Crew MNF: Bears to Determine MWM Semifinal

The MWM Semifinal between 🦞 Doug and ⏪ RTRO comes down to three Bears tonight, and five more Crew games are not over yet. One of them is 🧪 CLI’s, which needs a comeback to beat 💨 LTF, even though 💨 LTF has now started an inactive Breece Hall in back-to-back weeks!!!

🦞 Doug trails by 21.1. It has Caleb Williams at quarterback and D'Andre Swift at flex. ⏪ RTRO has Luther Burden III at flex, a Bears receiver. So 🦞 Doug needs the Bears quarterback and running back to outscore the Bears receiver by 21.1.

Williams and Swift have beaten Burden by more than 21.1 in eight of ten weeks. Last week Burden scored 24.9, and the two still cleared it by 1.8. Tonight’s projections have it closer: 34.9 for the two of them, 12.7 for Burden.

A comeback puts 🦞 Doug in its third straight MWM Final, which no franchise has done, after losing the last two to ⚜️ K&G and 🧪 CLI. It has never won an MWM. If ⏪ RTRO holds on, the MWM Final is between two past MWM winners, and the winner joins 🧪 CLI as the only two-time MWM winners.

Every @BotHasStat number tonight comes from 200,000 simulated Monday nights, drawn from each player’s weekly scores since 2024 and scaled to tonight’s projections.

@BotHasStat: 55% chance of a 🦞 Doug comeback

🎣 DTTW leads by 37.9 with a kicker to come. 🍆 ZJ’s last starter is Rome Odunze, whose best start in Crew history is 19.4, so the other MWM Semifinal almost certainly belongs to 🎣 DTTW. It will be 3–0 in MWM games, and it goes into next week’s MWM Final looking for its second MWM, after the 2020 MWM, 133.3 to 123.8. If 🦞 Doug comes back, the MWM Final is a rematch of last season’s Championship, 114.2 to 103.4.

🎣 DTTW vs 🦞 Doug

The same two Bears play for 🦞 Doug twice tonight. Here it trails by 1.7, and 🎣 DTTW has only that kicker left. A win makes 🦞 Doug 6–2 and puts it on a five-game winning streak. It could also win this regular season matchup while losing the MWM Semifinal, which @BotHasStat puts at 45%.

@BotHasStat: 97% chance of a 🦞 Doug comeback

🧪 CLI vs 💨 LTF

More Bears. 🧪 CLI trails by 3.5 with Colston Loveland at tight end, and 💨 LTF has the Bears D/ST and a kicker, also a Bear. The Bears defense has started six Crew games in week 8, and it scored 2.3 a game in them. A win would end 💨 LTF’s three-game losing streak, and it has not beaten 🧪 CLI since 2023.

It would also be a win despite a ghastly lineup. 💨 LTF started Breece Hall at running back on Sunday, inactive for the second week in a row. That is its 17th inactive start, extending its lead for the most in Crew history, three clear of 🕳️ TBH: a record that looks impossible to catch. The last franchise to start the same inactive player in back-to-back weeks was also 💨 LTF, with Alvin Kamara in weeks 16 and 17 of 2024, the same two weeks it was starting an inactive Theo Johnson, who was on injured reserve, for the third and fourth weeks running.

@BotHasStat: 27% chance of a 🧪 CLI comeback

🍆 ZJ vs ⚜️ K&G

🍆 ZJ lost its MWM Semifinal, but it should still win tonight. It trails by 0.9, and Odunze has scored at least that in 34 of his 35 weeks on Crew rosters. A win makes it 6–2 and puts it on a five-game winning streak. ⚜️ K&G, which has spent the season facing the week’s best scores, would lose this one to a Bears receiver’s first catch.

@BotHasStat: 97% chance of a 🍆 ZJ comeback

🦅 Pwns vs 🕳️ TBH

🦅 Pwns leads by 0.08 points, and 🕳️ TBH is done. Zach Charbonnet is in 🦅 Pwns’s flex for his first start for it, and the only way he loses this game is by going below zero. Of 6,597 running back starts in Crew history, 19 have scored below 0 fantasy points, which is 0.29%. Charbonnet’s own lowest score in 44 Crew weeks is 0.4.

So 🦅 Pwns has a decision to make before kickoff: start Charbonnet and risk the 0.29% chance of a negative performance and a loss tonight, or bench him, take a knee, win by 0.08, and hope no stat correction moves it after the fact. ESPN has changed a Crew score with a late stat correction only 13 times, and never by a full point.

If 🦞 Doug, 🍆 ZJ and 🦅 Pwns all win, three franchises share the league lead at 6–2.

@BotHasStat: 0.3% chance of a 🕳️ TBH comeback

👨‍🍳 M&R vs ⚽ TPC

For four straight Mondays 👨‍🍳 M&R went into the night protecting a lead, and it went 2–2. Tonight it trails ⚽ TPC by 47.2 with Jaxon Smith-Njigba and the Seahawks D/ST. In the 31 weeks both were on Crew rosters, they combined for 47.2 once: week 2 this season, when Smith-Njigba scored 42.7 for 👨‍🍳 M&R. He has to put 👨‍🍳 M&R on his back again. He scores 28.2 a game for it, against 18.3 for everyone else, and tonight it needs something close to that 42.7.

@BotHasStat: 5% chance of an 👨‍🍳 M&R comeback