The Marauders reached week nine as the league's only unbeaten club. They had won their first three games by an average of twenty-seven points, and their next four by an average of seven — the record held while the margin underneath it thinned.
Then it ran out. At the two-and-five Sentinels, favored by thirteen, they lost by six. At home to the Nightshift, giving twelve, they lost by five. Andre Kearse threw it thirty-two times for 108 yards in the first loss — under three and a half an attempt, from a reigning MVP who has averaged nearly eight all season — and Lorenzo Hobbeson ran for sixty-eight yards in each of the two.
A year ago, asked about the club that let him go, Kearse called that one just another game. Asked what these two were, he answered with three fewer words: “Two games.”
The board is already up for week eleven — Marauders by eleven, at the Timberjacks — which is a bigger number than they carried into any of the wins by twenty. On the month of margins, not the record, I am taking the points.