After the Tide, the road: Injury Prone lose the Matchup of the Week, and every Delta rival gets them at home

Joey McVey has a line he uses after a loss, and on Sunday night, after the Crimson Tide beat Injury Prone 108.1 to 91.8, he sent me the update on it himself.

"I said we don't lose two in a row. We just did," McVey wrote. "We don't lose three."

That sentence is about to be tested by the whole Delta, and the schedule has set the test up about as awkwardly as it could. Injury Prone are 4-3 and still on top of the division. Their next three games are all against Delta teams, and all three are on the road: at the Strikers, at the Inexperienced Blitz, at the Dragons. Every rival gets the leader on its own field.

First, Sunday. Both owners agree on what decided it. Tony Pollard ran for 129 yards and three touchdowns and scored 35 points, nearly double anybody on the Injury Prone side. "Tony Pollard put 35 on me," McVey wrote. Jon Rudolph, who owns the Tide, said the same thing from the other bench: "Walker and Nabers did their part, but Pollard was the one today, and Tucker."

My colleagues on the two beats have the rest of the game covered. Ben Carter has the Tide's day and Jenna Park has the Injury Prone tight end story, and I'm not going to retell either. I want the part that sits between them.

Injury Prone played Sunday without both of their regular starting wide receivers. Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston play for the Chargers, and the Chargers had the week off. "Ladd and Quentin were on the bye today, so Godwin and Lane got the starts," McVey wrote. Chris Godwin and Lane came up with less than nine points between them. The players who did take the field for him mostly delivered: Matthew Stafford, Jonathan Taylor and Kyren Williams scored about 18 apiece. "My guys who played showed up," McVey wrote, and the scoreboard backs him.

Here's my take. Injury Prone didn't lose this game because they're fragile, whatever the name invites people to say. They lost because a bye took their receivers on the same afternoon Pollard had the biggest day on the field. Only one of those problems travels with them, and it isn't the bye.

I owe you one admission. When I sketched this matchup last week, I leaned Injury Prone at home, on one condition: a wide receiver had to show up. The regulars never got the chance. I was wrong about the result, and the condition turned out to be the right one to watch for a reason I didn't see coming.

My colleague Trevor Banks, who covers the Tide's division, wrote the Tide's half of this Matchup of the Week before kickoff. The game has been played since. I'm running his section as he wrote it, trimmed, because the question he asked still holds.

Tide section, by Trevor Banks

Start with the number the Crimson Tide would rather you skip. Six games, 660.9 points scored, 706.9 allowed. They are 4-2 and tied for first in Tri-Valley, and they have been outscored by 46 points. A team that lives like that is either tougher than its scoring says or luckier. My answer: mostly lucky, but not only lucky.

Here is the "not only." Last week at the Strikers, the Tide won by 3.16, and two men made the difference. Kenneth Walker III ran for 128 yards and two touchdowns. Malik Nabers caught 12 passes for 165 yards. Patrick Mahomes threw an interception, the starting tight end scored nothing at all, and the Tide still won. That is a lineup with two stars and a lot of thin spots, and I think it is a real team on its best days and a fragile one on its worst.

If Injury Prone hang 100-plus on the Tide, Walker and Nabers will have to be that good again, and I would not bet on it happening twice in a row.

The road ahead is the real story. After Injury Prone the Tide go to the Wild Cards, then host Dandy. My take: the Tide's season is decided in these two weeks, and they are doing it with two stars and a defense that has not shown up.

Back to me. Trevor was right that Walker and Nabers wouldn't carry it twice; they gave the Tide about 22 points between them on Sunday, not 51. He was wrong only about who would make up the difference, and Injury Prone never got to 100. Rudolph knows the season number, too. "The points-against number, I know it," he wrote. "A win's a win, and I'd rather be the team that wins close than the one that loses big." Sunday wasn't close. The Tide are 5-2 and headed to the Wild Cards. "That puts us right where we want to be," Rudolph wrote, "and we'll worry about Dandy after that."

Now the Delta, which is where this loss actually lands.

Injury Prone are the only team in the division with a winning record tonight, and Monday night could change that. The Blitz trail Dandy with Dallas Goedert still to play for Philadelphia, and the league scoreboard projects that one to finish within about two points. If Goedert has the night, the Blitz are 4-3 and level with Injury Prone. The Dragons lead the Annihilators comfortably with one Annihilators player left. The Strikers lost to the Wild Cards and are 2-5.

Then the division turns inward for three weeks, and it doesn't turn evenly. The Blitz play all three Delta games at home. Injury Prone play all three away. The owners have noticed.

"Injury Prone here next week, the Dragons here after that, then at the Blitz," Strikers owner Mike Paden wrote Sunday night. "Win those three and we're in it. Lose them and we're not." He didn't dress up the Wild Cards loss, either: "I've been in this league too long to promise anything in October, and too long to quit in October either."

Echo Paden, writing before her Sunday against Dandy, put the Blitz plan in three words: "win at home." She also wouldn't call it a two-team race. "I'd never count the Strikers or the Dragons out," she wrote.

Jon Paden won't take the spoiler label for the Dragons. "We're not playing spoiler, we're playing for ourselves," he wrote. "Contender is something you earn on the field, not something you say into a microphone." Fair enough. I'll keep the microphone pointed at the field.

Here's what I think. A week ago this division read like one leader and three chasers. After Sunday it reads like a four-team argument, with the leader spending the next three weeks as everybody's home game. I love it when the standings and the shape of a race stop agreeing, and they just did.

McVey, for his part, isn't asking for sympathy. "The three Delta road games?" he wrote. "Bring them."