Culture
NFL Power Rankings Week 6: Commanders rising; checking in on fantasy flops
As we enter Week 6 of the NFL Power Rankings, it might be time to check on the fantasy football manager in your lives.
It’s been a rough start for lots of the folks who spent weeks poring over data in the preseason to make the perfect pick only to see their plans left in shambles by the first five weeks of the actual season. So this week’s theme is fantasy focus as we look at exactly how bad things have gotten.
Spoiler alert: Pretty bad.
None of the top five fantasy players coming into the season based on average draft position is in the top 48 in fantasy scoring. Top pick Christian McCaffrey has more flights to Germany to get medical consultation than rushing yards this year. Extending the scope to look at the top 20 picks doesn’t make things much better. That group includes A.J. Brown, Puka Nacua and Isaiah Pacheco. Oof, oof and oof.
As you’ll see, these fantasy results have a real-life impact on the field and affect our rankings, where the Minnesota Vikings and fantasy afterthought Sam Darnold still sit up top. (The fantasy scoring numbers here are provided by TruMedia, and the average draft position statistics were compiled by Fantasy Pros.)
1. Minnesota Vikings (5-0)
Last week: 1
Sunday: Beat New York Jets 23-17
Darnold’s surprising season is nicely illustrated by his fantasy numbers. His average draft position was 223rd. His actual rank after another victory is 31st, and he’s 12th among quarterbacks with 16.5 points per game. Wide receiver Justin Jefferson is underperforming his draft position (drafted sixth, currently 14th in points per game, 19) but not by much, and no one in Minnesota is complaining with the Vikings undefeated. Aaron Jones (15.7 fantasy ppg) has been a good pick but left early Sunday with a hip injury.
Up next: Bye
GO DEEPER
Bills’ alleged blunder wasn’t so bad, but they need help (Davante Adams?): Sando’s Pick Six
Last week: 2
Monday: Beat New Orleans Saints 26-13
Kansas City’s most productive fantasy wide receiver this year has been Rashee Rice, who ranks 67th overall and 23rd among receivers with 64.9 points and is unlikely to play again this season because of a knee injury. After that, it’s rookie Xavier Worthy, who is 84th in scoring (58.1 ppg). And still, the Chiefs, who completed 12 passes to three tight ends Monday night, are undefeated.
Up next: Bye
Last week: 3
Sunday: Beat Cincinnati Bengals 41-38
Lamar Jackson passed for 348 yards and four touchdowns, rushed for 55 and led Baltimore to scores on five of its six drives after halftime Sunday. After going 38th in the average fantasy draft this season, he is the top player in the league in points per game (24.9). Jackson has accounted for 11 touchdowns and has thrown only one interception this season. And remember Derrick Henry? Shame on anyone who forgot. Henry is averaging a league-high 114.4 rushing yards per game and is seventh in the league in fantasy scoring (22.02 ppg) after being drafted 18th.
Up next: vs. Washington Commanders, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
Last week: 7
Sunday: Beat Buffalo Bills 23-20
Nico Collins leads the league in receiving yards (567) and is tied for fifth in targets (45). He caught only two passes Sunday before leaving with a hamstring injury, but one was a 67-yard touchdown. After being drafted 27th, he’s 10th in the league in fantasy scoring (21.34 ppg). Collins’ competition for catches in Houston is increasing, though. Stefon Diggs is averaging 81.7 receiving yards in the last three games. Diggs still hasn’t scored a touchdown since Week 1, though.
Up next: at New England Patriots, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
CJ TO NICO 67 YARDS!
📺: #BUFvsHOU on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/0wfq5acJXl— NFL (@NFL) October 6, 2024
5. Washington Commanders (4-1)
Last week: 6
Sunday: Beat Cleveland Browns 34-13
Even the people who were optimistic about Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels weren’t optimistic enough. Daniels was 99th in the draft order and sits fifth in points per game (22.68) and second in points by quarterbacks after five weeks. He passed for 238 yards and rushed for 82 against the Browns and has now led Washington in rushing in three of its five games in addition to being the NFL’s leader in expected points added per dropback (.38).
Up next: at Baltimore Ravens, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
GO DEEPER
Hey, Commanders fans, it’s OK to believe. For real
Last week: 5
Sunday: Bye
The Lions have managed to settle at sixth in these rankings in part because of their offensive balance. Fantasy football players aren’t big fans of balance. Wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown is the most perplexing case on the team. His average draft position this year was sixth, but he’s currently 25th in points per game (17.12). Detroit’s top two running backs — David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs — are basically the same fantasy player (17.38 ppg vs. 17.77 ppg), which cuts into the value of each, and Gibbs was drafted 13th in the preseason.
Up next: at Dallas Cowboys, Sunday, 4:25 p.m. ET
7. Buffalo Bills (3-2)
Last week: 4
Sunday: Lost to Houston Texans 23-20
Josh Allen’s stats weren’t the story Sunday. His health was. The Bills quarterback left the game after hitting his head hard on the turf. He was cleared to return but finished 9-for-30 for 131 yards. His 56.4 passer rating was the second-lowest of his career in games in which he hasn’t thrown an interception. He’s still 15th in the league in fantasy scoring (18.76). Running back James Cook is 29th in scoring (16.84), which matches his draft position.
Up next: at New York Jets, Monday, 8:15 p.m. ET
Last week: 13
Sunday: Beat Los Angeles Rams 24-19
Wide receiver Jayden Reed has carried the Packers through Christian Watson’s injuries and Dontayvion Wicks’ drops. He’s fifth in the league in receiving (414 yards) and first among players with more than 20 catches in yards per catch (19.7). He’s fifth among wide receivers and 18th overall in the league in fantasy points per game (18.28). Not bad considering he was drafted at No. 83.
Up next: vs. Arizona Cardinals, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
GO DEEPER
Packers’ Xavier McKinney makes history with NFL-high fifth INT: ‘I’m on a mission’
Cowboys receiver CeeDee Lamb, left, with the Steelers’ Elandon Roberts, is among many players failing to live up to their fantasy football draft position. (Justin K. Aller / Getty Images)
9. Dallas Cowboys (3-2)
Last week: 14
Sunday: Beat Pittsburgh Steelers 20-17
The disastrous fate of McCaffrey fantasy owners is providing some cover for the almost-as-bad issues with CeeDee Lamb. The Cowboys wide receiver was taken No. 2 on average in drafts, but he’s just 48th in scoring (15.26), being outscored by, among others, Jauan Jennings and Brian Thomas Jr. Lamb is ninth in the league in receiving yards (378) after catching five passes for 62 yards on Sunday night.
Up next: vs. Detroit Lions, Sunday, 4:25 p.m. ET
Last week: 15
Thursday: Beat Tampa Bay Buccaneers 36-30 in OT
The good: Darnell Mooney’s average draft position was 174, but he’s 51st in points per game (15). The bad: Bijan Robinson’s average draft position was fourth, but he’s 74th in production (13.5 ppg). The downright wild: Kirk Cousins’ 509-yard, four-touchdown performance Thursday was the second-best fantasy performance of his career (34.4 points), and he’s 47th in points per game (15.34). Cousins became the first player in NFL history to throw for 250-plus yards before halftime and 250-plus yards after halftime in the same game.
Up next: at Carolina Panthers, Sunday, 4:25 p.m. ET
Kirk Cousins completed 42 of 58 passes for 509 yards, 4 TDs and an INT, with all 509 yards coming from passes within the pocket, the most in a game in the NGS era (since 2016).
Cousins Passing Between Numbers: 27/33, 385 yards, 3 TD (+25.1 EPA)#TBvsATL | @AtlantaFalcons pic.twitter.com/FjJ9TCKvJl
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) October 4, 2024
11. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-2)
Last week: 9
Thursday: Lost to Atlanta Falcons 36-30 in OT
Baker Mayfield is seven spots ahead of Josh Allen in fantasy scoring this year, just like everyone expected. Mayfield, who was drafted 139 spots lower than Allen, is averaging 21.9 fantasy points per game in large part because he is tied for second in the league in touchdown passes (11). Through five games, this is far and away the best fantasy season of Mayfield’s career. Second place was his rookie year (17.1 ppg).
Up next: at New Orleans Saints, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
Last week: 12
Sunday: Bye
J.K. Dobbins is quietly one of the feel-good stories so far this season. Dobbins missed all of the 2021 season because of a knee injury and most of 2023 with an Achilles injury, but he’s averaging 85.5 yards per game. That makes him the 15th-best running back in fantasy leagues (15.5). Not bad for a guy drafted at 130. As for quarterback Justin Herbert, fantasy owners had Jim Harbaugh’s offense figured out in the preseason. The Chargers quarterback was drafted 127th and is 120th in scoring (10.38).
Up next: at Denver Broncos, Sunday, 4:05 p.m. ET
Last week: 8
Sunday: Lost to New York Giants 29-20
It’s still hard for folks to believe in Geno Smith. He was drafted 183rd in the preseason. Now that the season has started, he leads the league in passing yards (1,466) and is 19th in fantasy scoring (18.25). He threw for 284 yards and a touchdown on Sunday and led the Seahawks in rushing (72 yards). Kenneth Walker had only 19 yards against the Giants.
Up next: vs. San Francisco 49ers, Thursday, 8:15 p.m. ET
14. San Francisco 49ers (2-3)
Last week: 11
Sunday: Lost to Arizona Cardinals 24-23
There were hints about McCaffrey’s health in the preseason. More people should have paid attention. McCaffrey was the top pick in fantasy football drafts, but he hasn’t played a snap because of calf/Achilles injuries that sent him to Germany looking for help. Quarterback Brock Purdy had his worst game of the season Sunday (62.1 passer rating). Still, he’s seventh in EPA per dropback (.16) and 44th in fantasy scoring (15.5) after being drafted 87th on average.
Up next: at Seattle Seahawks, Thursday, 8:15 p.m. ET
15. Pittsburgh Steelers (3-2)
Last week: 10
Sunday: Lost to Dallas Cowboys 20-17
Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith has been on plenty of fantasy football owners’ dartboards dating to his days in Atlanta, but he’s getting something out of Justin Fields this year. Fields was drafted 213th in the preseason, but he’s 20th in scoring (17.93). He has accounted for eight touchdowns (five passing and three rushing) and has turned the ball over only twice. The bad news is running back Najee Harris is only 126th in scoring (10.18).
Up next: at Las Vegas Raiders, Sunday, 4:25 p.m. ET
GO DEEPER
‘Gotta stop kicking our own ass’: Steelers’ shortcomings go well beyond the final drive
Quarterback Kyler Murray is leading the way for the Cardinals and those who picked him for their fantasy football teams. (Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)
16. Arizona Cardinals (2-3)
Last week: 21
Sunday: Beat San Francisco 49ers 24-23
Wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. and tight end Trey McBride have been fantasy disappointments. Harrison was drafted 16th but is 66th in production (13.78). McBride was drafted 48th but was 111th in production (10.88). Kyler Murray’s big season is helping to offset those things. He was drafted 70th, but he’s 16th in scoring (18.32 ppg). On Sunday, he threw for 195 yards and rushed for 83. He is averaging 10.7 yards per designed run, the best among NFL quarterbacks.
Up next: at Green Bay Packers, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
Last week: 19
Sunday: Beat Carolina Panthers 36-10
In the last three weeks, rookie quarterback Caleb Williams is 38th in the league in fantasy scoring (17.45) and has topped 300 yards passing twice in that span. Williams was drafted 104th in the preseason and in the first two weeks of the season that looked too high, but Williams is making steady progress. That’s why the Bears have won two in a row. He had 304 passing yards and a 126.2 passer rating on 29 attempts against the Panthers.
Up next: vs. Jacksonville Jaguars, Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET (London)
The throw 🤩
The catch 🤩📺: #CARvsCHI on FOX pic.twitter.com/LY8XUhroJs
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) October 6, 2024
Last week: 20
Sunday: Bye
Why are the Eagles struggling? Maybe because what everyone thought in the preseason could be the best wide-receiving trio in the league has really just been one guy playing well. A.J. Brown, drafted 10th, had a big opener (five catches, 119 yards and a touchdown against the Packers), but he hasn’t played since because of a hamstring injury. Jahan Dotson, acquired in a preseason trade, has only five catches in four games. DeVonta Smith, drafted 46th, is actually overachieving at 27th in scoring (16.97 ppg), and the Saquon Barkley addition has been fun. Barkley is third in fantasy scoring (24.5).
Up next: vs. Cleveland Browns, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
19. Denver Broncos (3-2)
Last week: 25
Sunday: Beat Las Vegas Raiders 34-18
This feels like a good place to talk about how good Denver’s defense is. The Broncos are tied for second in the league in points allowed (14.6) and third in defensive success rate (64.6 percent), sack percentage (10.8) and defensive EPA per 100 snaps. Pat Surtain II had two interceptions Sunday and returned one 100 yards for a touchdown. The defense is the reason this team is 3-2 even though its highest-rated fantasy player is rookie quarterback Bo Nix, who is 69th in scoring (13.71).
Up next: vs. Los Angeles Chargers, Sunday, 4:05 p.m. ET
I actually love this from Bo Nix. 🔥🔥🔥
Sean Payton’s going to get heated on the sideline but if you really believe you’re right…give it back. Shows how competitive they both are. pic.twitter.com/dishUG86xP
— Chase Daniel (@ChaseDaniel) October 6, 2024
20. New Orleans Saints (2-3)
Last week: 16
Monday: Lost to Kansas City Chiefs 26-13
In 2023, it looked like Alvin Kamara’s career was on the downslope. Through five weeks, the eighth-year running back is third in the league in fantasy points per game (23.84). However, that falls under the category of a silver lining at this point for New Orleans. After their fast start, the Saints have lost three straight, and quarterback Derek Carr left Monday’s game in the fourth quarter with an oblique injury.
Up next: vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
21. New York Giants (2-3)
Last week: 29
Sunday: Beat Seattle Seahawks 29-20
We might need to have a Daniel Jones conversation soon. If you take away a rough Week 1 performance, Jones is 33rd in the league in fantasy scoring (17.34) this season. In the last four games, Jones is sixth in EPA per dropback (.18) and ninth in passer rating (99.3) among quarterbacks with more than 60 pass attempts. Entering the season, Jones’ career EPA per dropback was minus-.03 and his passer rating was 81.6.
Up next: vs. Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday 8:20 p.m. ET
GO DEEPER
Can Giants QB Daniel Jones change narrative around him? Maybe not, but wins will help
22. Cincinnati Bengals (1-4)
Last week: 23
Sunday: Lost to Baltimore Ravens 41-38
Ja’Marr Chase is about the only player preserving the honor of this year’s top-10 fantasy draft picks. Chase’s average draft position was seventh, and he’s ninth in scoring (21.7). He’s second in the league in receiving (98.6 ypg). Joe Burrow is also in the top 12 in fantasy scoring (20.14), and he’s first among regular starters in passer rating (113.6). And, still, the Bengals are 1-4.
Up next: at New York Giants, Sunday, 8:20 p.m. ET
23. New York Jets (2-3)
Last week: 24
Sunday: Lost to Minnesota Vikings 23-17
So, about all the Breece Hall hype … The Jets’ third-year running back was drafted sixth on average. His production (14.3 ppg) ranks 61st, and things aren’t trending in the right direction. After averaging 3.9 yards on 30 carries through Weeks 1 and 2, he’s averaging 2.3 yards per carry on 35 carries in Weeks 3-5. Aaron Rodgers is outperforming his fantasy draft position (drafted 134th, ranked 70th with 13.6 ppg), but it’s not helping enough on the field.
Up next: vs. Buffalo Bills, Monday, 8:15 p.m. ET
24. Las Vegas Raiders (2-3)
Last week: 18
Sunday: Lost to Denver Broncos 34-18
The only Raiders player in the top 75 in fantasy scoring this year won’t be a Raider much longer. Davante Adams (14.97 ppg) is 53rd in fantasy scoring but sat out Sunday with a hamstring injury and has asked to be traded. The only bright spot for Las Vegas is rookie tight end Brock Bowers, who is 76th in fantasy scoring (13.3). The Raiders replaced quarterback Gardner Minshew with Aidan O’Connell for the second time on Sunday.
Up next: vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, Sunday, 4:05 p.m. ET
Veteran quarterback Joe Flacco has played well for the Colts in place of the injured Anthony Richardson. (Nathan Ray Seebeck / Imagn Images)
Last week: 17
Sunday: Lost to Jacksonville Jaguars 37-34
Joe Flacco hasn’t played enough to qualify for the official fantasy scoring rankings. If he did, he’d be 11th in the league (20.8). Flacco, whose average draft position was 339, was 33-for-44 for 359 yards and three touchdowns Sunday against the Jaguars. You think the Cleveland Browns would like that back in the building this year?
Up next: at Tennessee Titans, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
GO DEEPER
Colts defense looks broken in loss that spoiled heroic efforts of Joe Flacco, Alec Pierce
26. Los Angeles Rams (1-4)
Last week: 22
Sunday: Lost to Green Bay Packers 24-19
Sean McVay is just showing off at this point when it comes to wide receiver development. With Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua out with injuries, sixth-round pick Jordan Whittington is 75th in fantasy scoring (14.05 ppg) in the last two weeks. Whittington had seven catches for 89 yards in Sunday’s loss.
Up next: Bye
27. Tennessee Titans (1-3)
Last week: 28
Sunday: Bye
The Titans made headlines when they signed Calvin Ridley to a four-year, $92 million contract in the offseason. In return, they have gotten nine catches for 141 yards. Ridley is the 53rd most-valuable fantasy wide receiver this season (9.3 ppg). In the last two games, he’s totaled two catches for 14 yards. Ridley’s production certainly is Will Levis-related. Tennessee’s quarterback is 166th in fantasy scoring (7.81 ppg) and is averaging 1.5 interceptions per game.
Up next: vs. Indianapolis Colts, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
Last week: 31
Sunday: Beat New England Patriots 15-10
Tyreek Hill, who was drafted third on average, is averaging 10.74 fantasy points per game. That’s his lowest average through five weeks since 2019, when he played only six snaps in Weeks 1-5. The good news is it appears Tua Tagovailoa will return this season. The bad news is running back De’Von Achane, who is Miami’s leading fantasy player (13.98 ppg), left Sunday’s game after hitting his head on the turf.
Up next: Bye
29. New England Patriots (1-4)
Last week: 26
Sunday: Lost to Miami Dolphins 15-10
The Patriots’ most productive fantasy player is running back Rhamondre Stevenson, which explains a lot. Stevenson is the 80th-most valuable player in the league, averaging 13.3 points per game. Backup running back Antonio Gibson is next at 176th. No wide receiver is ranked higher than Demario Douglas at No. 193. There’s a reason this team has lost four straight and is 31st in the league in scoring (12.4).
Up next: vs. Houston Texans, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
30. Carolina Panthers (1-4)
Last week: 27
Sunday: Lost to Chicago Bears 36-10
We should all leave Bryce Young alone at some point, but one more thing. Young totaled 14.72 fantasy points in his two starts this season. Andy Dalton is averaging 14.67 per game since taking over as the starter. Running back Chuba Hubbard has been a bright spot. He’s 37th in scoring (16.1) after being drafted 129th on average.
Up next: vs. Atlanta Falcons, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
31. Jacksonville Jaguars (1-4)
Last week: 32
Sunday: Beat Indianapolis Colts 37-34
Let’s celebrate the Jaguars’ first win of the season by focusing on the positive. Brian Thomas Jr. is 35th in fantasy scoring (16.2 ppg), which is second-best among rookie wide receivers behind only Malik Nabers. Thomas, whose draft position was 118th, is sixth in the league in receiving yards (397) and is second in yards per reception (18) among receivers with more than 20 catches.
Up next: vs. Chicago Bears, Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET (London)
32. Cleveland Browns (1-4)
Last week: 30
Sunday: Lost to Washington Commanders 34-13
Browns fans can only wish this season was some kind of dystopian fantasy. After Sunday’s game, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said “we’re not changing quarterbacks” even though pretty much everyone thinks they should. Deshaun Watson, who is actually outplaying his fantasy draft position if anybody cared (and nobody does), is 28th among starters in passer rating (74.8). Watson’s struggles are the biggest reason wide receiver Amari Cooper is only 114th in fantasy scoring (10.6 ppg) after being drafted 54th.
Up next: at Philadelphia Eagles, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET
(Top photo of Jayden Daniels: Timothy Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
We often think of the past as if it were another world — and in some ways, it is. The politics, religion and social customs of other eras can be vastly different from our own. But one thing historians and historical fiction writers alike often notice is the constancy of human emotion. The righteous anger of a customer complaining about a Mesopotamian copper merchant in 1750 B.C. feels familiar. Tributes to beloved household pets from ancient Romans and Egyptians make us smile. And we are captivated by stories of love, betrayal and sacrifice from Homer to Shakespeare and beyond.
In literature, letters, tablets and even on coins, we find overwhelming evidence that people in the past felt the same emotions we do. Love, hate, fear, grief, joy: These feelings were as much a part of their lives as they are of our own. And they resonate especially acutely in the bond between mother and child. Here are eight historical novels that explore the meaning of motherhood across the centuries.
Sometime in the 2000s, the producer Lindsay Doran asked her doctor for a book recommendation. “I’m reading that book everybody’s reading,” the doctor replied. “You know, the one about the shepherd who’s murdered and the sheep solve the crime.”
Doran had not heard of the book, “Three Bags Full,” a best-selling novel by a German graduate student (“No one’s reading it,” she recalls responding, inaccurately), but she was struck by what sounded like an irresistible elevator pitch. “Everything came together for me in that one sentence,” she said. “The fact that it was sheep rather than some other animal felt so resonant.”
Doran spent years trying to extricate the book from a complicated rights situation, and years more turning it into a movie. The result, opening Friday, is “The Sheep Detectives,” which features Nicholas Braun and Emma Thompson as humans, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart and others giving voice to C.G.I. sheep stirred from their customary ruminations by the death of their shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman).
The film, rated PG, is an Agatha Christie-lite mystery with eccentric suspects, a comically bumbling cop (Braun) and a passel of ovine investigators. It’s also a coming-of-age story about growing up and losing your innocence that might have a “Bambi”-like resonance for children. The movie’s sheep have a way of erasing unpleasant things from their minds — they believe, for instance, that instead of dying, they just turn into clouds — but learn that death is an inextricable part of life.
“In some ways, the most important character is Mopple, the sheep played by Chris O’Dowd,” the screenwriter, Craig Mazin, said in a video interview. “He has a defect — he does not know how to forget — and he’s been carrying his memories all alone.”
“Three Bags Full” is an adult novel that includes grown-up themes like drugs and suicide. In adapting it for a younger audience, Mazin toned down its darker elements, changed its ending, and — for help in writing about death — consulted a book by Fred Rogers, TV’s Mister Rogers, about how to talk to children about difficult subjects.
The journey from book to film has been long and circuitous. “Three Bags Full” was written by Leonie Swann, then a 20-something German doctoral student studying English literature. Distracting herself from her unwritten dissertation, on the topic of “the animal point of view in fiction,” she began a short story “playing around with the idea of sheep detectives,” she said. “And I realized it was more like a novel, and it wasn’t the worst novel I’d ever seen.”
Why sheep? “I wasn’t someone who was thinking about sheep all the time,” Swann, who lives in the English countryside and has a dog named Ezra Hound, said in a video interview. Yet they have always hovered on the periphery of her life.
There was a friendly sheep that she used to see on her way to school. There was an irate ram that once chased her through the streets of a Bavarian village. And there were thousands and thousands of sheep in the fields of Ireland, where she lived for a time. “There were so many of them, and you could tell there was a lot of personality behind them,” she said.
A book in which sheep are stirred to action had to be a mystery, she said, to motivate the main characters. “In a lot of other stories, you would have trouble making a sheep realize there’s a story there,” she said. “They would just keep grazing. But murder is an existential problem that speaks to sheep as well as humans.”
Swann (the name is a pseudonym; she has never publicly disclosed her real name) found a literary agent, Astrid Poppenhusen, who brought her manuscript to market. Published in 2005, the book was translated into 30 languages and ended up spending three and a half years on German best-seller lists. (The German title is “Glennkill,” after the village in which it takes place.) Other novels followed, including a sheep-centric sequel, “Big Bad Wool,” but Swann never finished her dissertation.
Doran, the producer, read the book — now published in the United States by Soho Press, along with four other Swann novels — soon after hearing about it. She was determined to make it into a movie. Whenever she told anyone about the idea, she said, she had them at “sheep.”
The director, Kyle Balda (whose credits include “Minions”), was so excited when he first read the script, in 2022, that “I immediately drove out to a sheep farm” near his house in Oregon, he said in a video interview. “Very instantly I could see the behavior of the sheep, their different personalities. I learned very quickly that there are more varieties of sheep than dogs.”
How to make the sheep look realistic, and how to strike the proper balance between their inherent sheep-iness and their human-esque emotions were important questions the filmmakers grappled with.
It was essential that “the sheep in this world are sheep” rather than humans in sheep’s clothing, Balda said. “It’s not the kind of story where they are partnered with humans and talking to each other.”
That means that like real sheep, the movie sheep have short attention spans. They’re afraid to cross the road. “They don’t drive cars; they don’t wear pants; they’re not joke characters saying things like, ‘This grass would taste better with a little ranch dressing,’” Doran said.
And whenever they speak, their words register to humans as bleating, the way the adult speech in “Peanuts” cartoons sounds like trombone-y gibberish to Charlie Brown and his friends.
Lily, the leader of the flock, is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It is not her first time voicing an animal in a movie: She has played, among other creatures, an ant in “A Bug’s Life” and a horse in “Animal Farm.” “When I read the script, I thought, ‘Wow, this is so weird,’” she said in a video interview. “It’s not derivative of anything else.”
Lily is unquestionably not a person; among other things, like a real sheep, she has a relatively immobile face set off by lively ears. “But her journey is a human journey where she realizes certain things about life she didn’t understand,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “There’s also the question of being a leader, and how to do that when you’re questioning your own point of view.”
Nicholas Braun took easily to the role of Officer Tim, the inept constable charged with solving the shepherd’s murder.
“The part was a little Greg-adjacent in the beginning, and I don’t really want to play too many Gregs,” Braun said via video, referring to Cousin Greg, his hapless punching bag of a character in the TV drama “Succession.”
“I’m post-Greg,” he said.
It takes Officer Tim some time to notice that the neighborhood sheep might be actively helping him tackle the case. But Braun said that unlike Greg, who is stuck in perpetual ineptitude, Tim gets to grow into a braver and more assertive person, a take-charge romantic hero — much the way the sheep are forced into action from their default position of “just forgetting about it and moving on and going back to eating grass,” he said.
Braun mused for a bit about other potential animal detectives — horses, say, or cows — but concluded that the sheep in the film were just right for the job. He predicted that the movie would change people’s perception of sheep, much the way “Toy Story” made them “look at their toys, or their kids’ toys, differently.”
“I don’t think people are going to be eating as much lamb after this,” he said.,
Siri Hustvedt was halfway through a new novel, about a writer tasked with completing his father’s unfinished manuscript, when her husband, the novelist Paul Auster, died from lung cancer.
Continuing that story in his absence felt impossible. They were together for 43 years, the length of her career. She’d never published a book without his reading a draft of it first.
Two weeks later, in the Brooklyn townhouse they shared, she sat down and wrote the first two sentences of a new book: “I am alive. My husband, Paul Auster, is dead.”
“It was the only thing I could write about,” she said.
She wrote about her feelings of dislocation: how she vividly smelled cigar smoke, even though Auster had quit smoking nine years before; how she woke up disoriented on his side of the bed and got into the bath with her socks still on; how she felt a kind of “cognitive splintering” that bordered on derangement. She had lost not only her husband, but also the person she had been with him. She felt faded and washed-out, like an overexposed photograph.
Those reflections grew into “Ghost Stories,” Hustvedt’s memoir about her life with and without Auster. Partly a book about grief and its psychological and physiological side effects, it’s also a revealing and intimate glimpse into a literary marriage — the buoyant moments of their early courtship, their deep involvement in each other’s work, their inside jokes (“I’ll have the lamb for two for one”).
She also writes publicly for the first time about the tragedies the family endured several years ago, when Auster’s son, Daniel, who struggled with addiction, took heroin while his infant daughter Ruby was in his care, and woke up to find she wasn’t breathing. He was later charged with criminally negligent homicide, after an examination found that her death was caused by acute intoxication from opioids. Soon after he was released on bail, Daniel, 44, died of a drug overdose.
A few months later, Auster started to come down with fevers, and doctors later discovered he had cancer. He reacted to the news as perhaps only a novelist would — lamenting that dying from cancer would be such an obvious, unsatisfying ending to a life marked by so much tragedy.
“He said so many times, it would make for a bad story,” Hustvedt said. “It was so predetermined, almost, and he hated predictable stories.”
Tall and lanky with short blond hair, Hustvedt, who is 71, met me on an April afternoon at the elegant, art and book-filled townhouse in Park Slope where the couple lived for 30 years. She took me to the sunlit second floor library, where Auster spent his final days, surrounded by his family and books. “He loved this room,” Hustvedt said.
“I’ll show you his now quiet typewriter,” she said, leading me down to Auster’s office on the ground floor, which felt as tranquil and carefully preserved as a shrine. A desk held a small travel typewriter, an Olivetti, and next to it, his larger Olympia. “Click clack, it really made noise,” Hustvedt said.
Auster rose to fame in the 1980s thanks to postmodern novels like “City of Glass” and “Moon Palace,” which explore the mysteries and unreliability of memory and perception. Hustvedt gained renown for heady and cerebral literary novels that include “The Blazing World,” “What I Loved” and “The Summer Without Men.”
They were each other’s first readers, sharpest editors and biggest fans. They even shared characters — Auster borrowed Iris Vegan, the heroine of Hustvedt’s 1992 novel “The Blindfold,” and extended her story in his novel “Leviathan,” published the same year. (Critics and readers assumed she had used his character, not the other way around.)
“We were very different writers and always were, and that was part of the pleasure in the other’s work,” Hustvedt said.
Friends of the couple who have read “Ghost Stories” said they were moved by Hustvedt’s loving but not hagiographic portrait of her husband.
Salman Rushdie, who visited Auster just a few days before he died, said Hustvedt’s vivid portrayal of Auster — who was witty, warm and expansive, always ready with a joke — captured a side of him that was rarely reflected in his public image as a celebrated literary figure.
“He’s very present on the page,” Rushdie said. “They were so tightly knit, and Paul was Siri’s greatest champion. They were deeply engaged in each other’s work.”
Hustvedt was 26, a budding writer who had just published a poem in the Paris Review, when she met Auster, 34, after a reading at the 92nd Street Y. He was wearing a black leather jacket, smoking, and she was instantly smitten.
They went downtown to a party, then to a bar in Tribeca, and talked all night. He was married to the writer Lydia Davis, but they had separated. He showed her a photo of his and Davis’s 3-year-old son, Daniel. They kissed as she was about to get into a taxi, and he went home with her to her apartment on 109th Street.
Shortly after they began seeing each other, Auster broke it off and told her that he had to return to his wife and son. She won him back with ardent, unabashed love letters that she quotes in “Ghost Stories”: “I love you. I’m not leaving yet, not until I am banished.”
In 1982, a few days after Auster’s divorce, they got married. They were so broke that guests had to pay for their own dinners.
Their writing careers evolved in parallel, but Auster’s fame eclipsed Hustvedt’s. She often found herself belittled by interviewers who asked her what it was like to be married to a literary genius, and whether her husband wrote her books.
“People used to ask me what my favorite book of Paul’s was; no one would ever ask him that,” Hustvedt recalled.
When Hustvedt complained about the disparity, Auster joked that the next time a journalist asked what it was like to be married to him, she should brag about his skills as a lover.
The slights persisted even after Hustvedt had established herself as a formidable literary talent. “One imagines that will go away, but it didn’t,” she said. She’s sometimes felt reduced to “Paul Auster’s wife” even after his death: At a recent reading, a fan of his work asked if she took comfort in reading his books in his absence, as if the real loss was the death of the literary eminence, not the man she loved.
She felt the weight of his reputation acutely when Auster died, and news of his death spread online just moments after he stopped breathing, before the family had time to tell people close to him.
The shadow Auster’s fame cast over the family became especially pronounced when scandal and tragedy struck.
In “Ghost Stories,” Hustvedt details a side of Auster’s personal life that he closely guarded: his relationship with Daniel, whose drug use and shiftiness was a constant source of worry. As a teenager, he stole more than $13,000 from her bank account, her German royalties. In 2000, Auster and Hustvedt learned that Daniel had forged his transcripts from SUNY Purchase after he had promised to re-enroll; he hadn’t, and kept the tuition money.
After each breach of trust, she and Auster forgave him.
“I have to leave the door open, just a crack,” Paul said about Daniel, Hustvedt recalls in “Ghost Stories.”
She writes about rushing to the hospital in Park Slope, where Daniel’s daughter was pronounced dead: “It’s the image of her small, perfect dead body in the hospital on Nov. 1, 2021, that forces itself on me.”
The shock of Ruby’s death, followed by Daniel’s arrest and overdose, was made even more unbearable by the media frenzy. Auster and Hustvedt were hounded by reporters, and made no comment.
“We were not in a position to speak about it when it happened, it was all so shocking and overwhelming and trying to deal with your feelings was more than enough,” Hustvedt told me.
But she felt she had to write about Daniel and Ruby in “Ghost Stories” because their lives and deaths were a crucial part of the family’s story, yet had been reduced to lurid tabloid fodder, she said.
“It would not have been possible to write this book and pretend that these horrible things didn’t happen,” she said. “I also didn’t want the horrible things to overwhelm the book, and that’s a tricky thing, because it’s so horrible, you feel it has to be there, but it isn’t the whole story.”
Before he died, Auster told Hustvedt he wanted that story to be told.
“I didn’t feel that I was betraying him,” she said.
Auster and Hustvedt’s daughter, Sophie Auster, a musician who lives in Brooklyn, said reading her mother’s memoir was painful, but she also felt her father’s voice and presence in its pages.
“Opening the book was extremely difficult for me, but you just sink in,” she said. “She doesn’t let you sit in the sorrow for too long. There’s a lot of life and a lot of joy.”
Hustvedt found it strange to write “Ghost Stories” without sharing drafts with Auster, her habit throughout her career. But often, his voice popped into her head.
“I kind of heard him in my ear, saying things like, ‘That’s a wavy sentence, straighten that thing out,’” she said.
After finishing the memoir, Hustvedt went back to the novel she’d been working on when Auster died. She realized she had to rewrite the first half entirely.
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