Week #8

FlyingElvis won for the second time in four weeks and took sole possession of second place in the standings.  Unfortunately they could only gain one rank-point on Prof so the road to the top remains long, FE trailing 8 rank-points behind.  All five of FE’s skill position players scored double digits, Cousins J Taylor Ekeler Thielen and Cooks which powered FE to first place this week.  Cousins was the weakest of this group with 14.5 pts during L Jackson’s bye week, but the last minute coach’s call to start him over Hurts proved to be correct because Hurts scored 9 pts on the bench.  All starting RBs and WRs scored between 15.25 pts and 18 pts which was an excellent result given the low scoring week due to bye weeks and injuries in the league.  On defense FE got some help from the Pats D who scored a TD and Derwin James scored 17 pts thanks to a boat load of tackles and assists in that same game against the Pats, plus a forced fumble.  James missed a lot of games in the last few years due to injuries but always remained on FE’s roster as a saved player and this year it’s finally paying off with James healthy and easily dominating the DB position with an average of 12.4 pts per game, in front of H Smith (Wax) far behind at 9.9.  This week B Wagner also contributed like he regularly does with 7 tackles and 7 assists. 

ProfessorMJ finished in the blue for the 7th time in 8 weeks with a second place and only lost modest ground with their first place lead.  One of the few reasons why Prof did not finish first is that Chubb had a forgettable game with only 5.75 pts despite K Hunt (Dec) being out to injury, and defense was not as strong as other weeks with all 4 individual defenders scoring between 3 and 8 pts, each of them being below their weekly projection.  The only big play was half a sack from Burns and nobody else having a sack, forced fumble or turnover, not even a pass defended.  The top scorer of the week for Prof was again Brady with 30.5 pts despite 3 turnovers in a surprising loss by the Bucs.  The old man has taken over the top spot as highest scorer in the entire PQBFL, only 0.2 pt per game in front of Josh Allen (Wax).  The other pre-season trade acquiree D Henderson continued to give stomach ulcers to the GloriousBastards GM with 2 more TDs and 17.75 pts to move up to RB5 in the PQBFL which is starting to sound like 1st round pick status.  WRs Ty Hill and K Allen got the job done with a TD each and being busy with 18 receptions combined, which partially made up for the relatively quiet games from T Lawrence (10.5 pts) and Gesicki (7.25 pts) who was subbing for M Andrews during his bye. 

WaxOnWaxOff finished in the top 3 for the first time since week #3 which helped Wax to move up to 6th place in the standings, not far from Beaud and Adm in 4th and 5th place.  With the couple of rookie Treys on the 49ers turning out to be a disaster this season, backup E Moore scored 10.5 pts as a starter to follow up the 9.5 pts he scored last week so he is slowly coming alive and being a worthy contributor at a position where 10 pts per game would be roughly equivalent to ROO5, therefore a mid-range starter.  Josh Allen easily disposed of the Dolphins with 27.75 pts to lead Wax, almost doubling the second best score of the week for the team which was 14.5 pts shared by both TJ Watt and Deebo Samuel.  Despite not having a prime QB, D Samuel does not seem to let up and now ranks WR4 in the PQBFL, this week he beat his weekly projection without even scoring a TD due to a great stat line of 6-172.  TJ Watt was a force to reckon with again with 1.5 sack and 3 QB hits plus a fumble recovery.  He helped double-dipping for Wax, with the Steelers defense who was projecting to have a difficult week on the road in Cleveland but held the Browns to only 10 pts so the Steelers finished the game with 12.5 pts, far more than anticipated.  Wax’s Achilles heel this season, the RB position, was adequate this week.  Kamara scored 11.25 pts which was ok but not great, however it is C Edmonds which impressed by even outscoring Kamara with 11.75 pts.  He will need to continue on this pace because Wax has no other option at RB2. 

The Decepticons finished 4th and lost some ground to Prof and FE for the third time in four weeks.  During that time-span, Dec earned 19 rank-points versus 31 for both Prof and FE so after a hot start in weeks #1-4, the subsequent 4 weeks have not been kind to Dec.  One major problem this week was that 4 out of 5 RBs were injured leaving only Mixon as the sole active RB.  He did his best with 2 TDs and 17.5 pts but missing a key starter will always be a strong head wind.  At WR, Kupp had another great game with 18.75 pts, topping his already high weekly projection, but the problem was WR2 Hopkins who did not do much with 5.25 pts.  That said, it’s almost impossible to blame the coach because it would have been difficult to start two WRs of the same team so leaving R Woods on the bench seemed reasonable but Woods scored 16.75 pts.  Also, Lockett had not done anything since R Wilson got injured, so benching him seemed logical as well but he nonetheless scored 19 pts without even scoring a TD.  A big headache for Dec continues to be franchise player Mahomes who barely squeezed by the lowly Giants on MNF with only 1 TD.  The turnovers continued with 1 INT, another one was fortunately called back due to a penalty which does not make anybody feel warm and fuzzy despite not having a consequence on the box score, and Mahomes also had a fumble not lost.  His score of 10.25 pts at home against a poor team is a major issue and calls into question in what kind of matchup can Mahomes be expected to perform.  Mahomes dropped to QB10 in the PQBFL, not even starting material anymore.  Anyway, Tua Tago is not the answer either, so Dec will live and die with Mahomes.  The good news for Dec which allowed to finish in the first half of the standings this week were mostly on defense with double-digit scores all 4 IDPs N Bosa, D Jones, D Leonard, and J Adams. 

The GloriousBastards had a middling finish this week but got passed by Wax in the standings and therefore fell to 7th place.  It’s been quite a fall from grace for the offseason early league favorites.  The most maddening issue continued to be the rookie position where Bas finally reverted to J Chase but it turned out to be exactly the week that Fields could finally get a decent score with 20.25 pts on the bench.  Thankfully Chase was not bad with 10 pts but it was the difference between 4th and 5th place so Dec laughed at Bas’ coach and saved a rank-point.  While Lockett (Dec) was the clear top target for backup QB Geno Smith with 12-142, DK Metcalf’s involvement was more modest with 6-43 however it was Metcalf who was on the receiving end of Smith’s two TD passes; Metcalf’s 19 pts were Bas’ best score of the week.  The Broncos defense was also solid by only allowing 10 pts to WFT in a defensive struggle and they notably blocked two FGs to pad their score to 17.5 pts.  Bas was in a tight battle against Old on MNF and in the end Bas edged Old because backup TE Engram scored a short TD in what might be his last appearance in the starting lineup if Waller does not get injured so the timing was perfect to score when Waller was on bye.  The main reason GB did not finish higher this week was in part because Ju Herbert is not always dominant when playing decent defenses and this week the Pats D found a way to partially keep him in check with 2 TDs and 2 INTs for 14 pts which was well below his projection of 23 pts.  Also the RB position was rough this week with starters Gibson and Swift scoring only 4.5 pts and 1.25 pts respectively, while backups M Davis and Michel both outscored them with 5.5 pts and 4.5 pts, and Josh Jacobs on bye.

OldNo7 finished 6th but took only the most modest of steps towards 8th place in the standings by beating Ball by one spot.  As mentioned above Old lost a close contest against Bas, and probably the most painful incident was DB Khari Willis getting injured early in the game before he could even score a single point while backup Poyer on the bench scored 16 pts, this was easily the difference between Old and Bas.  As if Old had not been affected enough by injuries this year (league-leading in injury points), Prescott missed the game this week and backup Wentz was adequate with 3 TDs but he also had 2 INTs and a fumble not lost; his score of 15.75 pts was not Prescott-level like, who scored more than 23 pts every single week except one so far this year before his injury.  Prescott missing the game probably did not help Elliott much to get going and he was limited to 6 pts, thankfully he was outdone by backup Gordon who scored 2 TDs as a decent replacement until McCaffrey comes back.  The main stars for Old this week were clearly the starting WR duo Godwin-AJ Brown who scored a combined 46.75 pts.  Antonio Brown’s injury gives some injury points to OldNo7 and by virtue of also having Godwin, Old benefits partially from that injury because Godwin just had his best two weeks of the season, the exact two games that Antonio Brown missed.  Old also has two injured LBs and to add to woes, it appears as if A Singleton has been benched by the Eagles because he only got one tackle on special teams in the 4th quarter and nothing on regular defense for a total of 1 point for Old this week. 

The Ballers had a bad week with barely 100 points but a last-minute sack on MNF from Chris Jones managed to secure 7th place instead of 8th place if that’s any consolation for Ball, but not exactly a good follow-up to the week #7 first place.  The team leader this week was from an unlikely position, DB Justin Simmons picked off Heinicke twice to finish the game with 17 pts.  The rest of the defense was forgettable, especially the Bucs D getting beat and did not create a turnover and only had one sack, plus Ball started S Barrett who finished the game with only 5 points.  The week had not started with an explosive performance, A Rodgers did enough to beat the Cards but 16.25 pts was below his projection.  The biggest problem was RB, the Ballers did not set a lineup for RB so D Cook was benched automatically although he did not have a great game with 6.5 pts; nonetheless it was better than starters Z Moss (4.75 pts) and Hines (2 pts) as Barkley’s absence continues to be felt.  Thankfully benching Cook did not have consequences on the standings this week.  At WR Diggs scored a TD but did not have a great stat line, so far at WR20 he is a shadow of what he was last year.  Co-WR McLaurin ranks WR15 so far, in other words a bit better than Diggs, but not this week; McLaurin was limited to 4.75 pts in the loss.  At TE Gronk came back to health but the Ballers left him on the bench which was the right move because Gronk did not catch anything, while starter Ertz had modest stats 4-42 but enough to beat the Bros.

The BeaudoinBrothers already had injury issues but the roof caved in with D Henry getting injured during his matchup against the Colts and finished with only 5.5 pts as he was ineffective.  James Robinson also got injured during the game and exited early after only 3.25 pts.  But that was not all.  WR Calvin Ridley was a late scratch due to personal issues and backup Claypool did not do much with 7 pts, the double whammy was that the Bros were forced to start M Ryan with Carr on bye and R Wilson still out, so not having his top WR was not ideal and Ryan finished the game with only 5 pts.  In a week where nothing was going well, even on MNF Kelce had a poor game and was relatively uninvolved in the game and fumbled one of the few passes he caught and put his team in trouble.  It was only Butker’s late FGs which gave the Chiefs the win and barely avoided the Bros finishing dead last, which is something that has not happened since 2017 (week 15 that year).  The only bright spot was WR Pittman who is slowly ascending to starter status, he scored 24.25 pts this week and climbed to WR17, just enough to be considered a low-end WR2.  Defense was so-so for Beaud this week, Garrett had another sack to hold on to the DL1 spot in the league, L Wilson had a decent game with 12 pts, but Chinn continues to drag his team down with only 6.5 pts while backup L Collins doubled him with 13 pts on the bench.

After three straight 4th place finishes, the Admirals hit rock bottom with last place.  The Admirals had the most injury points of the league this week starting with franchise player D Adams who tested positive with covid and backup R Anderson laying a goose egg on only one target against the poor Falcons defense so the impact could not have been more severe.  The other WR Mike Williams had an off week with only 2.75 pts so his inconsistency continued to affect Adm, it was the third game in his last 4 where he had 3.25 pts or less.  K Murray also had his worst game and first loss of the season with only 4.75 pts: no TD and 2 INTs against the Pack, while all three of the Cards TDs were on the ground by RBs.  The top scorers for Adm this week were almost all from secondary positions, starting with Oluokun who scored 17 pts, DB Byard had an INT and three passes defended, and kicker J Elliott made all 8 of his kicks including 3 FGs for a total of 13 pts.  Otherwise the only regulars who reached double digits were D Harris and A Jones with 25.5 pts combined.  The rest were poor, for example WFT had two FGs blocked – they were the opposite end of the Broncos’ special teams (Bas) prowess referred to above – those two blocks were the difference between 8th and 9th place.  Also it should be noted that the injury to college QB Dillon Gabriel was costly this week during Dustin Crum’s bye week because Adm had nobody to start and the position. 





PQBFL Home | Season 2021 | Standings 2021 | Leaders By Position 2021