The GloriousBastards refuse to say die and won for an impressive 4th
straight week and 5th time in 6 weeks. With only one week to
go they would have to beat Dec by 5 rank points for the crown and
even during their hot stretch they did not beat Dec by more than 4
rank-points. GB won with ease this week by scoring almost 20
points more than FE. Offense was good but not great for GB,
the defense being better, but GB could overpower the competition by
avoiding any player having a dreadful game which was the case for
all other teams this week. The only underperformance was E
Elliott who only scored 7 pts against the Eagles, but most other
players outscored their weekly projection or came very close.
The top game was M Thomas who has been on a tear recently and scored
23.75 pts this week and broke the NFL all-time record for receptions
in a season, and he still has next week to pile on even more.
The coach had the courage to start Goff in SF which was not a
promising matchup but Goff outscored Brady on the bench 21.75 to
16.25 pts. Bas also got a TD each from Mack, Diggs, rookie AJ
Brown, TE Kittle, and defense was very solid with the Broncos D
neutralizing the Lions offense with less than 200 total yards.
The coach also made a great last minute substitution to bench J
Brown (8 pts) in favor of D Davis (16.5 pts) which paid off.
DB J Bates and DL C Jordan also had decent games just below the
10-point mark.
FlyingElvis beat Dec by three spots to keep an outside chance of the
PQBFL title but will have to beat Dec by 4 spots in the final
week. FE had several bad games this week but Barkley made up
for all of them by feasting on a bad defense for the second straight
week. This time Barkley scored 2 TDs and almost 300 yards from
scrimmage against the Skins for a total of 38.25 pts which is more
than he scored between weeks 9-14 combined (33.25 pts in 5
games). Apart from Barkley, offense was rather
pedestrian. Kupp scored a TD but only had 31 receiving yards,
M Williams and H Henry did nothing special like the rest of the
Chargers offense despite playing the Raiders and they combined for
only 12.75 pts. Fournette did not score and finished with 8.75
pts, rookie Singletary was even worse with only 4 pts, and Prescott
had a similar result, no TD and only 9.25 pts. FE was able to
beat Wax via defense, most notably DB S Williams who had a big game
with 18 pts closely followed by Wagner who scored 16 pts. LB
Kendricks did not do as well with only 2 pts on MNF but Bas was out
of reach and FE did not need Kendricks to do anything to beat Wax
anyway.
Wax beat Adm by one spot and extended their lead in the standings to
3 rank-points over Adm so Wax is in good position to finish the year
in 5th place which is not too bad given how affected the team has
been by injuries. QB L Jackson came up big again with 33.25
pts but that is a common occurrence, the big difference from the
recent past this week was franchise player Kamara who scored over 10
pts for the first time since week 3, and in fact he doubled that
threshold and then some, with 22 pts against the Titans thanks to 2
TDs. Rookie D Samuel also scored a TD and topped his
projection with 12.75 pts, but everybody else on offense
stunk. First of all WR Westbrook scored 2.25 pts although not
much was expected from this chump anyway – S Shephard should have
started but he was benched with 16.75 pts. While Westbrook
scoring a deuce is not a surprise, the same cannot be said of J
Conner who only got 2.5 pts in an easy matchup against the Jets
which might mean the Steelers will miss the playoffs because of this
dud. Ty Hill (8.5 pts) and Ertz (5.25 pts) were not very
impressive either, particularly Ertz being completely outscored by
teammate Goedert (Old) which is not a good sign for Ertz’s 2020
potential. On defense Donald sacked Garoppolo 1.5 times and TJ
Watt added a sack of his own as well, while Kuechly (8 pts) and
Bethea (7.5 pts) had modestly below average games.
The Admirals had quite a bit of ground to cover before MNF to catch
up with Wax who did not have any remaining players while Adm still
had WR D Adams, LB B Martinez, DL D Hunter, and the Vikings
defense. The combined projection of those four was 41.5 pts
and Adm needed 48.75 pts to beat Wax. Unfortunately despite a
good effort from all of them, Adm came up short with 44.75 pts from
this group to finish 3.75 pts behind Wax. If Adm had beat Wax
they would have been only one rank-point behind Wax in the standings
but now being 3 rank-points behind the task will be more difficult
in the final week especially since Adm might not own the
tie-breaker, currently trailing Wax by 32.5 total points after 16
weeks. The main culprit for why Adm lost to Wax was QB
Garoppolo who only scored 8.5 pts at home against the Rams despite
the 49ers scoring 34 pts in that game. Garoppolo had 2 INTs
and a fumble (not lost) and he’ll need to do better than this in the
playoffs if the 49ers want to go far. The other big problem
for Adm was rookie DK Metcalf who was blanked completely when he
failed to catch a single pass at home against the weak Cards, only
being targeted once by R Wilson and the Hawks trailing all
game. Adm’s RBs scored 3 TDs combined this week although not a
lot of yardage with Gurley rushing for 48 yds and 2 TDs compared to
91 total yards from Ingram and one TD. The top game for Adm
was TE Andrews who scored 2 TDs and was just shy of 100 receiving
yards on 6 receptions for a total of 23.5 pts. Defense was
effective for Adm this week with the Vikes, Hunter, and Martinez
putting up good points on the board as mentioned above, plus J Bosa
and B Baker added 9 pts each.
The Decepticons finished in the middle of the pack tied in 5th place
with Ballers but expanded their lead in the standings and now just
need to finish 4th in week 17 to clinch. With injuries Dec is
limping towards the finish line but injured player replacement D
Parker provided a much needed TD and 16.5 pts with M Evans on
IR. Brees was the team leader with 28 pts despite starting the
game very slow in the first half, and he took advantage of the
Titans not playing for anything during that game. Besides
Brees and Parker, Kelce was the only bright spot on offense for Dec
with 16.5 pts, and the rest was not very impressive. First off
at RB with D Cook out, Hunt started again and only scored 2.75
pts. Carson got the dreaded intra-game injury after scoring
only 5 pts and his teammate WR Lockett did even worse with 1.5 pt
although he’s supposed to be healthy now. Rookie D Jones came
back to health but the coach played it safe and started D Lock which
turned out badly with Lock scoring 12 pts which was ok but not
great, while Jones exploded for 41.5 pts. If Dec had started D
Jones the team would have finished 2nd instead of 5th and would be
virtually assured of the PQBFL championship by now. Defense
was a mixed bag this week with L Collins surprisingly leading the
pack with 10.5 pts while LBs Littleton and Cunningham were less
impressive with 8.5 pts and 7.5 pts, respectively. The Rams
defense did not get the job done in SF and got booted out of the
playoff picture with only 5.5 pts which was even below their modest
projection.
The Ballers beat the SunshineBoys by 2.5 ranks this week and have
locked in 8th place for the season and will therefore avoid the
cellar. Ball was able to finish tied in 5th place despite an
incomplete lineup because several starters had excellent games,
starting with Josh Allen who easily beat his (low) projection
against the Pats by holding his own and keeping the Bills in the
game. Allen finished with 2 TDs and most importantly no
turnover for a total of 23.25 pts. Both Ju Jones and K
Golladay had double digit games, Golladay via a TD with low yardage
and Ju Jones did not score but had exactly 100 more receiving yards
than Golladay (166 vs 66). TE J Cook made the most of his 3
receptions because two of them were for a TD so he topped both Ju
Jones and Golladay with 21 pts. Miles Sanders almost did as
well with a TD and 156 total yards for 18 pts. Sanders has
clearly been improving during Jo Howard’s injury and was a key to
the Eagles win against the Cowboys. The Ballers could have
beat Dec if the coach had not started injured Akiem Hicks at
defensive flex, leaving a couple of healthy defensive players on the
bench. Also Breida was active but only played on special teams
and got a goose egg, while the Titans D had nothing to play for and
finished with -0.5 pt which was not very different than the Bears D
on the bench which scored zero.
The BeaudoinBrothers struggled for a third straight rough week, to
further drop in the standings to fourth place. The Bros are
just below FE and Bas in the standings so 2nd place could easily be
achieved with a strong week 17 but based on recent indications it is
questionable whether it will happen. R Wilson has slowed down
considerably and this week was particularly disturbing. It was
the third time in five weeks that he failed to reach 10 pts but this
time it was against a bad defense at home (Arizona) when he was
expected to be in a shootout with Kyler Murray. Since RB Drake
(FE) took care of most of the offense for the Cards, Murray was left
behind and to make matters worse got injured early in the 3rd
quarter which cost Beaud dearly. On MNF Aaron Jones managed to
salvage a terrible week for the Bros with 25.25 pts and beat Sun,
however if DB A Amos had done better than only 2 pts the Bros could
have beat Dec and Ball. The coach can also be blamed for that
result and as it’s been the case all year some key decisions ended
up costing in close weeks, for example this week the coach benched
the Ravens D on the road in Cleveland and instead started the
Chargers D because they were playing at home against a weaker
offense (Raiders). This did not pan out well and the Chargers
sucked with only 1.5 pt while the Ravens did just enough with 7.5
pts, such that if they had started the Bros would have beat both Dec
and Ball and would be much better positioned to win the
league. Instead of trailing Dec by 2 rank-points, the Bros are
down by 5 which means they are unlikely to drink champagne in one
week’s time.
The SunshineBoys finished in the red for the 12th time in 16 weeks
and will finish their expansion year in last place. D Freeman
has been a non-factor all year and ranks RB21 in the PQBFL but at
least this week he was productive with his best game of the year,
scoring twice for 21.5 pts. M Gordon also scored a couple of
TDs but unlike Freeman his yardage was terrible with 9 rushes for 15
yards so he finished with a more modest 13.75 pts. At WR both
ODB and Edelman cracked the 10-point mark but barely so, with 11 pts
and 10.5 pts respectively. As mentioned in previous weeks
rookie Pratt has been gradually improving and this week was the
first time that he scored over 10 pts with a good effort when he got
11 tackles and 1 assist. However the rest of Sun’s lineup was
in the single digits starting with the bad game from D Watson
against a porous defense in Tampa Bay. Watson did not have a
single TD and he threw an INT to end the game with only 6 pts.
At TE the coach benched McDonald and Ji Graham sucked. He only
caught one pass and he fumbled it away although fortunately
recovered by his teammate G Allison. On defense Sun is down to
the bare minimum of 4 healthy players and they did not do much to
speak of. DLs Dunlap and K Clark were fine with 17 pts
combined but 6 pts from L Alexander is not enough for the LB
position, and DB E Jackson scored only 2 pts which was the fifth
time this year that he scored 2 or fewer points.
OldNo7 has not had a very good year but had only finished last once
all year, quite a while ago in fact, in week 2. Old hit rock
bottom this week with 96 pts and not even close to Sun who was more
than 20 pts ahead of Old. The only thing that worked for Old
this week was the connection Wentz to Goedert with Wentz using
Goedert with Ertz being banged up, Goedert was targeted 12 times and
caught 9 of them including a TD to finish as Old’s best scorer with
18.5 pts while Wentz scored an adequate 17.25 pts. McCaffrey
had big yardage again but failed to score a TD so he finished the
game with 14.25 pts which was below his projection. T Coleman
was the opposite with only 3.75 pts but he beat his desperate
projection nonetheless, unlike McCaffrey. The coach messed up
at WR by starting Godwin who was injured but backup K Allen did not
score nearly enough on the bench to make a difference anyway.
As mentioned last week Old is now without a kicker so they got a
zero at the position and the Bills defense scored almost zero too,
ending the week with only half a point as they lacked big plays
against the Pats offense. In that game DB Poyer tallied up 10
tackles and had the only big play of the defense with a forced
fumble which was recovered by the Bills D. LBs J Smith and K
Mack both scored 8 pts which was a bit below their projection and
Buckner was almost worthless with only 1 pt.
