The GloriousBastards recovered in perfect fashion from the week 12
doom with a dominant win in week #13 and took back a
comfortable lead in the standings in 4th place because their nearest
3 opponents Wax Old Adm finishised 6th 7th and 8th. This week
was all defense for Bas because the team only scored 2 TDs on
offense, both by QB Goff who had the best score of the week for the
team with 25 pts, but everybody else failed to reach the end
zone. Defense was stellar however with 20+ pt games each for C
Jordan, D Leonard, and R Smith. This defense was supposed to
be strong but has modestly disappointed this year particularly R
Smith who has not done as well as last year and C Jordan was not
even top 10 DL before this week. However it all came together
with 8 sacks from these three guys combined and this week alone
catapulted C Jordan up to DL2 in the league behind Heyward
(FE). Failing to score TDs, some offensive players at least
contributed via decent stats for example TE Waller 7-100, E Elliott
137 yds from scrimmage, and Josh Jacobs rushed for over 100
yards. Stats were not as good for WRs M Thomas and S Diggs who
only had 73 receiving yards combined.
FlyingElvis beat both Beaud and Dec this week to stay in the race
and move to 2 rank-points behind Dec in the standings. The
choice of QB was somewhat easy this week with D Prescott playing the
Bills and A Rodgers playing the Giants; Rodgers started and led FE
with 33 pts. The rest of the offense came from Singletary and
C Kupp with 15.25 pts each but the rest was so-so with both
Fournette and Barkley scoring single-digits and H Henry being
limited to two short receptions. At least on defense Wagner
and Kendricks who were playing each other on MNF were able to seal
the win against Dec and Beaud with a solid 10 pts and 11.5 pts,
nothing earth shattering but it was enough. It helped make up
the Pats D which failed to reach 10 pts only for the second time
this year, this week they were powerless against the Texans, not
creating a single turnover and allowing 28 pts for a total score of
only 2.5 pts. They are no longer the most dominant at any
position, now leading the Steelers (Wax) by 5.2 pts per game,
compared to McCaffrey (Old) leading D Cook (Dec) by 5.3 pts per game
and K Murray (Beaud) leading D Jones (Dec) by 5.4 pts per
game.
The BeaudoinBrothers beat Dec at the finish line to increase their
lead in the standings to 2.5 rank points in a race that is shaping
up to go down the wire. On MNF R Wilson was going against Cook
+ Carson from Dec and it started awful for Beaud with 2 TDs from the
Dec RBs and a pick-6 from R Wilson in the first half. However
R Wilson made it back in the second half with 2 TDs to edge Dec by
3.75 pts. The Bros’ top scorer was not Wilson however, it was
A Jeffery back from the dead (and back from injury) who feasted on
the weak Dolphins offense which made the timing ideal to start
him. It should be noted that the lack of defense by the Eagles
in that game benefited Jeffery because the Eagles had to play
catchup and Jeffery was active with 9-137 plus a TD. The rest
of the offense was good but not great, except for A Jones who stunk
big time despite the juicy matchup against the Giants with only 31
total yards. Rookie Murray also underperformed his weekly
projection by a considerable margin with the Cards being blown away
34-7 by the Rams and only a 4th quarter garbage time TD from Murray
could save him from a truly disastrous day and he finished with 10.5
pts. Defense did not come to the rescue of Beaud this week and
they are the reason they did not beat FE as none of the Chargers,
Ingram, L David, Schobert, and Amos could reach 10 pts.
The Decepticons got beat by both FE and Beaud, so this week was
clearly a disappointment. The team got a big dose of bad luck
when on MNF D Cook got injured after scoring 6.25 pts and missed
most of the second half which robbed Dec of 3rd place and lost a
critical match-up against their rivals. C Carson scored 14 pts
in that game which was better than expectations but he continues to
split carries with R Penny (Wax) which is a worry for the rest of
the year given the lack of viable RB backups on Dec’s team.
The ‘Cons top score this week was surprisingly the Rams D who scored
a TD and held the Cards to less than 200 total yards and almost shut
them out completely. That game alone came close to being the
difference with Beaud because not only the Rams scored big but at
the same time kept K Murray in check. The Chiefs had a good
match-up against the Raiders at home but both Mahomes and Kelce
underperformed slightly with 2 short TDs from Mahomes and less than
200 passing yards, while Kelco did not score a TD. It’s not
every day that the Chiefs score 40 pts and that Mahomes-Kelce are
somewhat quiet but the Chiefs defense and running attack limited the
fire power of the Dec duo. At WR it was not much better with M
Evans underperforming his projection by even more than Mahomes and
Kelce did, with 4-53 no TD for 6.5 pts. But this time it was
not Godwin (Old) who stole Evans’ thunder, similar to the Chiefs it
was the running game and the Bucs defense who did the scoring.
The Ballers finished in the middle of the pack this week which was
their highest finish since their 3rd place in week #8. In the
last four weeks they earned 16 rank-points compared to the
SunshineBoys only 5 rank-points so now the Ballers’ lead in 8th
place is 10 rank-points which will be hard for Sun to
overcome. The Ballers could have finished as high as 2nd if
they had not started injured Ju Jones and Myles Jack. Players
in the starting lineup and healthy did well, first off Josh Allen
got the job done again by pulling off an important road win in
Dallas with a near perfect game 19/24 passing and 43 yards rushing,
2 TDs and no turnover. Boom-bust WR Golladay caught another TD
bomb, this time for 75 yards and finished just short of 20
points. RB N Hines is benefiting from M Mack’s injury and
scored a TD for the second time in three weeks, with Joe Mixon doing
the same and both RBs finished with 20 pts combined. Rookie
Miles Sanders came back to the starting lineup after being benched
in favor of Preston Williams in weeks 10-11-12. Sanders took
advantage of the Dolphins with 14.75 pts to move up to RB15.
He has not been as dominant as expected this year but he is trending
up with Jo Howard (Wax) injured.
WaxOnWaxOff finished a hair behind the Ballers in 6th place to
continue their frustrating season and lost significant ground to the
GloriousBastards in the standings. L Jackson’s challenge was
more important this week by playing the 49ers defense and he was
limited to only 105 passing yards and he lost a fumble, but he
salvaged the game with over 100 rushing yards and 2 TDs to finish
over 20 pts nonetheless. The top scorer of the week for Wax
was D Guice who has been doing quite well since coming back from
injury and scored 21.25 pts in Carolina. Wax’s regular RBs did
not do nearly as well however with Kamara continuing to underperform
in a major way with only 7 pts this week, at least this time he was
not outscored by L Murray. With Jo Howard and Conner out,
Wax’s coach started Ro Jones but he only got 6 carries for 8 yards
while teammate P Barber took the load with 17 rushes and 2
TDs. This was in part because Ro Jones was benched during the
game after missing a blitz picking which resulted in a sack and lost
fumble for J Winston. Wax left R Penny on the bench with 19.75
pts and Ad Peterson with 15.25 pts – who could have guessed that
starting both Guice and Peterson could have produced more than 35
pts. On defense the Steelers manhandled the Browns to kill
their playoff chances and finished with 11.5 pts thanks to 5 sacks
and 2 turnovers.
OldNo7 finished in the red for the 6th time in 13 weeks to drop to
7th place in the standings behind Wax and Adm who are both 2
rank-points ahead. Wentz was expected to have a big game
against the Dolphins and he even beat his projection with 27.25 pts
but he could have done better if not for his INT and he lost the
game. McCaffrey was the one who missed his projection by the
biggest margin with 102 total yards and no TD at home against the
Skins – a much better game was expected from him. T Coleman
fell flat on his face against the Ravens even with Breida out; it’s
actually Mostert who took over with 19 carries compared to 5 for
Coleman who was just an afterthought. WR Godwin was also quiet
with only 4-50 no TD, D Hopkins scored a TD but only 5-64 which was
not the most impressive stats, and E Engram is still injured which
hurts Old although Goedert has been a serviceable backup including
this week again with 9.25 pts. Defense was a mixed bag
with 14 pts for Jaylon Smith but only 2 pts from K Mack, while
Buckner (10 pts) and the Bills (8.5 pts) modestly beat their
projection. We rarely comment on kickers but this week was
notable with B Maher missing 2 FGs to end up in negative territory
which was a drag for Old.
The Admirals finished in the bottom 2 for the first time this season
with 8th place and lost ground to all their closest competitors in
the standings. The Admirals rank last in injury points and
they have been spared for the most part this season, one exception
being D Adams who missed some time in weeks #5-8. Since coming
back he has been gradually doing better from week 9 to 13 with 9
pts, 12.75 pts, 16 pts, and this week 19 pts. Gurley was
banged up too earlier this year but he scored 14.5 pts this week
which was his second good week in the last 3 weeks. For Adm
it’s the healthy guys who are not pulling their weight, starting
with rookie D Haskins who by virtue of being a QB is luring the
coach into starting him but even in a week where the Skins won
convincingly with 29 pts on offense, Haskins was a non-factor with
only 3.25 pts and he did not even have a turnover – he just did not
do anything useful. DL J Bosa is normally a pillar of Adm’s
defense but not this week. He could not get to a rookie QB in
his first start D Lock (Dec) to sack him, and only got one assist
all game, and that’s it. And what about G Olsen? Almost
every year he misses a few games to injury but so far in 2019 he’s
been playing every week until this week when he got concussed after
scoring 4 pts. What hurts more is that backup M Andrews scored
12.5 pts which made the coach beat himself up over the late lineup
change on Sunday. The Browns defense was also disappointing
with only 4.5 pts against the Steelers and their 3rd string
QB.
The SunshineBoys finished last for the 6th time this year and in the
red for the 7th straight week to sink further deep into last
place. This week was a particularly surprising finish for Sun
given that D Watson scored 32 pts against the tough Pats D which
well exceeded his projection, Edelman had a good game with 17.75
pts, DL Dunlap was a monster with 3 sacks and 6 QB hits, and even
kicker Lutz had a solid game with 4 FGs three of which were over 40
yards. So given those top performances how could Sun possibly
finish in the basement again? RBs were an unmitigated disaster
with a goose egg for Ballage despite the Dolphins putting 37 pts on
the board, and another goose egg for L Murray rushing only 4 times
for 2 years. The coach can be blamed for that because M Gordon
and D Freeman are back healthy and should have started instead,
which would have made a difference of 15.25 pts and Sun would have
finished in 5th place – a huge 4 rank difference. There were
other sore spots in the lineup which were not the coach’s fault, for
example ODB is impossible to bench yet he continues to suck, only
4.25 pts this week. Rookie N Harry is now healthy and the
coach started him but he was the third goose egg of the week for
Sun, that said backup N Fant only scored 1.25 point on the bench so
that one did not matter as much, and rookie LB Pratt was probably
not at the top of the coach’s mind but he came out on top of Sun
rookies with 5 pts.
