Week #8

The GloriousBastards won for the second time in four weeks, this time by a wide margin over the Ballers and Decepticons with 173.25 pts in what was the second lowest scoring week of the season.  After DK Metcalf’s 1 catch performance sunk Bas in week #7, he bounced back with 12-161-2 this week for 33 pts and crushed teammate Lockett (Dec) which was the difference between Bas beating Dec this week unlike the opposite happening last week.  Metcalf is now WR3 in the PQBFL so far having scored only 2.5 fewer total points than Lockett in 7 games.  Rookie Herbert was the second-best scorer for Bas in another loss and turnover-prone game but he had enough TDs and yardage to exceed 20 pts for the fourth straight game.  Brady also topped 20 pts but he did so in more efficient fashion without a turnover which led to a road win by the Bucs against the weak Giants.  Individual defense was very strong for Bas as well with 48.5 pts in total, the laggard being C Jordan who scored 8 pts which is not bad for a DL, and the best was DB Bates who scored 16 pts including an INT.  There were some bad news for Bas this week however, notably Kittle got injured after scoring 3.75 pts, but thankfully Bas has Waller who is by far the best backup TE in the PQBFL in fact he’s TE3 so he would be a starter on almost every team.  The situation is more problematic for Elliott however who will not be getting any help from a QB as shown this week: DiNucci is confirmed to be worse than Dalton in case there were any doubts, so defenses can focus on Elliott and the Cowboys are not scoring TDs anyway.  Elliott finished with only 6 pts and Bas does not have any other viable backup RBs to start. 

The Ballers had their best week since their week #4 win with second place, in a close contest against Dec.  Ball was able to beat Dec at the finish line on SNF because of Zuerlein’s FGs of 49, 49, and 59 yards, the longest of which was even against the wind.  The Ballers struggled recently in part because D Cook was injured in week #6 and had a bye in week #7 but he returned in full force this week with 4 TDs and over 225 yards from scrimmage as he single handedly beat the Packers with a crushing 43.75 pt effort.  Cook is now the highest scoring RB in the PQBFL far ahead of Kamara (Wax) if we ignore McCaffrey who has only played 2 games.  In fact Cook’s worst game of the season was no less than 12.25 pts in week #5; such an average would place him RB7 in the PQBFL and that is his floor so far.  Needless to say he is turning out to be the right pick to make in first overall during the draft.  Co-RB N Hines was a surprise contributor with 19 pts thanks to two TD which was the first game since week #1 where he scored more than 5 pts, and he did it without having to dislodge J Taylor (FE) who is still healthy.  The Ballers were further boosted this week by LB Wagner who sacked the QB twice and added 4 QB hits for a total of 21 pts and took over as the league’s best LB so far.  For Ball to challenge Bas at the top this week, the team would have needed more from WRs who were awful, P Williams and AJ Green both caught two short passes for a total of less than 20 yards and no TD.  D Hopkins being on bye week was painful and other WRs Watkins and Edelman were injured. 

The Decepticons beat both Wax and Beaud to move closer to the top but must also pay attention to Bas in the rearview mirror; Dec finished 3rd this week which was ok but more will be needed to catch up when injured players come back.  The ‘Cons lead the PQBFL in injury points and there are still several players sidelined who have not come back yet.  The main one this week was DB Adams who was questionable but ended up sitting again which was problematic because DB Collins was on bye not to mention that he is also injured anyway.  While there is no denying that Dec was hit with very bad luck due to injuries, it also exposes the drawback of having drafted college players to improve 2021 but it came at the expense of less depth in 2020 and Dec is now paying the price.  Dec was also down to the bare minimum of two active RBs this week with Chubb and Carson both injured, Duke Johnson on bye, and starters Hunt (6 pts) and Montgomery (8.75 pts) both underperformed relative to their projections.  As mentioned above Lockett was not the focus of the offense this week and gave way to Metcalf; Lockett only scored 5.5 pts this week.  Ju Jones beat his projection by a point with 13.75 pts due to 7 receptions and well over 100 yards receiving but he would have needed a TD for a bigger game.  The top player for Dec this week was by far QB Mahomes.  Dec’s franchise player did not have much to do in the last few weeks because the Chiefs ground game was working well but this week against the Jets, Mahomes kicked ass with 5 TDs for his best game of the year with 47.75 pts.  This week was also the first start for rookie Tua Tago but it turned out to be a snooze; the Dolphins won the game but Tago threw for less than 100 yards.  He beat Dec’s previous starting rookie P Queen 5 pts to 4 pts but more was expected. 

The BeaudoinBrothers had their second worse game of the season with only 138.25 pts and also the lowest finish in the standings since week #3 with 4th place, but due to Wax’s struggles Beaud nonetheless more than doubled their lead in the standings from 3 rank-points to 7 rank-points – go figure.  QB Wilson was back in his element this week with 4 TDs no INT after the 3-INT game the week before in the Seahawks’ only loss, and Wilson’s 33.25 pts was the first time he scored more than 30 pts since he did it in the season’s first three weeks before slowing down in weeks #4-7.  The second-best game for Beaud was from an unlikely contributor, rookie CD Lamb was benched due to the Cowboys QB situation and Beaud benefited from injuries to D Samuel (Wax) and G Kittle (Bas) making Aiyuk the center point of the 49ers offense and he scored 18.5 pts against the Seahawks bad pass defense so needless to say that all stars aligned to make that happen.  However less should be expected going forward with Garoppolo now injured.  The Bros could have finished 2nd if they had started Gallup instead of A Cooper: it seemed like the rookie QB in Dallas had more chemistry with Gallup who scored 10 pts on the bench while Cooper was useless with 1 reception for 5 yards.  Defense was also a sore point with only 29 pts in total compared to a projection of 46.3 pts.  LB White was the only one to beat his projection with 12 pts, while L David could not do better than 6.5 pts on MNF, JJIII only had 2 assists, Garrett did not sack the QB for the first time since week #1 and got injured, plus the Saints which started due to matchups, and once again the Ravens did better anyway despite playing the Steelers. 

The Admirals finished in the middle of the pack with 126.75 pts and 5th place.  With D Watson on bye, Adm was not expecting miracles and Mayfield stunk with 6.25 pts although it was better than Garoppolo who finished with a negative score on the bench.  Adm was another team with the bare minimum RB required with only two active players D Harris and P Lindsay and thankfully they both did well with 15.5 pts and 15 pts, respectively.  All others were injured: A Jones, M Ingram, and C Hyde; while the latter two are not crucial for Adm’s lineup, having A Jones back soon will make a big difference.  One player who was injured but came back is D Adams.  After missing weeks 3-4 and being on bye in week 5, Adams has been lights out in weeks 7-8, scoring 24.5 pts this week and he now leads the entire PQBFL with an average of 21.6 pts per week if we exclude QBs (or rookie QBs).  Adm’s other star WR Thielen did not do as well however because D Cook did everything himself.  Thielen was limited to 3 receptions for 27 yds and he did not have to do anything else for the Vikings to win.  TE Andrews was similarly absent from the offense with 3-32 in part because L Jackson continues to play RB not QB, even refusing to throw the ball in obvious passing downs with the Ravens play from behind, which ultimately cost them the game.  Adm might have finished closer to the bottom of the standings this week but the Eagles defense had a party on SNF with 24.5 pts against the inept Cowboys. 

OldNo7 struggled with 6th place this week and because of Bas and Ball finishing 1-2, Old is now closer to 7th in the standings with Ball 2 rank-points behind, rather than catching Bas in 5th place who is now 7 rank-points ahead.  With McCaffrey and Michel injured, Old had to start Gordon and J White again and both were horrible with only 6.5 pts combined.  Ty Hill had a good game with two long TDs but the problem is that his stats left to be desired, if we remove his two long TDs he only had 2 receptions for 22 yards the rest of the game.  K Allen only scored one short TD but he was more dominant the rest of the game than Ty Hill with 9 receptions.  Because the Chiefs were throwing the ball at will against the Jets they did not use rookie CEH much and he only scored 2.5 pts.  Not only the Chiefs threw 47 times and ran only 20 times, but CEH had to share carries with L Bell, D Thompson, and D Williams which makes one wonder with such a crowded backfield on a passing team, whether Old will have to punt and start one of their two rookie LBs instead at some point later this year.  On defense, Old got a double-digit game from Poyer, K Mack, and B Martinez, but DL Buckner was quiet with 1 point and Old incorrectly benched the league-leading Colts who scored 11.5 pts and started the Bills D instead who were shaky against the Pats and finished the game with 4 pts.  Old had the choice of starting A Rodgers against the Vikings or Wentz against the god-awful Cowboys defense, fortunately Old picked Rodgers who scored 22.25 pts instead of Wentz who was even worse than DiNucci with only 5.25 pts. 

FlyingElvis finished 7th this week and because of the Ballers’s big week, chances are that FE will finish the season in 8th place because Ball is now a whopping 12 rank-points ahead in the standings.  QB was forecasted to be a problem for FE and unfortunately it has unfolded exactly that way, this week Bridgewater scored 12.25 pts which fell way short of his projection of 20.2 pts.  Backups Cousins (13.25 pts) and D Jones (15 pts) just did a bit better but that is nothing which would have lifted FE to success.  Back in August, D Jones was called FE’s worst pick in the draft in the 5th round.  He is now QB24 in the PQBFL so a massive overreach at the time he was taken.  Part of it is unfair because S Barkley is injured but FE knew they would be putting eggs in the same basket by having the Barkley-Jones duo, and given that A Rodgers (QB5 in the PQBFL so far) was taken three rounds later by Old, it makes the D Jones pick look even worse than it was.  At RB the problems are not the GM’s fault but rather injuries, this week with M Sanders and Ekeler out FE started Singletary and Fournette.  The former did ok with 7.5 pts which beat his projection, but the problem is that he must share with rookie Z Moss (Ball) who is back healthy.  Both Moss and Singletary carried 14 carries times each, but it’s Moss who scored the two TDs, not Singletary.  Fournette is now back to health himself and the good news is that he out-rushed R Jones (Wax) 15 to 7 carries but Fournette only had 3.5 yards per carry and no TD which was not good enough to beat his projection.  Rookie RB J Taylor is another one who needs to compete for touches, this week not only Hines (Ball) stole the TDs but RB Wilkins also took the lion’s share of carries with 20 compared to only 11 for Taylor who went nowhere fast with 22 yards on those carries for an average of only 2.0.

WaxOnWaxOff had stayed close to the top for several weeks despite losing to Beaud three straight weeks between weeks 5 and 7, because they lost by a combined 4 rank-points only during that time frame.  However the roof caved in this week with Wax failing to score 100 points and finished in 8th place.  Now Wax has Dec only one rank-point behind in 3rd place, most likely will not own the tie-breaker, and Dec is getting healthier.  Even Adm is not far behind (only 3 rank-points) and Bas same thing only 4 rank-points behind.  L Jackson’s struggles have been well documented and he had his worst week of the season with only 10 pts.  The time has come to ask when will Wax start Roethlisberger, this week Roeth scored 18 pts on the bench against the tough Ravens defense, and now Roeth has scored 136.0 points total compared to L Jackson 135.5 pts since the beginning of the season, both in 7 games.  At RB Kamara had another good game with 163 total yards but he did not score so he was a bit short of his projection with 13.5 pts this week.  Ronald Jones sucked as mentioned above after being put in the dog house by coach Arians following a lost fumble and he ended the game with 0.75 pt and might end up being Fournette’s backup going forward.  Wax had more hope for L Bell but with only 2 points this week in a blow-out win, it’s not clear that Bell will score more as a Chief than he did as a Jet.  Wax’s receivers were also awful this week with only 13 pts total for Jo Smith, Ridley, and DJ Moore.  The Bucs defense was not dominant against the Giants in fact they almost had to go into overtime, and individual defenders were not a lot better, A Donald scored 10 points with a sack and forced fumble but everybody else failed to reach double digits notably F Warner only scored 5 pts which is about half of his season average and his weekly projection. 

ProfMJ finished last for the 4th time in 8 weeks with 74.5 pts which was almost as bad as their season-low 73.25 pts in week #6.  Since Josh Allen got off track Prof has been struggling and Prof even benched Allen this week because of his matchup against the Pats.  That turned out to be the right call because Allen only scored 8.75 pts but D Carr did not do much better with 10.75 pts so it was irrelevant.  With Drake on bye, Prof had to start Mattison but now that D Cook is back, Mattison is useless and only had 3 carries for 8 yards.  At WR C Kupp had a good game with 17.5 pts but Golladay got injured before catching a single pass and he will miss more time; that goose egg was painful but Prof would most likely have finished last anyway since they were so far behind Wax.  At TE Prof has 3 of the worst 7 in the PQBFL, the best of the bunch being Gesicki who scored a lowly 1.25 pt this week, not showing any connection with his new QB Tua Tago.  Rookie D Mims is now healthy but had a slow start with 6 pts last week and 4 pts this week which was still better than Ruggs on the bench with 2.25 pts.  The Titans defense started against the Bengals which seemed to be an obvious call because the Cowboys should be benched at all times, but this week it’s the Titans who sucked with -1 pt and lost to the Bengals while Dallas’s defense surprisingly kept the team in the game against the Eagles and scored 12.5 pts by creating 4 turnovers against Wentz (Old).  Part of the Cowboys’ resurgence is the return to health of Vander Esch who started at LB for Prof and scored 9 pts because of a sack and forced fumble. 





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