Week #7

The Ballers were without D Cook (bye) and Barkley (injured), not to mention that backups Cohen and Z Moss were also unavailable due to injury and bye as well, so Ball’s only active RB was N Hines who only scored one point.  No problem – the Ballers nonetheless won for the first time since 2020 week #4 so it’s been more than one year wait to return to the top.  Ball benefited from Ertz being traded to Arizona and he took advantage of his new role by catching a long TD and scoring 14.5 pts which was the best score of any starting TE this week.  The Bucs defense was dominant by holding the Bears to only a single FG and they created 5 turnovers for a total of 23 points.  Rookie Parsons was on bye so Ball finally sent Mac Jones in the starting lineup and it was good timing because Jones had his best game of the year with 22.5 pts.  McLaurin was another key contributor this week with 21 pts which made up for the poor game by co-WR A Robinson (3.75 pts).  There were a few subpar games by defensive starters for the Ballers such as Chris Jones only 1 point and Justin Simmons 6.5 pts but in the end it did not matter and the Ballers got the win anyway because a perfect lineup was not necessary this week.

In what turned out to be a very low scoring week, FE barely scored more than this week’s league average but every point counted and FE escaped with second place and benefited from Dec’s stumble to catch up in second place in the standings.  FE expressed frustrations during the draft about a large number of players being on bye in week #7, in the end FE made out more than ok in this bye week apocalypse.  Lamar Jackson had a poor game in a blowout loss to the Bengals, but as long as he runs and stays away from turnovers, his final PQBFL score can be decent such as this week 22.75 pts despite only scoring one TD.  He did not beat his weekly projection but this week such a score was valuable, what helped was that the lone TD went to M Brown who FE started; Brown finished with 16 pts.  This week’s result was quite satisfying for FE considering Ekeler was on bye and with Montgomery’s injury FE had to start Lindsay who did nothing (0.5 pt) as usual, and J Taylor was held below the double digit mark because of a lost fumble and a fumble not lost.  At TE H Henry only caught two short passes but one of them was for a TD which helped, and rookie TE Pitts is coming alive, unlike Henry he did not score but his stat line of 7-163 was impressive for any rookie or any TE.  He has moved up to ROO6 in the league – perhaps he will be able to come close to justifying his second round pick status.  On defense the best scores were the Pats (12.5 pts) who crushed the Jets, and JPP (14 pts) who had two sacks in the defensive domination of the Bucs over the Bears.

ProfessorMJ had a low scoring week with only 136.5 pts but finished in the blue nonetheless for the 6th time in 7 weeks.  By virtue of being the only consistent team so far this year, they have forged a 9 rank-point lead in first place ahead of Dec and FE.  Very few teams have lost a double digit rank-point lead in the past and Prof will be almost entirely healthy as Chubb is coming back so Prof is close to running away from the league title before the mid-point mark.  This week not much was going well for Prof until the Brady-Evans connection saved the team from a very low finish, benefiting from A Brown’s injury (Old) which made Evans a greater part of the offense.  Brady threw 3 TDs to Evans to account for the bulk of Prof’s offensive scoring.  Defense was hit and miss, the Bears being crushed by the Bucs but at least in that game LB R Smith continued his dominant season with 15.5 pts and took the LB1 spot away from TJ Watt (Wax) who was on bye.  Prof’s offense left to be desired besides Brady-Evans, with Chubb out to injury Conner started and beat his projection with 11.25 pts so he was not the problem, Henderson was, with only 5.25 pts despite playing the weak Lions and being given the lions’ share of carries over Michel (15 to 2); Henderson simply did not do much with the opportunities.  

The Admirals survived the double-whammy of having the most injuries in the PQBFL this week, on the exact week with the most bye week issues, and emerged with a decent 4th place in the circumstances.  K Murray failed to reach his projection but he came close with 25.75 pts at home against the useless Texans.  D Harris did better than Murray to take advantage of an easy matchup by scoring 19.25 pts against the Jets.  A Jones did not do nearly as well with only 3.25 pts and did not score a TD, one of the Packers TDs went to D Adams as usual and Adams finished the game with 15.75 pts which was not bad, but similar to K Murray it was slightly short of his elevated projection.  With M Williams on bye and a couple of WR injuries, Adm started R Anderson who has been one of the worst WRs in the PQBFL so far (WR44/51) and he only scored 3.5 pts, worse than his already crappy season average of 5.8 pts per game.  With Kittle injured and Ebron on bye, Adm had to start Trautman who only caught three passes and screwed things up by fumbling after one of them.  Defense was an equally messy affair with Maxx Crosby being forced into the lineup with bye weeks for J Bosa and D Hunter; Crosby only scored 3 pts.  At LB the result was better, with B Martinez out to injury, Oluokun was dominant with 15.5 pts.  Rookie Waddle made his contribution to help Adm finish in the top half with 12 pts despite not catching a TD, and he has moved up to ROO5 in the PQBFL which is quite decent because he was drafted as the 8th rookie (6th round) so he came at moderate cost to Adm.

The BeaudoinBrothers finished a middling 5th this week, gaining some ground on Dec but losing some to FE, while seeing Adm get closer behind.  D Carr did an ok job in R Wilson’s absence despite missing Waller (Bas) who was out to injury and finished the game with 18.75 pts against the Eagles.  D Henry only scored one TD and did not reach 100 rushing yards so 13.5 pts is not what he got the Bros used to and was his lowest score since week #1.  Backup Fournette almost did as well as Henry did with 12.5 pts, thanks to a short TD and a decent contribution to the offense with 90 yards from scrimmage, so bye weeks and injuries to other RBs were not an issue.  Ridley also scored a short TD but not much yardage otherwise so 11.25 pts was not enough to carry the Bros towards the top.  It was M Pittman who saved Beaud from a lower finish with 16.25 pts on SNF in bad weather conditions.  Kelce and the rest of the Chiefs offense has been struggling recently, Kelce reached double digit but it was another game without a TD so it was not enough for Beaud, and Butker was only called on the field twice and missed a very long FG attempt.  However the worst news of the week was not the Chiefs, it was Zach Wilson getting injured early in the game which cost Beaud dearly with so many close results and now he will be sidelined for a few weeks. 

WaxOnWaxOff finished in the bottom half and barely avoided the red by beating OldNo7 by the slimmest of margins 0.25 pt.  Kamara did enough on MNF with 20.75 pts to secure 6th place thanks to Saints having no receivers whatsoever so Kamara caught more than half of Winston’s 19 completions, in addition to rushing the ball 20 times but for only 51 yards.  With Josh Allen on bye, Stafford had his first start of the year and it paid off with 29 pts against the Lions.  At WR, Deebo Samuel has been quietly putting up decent numbers on the board, this week he produced 7-100-1 in the rain which made it even more impressive.  Very few expected him to be WR5 in the league after 7 weeks.  Similar to many other teams, Wax had bye week problems, with the Steelers on bye Boswell was not available and starting kicker Blankenship was out to injury so Wax scored a goose egg at the kicker position.  Also with the Steelers inactive Wax was forced to start the Dolphins which had a decent matchup at home against the Falcons but they lost the game and only scored 1.5 pt.  The rest of Wax’s defense was not very good either, A Donald was limited to 4 pts and is not as dominant as he used to be, B Baker is an even bigger problem, with only 2 points this week he sunk to DB15 in the league.  And with TJ Watt and M Jack both on bye, Wax had to start a backup DB for defensive flex (H Smith was also on bye), so that meant the third DB for Wax started and K Curl could only put 6 pts on the board, close to his season average.

OldNo7 has not finished higher than 6th since week #1 and this week was no different.  With McCaffrey, James White, and CEH all injured, compounded by E Elliott on bye, it was hard to make miracles for OldNo7.  Gordon was barely adequate with 7.5 pts, and for perhaps the only time of the season AJ Dillon had a start.  And what a start it was, three carries for 6 yards, one reception for 2 yards, and the loser fumbled two of the four times he touched the ball to finish with negative 4 points.  Prescott and Roeth were on bye, forcing Wentz into the lineup and he was decent with 21.75 pts.  At WR, despite Antonio Brown injured and D Johnson on bye, Old was able to get a decent amount of scoring thanks to 18.5 pts from Godwin, but it could have been better if AJ Brown had not been on the bench (21.5 pts) – the coach must have been reluctant given the recent food poisoning that Brown had.  Instead the starter was Higgins who only scored 10 pts, letting J Chase (Bas) do most of the damage instead.  On defense Old was fine but nothing fantastic, DB Willis led the way with 11 pts during Poyer’s bye, and Singleton also had a double-digit game.  The same cannot be said of Mack who got a rare start because Schobert was on bye, and Mack let his coach down with only 1 pt.  He had not scored less than 6 pts since week #1 so he chose the wrong time to have a poor game and he cost Old 6th place. 

The Decepticons finished 8th for the second time in three weeks, pouring cold water on their week #6 win.  Their lead in second place has now completely vanished and the gap to first place more than doubled from 4 to 9 rank-points.  In this nightmare of a week, Mahomes was once again the major problem, only this time was far worse and it made his season-low 15 pts scored in week #5 look a like a hall of fame performance compared to week #7: no TD, 2 turnovers plus a fumble not lost for a total of 2 measly points.  Mixon did his part with 11.75 pts but M Sanders got injured and only scored 2.25 pts.  The WR position was stellar once again, with R Wilson injured Lockett has become bench-bound but Dec’s depth can sustain this mishap.  Kupp was unstoppable again with 27.75 pts and Hopkins added 14.5 pts of his own.  Rookie N Harris was on bye at a time where McCaffrey is injured so for a moment it looked like good timing to start Chuba Hubbard but he only scored 4.5 pts and will go straight back to the bench.  Defense was mediocre for Dec this week, the Rams beat the Lions but they allowed 415 yards of total offense which capped their score this week.  N Bosa hit the QB three times but did not get a sack, while Jerome Baker also had the dreaded intra-game injury like M Sanders and exited after only scoring one point.  At DB J Adams is not injured but he is playing like he is, this week he was useless in the Seahawks loss and finished the game with 3.5 pts and dropped to DB14.

The GloriousBastards had a rocky stretch with a bottom 3 finish in three of the previous 5 weeks but for the first time in an odd-numbered week Bas did not do well, and this time the team hit rock-bottom by failing to reach 100 points.  This was the first time Bas finished last since week 12 in 2019 which actually cost Bas the league title that year because they finished only one rank-point from first place so that last place doomed GB when it happened.  It is unclear whether Bas will orchestrate a late season surge like 2019 but it’s not looking good right now, Bas falling to 6th place in the standings and Wax being not far behind despite Wax’s RB injuries, while Bas has been the least affected by injuries this season so far.  This week the biggest catastrophe was Justin Fields again, he sucked balls with no TD, 3 INTs, 2 fumbles lost, and 1 fumble not lost which I recovered himself.  He ended the game at negative 6 pts, and what hurts the most is that JaMarr Chase on the bench continued to dominate with 24.5 pts and he even increased his lead as ROO1 over Mac Jones (Ball) by outscoring him.  It is a travesty that the highest scoring rookie in the PQBFL be benched so often in favor of a rookie who is averaging less than 4 pts per game.  Ju Herbert was on bye and Bas had the choice of Winston vs Darnold.  The coach went with Darnold who scored 0.5 pt and Winston on the bench scored 16.5 pts.  At RB starting Swift was ok and he scored 20 pts, however the coach left J Jacobs on the bench (10.5 pts) and started Gibson (3 pts) which was another mistake.  At WR the coach made no mistake, starting Metcalf was a no brainer and he scored a long 84-yard TD but he only caught one other pass the rest of the game to prevent him from having a big day.  At LB, D White scored more than 10 pts for the first time (at last!) with 13.5 pts but Cunningham did not follow suit and scored a season-low 2 points.




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