I scored 117.84 in Week 8 and lost. I scored 120.30 in Week 9 and won. Almost the same total, very different results.
Week 8: two zeros
Week 8 felt unlucky. Tony Pollard gave me 28.7 and Brock Bowers added 28.2, but I still lost 117.84–143.58. Zay Flowers and Omar Cooper Jr. both finished with zero in my lineup.
The Flowers game went wrong almost immediately. Lamar Jackson hurt his thumb on Baltimore's first offensive play, and backup Tyler Huntley later left with a toe injury too. Flowers finished without a catch.
With Omar, I honestly don't know what happened. He had scored 22.3 and 22.5 in the previous two weeks, both while outside my starting lineup. Then he was in the lineup for Week 8 and gave me zero. That's the part that felt unlucky to me.
Pollard and Bowers weren't the only ones contributing. Chase Brown had 16.1 and Ladd McConkey had 12.6. But those two big games at the top didn't make up for everything else.
Week 9: the defense helped
For Week 9, I chose the Giants defense because of who they were playing: Philadelphia. New York had seven sacks in a 19–11 win, and the defense gave me 14 fantasy points.
Spencer Shrader added another 16. Bowers had 22.3, so those three spots did a lot of the work.
The lineup wasn't identical to Week 8. Breece Hall, Caleb Douglas, Woody Marks and the Giants were in the lineup that counted; Pollard, Germie Bernard, Dallas Goedert and Cleveland were out of it. Omar stayed in and scored 13.8 this time. Flowers had 5.3, while McConkey was the zero.
I won 120.30–73.70. My score barely changed from the week before, but my opponent's did. Week 8 was two huge games and two zeros. Week 9 was Bowers again, a better result from Omar, and a lot of help from my kicker and defense.
Fantasy scores and lineups are from my Sleeper league records.