After a three-week skid from week 14-16 where the Bros finished no
better than 6th, they seemed the least likely of the pack of 4 teams
at the top to emerge victorious because stars had to align with a
big final week combined with Dec who had to finish towards the
bottom plus Beaud had to beat both Bas and FE, and FE by more than
one spot. After a lackluster 1pm from all teams, things
started to heat up during the 4pm games with the GloriousBastards
surging and looking like they were going to win an unprecedented 5th
straight week with 2 TDs from Elliott, 2 TDs from Mack, 1 TD from AJ
Brown, and an INT from D Leonard all in the first half of 4pm games
while the Bros only had the Ravens D and D Henry remaining and
seemed all left for dead despite Dec and FE struggling
equally. However as it’s been the case so many times, the
later it gets, D Henry overpowers the competition and he scored 3
TDs in the second half including a long 53-yard TD with 3 minutes
left to ice the game. The Ravens D did the same with their
backups on the field against the Steelers. They were having a
fine game, holding the Steelers to 10 pts and less than 200 yards of
offense, but with only 1 turnover and 2 sacks it was not a
difference maker. However moments after Henry’s 3rd TD, the
Ravens scored a defensive TD and scored a safety within 15 seconds
of each other late in the 4th quarter to power the Ravens D to a
24-point game which ended up being the second best on the Bros’
squad after Henry’s 35.5 pts which helped the Bros end up with a
comfortable lead in first place this week and edge Bas, FE, and Dec
in one of the closest finishes in the PQBFL history. Notable
mentions go to WRs A Robinson and J Landry who have been called into
action far more than expected all year with A Brown being out of the
league and with injuries to TY Hilton and Thielen. Once again
in week 17 Robinson and Landry were serviceable backups, with
Robinson catching 9 passes for 12.5 pts and Landry scoring a long TD
for 15 pts. At the rookie position things were looking bleak
because K Murray was a game-time decision at 4pm so the Bros were
forced to start rookie Devin White instead, and the young LB scored
a 91-yard TD recovery to provide a more than adequate 14-point game
and finished the season as 4th best rookie in the PQBFL, behind K
Murray, D Jones (Dec), and J Jacobs (Bas).
The GloriousBastards furious comeback ended up just short, one
rank-point behind the BeaudoinBrothers. Bas got beat by 1.75
pt by OldNo7 this week but would not have had the tie-breaker
against the Bros anyway so what really mattered is that Bas had to
beat Bros period and despite big games from Elliott (23.5 pts), Mack
(16.5 pts), and AJ Brown (18 pts) as mentioned above, ultimately it
was not enough because the other guys playing at 4pm did not do as
well for example WR Sutton was limited to 6.5 pts and the Broncos
defense bended all game without breaking, but allowing 477 total
yards and no turnover only resulted in 2 pts. LB Leonard had
an INT early on but finished with only 3 tackles 3 assists so he
just matched his projection of 11 pts and the rest of Bas’s defense
was bad particularly only one point from DB Bates and 3 pts from D
Davis. At QB the coach wavered between starting Goff or Brady
and ended up going with old man Brady who does not look like his old
self, failed to beat the Dolphins when it mattered and finished the
game with 19.25 pts, a bit less than Goff on the bench with 26.75
pts. One of the key reasons why Bas was even in position to
win the league was WR M Thomas who had scored at least 19.5 pts in 7
of his last 8 games, but he was barely used due to the Saints
jumping to a huge lead early and he finished with only 5.75 pts
which was his worst game of the year, at the worst possible
time. On SNF the Bastards still had a tiny chance to beat
Beaud but needed 38.25 pts from TE Kittle which is simply too much
to ask for a TE. At that time Bas was still in a tight race
with FE and Dec and Kittle did enough to move Bas to third place
this week by beating Adm by only 2 pts, and it proved to be the
difference between a 2nd place in the final standings or finishing
tied with Dec and Bas would have lost the tie-breaker.
The Decepticons had been hanging on to their lead in the standings
despite mounting injuries in the last few weeks because the Bros
were not doing any better, but Dec crashed and burned in the final
week to a season-low 8th place and only 97.5 pts, almost finishing
dead last, only 2.5 pts ahead of the SunshineBoys. All Dec had
to do was finish in 5th place but that was not meant to be and
injuries were too much to overcome with a situation that went from
bad to worse especially at RB with D Cook, C Carson, and J Williams
all out, forcing K Hunt and D Johnson into the starting
lineup. Johnson scored a TD but Hunt only scored 3 pts and a
miracle could not have been expected from them. The problem
for Dec was rather that top producers did not deliver this week,
first of all Kelce only scored 4 pts, Mahomes was way short of his
projection with 11.5 pts, and Dec needed a monster game from D Jones
at 4pm which he has sometimes been able to do (like in week 16 with
41.5 pts) but this time he was mostly held in check by the Eagles
with 13 pts. Defense has sometimes carried Dec during the
season but it did not happen this week. DL C Jones got one
sack but 7 pts was not that great, Littleton also got a sack but
only 3 tackles so he finished with 8 pts, Dec started LB Cunningham
who only scored 3 pts with D Jones on the bench scoring a TD on a
pick-6 in overtime for 16 pts, and Dec started injured DB L Collins
with J Adams scoring 4.5 pts on the bench which turned out to be
a non-issue anyway since Dec finished more than 30 pts behind
5th place.
FlyingElvis kept their head above water all year long and never led
in the standings but in a crazy-close finish, FE actually had a
chance on SNF to win the league if they could have emerged on top of
a tight pack of Old, Bas, Wax, and Adm for spots 2-6 in the final
week. FE did not have to beat Beaud this week to be champs,
they just needed to finish one spot behind so with the Bros running
away with first place, FE needed to finish 2nd with LB Wagner as the
remaining player going against Kittle (Bas), Buckner (Old), DK
Metcalf (Adm), and Deebo Samuel (Wax). FE was hoping for a big
play from Wagner but it never came so FE finished last of this group
and dropped to 4th place in the final standings. If FE had
scored an extra 10.75 pts this week, they would have finished 2nd
instead of 6th this week, and those 10.75 pts alone were the
difference between 4th place in the standings instead of the PQBFL
championship; that’s how close things were. Scoring an extra
10.75 pts is a long TD on offense and Prescott provided his share
this week with 36.75 pts so nothing more could have been asked from
him, Barkley did score a long TD of his own for 17.75 pts, Drake
scored a short one and ended with 13.75 pts which was not bad
against the Rams, Kupp scored 16.75 pts which was in excess of his
projection, and H Henry also scored a TD for 12 pts. The
problem for FE this week was WR2 which was the Achilles’ heel all
year and this time Mike Williams was sent in the lineup with Cole
Beasley resting; M Williams disappointed with only 4.75 pts while K
Allen (Old) and Henry did the scoring for the Chargers
offense. However the bigger problem for FE was the rookie
position. Week 17 can always be whacky and nobody was
penalized more than FE. Singletary could have easily scored
that critical 10.75 pts for FE if he had played, but the Bills were
resting key players and FE had to start Isabella who did nothing at
all. But there is more. On defense E Kendricks was
injured and he too could have been able to score those 10.75
pts. Instead the coach started DL D Lawrence who stunk with a
goose egg, leaving Von Miller on the bench with 11.5 pts. So
that starting call alone deprived FE of their first league title
since 2011.
WaxOnWaxOff needed to avoid Adm beating them by a few ranks to
secure 5th place and they did exactly that with a big game on SNF
from Deebo Samuel who scored 18.75 pts to edge FE, and Adm was 3.75
pts short of beating Old and Bas despite DK Metcalf scoring a TD and
nearly missing on another one. Wax finishes their
injury-riddled season with second most injury points behind the
Ballers and will have the second pick overall in 2020. Star QB
L Jackson was rested and Wax had to start Rivers who scored 14.5
pts. Right behind team leader D Samuel, second best this week
was last minute injured player replacement TE Higbee who scored 17
pts followed by Kamara who has been doing better recently and scored
a couple of TDs for 15.75 pts. Starting WRs Ty Hill and
Shephard were not very impressive to end the regular season with 7
pts and 6.75 pts respectively, and Conner’s injury was painful once
again for Wax with backup Ro Jones starting and scoring only 6.5 pts
despite a 100-yard effort, mostly because he fumbled twice and lost
one of them. On defense Wax was not very good, first off the
Steelers only scored 5 pts against the Ravens B team and in the rain
to boot. A Donald was held to 2 pts while both Kuechly (8.5
pts) and Bethea (6 pts) failed to reach their projection.
The Admirals came up short on SNF with 16 pts from rookie DK Metcalf
as mentioned above, and the 4th place finish this week means the
team ends up in 6th place overall for the season. It’s been
hard to pick a starting QB all year for Adm because Carr, Mayfield,
and Garoppolo all had an inconsistent season. This week Adm
started Carr who scored 18 pts which was less than Mayfield’s 25.5
pts in an easy matchup against the Bengals. At RB Gurley did
not score a TD unlike J White but White also lost a fumble so he
only scored 6 pts, worse than Gurley’s already weak 7.25 pts.
At WR D Adams helped the Packers to a first round bye with 18.5 pts
and the other starting WR was C Kirk which was somewhat of a
surprise that the coach benched A Cooper but it was the right call
by a small margin, Kirk scored 10.25 pts and Cooper did not do much
with teammate Gallup (Sun) scoring 3 TDs and Cooper was held to 8.75
pts. Ravens TE Andrews was injured and missed the game along
with Ingram, although it’s unclear that they would have played much
even if healthy. Backup TE Olsen only scored 2.5 pts which did
not help Adm. On defense B Martinez and B Baker had big games
with 31.5 pts combined, but DL D Hunter did not get anything, not
even a tackle in a meaningless game with the Vikings resting many
key players for big chunks of the game.
OldNo7 ended the year on a good note with 2nd place and finishes in
7th place as expected. It was actually the 5th time this year
that Old finished in the top 2 which was far better than Wax and Adm
who only did so twice all year. The problem for Old has been
consistency with 6 times in the bottom two compared to Adm just
once, and Wax three times. It’s worth noting that Wax’s bottom
two finishes were all in the first 7 weeks and subsequently Wax
avoided the red in the last 10 weeks of the season which is not
something that Old ever came close of achieving. This week Old
started injured WR DJ Moore but given that Hopkins was rested by the
Texans Old really did not have anybody to start at WR2 with Godwin
also injured. Lone starting WR K Allen scored 20 pts which was
second best for Old, right behind RB Damien Williams who exploded
for 25.75 pts and robbed key scoring from Dec with the Mahomes-Kelce
connection which turned out unnecessary because of Williams which
means Old was a key troublemaker in the standings this week.
McCaffrey scored another TD and almost 100 yards despite the
Panthers getting obliterated by the Saints and he finished best RB
in the PQBFL by a margin of 3.3 pts per game over D Henry
(Beaud). Wentz did not beat his projection this week but 17.75
pts was good enough to put OldNo7 on top of the close finish between
2nd and 6th place in a week where points were at a premium. On
defense Old made the right call to bench Poyer knowing the Bills
might not use key players much, and Poyer scored 2 pts compared to
13.5 pts from starting DB Mathieu who had an INT to help the Chiefs
clinch a first round bye.
The Ballers finished 7th this week and 8th for the year with the
most injury points of the entire PQBFL and will have the benefit of
drafting first overall next year. At QB it was clear Josh
Allen was not going to play the full game but he was starting so who
could have known it was better to start backup Taysom Hill?
Hill scored a TD and 12 pts while Josh Allen only threw 3/5 for 5
yards before resting. The best game of the week for the
Ballers was by far Joe Mixon who scored 24.5 pts against the
disappointing Browns. This was Mixon’s best game of the year
and after a slow start he ends the season RB16 which is not good
enough as a first round pick, but at least he ends up top 18 which
is starter material. Ball only had one starting RB to speak of
all year and this week backup J Samuel scored 1.25 pts even with
Conner injured which is awful. At WR Ju Jones had a monster
projection of 20.5 pts this week because of the matchup with the
Bucs but Jones was held out of the end zone with 7-78 which was
barely above half of his projection with 10.75 pts. Tyler Boyd
was also expected to have a big game against the Browns but he only
scored 7.75 pts, also close to half of his projection like Ju
Jones. On defense M Jenkins was the best with 14.5 pts to help
the Eagles make the playoffs and C Campbell scored on a TD recovery
to reach 10 pts.
The SunshineBoys finished last this week to end the season in
typical fashion for an expansion team with little depth. Sun
almost beat Dec but with Lockett scoring a TD on SNF, Sun fell to
last place but in the end it was not relevant in the final
standings. With D Watson resting, Dalton started and scored 14
pts which was not as good as what Watson normally does. Gordon
had a good game with 15 pts but D Freeman’s 6 pts was somewhat low
against the Bucs. At WR it’s been a clusterfuck all year for
Sun with ODB and JJSS underperforming all year and with Edelman
being benched more often than not despite being a top 10 WR in the
PQBFL. This week both ODB and JJSS were benched but Edelman
only scored 3.25 pts and is a main reason why the Pats missed on the
first round bye. Backup C Samuel started and was horrible
against the Saints with only 2.5 pts, while Gallup was benched and
he exploded for 29.75 pts and ODB also scored 14 pts on the bench in
one final week of bad starting calls at the WR position. On
defense the Boys did not have any LB to start with Vander Esch
injured, P Brown not active, and L Alexander not playing much for
the Bills. However DL Dunlap made up for it with a big game
thanks to 2.5 sacks, one forced fumble, and 3 QB hits on
Mayfield. Dunlap ended the week with 20 pts and surprisingly
edged C Heyward (FE) for the top DL crown in the PQBFL with an
average of 9.3 pts per game vs 9.2 pts for Heyward.
