Isaiah Likely's quiet Sunday, and an owner who says the rest of it is on him

A week ago I sat down to write about Isaiah Likely because he'd just had the best afternoon of anyone on the Fumblers' sheet: six catches, 99 yards, a 24-yard touchdown and a two-point conversion against It's Miller Time.

On Sunday he gave the Fumblers 2.2 points.

So this is the profile now. Not because one quiet afternoon tells you who a player is. It doesn't. But a quiet afternoon is when you find out what the people around a player think he is, and on Sunday night the people around Isaiah Likely were willing to say.

Start with the man who owns the team, because Michael Paden II didn't dress anything up. "Ashley, we got beat. No way around it," he wrote to me Sunday night.

The league scoreboard had Sports Ballers at 105.72 and the Fumblers at 54.48 when Sunday's games were done. CeeDee Lamb is the only Fumbler left to play, Monday night in Philadelphia, and the scoreboard projects the Fumblers to finish somewhere around 69. Barring a Lamb game nobody is forecasting, the first-place meeting of two 5-1 teams is going to Matt Carrico's side. It isn't final, and I won't write that it is. Michael isn't pretending, either. "CeeDee still plays Monday night but that's not changing anything," he said.

Then he said the thing owners rarely say out loud the same night. "Nobody carried us; honestly, our bench did more than our lineup, and that's on me."

I'll give the bench one sentence, because it deserves one and not a column: KC Concepcion scored 19.2 points without leaving it, more than anyone in the Fumblers' lineup has managed so far.

The rest of the lineup had a day to forget. J.J. McCarthy started at quarterback with Josh Allen on bye, Derrick Henry was held quiet, and the Giants played at Houston without Theo Johnson, who was ruled out Saturday. On paper that should have meant more of the tight end work for Likely, not less. It didn't turn into points, and I'm not going to pretend I know why. I wasn't on that sideline, and Likely hasn't talked to me for this story. What follows is what other people said about him, in their words.

Last Tuesday I asked Michael for one thing about Likely the person, not the player. The answer came back Sunday, after the quiet week instead of the loud one.

"Isaiah's the same guy every day," he said. "Two catches or six, he shows up, he works, and he's the first one happy for the next guy. After a night like this, that's exactly the guy you want in your building."

On the profile itself he wrote: "Isaiah's been everything we hoped for, and we win more than one way. Today wasn't his day, it happens."

Here's my take. Anybody can say nice things about a tight end after 99 yards. I put more stock in it when an owner says it on the night his team got beat and he has every reason to go looking for someone to blame. Michael went looking, and the person he named was himself.

The other side of the field saw Likely the same way. Carrico, who owns Sports Ballers, answered my questions on the record late Sunday, apologizing for the hour. "Five and one against five and one, first place against first place, the game everybody should have circled," he said. "What I respect about the Fumblers: they score. Most points in the league, they earned every one, and Isaiah Likely is a real player."

What decided it, in his view? "Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and the fact that we brought everybody." He's not wrong about the first part; Smith-Njigba's 26.8 was the biggest number anyone put up in the game. And he wasn't shy about Monday. "Lamb still plays Monday night, and they need fifty-one from him. I like where I'm sitting." He also asked me to tell Michael thanks for having them, which I'm passing along here.

Now an honest follow-up on my own opinion. My view going into Sunday was that a team that wins on its tight end hasn't solved its receivers. Sunday was the other side of that coin. When Likely didn't get going, nobody in the starting lineup picked it up, and the best receiving day on the roster sat on the bench.

Michael sounds like he's thinking the same thing. "Tory and KC are going to keep getting chances, and KC gave us 19 tonight," he said, and in a separate note, "the kid's going to get his chances." I watched Concepcion line up second behind Lamb at a walkthrough on Oct. 20 and called it a look, not a role. An owner saying "chances" on the record is still not a lineup, but it is more than I had a week ago. He drew his own line on everything past that: "I don't talk about moves until they're official."

And one more thing that belongs on the record. On Oct. 20 I wrote that Justin Fields was taking first-team reps and the Fumblers weren't saying why. Michael says he answered me by email that Tuesday morning, after the piece ran. He gave me the answer again Sunday: "Josh was on bye this week, that's why Justin was taking the first-team reps then." Fields has since been released, and McCarthy signed. "J.J. stepped in with Josh on bye and he's the guy behind Josh now," Michael said. "Josh is our quarterback, period."

So the Fumblers wake up Monday still a 5-1 team, and very likely a 5-2 team by Monday night, with their quarterback back from his bye and a young receiver their owner keeps bringing up.

Lamb plays Monday for a game the Fumblers almost certainly can't get back. On Tuesday, Isaiah Likely shows up for work. If his owner is right about him, that's the more important of the two.