, is that "it's time," which is a hope wearing a plan's clothes. McBride makes it three elite pass-catchers, which is why ninth feels low here and honestly might be.

Kashir posted another site's low ranking of his team with the caption "I guess I don't know ball." The desk would never say that. The desk simply drafted its kicker in round eleven.