In a nail-biting close week where first place and 7th place were
separated by less than 20 points, the GloriousBastards emerged on
top for their first win of the season and retook 4th place in the
standings from the Admirals. Bas’ WRs led the show with 19.5
pts and 19 pts from M Thomas and S Diggs, with M Thomas almost being
traded away at the trade deadline in return for a top RB. M
Mack scored 15 pts this week which would seem to indicate that no
help was needed at RB down the stretch but timing could not have
been more awful for GB as Mack broke his hand, making the trade more
attractive now that he’s out but it’s one week too late to trade
now. Bas also could have very well used the services of a QB
in a trade because Brady was frustrated and only scored 7 pts while
backup Goff was even worse with only 3 pts. It was Darnold who
lit up the scoreboard on the bench with 30.5 pts but will the coach
have the balls to start such a second rate QB? Darnold has now
passed Goff in the rankings but not Brady yet. On defense D
Leonard had an off game with only 5 pts but fortunately C Jordan
(11.5 pts), R Smith (16 pts), and J Bates (12 pts) all picked up the
slack.
FlyingElvis recovered from a bad week #10 with second place this
week in an ideal development with both Dec and Beaud struggling so
FE is right back in the race for the PQBFL championship. With
A Rodgers on bye the coach did not need to ponder the choice of
starting QB and Prescott scored 35.25 pts to power FE near the top
this week. With S Barkley on bye FE did not expect great
results but L Bell at least scored a short TD. However backup
Fournette was held in check with only 4.75 pts. At WR C Kupp
had another bad game and surprisingly it’s WR M Jones who scored
twice on 4 receptions for 18.75 pts. On MNF FE needed a big
game from TE H Henry and the result was good but not great, 6-69
without a TD; that said the 2-point conversion to Henry proved to be
the difference between 2nd and 3rd place because it allowed FE to
beat Adm by half a point. Defense was not as good as offense
this week with the Pats scoring 11.5 pts so not as impressive as in
recent weeks and all individual defenders scored single
digits.
The Admirals were in prime position to win this week before MNF but
DL J Bosa did not get the job done with only 4 pts which is tied for
his lowest output of the season, definitely not what was expected of
the PQBFL’s top DL so far after 11 weeks. Adm finished only
3.75 pts away from Bas in first place so all Bosa had to do was
score 7 pts which is 2 pts below his season average and it would
have clinched the week but it was not meant to be. Rookie D
Haskins is now starting for the Skins which is a positive
development for Adm and he scored 19.25 pts this week which was key
given that regular starter DK Metcalf was on bye. Haskins was
almost Adm’s top scorer this week but it was rather RB M Ingram who
scored 20 points in the trashing of the Texans. At QB it would
have been illogical to bench D Carr at home against the Bengals but
surprisingly he only scored 16.5 pts compared to Mayfield 21.25 pts
and Garoppolo 30.5 pts on the bench. The coach can hardly be
blamed for this bad result. The same can be said of starting
the Vikings defense at home against the Broncos and they almost lost
the game with a poor outing and finished with only 0.5 pt while the
Browns scored 17.5 pts on the bench.
Next in line of teams wondering what could have been this week is
WaxOnWaxOff who finished immediately behind the top 3 this week,
only 8.75 pts away from the top. Of all the bad luck this week
split between various teams, Wax might have had the worst of all
with Ty Hill getting injured during the game and scored a big fat
zero. A normal game from him could have easily made the
difference between fourth and first. QB L Jackson continued
his stellar season with 39.25 pts and is looking like the league MVP
at this stage particularly knowing Roeth got injured early for Wax
and backups Rivers and J Brissett have not been starter
material. One piece of good news for Wax was the return to
health of D Guice who has been missed by Wax in the first part of
the year. Guice scored a long TD and finished with 13.75
pts. Since coming back from injury the same cannot be said of
Kamara who scored 6 pts last week and 9 pts this week – not what Wax
had in mind when they acquired the star RB to make him franchise
player in the offseason. This was the 5th straight single
digit game by Kamara plus 2 games missed due to injury and one bye
so Kamara has not scored over 9 pts since week #3. J Conner is
another RB who came back from injury this week but the result was
dismal with only 16 total yards from scrimmage and no TD.
The Decepticons had an army of players going on MNF and a golden
opportunity to slam the hammer on the Bros’ head but failed to take
advantage with a whimper from Mahomes who scored 14.75 pts, his
second worst game of the year. Fortunately his lone TD went to
Kelce who ended up the only positive performer of the night with his
18.5 pts otherwise Dec would not have beat either of Beaud or the
Ballers, because DL C Jones and K Badgley were pedestrian in that
game with 10 pts combined. Dec has been fairly fortunate this
year in terms of timing, with players getting injured or on bye
exactly at the same time as the backup popping out a great
performance and this is exactly what happened at WR with Lockett on
bye, C Ridley came off the bench and scored a key 20 pts for
Dec. However this situation did not happen at the rookie
position where D Jones was on bye and backup D Bush only scored 5
pts. After a decent start this year Bush has slowed down
considerably with only 23.5 pts combined in the last 4 weeks since
his bye. His recent average of less than 6 pts per game is
half of what he did in the first 6 weeks of the year when he
averaged almost 13 pts per game.
The Ballers scored an adequate 131.5 pts but needed just a bit more
to finish near the top. The Ballers were able to compete with
the top teams this week in large part because of Josh Allen making
the most of an easy matchup against the Dolphins with 38 pts.
However there were more favorable surprises this week, for example
Joe Mixon who has had a rough year, in previous weeks he either got
bad yardage, or no TD, or both. However for once he scored a
TD and got more than 100 yards from scrimmage for his best game of
the year finishing with 13.5 pts. With Breida out to injury
backup N Hines was called into action with very low expectations but
Mack’s injury meant more playing time for Hines and he took
advantage with a 4th quarter TD. TE J Cook has mostly been a
non-factor all year but at least this week he scored a short TD to
provide valuable points for the Ballers in a close week. At WR
Golladay had scored 55.25 pts in weeks 8-10 but unfortunately he was
held in check this week with only one reception. Defense was
very much up and down for the Ballers, with 27 pts combined from LBs
Edmunds and Jack, but only 2 pts each from DL Campbell and DB
Simmons.
The BeaudoinBrothers were by far the most affected team by “what
could have been” by ending up with the short end of the stick in the
close rankings from first to seventh. Part of it can be blamed
on injuries with Jeffery, TY Hilton, and Thielen all out to injury
on the same week which is not the position Beaud could afford
injuries since A Brown has been planting flowers in his garden all
season. However the Bros had the opportunity to start J Landry
on TNF but elected not to do so given that there was a chance at
least one of the three other WRs would play on Sunday, or that the
Bros might be able to trade for a WR before the deadline.
However it all ended up being poor management and the gamble did not
pay off, with J Landry scoring a TD on the bench, all the injured
WRs missed their game to injury, and three trade offers for a WR did
not work out. The price paid for this miscue could not have
been higher because just starting J Landry would have meant Beaud
would have finished 2 spots ahead of Dec instead of 2 spots behind
so when it’s all said and done at the end of the year this simple
call could very well mean a lot. And what to say of RB D
Johnson? If the guy is hurt then the Cards should just bench
him and the Bros will earn injury points and start someone
else. But no, he played without touching the ball a single
time so he got the goose egg with A Jones and D Henry on bye.
This disaster of a week was the same at QB with R Wilson on bye,
Winston started and scored only 12 pts because of 4 INTs, some of
them attributable to his teammates while M Ryan did better on the
bench with 15.25 pts which cost Beaud 6th place. The top
scorer for Beaud was LB Schobert with 28 pts which saved the team
from the depth of the standings this week.
OldNo7 was expected to have a quite good week based on weekly
projections (almost equal to Bas as highest projected score) but all
OldNo7 starters underperformed relative to projections except for TE
Goedert who scored a TD, the kicker, and college RB Taylor.
These three guys all beat their projection but barely, by barely
more than a point each. The poorest game of the week was from
LB K Mack who has been a disappointment since being acquired via
trade; Mack scored a goose egg and surprisingly it’s been Goedert
who has been the key to that trade especially with E Engram being
injured. Wentz was not expected to have a big score because he
was playing the Pats but 11.25 pts was nonetheless below
projections. It was the opposite for T Coleman who had a
perfect matchup against the Cards and Breida out to injury, but he
fell flat on his face with 12 carries for 14 yards. C
McCaffrey almost gained 200 total yards but he did not score so he
too underperformed against his projection. Besides Mack
defense was mediocre with scores between 6 and 9 pts for Poyer, J
Smith, Buckner, and even the Bills only scored 8 pts against the
Dolphins.
The expansion SunshineBoys have officially written off 2019 with
another last place (the fifth in 11 weeks), and finished in the
bottom two for the 5th straight time. The week #1 success of
3rd place has long been forgotten and Sun now trails the Ballers by
5 rank-points in last place. This week Sun scored only 77.25
pts which was not even remotely close to Old in 8th place with
112.75 pts. The big problem with Sun this week was that D
Watson who is normally one of the very few reliable players on the
team was completely shut down by the Ravens defense and finished the
game scoreless and only 0.5 pt. At WR it was more of the same
from ODB and JJSS who sucked again with only 10 pts combined.
And what to make of RB Gordon? While he seemed to be a good
gamble during the draft and he only missed 4 games with his holdout,
but his average since coming back was nothing to make an investment
for, with 9.2 pts per game which ranks RB18, putting him as dead
last of RB starters in a 9-team league. On defense nobody
stood out either so defense was equally poor as offense. The
end result was that for this week the top score for the Ballers’
entire squad of starters was as low as 9 pts, from both DB E Jackson
and K Lutz. When the DB and a kicker led the way, you know you
have a problem.
