OldNo7 reverted to the old pattern that odd-numbered weeks are
successful whereas even-numbered weeks suck. Old won for the
second time this year despite scoring only 163.25 pts which is the
lowest winning score of the season, same as FE who also scored
163.25 pts and won in week #2. Old’s win was fairly
comfortable beating Adm by 13.25 pts and it made Old’s e-mail
malfunction irrelevant. On Saturday morning Old announced that
J Taylor on bye was being benched, and Old wanted to start AJ Dillon
instead but the e-mail did not reach destination until Sunday
morning when it was too late. Such occurrences used to be more
common in the early days of e-mail technology in the late 1990s
which is why we introduced stringent rules about e-mail where the
onus falls back on the owner. Such problems are now fairly
rare and fortunately for Old it did not matter for the standings and
AJ Dillon’s 9.5 pts were not needed. C McCaffrey continued his
high scoring at the RB position with 3 TDs and 31.75 pts.
McCaffrey has extended his lead as the top RB in the PQBFL to 7.9
pts per game and closing in on the Pats D (FE) as the most dominant
of any position (Pats 8.5 pts ahead of the Bills D). Defense
was particularly strong for Old with J Smith scoring 14.5 pts,
Onwuasor scoring 15 pts, both the Bills D and Poyer reaching
double-digits, and DL Buckner beat his weekly projection and his
season average by a small margin with 8 pts.
The Admirals finished in the blue for the first time since week #1
with a satisfying second place. Adm benched D Haskins since he
was playing the tough Bills D and it paid off because Haskins was
limited to 5.75 pts while DK Metcalf got his best game of the year
with 22.5 pts. Adm was hampered like Old by not having a
starting college player this week due to P Taylor’s injury and
Ehlinger was on bye. In addition Adm has one of the weakest
groups of QBs but at least this week D Carr was adequate with 22.5
pts and Garoppolo was even better on the bench with 34.5 pts.
On defense B Baker contributed in a significant way with 11 tackles,
2 assists, and 3 passes defended, and B Martinez + J Bosa were not
bad either with 12 pts and 12.5 pts, respectively. Wax made a
strong push on MNF to beat Adm with an excellent game from A Bethea
(15 pts) but for Adm did even better with A Cooper scoring a long TD
in the middle of the 4th quarter to put the Giants away and score
enough on that play alone to edge Wax by 4 pts.
WaxOnWaxOff had their best week since week #6 but in one of the
whackiest weeks of the season, the team actually lost ground against
their two closest rivals Old and Adm. Like most teams this
week, Wax was handicapped by missing a starter, not having a DL to
start due to A Donald being on bye and F Clark missed the game due
to injury. Ty Hill had a strong game with 21.25 pts but his
teammate rookie M Hardman undid all the good work with an awful
-2.75 pt game by not catching a single pass and fumbling away a
kickoff return. Wax was in danger before SNF of having a bad
week but L Jackson overcame bad odds and became the first QB of the
season to dominate the Pats D thanks to 3 TDs and no turnover.
Injuries continue to be an issue at WR and Wax started A Miller who
only scored 1 pt, but at least Z Ertz finally got on track with 21
pts after only scoring 10.25 pts in the previous three weeks
combined. Ertz still has work to do to justify his draft
status because he’s only TE9 in the PQBFL. Wax also received
an unlikely contribution from RB afterthoughts Jo Howard and Ad
Peterson who both scored double digits while Kamara was on bye and J
Conner was injured.
The Decepticons’ string of bad luck with injuries continued this
week, with Mahomes out and Brees on bye, Dec started Brissett who
also got injured early in the game after scoring only 2 pts which
killed Dec’s chances in such a close scoring week. Both D Cook
and C Carson had decent yardage but were held out of the end zone,
which was a similar outcome for Kelce who caught 7 passes but no TD
once again. Dec was also missing a starting defense with the
Rams on bye and at the college position Dec had to reach to their
third string player D Swift who only scored 2.25 pts. The only
saving grace for Dec this week was the fantastic output from both
starting WRs M Evans and T Lockett who were playing against each
other in an overtime shootout with Lockett and the Seahawks coming
out on top of M Evans and the Bucs. Lockett finished with
13-152-2 compared to Evans’ 12-180-1, in one of the highest scoring
WR duo ever with 332 yards combined and 3 TDs. On MNF D Jones
had the chance to put FE away but he fell short with only 7.5 pts
due to three turnovers so Dec finished tied with FE with 134.75 pts.
FlyingElvis was one of the only two teams this week to field a
complete roster but FE failed to capitalize by tying Dec in 4th
place. FE’s subpar performance was mostly not injury-related
because the team did not have any key starters out; the problem was
coaching. FE leads the PQBFL in coaching efficiency this
season but this week one single call sunk the team with the late
change to bench D Prescott (28.5 pts) and start A Rodgers instead
who was limited to 13.5 pts. Rodgers’ game was actually far
worse than his scoring shows because almost all of his 161 passing
yards were in the 4th quarter when the game was already out of hand
(and his only TD as well). On MNF S Barkley equally failed as
D Jones (Dec) with only 7.75 pts to create deadlock in 4th
place. The top contributors for FE this week were unusual
faces, with WR M Jones scoring 19.25 pts for the Lions and rookie D
Singletary making the most of his opportunities with 16.5 pts while
F Gore was stuffed at the goal line several times in a row and the
Bills refusing to hand Singletary the damn rock to punch it in,
drawing the ire of FE.
The GloriousBastards were the other team with a full roster like FE,
having few if any injuries, and yet Bas also disappointed with only
6th place. The only excuse for the lack of firepower this week
is that M Thomas was on bye and backup WRs for Bas are not that
great, otherwise Bas was in prime position to dominate. Goff
was also on bye which perhaps did not help given that Brady was
playing against the Ravens defense, but anyway Goff has not been
stellar this year, ranking only QB16 so it’s hard to argue that his
absence was a major headwind. Brady is not who he used to be
and his mediocre 11.5 pts did not help Bas in fact backup Darnold
had the same score against the Dolphins. Franchise player
Elliott also failed to deliver the knockout blow on MNF similar to
Dec and FE with only 11.5 pts against a weak defense, especially
with the Cowboys scoring 37 pts and Elliott could not score a TD and
underperformed relative to his weekly projection of 15 pts.
Bas can also point fingers at S Diggs who only caught one short pass
and finished the game with 1.75 pt despite Thielen being out of
action. Diggs has been a letdown for most of the year and only
ranks WR22 so far.
The BeaudoinBrothers did not trade to acquire a college player to
fill a hole this week with D’Eriq King no longer playing in order to
keep his senior season for next year, and Ju Fields was on
bye. The difference this week unlike week #6 when Beaud also
did not have a college player to start, is that in week #9 Beaud
paid a far heftier price for not making a trade, by losing a close
contest to both FE and Dec, plus seeing Bas slide in between to add
insult to injury. Injuries have been piling up for the
Bros. After being injury free the first few weeks and ranking
last in injury points for the first few weeks of the season, this
situation is long gone and Beaud almost had as many injury points as
Wax this week. To make matters worse, similar to FE the
coaching efficiency has been fine all year but this week was not at
all. The coach hesitated between starting D Henry or A Jones
and finally went with the hot hand A Jones even though he was
playing a tougher defense. This was a major mistake with Henry
easily outscoring Jones 20.25 pts to 2.25 pts. But Beaud could
have still survived this bad call by simply starting freakin’ kicker
H Butker as usual, but the coach wanted to be fancy and went with J
Myers who missed 2 FGs, one extra point, and almost cost his team
the game against the Bucs this week. The kicker selection
alone would have put Beaud ahead of Bas, FE, and Dec so this was a
huge difference maker. At WR as if Hilton’s injury was not
enough, Thielen started but got injured early in the first quarter
and never returned so his goose egg was costly. Co-WR A
Robinson had been playing fine so far this year but he was a
disaster this week with only 1.25 pt. TE Ebron was barely
better with 2.75 pts and the Beaud acquiring TE Herndon a few weeks
ago to shore up the TE position has failed to materialize so far
because Herndon got injured in practice immediately after the trade
was finalized. At the very least the Bros avoided finishing
farther down the rankings this week thanks to a TD from the Ravens D
against the Pats on SNF which was unexpected.
The SunshineBoys were in good position to beat the Bros on MNF but
unfortunately they caught the injury bug as well with Vander Esch
being scratched at the last minute, not to mention that both college
players were on bye this week. M Gordon had been pedestrian in
four games this year since returning from his holdout, not topping
10 pts a single time. Thankfully he came out of his shell this
week with a 19-pt game and edging Ekeler for touches as well.
D Watson had a similar score with 19.5 pts but unlike Gordon it was
below his weekly projection because RB Hyde did most of the damage
against the Jaguars and Watson did not have much to do with the
Texans having a comfortable lead and running the ball with
ease. The most surprising contributor this week was rookie N
Fant who scored a 75-yard TD by laughing his way to the end zone
with poor tackling by the Browns defenders. Also DB J Peppers
was stellar on MNF and could almost overcome Vander Esch’s absence
with 7 tackles, 5 assists, 1 pass defended and 1 forced
fumble.
The Ballers finished in the cellar for the 4th time this year to end
a positive two week string in weeks 7-8. The Ballers got
screwed this week in one of the most unusual ways in the London game
HOU-JAX where Ball had two defensive M Jack and C Campbell. It
is unclear what kind of clown was sent to London to compile the
game’s statistics but when there are a total of 97 tackles made in
the game, for sure there should have been a heck of a lot more than
8 assists. Someone needs to teach to whoever was in charge
what an assist is, otherwise the stinginess is laughable.
Myles Jack and Calais Campbell had a relatively productive afternoon
with 10 tackles combined, they were held to 2 assists only as part
of this statistical anomaly. Perhaps that London stats man
should do an internship in New York where 49 assists were awarded on
79 tackles on MNF. In terms of what the Ballers’ coach could
control, the starting decisions were sloppy but had no impact.
Njoku started at TE but he was injured; on the bench backup Burton
did not even catch a pass so it did not matter. At RB C
Thompson started and was also injured, but backups N Hines and J
Samuels did not do much with 2.25 pts and 3.75 pts,
respectively. The Ballers’ top game this week was WR Golladay
who scored a long TD and finished the game with 18.5 pts which was
his second straight big game; he has now cracked the top 10 WRs in
the PQBFL in the rankings so far.
