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The Association Podcast, Ep. 6: "Same Two at the Top, Same Questions at the Bottom
Audio coming soon
# The Association Podcast, Ep. 6: "Same Two at the Top, Same Questions at the Bottom"
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JACKWelcome back to The Association Podcast, Episode 6. I'm Jack Monroe, joined as always by Marcus Vale, Claire Donovan, Evan Cole, and Alex Mercer. We are six weeks into Season 2025, and I want to say something before we even get into it. This league has a reigning champion right now who is sitting at four and two, and the guy who lost to him in the biggest upset in league history is five and one. If that's not a setup for a great season, I don't know what is.
MARCUSYou buried the real lede, Jack. Brodie is five and one, Gooch is five and one, and BOTH of them have more wins than the guy who took Brodie's ring. That is the story. Alec won the championship and the two guys he had to beat to get there are STILL running this league like nothing happened.
CLAIREI keep coming back to this image in my head. You've got Brodie and Gooch at the top of the mountain, same place they've been for basically two seasons. And down below you've got Alec, the champion, clawing his way back up. He's not at the top yet. He's at four and two, third in the standings. The king climbed the hill, took the crown, and now he has to climb it again to prove it wasn't a fluke.
EVANThe asset picture on all three of those teams is what I'm fixated on right now. Brodie ran nineteen and two last regular season. That kind of dominance doesn't happen without incredible roster construction. He still has those pieces. Alec beating him in the playoffs was one moment. Six weeks into the next season, Brodie is five and one and Alec is four and two. The construction still favors Brodie.
ALEXLet's be completely honest about what we're watching. Brodie has twenty-one hundred and sixty-seven points scored. Gooch has twenty twenty-five. Alec has twenty seventy-one. Those three teams are operating in a completely different universe than everyone else in this league. The separation between third and fourth place is almost three hundred points scored. That's not a gap. That's a canyon.
JACKLet's start at the top and work our way down, because there is a lot to get through. Six weeks in, Brodie at five and one with twenty-one sixty-seven, Gooch at five and one with twenty twenty-five. Two teams, one game back from each other in the loss column, and a hundred and forty points separating them in scoring. Marcus, I'll give you the floor. What is the headline at the top of the standings?
MARCUSThe headline is that nothing has changed. And I don't mean that as a compliment to anyone. I mean it as a warning to the rest of the league. Brodie was nineteen and two last regular season. He was the unbeatable monster. And then Alec beat him, and everyone celebrated, and we all said oh wow the dynasty is dead, the king is gone. And then what happened? Six weeks into the next season, Brodie is five and one. He didn't rebuild. He didn't regress. He is STILL running at that pace. That nineteen and two record wasn't a lucky run. That was who this team is.
CLAIREWhat I find fascinating about Brodie's story this season is the psychological dimension of it. You lost to Alec in the playoffs. Your championship got taken. You come into Season 2025 and you have something to prove. And the response is five and one and two thousand one hundred sixty-seven points. That's not a guy who is broken. That's a guy who is motivated. The regular season championship last year was his. The ring wasn't. He's coming for the ring.
EVANThe scoring tells you everything. Twenty-one sixty-seven in six weeks is a historic pace. If you extrapolate that over a full season, Brodie is on track to score at a level that would challenge his own records from last year. The roster depth is clearly still there. The matchup wins are still there. Nothing about the construction of this team suggests he learned the wrong lesson from the playoff loss.
ALEXHere's what I want to hold Brodie accountable for, though. Five and one is great. Twenty-one sixty-seven is great. But he was nineteen and two last season. He was, and I will use this word carefully, unbeatable. And he still lost. So until we see how this team performs when it matters, when the stakes are real, when Alec or Gooch are on the other side of the bracket, the regular season dominance means something but it doesn't mean everything. Brodie knows that now.
JACKThat's a really fair point. And speaking of Gooch, because I don't want to just treat him as the number two story when he is also five and one. Gooch finished last season at eighteen and three. He was right there with Brodie all year. What happened in the playoffs? He didn't win the championship either. So you've got two teams who were one and two in the regular season last year, and neither of them is the champion. And both of them are back at five and one this year.
MARCUSGooch might be the most underrated team in this league's history and I will die on that hill. Eighteen and three. Five and one this season. Twenty twenty-five points scored already. This team is CONSISTENTLY elite and nobody ever talks about it because Brodie is always slightly ahead. If Gooch played in any other league, in any other era, he would be the guy. He is perpetually in the shadow of someone who is just a little bit better, and that is a brutal place to live.
CLAIREThe Gooch narrative is actually one of the saddest ones in this league, if you think about it. Because eighteen and three is a magnificent season. That's a legacy season in any context. But in this league, in this era, it earned him third in the playoffs at best because Alec caught lightning in a bottle and Brodie was just a hair ahead all year. Gooch is the great team that history might forget because the two stories around him are so loud.
EVANI want to look at the gap between Gooch and Alec, because the standings say four and two for Alec but the points say twenty seventy-one, which is only forty-six points behind Gooch in total scoring. That's an incredibly tight gap. Alec's four and two record might be slightly misleading in terms of how close he actually is to that five and one tier. The scoring says he belongs in the conversation.
ALEXTwo wins separate Alec from Brodie and Gooch in the standings. That's it. But I will push back on the rosy read here, because those two losses matter. Who did Alec lose to? What happened in those weeks? A four and two record for the reigning champion is fine but it's not dominant. And if Alec needs to run the table to catch the top two, that's a very different position than if he has cushion. Right now he doesn't have much cushion.
JACKGreat segue into the middle of the standings, because I think this is where things get really interesting. You've got 44Colt and Nighthawk and Natebarrett all in that three and three, four and two tier. These are the teams that are trying to crash the party. Claire, set the scene in the middle of the standings for us.
CLAIREThe middle of this standings is where the real drama lives, honestly. You've got 44Colt at four and two with seventeen ninety-six points. That's a team that finished thirteen and eight last season, made the playoffs, and is now six weeks in and still in strong position. But there's a point differential problem. The top three are all scoring at a level that Colt hasn't matched. Seventeen ninety-six is two hundred and seventy points behind Brodie. That gap in scoring usually shows up eventually in the win column.
MARCUSColt named their team Wet Like I'm Book, which is a great name and I respect it, but four and two is a soft four and two when you look at the scoring. They're fourth in the standings and sixth in points per game pace roughly. That tells me this is a team winning some close games, maybe some fortunate weeks, and the foundation isn't as solid as the record suggests.
EVANThe Nighthawk and Natebarrett situation at three and three is where I think the draft implications start to come into focus. Both of those teams are on the bubble. Last season, Nate barely made the six-team playoff field at ten and eleven. He is already at three and three, which puts him on pace to be right there on the bubble again. If you're Nate, you don't want to be scrapping for the six seed in back-to-back seasons.
ALEXI want to talk about Nighthawk specifically because Shane Gillis Alexander is a great team name and this is a team at three and three with sixteen fifty-four points scored. That's more points than BigSuge who is two and four, and more points than Nate who is also three and three. Nighthawk is actually outscoring his record a little bit. There are some bad beats in there, I'd guess. Three and three for a team putting up these numbers feels like a team that is closer to the top than the record shows.
JACKThat's a great point about hidden value in the standings. BigSuge is the first team I want to address directly in the bottom half, because Bullet Risacher is two and four with sixteen thirty-six points scored, and that points number is actually higher than both three-and-three teams. BigSuge is losing games he probably should be winning based on output alone.
MARCUSBigSuge is getting COOKED by the schedule and I feel bad saying it because the record looks rough but the points suggest a team that is not bad. Two and four. Sixteen thirty-six points. That's more than Nate at sixteen oh four. More than Nighthawk at sixteen fifty-four, roughly. This is a team that is either playing the wrong opponents every week or losing heartbreakers. Either way, two and four does not tell the full story of what Bullet Risacher is doing.
CLAIREThe tragedy of a team like BigSuge in a season like this is that even if the points suggest you're better than your record, the record is what determines your playoff fate. You can outperform your record every single week and still miss the playoffs. And if BigSuge misses the playoffs, they go to the draft lottery with the bottom four from last year, and that's a very different conversation about the future.
EVANThis is actually where the lottery picture from last year intersects with this season in a really meaningful way. The four teams in the bottom last season, michaelhebb, BigSuge, blakeeverroad, and Ctwhitaker, they're all in the lottery. Now you've got BigSuge at two and four trying to prove they can fight out of that tier. If BigSuge makes the playoffs this year, the lottery pick becomes a launch pad. If they miss, you're looking at back-to-back years of rebuilding.
ALEXBigSuge at six and fifteen last season was rough. Two and four through six weeks is not a trajectory change. It might be a slight improvement but the pace is not dramatically different. I want to see what the roster looks like and whether the lottery additions have actually moved the needle. Right now the numbers say probably not enough.
JACKLet's get into the basement, because this is where things get genuinely painful. michaelhebb's The 3rd Options is two and four with fourteen fifty-three points. That's the lowest scoring two-and-four team in the league. And then you've got Ctwhitaker1's CJ's Squad at one and five, and blakeeverroad's Ayton on Brodie's Team at one and five. These three teams are the bottom of the league through six weeks. Alex, be merciless.
ALEXOkay. Let's start with michaelhebb. Seven and fourteen last season. Two and four this season. Fourteen fifty-three points scored. That is the lowest scoring total for any team with a winning record in any pair. The 3rd Options is two and four and scoring like a one and five team. The wins are fluky. The floor of this roster is bad. I don't see a path to the playoffs if the scoring doesn't jump significantly.
MARCUSThe 3rd Options is a great name for a bad team because that's exactly what their roster is full of, third options. You've got a bunch of guys who are the third best player on their real-life teams and you're hoping they go off in the same week. That's a losing strategy. It catches you a win here and there but over a long season, you're going to get exposed. Fourteen fifty-three points in six weeks is getting exposed.
CLAIRECJ's Squad and blakeeverroad are the two stories I keep circling back to because they are the two most historically bad franchises in this league's short history. Ctwhitaker went three and eighteen last season. Three and eighteen. And now they're one and five through six weeks. That is not a team that found the answers in the offseason. That is a team that is on track for another historically bad year.
EVANI have to talk about blakeeverroad for a second because the team name alone tells you the whole story. Ayton on Brodie's Team. This is a manager who was self-aware enough to name their team after the fact that they gave up assets to Brodie and got burned. Four and seventeen last season. One and five this season. Fourteen ten points scored, which is the lowest total in the entire league. If you are going to give Brodie assets and this is the result, the name is the least of your problems.
ALEXThe blakeeverroad situation is almost Shakespearean. You make a trade. The trade helps Brodie. Brodie goes on to have the greatest regular season in league history. You go four and seventeen. You name your team after the mistake. And then the next year you're still one and five and still at the bottom of the league. The self-awareness is admirable. The results are the same regardless.
JACKI want to spend some time on what I think is actually the most interesting under-the-radar storyline of this season, which is Alec's position as champion. Because here is the deal. Alec won the championship. Full stop. He beat Brodie in the biggest upset in league history. He took the ring. And now he's the fourth team we talk about when we go in order, because Brodie and Gooch are still at the top. How do you hold the championship and simultaneously be an underdog?
CLAIREThat is the most interesting question in this league right now and I'm glad you brought it back around to it. Alec is the champion who is not yet the king. He has the ring, he has the proof, he has the moment. But the standings say he's third. The points say he's third. And the two guys he had to go through to get to that championship are still sitting at five and one. He won the battle. The war is ongoing.
MARCUSAlec's championship is one of the most complicated achievements in a young league because the sample size is so small. This is Season 2. Season 1 was Brodie's. Season 2 is Alec's. But Brodie dominated the regular season BOTH years. He's won the regular season title both times. The only thing he's missing is a championship ring. How do we define legacy in a league this young? Is Brodie the greatest team even without the ring?
EVANFrom an asset and future-value perspective, I think Alec's championship win actually gave him the most confidence to make aggressive decisions going forward. He knows his roster can peak. He went through Brodie. He proved his construction can work when it matters. Four and two right now is not a crisis. It's a team managing the long game.
ALEXHere's what I hold Alec accountable for going forward. You won the championship. Great. You are now four and two in a new season and you are already a game and a half back of two teams that both want to take that ring from you. The question isn't whether Alec CAN win. He's proven he can. The question is whether he can sustain it. Champions who can't sustain are one-hit wonders. The next four weeks will tell us a lot about whether Alec's championship was a peak or a platform.
JACKBefore we wrap, I want to do a quick round of takes. Each of you give me your bold prediction or your biggest question mark for the rest of the season. Marcus, start us off.
MARCUSBold prediction. BigSuge makes the playoffs this year. The points are there. The schedule will balance out. They put up sixteen thirty-six, they're outscoring their record, and if they can go eight and four the rest of the way or somewhere near it, they sneak into that six-team field. That would be the comeback story of the season.
CLAIREMy biggest question mark is Natebarrett5. Last season Nate went ten and eleven and barely made the playoffs. He's three and three right now, on the same pace. The question is whether this team has a ceiling that we haven't seen yet, a version of Coopa Troopas that can go on a run. Because if Nate is going to be relevant, it can't be another ten and eleven photo-finish. He needs to find something more.
EVANMy bold prediction is that the bottom of the standings is going to get ugl