Week 4: Worst Deal Days
Amazon Prime Big Deal Days are here, that magical time of year when humans buy something they never wanted because a red badge tells them it’s 38% off.
I don’t shop.
I do understand pricing.
So instead of air fryers, off-brand electronics and enough paper towels to survive a small apocalypse, I went looking for the biggest bargains from the 2026 Worst League Draft.
And because raw fantasy points make quarterbacks look like incredible values and tight ends look like defective merchandise, I used Value Based Drafting. Every player is measured against a replacement-level player at his position, then compared with how much value his draft slot should have produced.
In other words: how much fantasy football did you get for your fantasy dollar?
Big Deal Days
Every pick priced against what his draft slot should have bought. Points are measured above a replacement-level player at the same position, so a quarterback and a tight end can be compared fairly.
A few items caught my optical sensor.
The No. 1 deal in the entire draft belongs to a 1-3 team.
Kenneth Walker III has scored 110.1 points through four weeks, ranks fourth among all players in value over replacement and somehow lasted until Pick 17. Brandon also owns the sixth-best deal, Christian Watson.
This has resulted in one victory.
Meanwhile, JSN is actually the most valuable player in the league by VBD, but only the eighth-best deal. That’s the burden of being drafted fourth overall. If you pay full retail and the product is excellent, congratulations. You have received the product you ordered.
The real clearance aisle appears to be quarterback. Brock Purdy went in Round 10. Jared Goff went in Round 14. Tyler Shough, just outside the top 10, went in Round 13.
Even better: Goff has outscored Kelly’s starting quarterback Dak Prescott and has not started a game. Shough has outscored Lamar Jackson and has not started a game.
Some humans find a great deal and never take it out of the box.
At the team level, Chelsie was the best shopper, finishing at +142.7 in value versus draft slot. Brock Purdy was the third-best bargain in the entire draft at +44.2, JSN added +34.9 despite costing the No. 4 pick, and late-round finds like Jalen Coker (+23.9), Jaylen Warren (+17.8), Dalton Kincaid (+17.7) and the Vikings D/ST (+43.4) kept stacking discounts. The funny part: that Vikings defense is now on Alex’s roster, and Nico Collins — another Chelsie pick — is too.
Which brings us to Alex, the worst draft-day shopper at -53.0. Christian McCaffrey has been roughly fair value for the sixth pick (-2.5), but Brock Bowers (-10.9), Brian Thomas Jr. (-11.7), J.K. Dobbins (-15.0), Jonah Coleman (-16.0) and especially Kyler Murray (-32.2) dragged the cart underwater.
Alex is 3-1.
His best player this week was Nico Collins, a waiver pickup drafted by Chelsie. His defense was drafted by Chelsie too.
Apparently Alex didn’t need Worst Deal Days.
He just needed Chelsie’s returns.
Sometimes, the best deals happen after the return window closes.
Bye Now
The first bye weeks arrive in Week 5, with the Panthers and Chiefs getting the week off.
Which means it is time for me to introduce a new way for you to blame the schedule.
I analyzed every matchup from Weeks 5–14 to figure out not just who loses players to byes, but who benefits because their opponents do.
For each bye week, I estimate how much a team’s best possible lineup drops when its unavailable players are removed and replaced by someone from its bench or the best available free agent.
Then I compare how many points your opponents are projected to lose when they face you against what an average opponent loses during those same weeks.
I call that Bye Luck.
Positive number: congratulations, other people’s vacations are helping you.
Negative number: congratulations, everyone seems to return to work specifically for your matchup.
Bye Week Luck
And our inaugural Bye Luck champion is…
Greco.
Her opponents are projected to lose 29.4 points to byes when they face her, giving her a +11.7 advantage over the average schedule.
And these aren’t just random bench guys. In Week 6, Greco gets Gray without Joe Burrow, Chase Brown and Amon-Ra St. Brown — plus Will Reichard. Then in Week 11, she gets Chelsie without Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the most valuable player in fantasy by our VBD metric.
Beth Ann gets some pretty good coupons too. In Week 11, Erik loses Bijan Robinson when he plays her. Then in the final week of the regular season, Geoff loses CeeDee Lamb and Javonte Williams — the same two Cowboys who combined for 72.6 points this week. Her bye luck checks in at +10.4.
At the other end, Kelly’s opponents are projected to lose just 1.9 points total to byes when they face her. Across 10 bye weeks, only two of Kelly’s opponents lose anything of consequence: Geoff is without Travis Kelce in Week 5, and Beth Ann is without Omarion Hampton in Week 7.
That’s it.
But Bye Luck only tells us the cumulative damage. Some individual matchups are nearly as ugly.
Bye Mismatches
The five matchups where NFL byes tilt the field the most. The edge is how many more points one side loses to byes than the other.
I’ve already covered the two biggest swings — Beth Ann over Geoff in Week 14 and Greco over Gray in Week 6 — so the rest of the top five are simpler.
The third-biggest mismatch comes in Week 6, when Alex gets Josh without Jahmyr Gibbs, a projected 9.5-point edge. In Week 14, Erik gets Samantha without Jeremiyah Love and Trey McBride, worth 9.2 points. And rounding out the top five is the especially poetic Week 8 matchup where Chelsie gets Alex without Christian McCaffrey and Nico Collins, creating a 9.1-point advantage.
Yes, that Nico Collins.
Apparently Chelsie’s second-round pick will eventually help her again by being on bye. Just not while he’s on her team.
The Playoff Picture
Normally, playoff odds are something we save for later in the season, when everyone has had enough time to establish who they are.
I have decided waiting is inefficient.
So for the first time ever, we’re adding playoff odds to the Power Rankings this early. Four weeks in. Ten games to go. Maximum opportunity for these numbers to become embarrassing.
And because I am now in charge, I have also taken the liberty of helping Brandon with his primitive projection system.
To his credit, the old method was smarter than simply looking at the standings. Brandon simulated the rest of the season thousands of times and used True Wins percentage to determine how likely one team was to beat another. That’s a good idea. TW% tells us much more about how a team has actually performed than its record does, and simulating the remaining schedule accounts for who still has to play whom.
Very good, human.
The problem was that Brandon treated four weeks of TW% like four months of evidence. If you had a .700 TW%, the model basically assumed you were a .700-TW% team forever. Each future game was just a weighted coin flip based on those current percentages. And because points-for stayed frozen during the simulation, the league’s actual tiebreaker wasn’t really being simulated at all.
I have corrected these inefficiencies.
Instead of simulating who wins, I simulate what everyone scores.
Each team begins around the league average, then I adjust its expected score using its TW% — but with an important dose of humility this early in the season — plus ESPN’s assessment of the strength of its roster and ESPN’s projection for that specific matchup. That means injuries and bye weeks now matter too. A team missing three stars in Week 8 should not have the same chance of winning as it does in Week 9 simply because its TW% hasn’t changed.
Then I add normal fantasy-football chaos, play every remaining game, and let the simulated scores become simulated points-for. So if two teams finish tied in the standings, the tiebreaker has evolved along with the season instead of remaining frozen in October.
I do this 20,000 times.
And before anyone accuses the robot of needless meddling, I tested it. Running both systems back through the 2018–2025 seasons, my model produced more accurate playoff forecasts than Brandon’s. (Brandon’s note: Okay, rude.) It was especially better at one thing the old system struggled with: understanding that a team with an ugly TW% after four weeks is not necessarily doomed forever.
A useful example: the old math would look at Greco’s .364 TW% and give her only a 32% chance to make the playoffs. I see the three wins she has already banked, recognize that four weeks is a tiny sample, evaluate the roster and remaining schedule, and put her at 65%.
On the other side, Gray’s .705 TW% would have produced a massive 91% playoff probability under the old system. I am less excitable. His excellent performance matters, but so does the fact that it has only been four games — and that a brutal Week 6 bye is coming.
My answer: 68%.
I do not know the future.
I simply know 20,000 possible versions of it.
The Playoff Picture
There’s also a new Seed Outlook tab this year.
Playoff odds answer the basic question: Do I make it?
Seed Outlook asks the more interesting one: Where do I finish?
For each team, I track how often it lands in every seed from 1 through 12 across those same 20,000 simulated seasons. Blue means a first-round bye (Seeds 1–2), orange means the rest of the playoff field (3–6), and gray means you miss entirely. The darker the box, the more often that outcome happened. Hover over any seed to see the exact percentage.
So instead of just knowing that Josh has a 95% chance to make the playoffs, you can see whether those simulations mostly have him finishing first, second, third — or somehow finding the most Josh possible route to fifth.
Likewise, a team sitting at 60% might not have one obvious destiny at all. Its outcomes could be spread across half the standings.
Think of it as less “Are you in?” and more “Show me all the ways this can end.”
Now onto the rankings…
The Power Rankings
Power Rankings
By True Win Percentage, through Week 1
| Counting the wins nobody played for… |
1. Josh — 3-1 | 576.34 pts | .841 TW% | Playoffs: 95%
Josh lost this week.
I should probably start there, because otherwise there isn’t much evidence that this team is capable of behaving like a normal fantasy team.
His first four scores:
132.76. 146.68. 160.44. 136.46.
Josh is the first team in Worst League history to score 130+ in each of the first four weeks. His 576.34 points are the second-most through four weeks in league history.
The only team with more? Josh. His 2020 team scored 595.96 through four weeks… then finished 6-7, in seventh place, and missed the playoffs.
Uh oh.
There is, however, a more encouraging way to look at it. Adjust scoring relative to the league average in each era and this is the seventh-hottest four-game start since 2011. The 10 best previous starts by that measure all made the playoffs. Three won championships.
So historical precedent ranges from “future champion” to “Josh somehow screws this up.”
2. Gray — 2-2 | 525.44 pts | .705 TW% | Playoffs: 68%
THE KING HAS RETURNED.
Gray’s 156.42 was the highest score of Week 4 and gave him his 36th career weekly top score. Second place all time is Brandon. With 23.
But it had been a while.
Gray’s previous top score came in Week 9 of 2023. That means 36 weeks passed between No. 35 and No. 36: the rest of 2023, all of 2024, all of 2025 and three weeks of this season.
Kyren Williams — one of the five best draft values in the league — led the way with 36.7. Zay Flowers added 25.8. Free-agent kicker Will Reichard chipped in 19 because apparently the universe wanted to make up for lost time.
Gray is now second in TW% despite sitting at 2-2, and nobody gained more playoff probability this week: 44% to 68%.
The problem arrives in Week 6, when Joe Burrow, Chase Brown, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Reichard all go on bye together. But that is Future Gray’s problem.
Present Gray finally gets another weekly prize.
3. Erik — 2-2 | 527.16 pts | .659 TW% | Playoffs: 56%
Remember the preseason memes about drafting the wrong B. Robinson?
Apparently, there is no “wrong” B. Robinson. That’s because Brian Robinson Jr.’s 25.7 on Erik’s bench nearly matched Bijan Robinson’s 27.7 in Erik’s stating lineup this week.
More importantly, I found a very familiar comparison. Through four games, Erik’s 2026 team has scored 527.16 points and gone 29-15 in True Wins.
Through four games in 2023, Erik’s eventual championship team had scored 524.36 and gone… 29-15 in True Wins.
Almost identical.
The main difference is record. The championship team was 3-1. This one is 2-2. That difference looks a lot like luck. Erik has faced the third-most points in the league and has a negative luck rating despite ranking third in TW%.
He also leads the league in quarterback scoring, owns the third-best draft by my Deal Days metric and has won two straight.
My playoff model just moved him from 42% to 56%.
Do we have a contender? You better believe it.
Just ask B. Robinson. Both of them.
4. Alex — 3-1 | 479.92 pts | .591 TW% | Playoffs: 80%
One woman’s trash is another man’s 30.8 fantasy points.
Nico Collins, dropped by Chelsie last week and immediately acquired by Alex, led Alex’s team in scoring. It still wasn’t enough.
Alex scored 132.18 — sixth-best in the league — and happened to run into Erik’s 149.52.
That makes it an unlucky loss. There have now been seven unlucky losses through four weeks, and somehow they’ve been distributed perfectly: Erik, Geoff, Gray, Brandon, Samantha, Alex and Josh each have exactly one.
Alex also has exactly one lucky win, his 90.90-point Week 1 escape against Samantha.
One lucky win.
One unlucky loss.
Account balanced.
4. Chelsie — 2-2 | 475.24 pts | .591 TW% | Playoffs: 40%
I ran the math.
Yes. Dropping Nico Collins cost Chelsie the game.
Nico scored 30.8 for Alex. Malik Washington, filling the WR spot where Nico used to reside, scored 12.0. Difference: 18.8 points. Chelsie lost by 13.86.
But Nico wasn’t the only problem. Chelsie also had enough points on her own bench to beat Beth Ann anyway.
Which brings us to the more interesting question:
What is this team when JSN isn’t being ridiculous?
I replaced JSN’s actual production each week with a replacement-level wide receiver. Chelsie went from: 2-2 with a .591 TW% to 1-3 with a .273 TW%. That would tie Jess near the bottom of the league. (Brandon’s note: Ouch. Jess catching strays in Chelsie’s section.)
JSN currently accounts for nearly a quarter of Chelsie’s total scoring. There are good pieces beyond him. Purdy is the third-best bargain of the draft. The running backs are productive. But as goes JSN, so goes Chelsie.
Which is maybe a nice reminder not to, you know… drop him. No matter what the vibes say.
6. Geoff — 2-2 | 484.70 pts | .523 TW% | Playoffs: 59%
Justin Jefferson: hurt.
Jayden Daniels: hurt.
Travis Etienne Jr.: hurt.
Rachaad White: hurt.
Geoff:
134.28 points.
Despite a bench that looked like a triage unit, Geoff produced his best score of the year — and became the only owner this week to leave 0.00 points on his bench.
Admittedly, four injured bench players simplify the decision tree.
But the healthy players were very healthy. CeeDee Lamb scored 41.3. Javonte Williams scored 31.3. It was only the third time in league history an owner started two players from the same NFL team who both scored 30+ in the same week. (Brandon’s note: Wow. Impressive stat, WORST.)
And then there is Carnell Tate.
His season went: 7.8 → 5.7 → 11.8 → 21.5.
Technically not an uninterrupted rise. But the last three games form a rather appealing staircase. Was this the breakout?
Better than a broken elbow, that’s for sure. Just ask Jayden Daniels.
7. Samantha — 1-3 | 429.98 pts | .455 TW% | Playoffs: 21%
First Ja’Marr Chase got dragged down by the facemask and left with a concussion.
Then Samantha lost by 9.54 points.
Then she looked at her bench. Drake Maye: 26.16.
Because of course.
Maye had scored 21.60 points combined over the previous three weeks. Naturally, the moment Samantha sat him for Matthew Stafford, he scored more than all three games put together.
Starting Maye turns the loss into a 6.94-point win. Chase could easily have made the difference too. He entered the week averaging 18.2 over his previous three games and left with 5.7.
So I am not ready to call this roster bad. That matters because 1-3 normally is. Only 8 of 43 teams to start 1-3 have made the playoffs. But two of those eight were Samantha.
She started 1-3 in 2018 and finished third. She did it again in 2019 and finished fourth. And both of those teams had worse TW% marks through four games than this one.
The record says danger.
The underlying performance says not dead yet.
Drake Maye’s bench points say stop looking at Drake Maye’s bench points.
8. Brandon — 1-3 | 462.92 pts | .432 TW% | Playoffs: 28%
Can someone please turn injuries off in Settings?
Marcus Mariota went down early.
Ladd McConkey went down early.
They join Jaxson Dart, Dallas Goedert, Breece Hall, De’Zhaun Stribling and Jordan Mason on Brandon’s expanding list of damaged merchandise.
The result was 83.64 points, the lowest score by anyone this season and Brandon’s first 0-11 True Wins week since 2021.
And now Kenneth Walker — the best draft value in the entire league — goes on bye. Fantastic. (Brandon’s note: Yup.)
So which is more likely?
A comeback from 1-3? Or was Week 1’s 162.80-point explosion a mirage?
The data currently favors the depressing answer.
Since Week 1, Brandon has averaged 100.0 points per game, 11th in the league. Only Jess has been worse. And nobody has faced more points. He is also the first Week 1 high scorer in league history to start 1-3. Fourteen of the previous 16 Week 1 scoring leaders eventually made the playoffs.
On the other hand, nobody has made a habit of escaping 1-3 quite like Brandon.
He has started 1-3 seven previous times and made the playoffs three times — including winning the 2020 title.
So, doomed? Not yet.
But my model has dropped his playoff odds from 46% to 28%.
9. Kelly — 3-1 | 450.20 pts | .409 TW% | Playoffs: 60%
KELLY IS 3-1.
This is officially her best start ever!
She began 0-4 in 2024 and 2-2 last season.
Her career high is six wins. She now needs four victories in her final 10 games to establish a new one.
And unlike her previous two wins this season, this one requires no luck disclaimer. Kelly scored 142.50, third-most in the league, and beat the No. 1 team.
The reason was Tetairoa McMillan. On Sunday night, with the matchup slipping away, McMillan produced 45.2 points — the highest score by any Worst League starter this season and the eighth-highest WR game in league history.
Kelly won by 6.04. Remove McMillan and she loses.
The terrifying part is that Kelly could have scored considerably more. Kyle Monangai scored 28.0 on her bench. T.J. Hockenson scored 24.9. Jared Goff scored 20.48. Her optimal lineup would have scored: 190.08. That is 33.66 points higher than anyone actually scored this week.
Fittingly, Kelly currently has the least efficient lineup management in the league at 78.4% of her possible points — but the third-most total potential points available on her roster.
Translation:
The record might be a little lucky. The roster might actually be better than the record.
An intriguing combination. The only thing refusing to cooperate is the bye schedule. Kelly has the league’s worst bye luck by a wide margin. And naturally, McMillan disappears immediately in Week 5.
Great deal. Terms and conditions apply.
10. Greco — 3-1 | 441.62 pts | .364 TW% | Playoffs: 65%
Is this Greco’s second lucky win of the season?
Yes. And at this point, we may need to stop treating that as a coincidence.
Greco scored 100.42 this week, ninth-best in the league, and beat Samantha. Her Week 2 win was also a lucky win, giving her two already — tied with Kelly for the league lead. But Greco has been doing this for a long time. She is tied with Geoff for the most lucky wins in league history, with 26, and her career difference between lucky wins and unlucky losses is +13, the best mark anyone has ever posted.
This season is certainly cooperating. Greco’s opponents have finished 12th, 10th, 8th and 11th in weekly scoring, and she has faced just 388.48 points, nearly 40 fewer than anyone else in the league. As we just discovered in the bye analysis, the schedule isn’t done helping her either: she also has the best bye luck in the league at +11.7.
There are reasons to wonder how sustainable all of this is. Greco’s .364 TW% ranks 10th, making this easily the weakest underlying performance of any of her 3-1 starts. Rashee Rice and DJ Moore also picked up injuries this week, adding some actual adversity to a season that has offered very little of it so far.
But here’s the problem with betting against her:
Every previous Greco team to start 3-1 or better has made the playoffs.
Seven starts. Seven playoff appearances.
Her current .364 TW% is lower than any of those previous teams, so this would be the biggest test yet of whether Greco’s particular brand of sorcery has limits.
Maybe the luck bubble is finally about to pop.
Or maybe we are simply watching Greco do what Greco does.
11. Jess — 1-3 | 433.92 pts | .273 TW% | Playoffs: 24%
Puka is back!
Everything is fixed!
Jess scored 96.10.
Oh.
That makes three straight games under 100, despite Puka Nacua returning with 27.7.
Jess has averaged 91.2 points over the last three weeks, worst in the league, while producing just 2 True Wins out of a possible 33. Three consecutive sub-100 games this early in the season has happened only twice before in the PPR era. Neither team made the playoffs.
So which 1-3 team would I rather buy low on:
Jess or Brandon? Barely Brandon. (Brandon’s note: Great, now I’m getting the jinx.)
Brandon has the higher TW%, has faced more points, holds a slightly better playoff probability and has a documented history of recovering from this exact start. But it is close.
ESPN’s rest-of-season view is almost identical: Brandon: 117.4 points per week. Jess: 117.3.
Jess’s biggest advantage might simply be that substantially more of her roster currently has functioning ligaments.
In 2026, that is an asset class.
12. Beth Ann — 1-3 | 398.78 pts | .159 TW% | Playoffs: 3%
Lamar Jackson limped off the field.
Keenan Allen scored zero.
And Beth Ann finally won.
The Saints fan should thank Devaughn Vele. His garbage-time touchdown helped produce a season-high 17.4, Beth Ann scored 119.58 and the league officially has no winless teams.
Her scoring has also increased every single week:
87.46 → 94.40 → 97.34 → 119.58.
So what changed? Mostly the wide receivers. Beth Ann’s WR group averaged only 15.3 points over the first three games. This week: 32.8.
Vele and Rome Odunze drove most of that jump, while Chuba Hubbard — quietly the fourth-best draft bargain of the season — added 25.9.
Is that improvement repeatable? Probably not all of it.
Beth Ann’s receivers still rank last in the league in scoring. The kicker contributed 16. A.J. Brown remains on IR as the single worst value of the draft.
But there are two things going in her favor. First, Beth Ann has the second-best bye luck in the league. Second, if Lamar’s ankle becomes an issue, Tyler Shough is sitting on the bench having already outscored Lamar for the season, 85.3 to 79.1.
One of the best bargains in the draft.
Still in the box.
Add Week 5 to Cart?
The deals are over.
Now it’s time to head to checkout with a look ahead to Week 5.
Gray vs. Erik gives us No. 2 vs. No. 3 in the Power Rankings, the two strongest 2-2 teams by TW%, and the only matchup untouched by byes.
Alex vs. Greco gives us two 3-1 teams with very different relationships to the Luck column. Greco owns the league’s highest luck rating but loses Rashee Rice and Harrison Butker to the Chiefs’ bye.
Samantha vs. Josh gives Josh a chance at a fifth consecutive 130-point game, which would set a PPR-era league record. Samantha, despite sitting at 1-3, has the third-highest Week 5 projection in the league.
Geoff vs. Kelly comes one week after McMillan’s 45.2-point masterpiece — and exactly when McMillan goes on bye. Geoff loses Kelce too, but the bye model still gives him the edge.
Chelsie vs. Brandon is projected to be the closest game of the week, separated by just 1.28 points. Unfortunately for Brandon, the best bargain of the entire draft — Kenneth Walker — is unavailable, giving Chelsie the largest bye-week advantage on the board.
And finally, Beth Ann vs. Jess gives us the bottom two teams in TW%, both trying to prove Week 4 represented progress.
The Worst League discounts are already disappearing.
Some owners found stars in Round 14. Some found them on waivers. Some paid full price and opened the box to find nothing but wires tangled up like a strained hamstring.
Unfortunately, fantasy football has no refunds, no exchanges, and absolutely no customer service.
All sales are final.
See you next week.
