Pete M. spent seven weeks in 2021 watching Jalen Hurts do things and the rest of the season finding out whether it would hold. Hurts led the Naberhood roster in scoring in six of the first seven weeks and put up 193 points across that run. Then he went quiet, and the team went with him: three losses in five weeks through November, a roster leaning on AJ Dillon and Ryan Succop and a week where Cam Newton was the best thing on it. Cale S.'s Caleboys, meanwhile, went 12-3 and scored 1,859, second in the league, and were the sensible pick.
Then Pete M. claimed the Chicago defense off the wire in week seventeen, started it that afternoon, and won a championship with it. He had ridden that same defense through all of 2020, twelve starts across fifteen weeks, and let it go at the end of the year. In 2021 he owned it for one week. They scored 25, the highest score on his side of the final and the best week any Naberhood defense had all season, against 2 from the Caleboys' Cowboys. He lost four of the six positions. Quarterback, running back, receiver and kicker all went to Cale S., by 22 points between them. The defense went to Pete M. by 23, and the game went to Pete M. by 7.
He had one other defense on the roster that week. The Packers sat on the bench for 8. Start them instead and the Naberhood score is 93 against 103, and Cale S. wins his first. In nineteen finals this is the only one where the defense is the only position the champion won by more than the final margin. Cale S. has now lost three. No franchise got more out of the position across that season than his did, and the one that mattered scored two.
Week 17. Lineup order is points scored in the final. Both scales are capped at the 90th percentile of this game, PAR 12.2 and points 26.4, and shared across all twenty ribbons: never normalised per row.
10 different players led the roster across 17 weeks. The most any one man led was 6 (Jalen Hurts). A defence led the team 1 time.
| Wk | Led the roster | Pos | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 31.40 |
| 2 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 23.70 |
| 3 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 25.80 |
| 4 | Tyreek Hill | WR | 36.60 |
| 5 | Mark Andrews | TE | 30.70 |
| 6 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 27.15 |
| 7 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 26.90 |
| 8 | A.J. Brown | WR | 21.50 |
| 9 | Joe Burrow | QB | 12.20 |
| 10 | AJ Dillon | RB | 24.80 |
| 11 | Ryan Succop | K | 13.00 |
| 12 | AJ Dillon | RB | 15.00 |
| 13 | Joe Burrow | QB | 22.60 |
| 14 | Cam Newton | QB | 17.60 |
| 15 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 32.60 |
| 16 | Damien Harris | RB | 28.30 |
| 17 | Bears | DEF | 25.00 |
| Player | Pos | Starts | Points | PAR | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jalen Hurts | QB | 13 | 304 | -6.0 | |
| Cam Newton | QB | 1 | 18 | -6.5 | |
| Joe Burrow | QB | 3 | 46 | -14 | |
| Damien Harris | RB | 11 | 171 | 37 | |
| Ezekiel Elliott | RB | 16 | 197 | 4 | |
| AJ Dillon | RB | 8 | 92 | 0 | |
| Chris Carson | RB | 4 | 43 | -3 | |
| Dontrell Hilliard | RB | 1 | 1 | -11 | |
| Tyreek Hill | WR | 16 | 186 | 43 | |
| Keenan Allen | WR | 12 | 119 | 14 | |
| Jaylen Waddle | WR | 7 | 56 | -5.7 | |
| Darnell Mooney | WR | 4 | 24 | -10 | |
| A.J. Brown | WR | 11 | 85 | -15 | |
| Terry McLaurin | WR | 12 | 84 | -26 | |
| Mark Andrews | TE | 15 | 178 | 60 | |
| Dan Arnold | TE | 2 | 7 | -4.1 | |
| Michael Badgley | K | 1 | 9 | 2 | |
| Ryan Succop | K | 16 | 126 | -5 | |
| Bears | DEF | 1 | 25 | 14 | |
| Packers | DEF | 2 | 33 | 5.3 | |
| Cardinals | DEF | 7 | 81 | 4.8 | |
| Steelers | DEF | 6 | 60 | -4.5 | |
| Bengals | DEF | 1 | 2 | -8 |
The champion finished fifth of ten in points scored. A title does not require the best offence and this season is the proof of it.
The regular season. Best week 147 in week 4, worst 81 in week 9. The narrowest win was week 1, by 4.3. They posted the highest score in the league 1 time all season.
The runner-up. Caleboys, 12-3, 1,859 points, averaged 124 a week in the regular season and scored 103 in the final, −21 off their own pace.