Two Carricos, one Monday night: the father leads and doesn't trust it, the son trails and needs Dak

Mike Carrico's team is ahead. He would like you to know he doesn't think that will last.

"We put up 77.3 and every one of our guys has played," the Fifth Quarter owner wrote to me Sunday night, on the record. "IR Kings are at 71.2 with three men going Monday night, so we're likely on the wrong side of this one, and I'll own that."

Most owners won't concede a lead until the scoreboard makes them. This one conceded his before the other side had finished playing. The league scoreboard agrees with him, for what a projection is worth: the IR Kings still have Javonte Williams in the Dallas backfield and Jalen Carter and Cooper DeJean on the Philadelphia defense, and they are projected to finish around 95. Fifth Quarter has nobody left. Its 77.3 is a number that can only get passed.

But that is only half of what Monday night means in the Carrico family, and the other half is the better story.

Across the league, Jeff Carrico's Kamehameha trails All Strong 106.02 to 87.3. Jeff has one player left, and it is Dak Prescott, in the same Dallas-Philadelphia game. The projection has Kamehameha finishing about a point and a half short. A point and a half. If you read this column last week, you know that number lives in this family's house now.

So here is the arrangement, as best I can work it out. On Monday night, one game in Philadelphia decides both of them. The son needs the Dallas quarterback to have a big night. The father needs Javonte Williams to have a quiet one, and two Eagles defenders to spend the evening chasing and not catching. I can't promise those wishes line up. My guess is a Dallas night that runs through Prescott's arm, and not through its backfield, is the one game in which Mike and Jeff Carrico root for the same thing. That's my read, not theirs. Neither of them said it.

Last week I wrote about Mike losing to his son by a point and three quarters in Week 6, Kamehameha's first win after an 0-5 start. I said then, plainly, that the story was one side, because Jeff hadn't answered. Now he has, and I owe it to him to say what changed.

What changed is the frame. I wrote that piece as a father carrying a sting lightly. That part holds; Mike's notes this week are as patient as the first. "Yes, Jeff and I texted after that game and talked on the phone Tuesday night," he told me. "He earned it by a point and three quarters, and I owe him a beer."

But Jeff doesn't treat it as a sweet family moment. He treats it as a win, and he is keeping score.

"After 0-5, that win felt like somebody finally turned the lights back on," Jeff told me, on the record. "Getting it against my dad, by under two points? That's the one you frame. I love the man and I'm going to bring it up every chance I get."

I asked whether he'd heard from his father. "He said he was proud of me and not to get used to it," Jeff said. "That's Dad in one text."

I think that is the best sentence anyone has given me this season.

I asked Jeff how he came into this league. He passed it back. "Ask my dad. He tells it better, and longer, and with more embellishment than I would." I asked what he learned from his father. "How to give somebody a hard time and still hug them after. Losing gracefully I'm still working on."

And Thanksgiving, which Mike brought up first, after Week 6, and which Jeff has clearly been rehearsing. "He's going to tell everybody a point and three quarters is a coin flip," Jeff said. "It isn't. It's a win, and I'm saying so before grace."

Mike, for his part, wasn't giving up the history. Asked how long the two Carrico clubs have been in the league together, he told me to take the exact years from the league's record book, not his memory. Then he volunteered the one year his memory has kept: "I can tell you Kamehameha beat us in the 2010 Baller Bowl and I haven't forgotten it."

That was sixteen years ago. A son who frames the wins, a father who files the losses away. I'd say they're more alike than either would admit, but I'd like both of them to keep answering my emails.

As for the football, which is what Mike wanted to talk about first. Kyle Monangai sat again; the toe kept him out, "as I figured it would on a short week," Mike said. Alvin Kamara started at running back. Ollie Gordon II, behind him, had the bigger day, 16.8 points on the bench. Jaylin Noel, who scored 21.38 on the bench in Week 6, got the flex this time and had a quiet one. "That's football, and he's a young player I believe in," Mike said. I said last week I'd mention Noel's bench number once and leave it. I'll add only that the week Noel got the flex was the week he didn't produce, and that is the whole case against second-guessing a lineup in one sentence.

The defensive line looked like the one Mike drew up. Aidan Hutchinson was back from his bye. "Having Aidan Hutchinson back makes it a different line," Mike said. "He got a sack and the Lions won, and this old Detroit kid enjoyed that." Gracen Halton, the rookie he added off the free-agent list before Week 6, is in the rotation behind him.

None of it was enough to feel safe, and Mike doesn't. Fifth Quarter and the IR Kings both came in 2-4. A Fifth Quarter win keeps the Diablo in view. A loss puts them in a hole that gets deeper with three straight division games coming.

My own view: Mike is probably right about the projection, and I wouldn't bet against him. But I watched this team lose its last game by less than two points, to his own son, in a week that wasn't settled until Monday night. I'm not ready to write the ending to this one either.

Jeff Carrico will be watching the same game, for a different man. And Mike already told me how he plans to handle the week after.

"He's got a game still going into Monday too," Mike said, "so I'll let him have the last word after that."