The 118.82 was a Sunday, not a season: the Annihilators fall to 2-5 and take the long road to Dandy

By the time Dallas and Philadelphia were done Monday night, there was nothing left for Jihaad Campbell to save, and nobody in the Annihilators' building had asked him to save it.

Campbell was the last Annihilator still playing in Week 7, and the linebacker finished with one point. The Cowboys won 38-21 in Philadelphia, the league closed the books, and the final read Dragons 129.4, Annihilators 79. That is a loss by just over 50 points, and it puts the Annihilators at 2-5.

Jason Bielski had done that arithmetic before kickoff. Asked Monday what he needed from Campbell, he answered like a man who already knew.

"Tonight I just want Jihaad to play his game; nobody's asking a linebacker to find fifty-four points," he said. "It's a loss, and we go to Dandy."

I'll give him this much: it is about as honest a sentence as an owner has handed me this season. It also closes a question I have been carrying around for a week.

The question was whether the 118.82 the Annihilators put on the Inexperienced Blitz in Week 6 was a turn. I would not call it one, because one big Sunday is one big Sunday, and Jason, to his credit, wouldn't either. "A turn? No," he told me Sunday night. Monday settled it for both of us. Through the first five weeks this offense averaged 78.8 points. Against the Dragons it scored 79. That is not a slump. That is the old team, back where it has usually lived.

I owe readers one correction of my own thinking. Last week I wrote that this game would come down to one defensive stop. It never came down to anything. The Dragons were not in a game that needed a stop, and I would rather say that here than leave an old headline sitting there looking clever.

What decided it was the Dragons' backfield. Jon Paden, who owns the Dragons and spent the whole weekend refusing to call anything early, did not hedge on who won it.

"The backs carried us," Paden said Monday. "Quinshon Judkins and Rhamondre Stevenson won that game, and the defense did its part."

Then he said something I did not expect from the winning side. "What 128 tells me is that we can win a week when one spot in the lineup gives us almost nothing. What it doesn't tell me is that the spot is fixed. One big number doesn't settle anything."

I would hang that last line in both locker rooms. Jon has a weak spot he isn't naming, and so does Jason, who told me Sunday the surprise of the day was a zero out of the flex and has not said whose. I'm not going to guess at it.

Lena Ortiz, who covers the Dragons for the East Bay Gridiron, read the game from the other side and was careful about it. Her view, and she was fine with her name on it: this is not a fixed Dragons defense. Fred Warner, Bobby Okereke and Jessie Bates III did the work, and the front has not shown itself yet. She also pointed out that the Annihilators' receivers had quiet Sundays, which, she said, tells you something about Sunday's lineup as well as about the Dragons. I think she is right on both halves, and the second half is the one the Annihilators should sit with.

That brings me to Josh Jacobs. He came back to the active roster last week and scored from the Annihilators' bench while D'Andre Swift kept the running back spot. Jason doesn't second-guess it. "D'Andre had the spot and he scored seventeen too, so I'd set it the same way again," he said. "Josh's first week back was never going to be about where he sat." For one week, that is a fair answer. It gets harder to give every Sunday that Jacobs scores and sits, and that is a question I will keep asking.

So here is where the Annihilators are: 2-5, at the bottom of the Tri-Valley, three games behind the Wild Cards, with a trip to Dandy next. Nicole Hart, who covers Dandy, asked me Monday what her team should worry about. I told her not to worry about the team that played the Dragons. Worry about the 118.82, the day Kirk Cousins threw for 313 yards and Swift ran for two touchdowns. That team exists. It just doesn't show up every week, and nobody, including its owner, has shown me how to call it in advance.

A turn is two good Sundays in a row. The Annihilators have one, sitting by itself between a lot of quiet ones. Jason said it's a loss and they go to Dandy. He is right on both counts. I will believe in the turn when I see it twice.