Twelve points from Dallas Goedert: the Blitz trail Dandy, and Echo Paden says ask her Tuesday

Echo Paden has set a time for the real answer, and it isn't tonight.

"It isn't over yet," the Inexperienced Blitz owner wrote me Sunday night, a few hours after Dandy left Sunday's games with a 110.58 to 98.46 lead on the league scoreboard. "Dallas Goedert plays Monday night in Philadelphia and we're down twelve, so ask me Tuesday for the real answer."

Fair enough. I'll ask Tuesday. But for a week I heard nothing from the owner of the team I cover, and on Sunday night she said a lot: answers to three rounds of my questions from last week, dated Tuesday, plus a paragraph on the Dandy game. All on the record. Read together, they sound like a scouting report on the one man the Blitz have left.

The math is short. Goedert is the only Blitz starter still to play. He needs 12.13 points for the Blitz to win outright, and the scoreboard projects him for just under ten. Dandy have nobody left. Whatever happens Monday in Philadelphia, Melanie Patterson can only watch.

Here is what Echo wrote about Goedert last Tuesday, when he was simply the fill-in with the regular starter off on Jacksonville's bye: "Dallas is our tight end this week, and I'm glad it's him. Dallas has been doing this a long time; he knows where to sit down against a zone and he catches what's thrown to him. Nobody had to sell me on that."

She wrote that six days before the game came down to him. He came off the injury report this week after a full practice on his knee, so the only question left is the one Monday night answers.

Echo didn't dress up Sunday. She picked out the player who carried it.

"The thing that told me the most was Bucky Irving," she wrote. "Two touchdowns in Carolina. That's who this team is when it's right."

Irving's 23.5 points led the Blitz lineup, with Jordan Love and Bijan Robinson solid behind him. It wasn't a bad Sunday for this offense. It ran into Joe Burrow.

"Joe Burrow's day I expected," Echo wrote. "I just didn't want it."

Burrow scored 28.08 for Dandy and Tee Higgins added 23.8, and that Cincinnati pair accounts for almost half of Dandy's total. Nicole Hart, who covers Dandy, told me Sunday afternoon that she thought Dandy's biggest problem was the skill spots, not the quarterback. Fair read going in. Mine tonight: Higgins answered it, at least for one Sunday.

Echo also found something she liked. "The day I didn't expect was Kamari Lassiter getting a sack," she wrote. "I'll take that every week."

I've spent a lot of this month on Jonas Sanker, the safety who came in as a free agent and played nearly every snap with Derwin James out. I wrote that story without hearing from the team. Now I have Echo's side, and what stands out is how hard she works not to oversell him.

"Two points in the box score isn't a big day and I'm not going to call it one," she wrote of his first week. "But he was out there for almost every snap two days after he got here, and nobody had to pull him off the field. That tells me a lot about him."

She gave the credit to Sanker and the defensive staff: "What I noticed with Jonas is that he asked a lot of questions and he didn't try to do too much. He played what he knew, lined up where he was supposed to, and let the rest come."

On Sunday, Sanker scored 8 points, four times his first week. I won't call that a breakout either. She's set the tone, and I think she's right.

The question I kept circling was whether a fill-in job turns into a permanent one. Echo answered it straight. "When Derwin's healthy, Derwin is Derwin. He's the leader back there, and that makes the whole room better. Jonas doesn't go anywhere; he gets to learn next to him." James's Chargers were on bye this week anyway, and she wrote that "the extra week can only help the hamstring." She goes by what the Chargers report. So do I.

Patterson, Dandy's owner, answered me Sunday night too, and she wasn't celebrating.

"Tonight we're ahead, a hundred and ten to ninety-eight, and your Blitz still have Dallas Goedert on Monday night, so I'm not counting anything yet," she wrote. "They played us hard. That's all."

That's an owner coming off two straight losses who knows a Sunday-night lead isn't a win.

Here's what's riding on it. Injury Prone, the team the Blitz have been chasing, lost to Crimson Tide on Sunday. If Goedert gets there, the Blitz go to 4-3 and draw level. If he doesn't, they drop to 3-4 with the Dragons coming in next Sunday.

One line from last Tuesday's note keeps coming back to me. Echo was talking about the Monday night before, the loss to the Annihilators. "None of my guys were even playing," she wrote, "and I still sat there watching like the score might change. It didn't."

This Monday, one of her guys is playing. The score can change. It needs 12.13 points, and it needs Dallas Goedert to be exactly who she said he was.