Ian Pfeiffer posted the week's highest score, 156.5, to take down Donald Hefferon 122.0 and move within two regular season wins of one hundred. Hefferon's share of first place went with it.
Pfeiffer scored 156.5, the highest total of week eight, and Hefferon's 122.0 was never close enough to matter. The margin was 34.5. Ja'Marr Chase contributed 31.5 and Emmett Johnson 30.5, which is the sort of foundation that lets a manager stop checking the scoreboard before the late window has finished.
Hefferon began the day 6-1 and level at the top. He finishes it 6-2, a game back of Mike Littlehale, having been handed the week's best performance by an opponent who arrived at 4-3 on a two-game run. There is no version of the afternoon in which 122.0 was a bad score. It simply arrived at the wrong address.
The win is Pfeiffer's ninety-eighth in the regular season. Two more and he reaches one hundred, a number nobody in this league has any business being proud of and everybody will be. He sits 5-3, two games back, with 976.0 points for, fourth most in the league.
Hefferon, for his part, has conceded the eighth most points in the competition and still owns the second best record. That arithmetic has carried him all season and it carried him into this week. On Sunday it went to the other man, who did not apologise.
Travis Gervais started 92.5 points and left 88.5 on the bench, very nearly a full second roster sitting with its hands folded. Chimere Dike alone accounted for 27.5 of it. The remarkable detail is that none of this changed the result. Mike Littlehale scored 156.0 and won by 63.5, and Gervais's best possible lineup would have made 132.0, still 24 short.
Littlehale has now won six in a row and stands 7-1 with 1063.5 points for, the most in the league, and the eleventh most conceded. Tee Higgins gave him 38.0 and the rest was housekeeping. Gervais falls to 5-3, two games back, and may take grim comfort from 2018, when he lost this same week to Tim Kelly by a single point. The scale of the disappointment has grown considerably since.
Hannan Merritt beat Jeff Abbott 114.5 to 74.5, a fixture Merritt now leads 17-6 across twenty-three meetings. Abbott drops to 1-7 and has conceded more points than anyone in the league. Merritt also left 38.0 on his bench and did not need a single one.
Ian Dudley beat Tom Pauza 79.0 to 65.5, a combined 144.5 that would have lost to several individual managers this week. Dudley takes his second win; Pauza, who benched 31.0, slips to 4-4 and three games back.
Sam Wadhams put up 149.0 against Andy Borah's 90.0, with Bhayshul Tuten scoring 34.0 and Josh Jacobs leading the losers on 20.0. Wadhams is back to 4-4. Borah is 1-7 and left 37.5 points unused.
Joe Burrow scored 50.0, the biggest individual return of the week, and Matt Francis beat Tim Kelly 130.5 to 107.5. Kelly's best was his Jaguars defence on 23.0, and his Kirk Cousins watched from the bench with 28.0.
Littlehale v Pauza — Littlehale leads Pauza 7-3 all-time; the league's top scorer meets its second-lowest.
Dudley v Pfeiffer — Pfeiffer leads Dudley 13-5 all-time, and arrives two wins from one hundred.
Gervais v Francis — Gervais leads Francis 10-4 all-time, both 5-3, both two games back.
Hefferon v Wadhams — Hefferon leads Wadhams 6-5, a single game in it.
Kelly v Merritt — Merritt leads Kelly 12-11 across twenty-three meetings. A Kelly win levels it.
Borah v Abbott — Abbott leads Borah 3-1. Two one-win teams, and somebody has to leave happy.
Clear and settled over Ragtag Misfits, with a hundred-win front approaching from the west by Sunday.
Persistent bench fog across A Jeanty-man and a Scholar. Visibility poor. Eighty-eight points unaccounted for.
Scattered scoring drought continues over Jackalope Society and Not Today Satan. Nothing above eighty expected.
Heavy, prolonged downpour over 420Fart69 and Drake Maye Fan Account. No relief in the long-range charts.