Julius Peppers’ big game helped The Thamesmen to a big lead Sunday.

A week after scoring 100 points and losing, the Outlaws of the Marsh took the reverse route to seeming defeat this week, putting up only 69.5 points thanks to a subpar game from Philip Rivers and a goose egg from Mike Sims-Walker. They lead by 1.5 points and have Roman Harper left in the Monday night game. But even in a league that awards a point a tackle, it’ll be hard to hold off John Carney. For the second week in a row, the Outlaws didn’t really leave much on the bench, as no one there had more than three points. So it’s looking like the Outlaws will drop to 4-4 and slide closer to the glut in the middle of the league. It’s a good thing that eight of the 12 teams in this league make the playoffs. (UPDATE: To my surprise, Harper actually outscored Carney on Monday night, lifting the Outlaws to a narrow victory. God, I love the 1-point-per-tackle scoring rule in this league!)

The picture is much rosier in my other league, as the Thamesmen are staked to a 26-point lead and put up more than 97 points before their quarterback, Matt Ryan, takes the field tonight. Getting 26 points from the Bears defense didn’t hurt, neither did Adrian Peterson’s continued strong play (97 yards, 1 TD) or a huge game by Julius Peppers (1 sack, 1 forced fumble, and 1 interception returned for a TD). The Thamesmen are on a roll, about to win their third straight to take sole possession of first place.

Week 8 Highs and Lows

• To harp some more on that two-catch, 9-yard effort by Sims-Walker on Sunday, it’s made even more frustrating by the fact that it came against the league’s worst defense, the Titans, who are 32nd in points allowed, 31st in yards allowed, and 32nd in passing yards allowed. They say good defense beats good offense, but apparently bad defense beats mediocre offense, too. No, I’m not bitter or anything.

This pretty much sums up Steven Jackson’s season: Him running through opposing defenses while the rest of his team is barely in the picture.
• His quarterback is a mess; his wide receivers are … well, he has no wide receivers; and his defense has given up more than 35 points in half of its games. Yet Steven Jackson (149 rushing yards, TD) somehow keeps piling up yards, going over 100 total yards in six of eight games this season. If he were on a team with a semblance of an offense, Jackson would probably be one of the top, if not the top, fantasy running backs. Unfortunately, he plays for the Rams and Sunday’s TD was his first this season.
• Speaking of the Rams-Lions game, it was another case of bad defense beating bad offense. The pitiful play of Lions QB Matthew Stafford against the usually pitiful Rams defense makes it seem increasingly hopeless for Calvin Johnson, whenever he does come back, to post any kind of consistent numbers this season. It’s tough to put up good stats when your worst nemesis is your own QB. If Johnson is Megatron, does that make Stafford Optimus Prime?
• I wrote a couple weeks back about Nate Burleson’ on-one-week-off-the-next pattern, and that continued Sunday. His receiving yards by week: 74, 46, 109, 31, 98, 40, 89. So, time to send him to the bench again this week, even if he is going up against the Lions.
• Hey Greg Jennings, where have you been the last five weeks? Sunday’s 88 yards were the most Jennings has put up since Week 3, and he got his first touchdown since the opening weekend.

For the Panthers, this is how it should be: Jake Delhomme doing little more than cheerleading in the background while a Panthers running back does something good.
• The Panthers might’ve finally realized what the rest of the world had known since Week 1: You can’t win games by letting Jake Delhomme throw the ball. Due in part to being knocked out in the third quarter, Delhomme finished with only 14 pass attempts — his fewest in a game this season. Not so coincidentally, the Panthers scored a season-high 34 points, powered by its backfield tandem of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart. Delhomme’s replacement, Matt Moore, threw just one pass.
• LaDainian Tomlinson scored twice Sunday against the Raiders, but he’s still looking like he’s close to done. He managed only 56 yards, right around his average for the season, and managed just 3.1 yards a carry against an Oakland defense that’s 29th against the run and is allowing 4.5 yards per carry. The best that LT owners can hope for the rest of the way is that Tomlinson picks up some short-yardage touchdowns, because that’s about the only way he can put up solid fantasy numbers these days.