I built a column around Bryce Young. Melanie Patterson never looked past Joe Burrow, and Sunday he gave Dandy the lead

I had this column written a week ago. It was about Bryce Young, and it went like this: the quarterback did his job against the Dragons, threw for 281 yards and two touchdowns, and Dandy lost anyway, so stop looking at the quarterback and start looking at the people around him.

Sunday night Melanie Patterson's answers to the questions I had been sending her since that loss came in all together, and then I read the league scoreboard. Both told me the same thing. I had a fair question about the wrong man.

Dandy lead the Inexperienced Blitz 110.58 to 98.46 with Monday night still to come. Burrow, back from the bye, started and scored 28.08 points, the most on either roster. Tee Higgins added 23.8. Young spent the afternoon on the bench.

"Joe played, and that was never in doubt," Patterson told me. "Four touchdowns. Tee had a very good day."

I had asked her twice whether it would be Burrow or Young. Her answer could not have been plainer: "Burrow. When Joe is healthy he's my quarterback; that was never a question for me."

So let me be plain, too. The idea that Young had earned another start was mine. It was a reasonable thing to think after one good game, and I still think he played well against the Dragons. But it was never the owner's idea, and I let a strong Sunday grow into a quarterback debate that lived mostly in my notebook.

"Bryce did what a backup is supposed to do on a bye week, and I was glad of it," Patterson said. "Bryce is my backup, and a good one, and nothing about today changes that."

That is kinder to him than it may sound. For two weeks I worried that Young was the underheard man in this story, the one who did everything right and wore the loss anyway. His owner doesn't see a man wronged. She sees a backup who did exactly what he is there for, and she said so with something close to gratitude. I can live with being wrong about the debate if that is how she sees him.

Now the harder part, for me: the pattern.

I called the 61.50 against Injury Prone and the 96.90 against the Dragons a slide, and I said the skill spots were the real problem. Patterson doesn't accept the first half of that. "Two bad weeks aren't a pattern to me. One was a bye week," she said. "I didn't change the team, and I'm not going to."

Two games is a small sample. I knew it when I wrote the outline, and Sunday is a third game that doesn't fit my theory very well. With Burrow and Higgins back from Cincinnati's bye, the same roster cleared 110. The bye-week explanation looks a good deal better tonight than I gave it credit for.

I'm not letting go of all of it. Chris Olave and Allgeier were quiet again on the scoreboard, a second straight modest week from the receiver and the running back. Patterson calls Olave "steady," and she has heard my argument and isn't interested: "One week from Tyler and the receivers isn't a problem I'm going to chase." She sets the lineup, and the lineup is ahead. I'll keep watching it, she'll keep not chasing it, and November will tell us which of us was looking at the right thing.

One thing I did see right. Last week I watched Grover Stewart working as the third man in the defensive line rotation and wrote that I didn't know how he got there. Patterson filled it in. The line, she said, is "Leonard Williams, Maxx Crosby and Grover Stewart," and Stewart is "my third man on the line, which is what I brought him in for." Kalif Raymond, the veteran I wrote about when he signed, is "a receiver who can return, in that order." He sat on Sunday.

Across the field, Echo Paden had written to me last week with a warning and a compliment. "Bryce Young is the one I'd watch," Paden said, and Dandy's two low weeks didn't count for much: "Melanie always has her team ready." The second half held up. The quarterback the Blitz had to deal with turned out to be the one who never lost the job.

Patterson's own worry going in was the other side of the ball. "What worried me about the Blitz was how much they score, and we held up," she said.

They have held up so far. The Blitz still have Dallas Goedert on Monday night, and the league scoreboard projects it close. Patterson isn't counting anything yet: "We haven't won yet; the Blitz have a man on Monday night." Paden, for the record, wrote last week, "I want this one."

Whatever Monday brings, I learned something about this team I should have known going in. Melanie Patterson doesn't run Dandy on two-week moods. She knew who her quarterback was long before I asked, she didn't move off it when the story got interesting, and on Sunday her quarterback handed her the lead. My column asked where Dandy go from here. Her answer is that they go where she already meant them to.