DEDDYBABA

I want to walk you through Asim's Monday night in real time, because it's the best running diary in the chat this season. 9:58 PM: "brooo I need 8 points. For weekly." 10:43: "Josh Allen bro damn." (The guy he traded away was on the other channel scoring 30.5 for Haroon and it did not help Asim's math.) 10:45: "Bro I need .9 points to win the weekly 😭🤮." 10:48: "Damn I didn't get it 😂." 10:52: "So close 😂. About these trades so far…" He finished at 147.56. Kashir finished at 148.36. The gap is 0.80, and Asim's bench scored 29.6, and I checked every combination, and there was exactly one lineup that found it: Terry McLaurin's 10.2 over Josh Downs' 6.2. I'm not going to be the one to tell him. You tell him.

About those trades so far. Bucky Irving ran for 30.5. Puka Nacua caught 29.2. Brock Purdy scored 16.16, Ollie Gordon 14.8, Fairbairn 17.0, the Broncos 14.0. The two players the entire league said Asim overpaid for combined for 59.7, and the first to say so was the guy who sold them. Haroon, Thursday night: "Damn @Asim. I told you Bucky was the guy." Naafay: "Bucky highkey played scary good, Asim on to something." Asim's response to being right: "Bro it's only one player rest of my team might be shotttt." He's the only guy in the league who doom-posts his way through a 33-point win.

The ledger reads DEDDYBABA +23.36 over Team Noor, and Haroon's own count is two wins to two losses. Now the part Asim won't like. He's 3-2 and fourth in the standings, and also 20-35 against the field — the second-luckiest team in the league — and the formula says ninth. I'm leaving him there, because three weeks ago this team scored 84 and I have a long memory. But the ceiling jumps three spots to eighth, because Bucky, Puka and Purdy are real, and because the next opponent is Arfan and the exact quote is "I need Bucky to turn into Josh Allen again." He traded Josh Allen for this. I love this league.

Asim traded Josh Allen to the defending champion for Brock Purdy and Bucky Irving — "I literally can't believe this is a debate" — and then, with the deal processed Friday, beat Mustafa in the IHOP Bowl 92.62 to 74.6. Purdy scored 19.62. Puka Nacua returned and scored 23.2. Ka'imi Fairbairn hit two long field goals for 16.0. Rashee Rice pulled up in the first quarter with a hamstring and scored 0.0 ("Damn I just lost rice"). Ollie Gordon II, the waiver claim Asim swore for two days he wasn't making, scored 17.0 on the bench.

The trade debate ran from Wednesday night to Friday morning and produced the best chat of the season. Asim argued the case in paragraphs ("with MLA formatted notes on why the trade makes sense for both sides"). Kashir: "Why are you sellin Josh so low idgi." Yaseen: "You should have traded with a team that was struggling to balance the league out a little." Arfan, mid-game Sunday: "Bucky score 6 points and Purdy 2 points. Let me help you with math." Arfan, Sunday night: "@Asim I take back what I said."

He is 2-2 at 10-34 against the field, which makes DEDDYBABA the luckiest team in the league by more than a full win. The formula knows that: 11th on the board, No. 11 ceiling, and the only team scoring 13 percent below the league average that has a .500 record. Next is Team MBK and Bilal, who has been trying to trade him a running back since Week 2.

Asim lost to Yaseen 88.54 to 84.46, the lowest score of the week, going 0-11 against the field. Josh Allen was mortal for the first time, scoring 16.96 after taking a shot to the knee (a bruise; he's expected to play). The loss came from the lineup screen. Asim started Rashod Bateman (4.7) over Terry McLaurin, who scored 16.7 on the bench. That swap alone wins the game. His explanation: "wtf zay flowers played today?? I thought he was out I started Bateman 🤣." The Broncos defense added 9.0 on the bench for good measure.

Yaseen twisted the knife in real time: "Harvey about to win it for you tonight." Asim: "Lmaooooo I hate you." Puka Nacua missed another game but should return in Week 4. Asim's trade desk stayed open all week: Allen for Bijan and Jordan Mason, Allen for Gibbs "plus another elite talent," and "who wants some chai and my players." The powers, meanwhile, have left the building. "I'll see yall next season boys. Bilal got me this year."

Then the waiver wire handed him the best claim of the season. Asim holds the No. 1 waiver spot the same week Achane tore his ACL, and he spent two days insisting he didn't want Ollie Gordon II. Kashir: "He gonna pick up ollie Gordon 100%." Asim, Tuesday morning: "The way my record lookin right now I don't have any choice but to take Ollie." Mustafa's summary: "Luckbox." He's 12th at 7-26 all-play. Next is RN in the IHOP Bowl.

Wednesday, Asim filed his weekly despair: "Brother Allen is my only glimmer of hope, the rest of my team can't carry. MF gotta drop a wilt 100 point game damn near every week to have a shot at competing." Sunday, mid-game, he escalated — "My whole team up for trade" — and told Bazaan, mid-collapse, "you could have benched half ur team and beat me." Final score: DEDDYBABA 105.22, Bazan 89.4. He won by 15.82.

Josh Allen posted 40.82, the best individual game of the fantasy season, breaking the previous record of 35.66, which was also Josh Allen, also for this team. Around him, actual signs of life: Terrance Ferguson put up 14.4 in the flex — winning Asim's side bet against Nabers in a rout — and waiver-add Rashod Bateman scored 18.3 on the bench. The group chat has formally diagnosed the pattern. Naafay: "The asim juju is back in full effect!" Bilal: "don't do the Asim magic!!!! U still in it!" The visions doom-post; the visions win; this is simply how it works, and has been since back-to-back 11-3 seasons.

He also offered Allen in trade "for the right price." The desk has consulted its models and set the price at everything, plus a formal apology.

Asim's week contained the single best quarterback performance of the NFL season — Josh Allen's 35.66, bigger than any QB game from all of last year — and ended in last place, 0-11 against the field, on the wrong end of the week's only Monday-night comeback. Kenneth Walker's 32.6 flipped a game Asim led by nine. The man predicted his wins would come from other people's running backs getting hurt; instead, his first loss came from someone else's running back getting extremely healthy.

The self-scouting remains the best in the league: "my team is ass, it took Josh Allen 35 points against a Texans defense for me to even have a chance," he filed mid-game, accurately, while Terry McLaurin sat at zero targets deep into the second half. The backfield performed exactly as constructed — Tuten 9.3, Gainwell 2.3 — and in the week's most Asim transaction, he dropped Jared Goff, the pick the frozen grades called the draft's best insurance, days before Goff's team won by 30. He also added Kaleb Johnson, Green Bay's other running back, presumably to live in Ivan's walls.

Twelfth on the board. The desk notes for the record that back-to-back 11-3 seasons say never count the visions out in September, and the 3am waiver wire opens tonight.

When Kashir opened last season's chat, he welcomed everyone back to "the best part of the year: where we get to see Asim's 'visions' and trades that could start a WW3." The visions are a league institution. Asim receives them, announces them, occasionally acts on them. The desk deals in rankings, not visions, and the ranking is twelfth — which Asim has earned the right to laugh at, because he has posted 11-3 in back-to-back regular seasons, the best record in the league both years, and owns zero titles. The visions keep producing Novembers. December remains unscheduled.

The split is stark. Josh Allen, Puka Nacua, Rashee Rice, Terry McLaurin is a legitimate top four, an elite quarterback and three real receivers, the kind of core that wins weeks on its own. Asim reviewed the Allen pick himself, live: it "might have jacked up my roster." ESPN priced Allen at 33; he paid 29. Cheap, as regrets go. The self-awareness kept coming. He announced that his wins will come from other people's running backs getting hurt, which is not a strategy so much as a séance, typed "GGs," and left to go smoke hookah with Bazaan.

The running back room is Tuten, Harvey, Gainwell, Spears, and Vidal. Five names, zero locked jobs, the clearest positional weakness in the league.

Respect the range, though: Jared Goff at pick 188, fifty-two past price, is exactly the insurance this roster needed, and Travis Hunter at 173 came fifty-three past, and the 3am waiver habit this roster was built to feed is a documented fact of league history. Twelfth today. Nobody is twelfth on waivers at 3am.