The scoreboard is clean. Week 5 hasn't started. “Cold Brew and The Regrettables Open the Slate” (six days ago) applies again: the board stays frozen until Sunday afternoon, when all six matchups settle in the early window. Until then, the standings from Week 4 are the only numbers that matter — and they are the same numbers that mattered when the desk closed last week. Six teams at 2-1. Cold Brew Crew leads on points for. The logjam holds. No schedule-context advantages have been supplied for this week: no short-week travel, no bye returns, no marked kickoff windows. The schedule document is blank. Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern, the reading begins.
The Schedule (schedule-read)
Waiting, that's the reading. The league's Week 5 slate is entirely in the early Sunday window. No team enters on a short week, no team returns from a bye, and no team plays consecutive road games — because the schedule context claims are absent. Without those markers, the column is a placeholder: six games, all pending, all at the same kickoff. The model says the top of the table is tight enough that a single Sunday will sort it. That's the only forecast the numbers allow.
