Week #5

FlyingElvis had a massive eruption on MNF with L Jackson, M Brown, and J Taylor who combined for 8 TDs and almost 100 pts together in a meteoric rise to the top for a total of 216.5 pts and FE’s first win of the season.  FE moved up to third place in the standings and with Dec’s struggles, FE is only 2 rank-points away from second place.  A Ekeler also added to FE’s offensive festival with 3 TDs of his own but tempered by a fumble lost, and a fumble not lost.  Thielen was also weak with 4 pts but otherwise everything was clicking for FE, even H Henry scored a TD and caught 6 passes.  What better week could rookie K Pitts have chosen to explode as well, he caught a TD and in addition had great stats with 9-119.  Defense was more quiet with the Pats, Q Williams, T Edmunds, and Wagner combining for only 21 pts, however the exception was DB D James who ended the game with 24 pts without even scoring a TD.  With this performance, James took the lead as DB1 in the PQBFL in front of Byard (Adm).  With bye weeks starting next week, it will be interesting to see if FE can keep up the pace because their roster depth is more shallow than others in large part due to injuries – FE is currently second in the league in injury points behind OldNo7. 

ProfessorMJ did everything except win in week #5, it is not common that a team scores over 200 pts and not finish first, but this is what happened when on MNF FE and Prof were tied at exactly 205.25 pts each until L Jackson threw the game-winning TD to M Brown for the win in OT.  M Andrews scored 2 TDs in the 4th quarter plus the two-point conversion twice and Andrews finished with his best game of the year by far, with 32.25 pts.  In the first 4 weeks combined he scored only 31.25 pts.  The team leader this week was old man Brady who rocked the Dolphins with 47.5 pts and currently sits on top of the PQBFL with 29.3 pts per game on average, right in front of Mahomes at 28.8 pts.  The pre-draft trade of Brady for a swap of 8/11 round picks is turning out quite nicely, thank you very much.  The other trade acquisition D Henderson for an even lower draft pick swap 14/16 for RB9 so far in the PQBFL is possibly an even more generous gift.  This week Henderson scored 13.25 pts despite S Michel stealing a TD away from Henderson and Michel remaining quite involved with the offense with 11 carries against Henderson’s 17.  Prof’s WRs were quiet this week with 10.75 pts and 9.75 pts from Ty Hill and K Allen so that was probably the difference between 1st and 2nd this week. 

The GloriousBastards were in good position to have a shot at first place this week but the shootout between FE and Prof relegated Bas to third place despite a season-high 183.5 pts.  Bas also had a huge offensive day with 12 TDs but it was not enough, not counting the college QB C Strong who threw for 6 TDs of his own.  Rookie Fields scored once but otherwise had another poor game with only 111 passing yards and not much on the ground, while J Chase was benched and scored 21.75 pts , exactly 3x the score of Fields at 7.25 pts.  However this lineup change would have kept Bas in third place, just below the 200 pt mark.  In a week where 4 QBs scored over 40 pts, Ju Herbert was the best of them all with 5 TDs and 51.5 pts.  The rest of Bas’ offense all had good games, Josh Jacobs scored although Swift on the bench did a bit better, A Gibson had 2 TDs, Metcalf one TD and over 20 pts, CD Lamb one long TD, even the kicker Succop made all 7 of his kicks.  The lone black mark was D Waller who disappointed with only 6.25 pts and slid to TE4 in the league after a hot start.  Defense was not overly impressive with the Broncos losing to the Steelers and only scored 2 pts, and the LB duo D White + Z Cunningham only scoring 12.5 pts combined.  Those guys were supposed to be an elite pair but they are ranked LB19 and LB23 – Bas’s backup old man Demario Davis is doing better than both of them at LB12 is is not at all what Bas anticipated. 

The Admirals had an up and down week and ended up in 4th place.  One of the most surprising players of the year has been WR M Williams who exploded for 32.25 pts this week and took sole possession of the WR1 spot in the entire PQBFL, against all odds.  Not bad for a 15th round pick!  He even outscored D Adams this week who was no slouch himself with 21.25 pts.  Defense was led by DB Byard who scored a TD plus the Vikings D and DL D Hunter who both reached double digits.  However Adm had clear holes notably Kittle missed the game to injury and Ebron only scored 2.5 pts in his replacement.  RB D Harris (6.75 pts) and A Jones (9 pts) underperformed relative to their weekly projection, although not as much as K Murray did with only 11.25 pts at home against the 49ers.  More than a single TD was expected of him, despite playing against a good defense – his projection was well into the 20s.  Even kicker Tucker was a disappointment with only 2 points because he was called on the field only once with the Ravens attempting a 2-point conversion on their first 3 TDs and the last TD was in OT so it ended the game right away.  Rookie Waddle was also subpar with only 4.5 pts and dropped to ROO11 in the league – not starting material.  Backup rookies for Adm are not better although Michael Carter has been trending up lately including 10.75 pts this week on the bench.

WaxOnWaxOff finished 5th for the second straight week and consolidated their hold on 7th place in the standings by distancing the Ballers.  Similar to the Admirals, Wax had some big games and some awful ones, first off Josh Allen scored 40.25 pts against the Chiefs and the game was not even a shootout because Mahomes could not keep up.  Kamara had his best game of the season with 24 pts and moved up to RB6, slowly providing value not far from franchise player status.  On defense A Donald was ignored at the beginning of the season by being benched in favor of Washington young punk Chase Young but once Wax realized Donald still rules, he has gotten back to the starting lineup and scored 15.5 pts this week with Young scoring 9 pts on the bench.  Donald is now DL4 while Young is DL18 – even teammate Montez Sweat (DL10) has been doing better than Young.  The rest of Wax’s starters were pretty bad, starting with Chase Edmonds who did not gain much yardage, J Conner was no different but it was Conner who scored the TD and Edmonds finished the game with 1.25 pts because he fumbled.  At TE Hockenson had a great start of the season with 36 pts in the first two weeks, but since then in weeks 3-5 he only scored 11.5 pts and has been a drag.  At TE5 in the league he’s still holding his value but Wax was expecting a true breakout and so far it is not.  On defense the main laggards were the Steelers and TJ Watt only scoring 6 pts each, the latter of which might have been bothered by an injury.

In a week with so many high scores from QBs, the BeaudoinBrothers had the opposite with R Wilson getting injured mid game before reaching 10 points which dimmed the Bros prospects for the rest of the season in a material way.  To make matters worse C Ridley missed the game in a juicy match-up against the Jets for mysterious reasons, although thankfully M Pittman did well as a replacement on MNF with 18.25 pts to single handedly move the Bros passed Old and Dec to avoid a more painful outcome.  The other WR A Cooper is playing banged up but continued to produce nonetheless with a TD this week, and one who does not seem banged up is D Henry who scored 3 more TDs for 26.75 pts.  Henry is normally dominant late in the season, not early, but this year he is the player dominating his position the most after 5 weeks, being up by 4.6 pts per game on average over Ekeler (FE).  The problems for the Bros were the same as in prior weeks: Z Wilson had another bad game without a TD although this time only one turnover, and defense was porous besides M Garrett who had a sack, for the rest nobody scored more than 7 pts among L Collins, L Wilson, I Simmons, and the Ravens D who almost lost the game against the Colts. 

OldNo7 had their best score since week 1 with 144.75 pts but in such a high scoring week it was only worth 7th place so not enough for Old to get out of the red – the fourth straight bottom three finish.  At least it stopped the sequence of three straight last place.  Dak Prescott did not light up the scoreboard but he led OldNo7 with 24.5 pts which was in line with his projection.  It was rather his teammate E Elliott who outscored his projection with 20.25 pts.  With McCaffrey out, CEH started and got injured too, he only scored 2 pts before going down – there is only so many injuries a team can afford at the same position especially RB.  WR AJ Brown returned from injury himself but did not appear to be 100% and was limited to 4.75 pts even without Ju Jones in the lineup to steal some targets.  Diontae Johnson was recently injured and also came back, he scored a 50-yard TD but only caught one other pass so it’s unclear if he is fully back to health.  Last week both OldNo7’s DBs were out to injury but returned this week, Poyer seemed the healthiest of the two, he started and scored 9.5 pts to easily beat his injury-depressed projection.  The laggard on defense was Buckner who only scored 4 pts on MNF to lose a narrow contest against the Bros.  Buckner was highly ranked before the season started but currently ranks DL16 out of 21 which is not an acceptable result. 

After being a model of consistency the first four weeks, Dec finished in the red for the first time with 8th place and falling out of first place.  For the first time in ages the Dec coach did not submit his lineup which is highly uncharacteristic – here is to hoping to everybody is doing ok health-wise in team management.  One who did not have an ok week was Mahomes who had three turnovers and cost Dec at least two ranks, and with a better effort Dec could have easily finished 4th instead of 8th.  R Wilson’s injury also affected Lockett with was held to 8.75 pts and co-WR C Kupp saw his teammate get the lion’s share of the scoring, Kupp scoring 11.5 pts and R Woods on the bench scoring 19.5 pts.  Rookie Najee Harris had not found any running room in weeks 1-4 but finally found some day light and against a good Denver defense to boot, with his first 100-running day of his career and he also scored a TD.  He currently ranks ROO3 – if he stays above the numerous struggling rookie QBs he could very well justify his first round pick status with excellent 2022 value on top of being competitive in 2021.  Defense was led by LB Leonard who scored 14.5 pts in a valiant effort on MNF to try to avoid 8th place but it turned out to be slightly insufficient.  The finger can be pointed to Deion Jones who only scored 5 pts while backup J Baker scored 12 pts on the bench – we’ll never know if the coach had submitted a lineup if Baker would have been the chosen one for defensive flex.

The Ballers took one on the chin this week with only 116.5 pts, to end a decent streak of 3 consecutive weeks where the Ballers scored no less than 144.25 pts during weeks 2-4.  The Ballers finished far behind all other PQBFL teams this week because no single starter had a big game of 20+ points, not even A Rodgers who slightly underperformed his projection with 19.25 pts.  S Barkley got the dreaded intra game injury and went down after scoring only 0.75 pt – there was always a risk of injury with him but the Ballers hoped it would not be as early as week 5.  This cannot come at a worse time because D Cook missed another game in what is turning out to be a mine field season for RB injuries.  Backup Zack Moss was one of the few men left standing and scored 7.5 pts in a game when the Bills did not have much success running the against the Chiefs.  The problem is that Josh Allen did not throw to Diggs who was limited to only 5.25 pts – how puzzling that the Ballers only scored 12.75 pts combined for Moss+Diggs in a day when the Bills scored 38 pts on offense.  At the rookie position LB Parsons started by default as the coach did not submit a lineup and he beat Mac Jones by a hair 11 to 10.75 pts but he continues to slightly trail Jones in the rookie standings, Parsons is currently ROO5 and Jones is ROO4.  Defense was not the problem for Ball this week because nobody scored lower than 7 pts, the weakest was M Jenkins at 7 which was not far from his projection anyway.  The best of the bunch was Kendricks who scored 13 pts in part due to an INT. 





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