Week #9

FlyingElvis won for the second straight week and third time in the last 5 weeks, in fact FE is the only team in the PQBFL who won more than twice so far.  FE has padded their lead in second place over Dec to a more comfortable 7.5 rank-points and most importantly have shrunk the distance to first place to a more manageable 5 rank-points.  The top scorer for FE this week was J Taylor who started the week on the right foot on TNF thanks to a 31.5-point effort by taking advantage of the porous Jets defense including a 78-yard TD run.  Lamar Jackson was not dominant and struggled at times again with 2 INTs however he still found a way to lead his team to a close victory, this time in overtime against the Vikings.  The reason Jackson could beat his projection slightly despite 2 INTs was his 120 rushing yards.  Also what helped is that 9 of his completed passes went to Marquise Brown who finished the game with 9-116 while no other Ravens receiver caught more than 5.  The other big score of the week was 24 points from the Pats defense who had a pick-6 and kept the Panthers out of the end zone and only allowed a pair of FGs with less than 250 total yards.  Ekeler and Thielen had forgettable games with 6.75 pts and 7.25 pts but in a week full of injuries and bye weeks throughout the league there was room for maneuver to have a few off games and still finish first. 

WaxOnWaxOff had their highest finish of the season with second place which was the second straight week in the top 3 for Wax.  The team is now only half a rank-point behind Adm in 4th place which is quite satisfying considering the RB issues, which only got worse this week with C Edmonds getting injured early in the game after scoring only 0.25 pts.  However Wax finished 11.75 pts behind FE so considering Edmonds has not scored 12+ points all year it’s unlikely it changed anything for this week, but the injury might have an impact in the second half of the season.  It is also surprising that Wax could finish as high as second place with Josh Allen having a terrible game against the Jaguars, failing to lead the Bills to the end zone a single time and committing three turnovers.  On offense the only player who got the job done was rookie Elijah Moore who is starting by default with the Treys not being used by the 49ers.  E Moore scored twice in a losing effort by taking advantage of Corey Davis (Prof)’s injury.  Most of Wax’s success this week was not offense but rather defense.  B Baker has been a disappointment all year, but the coach stuck with him so far, until this week when the coach threw the towel and started H Smith instead who is far ahead of the DB standings anyway (H Smith 3rd and B Baker 13th). The coach set the starting lineup with H Smith but he caught covid so ironically the starter defaulted back to Baker again who had his best week of the season with 12 pts.  However that was nothing compared to TJ Watt’s 3-sack game on MNF with 20.5 pts to strengthen his lead as LB1 in the league over Roquan Smith (Prof). 

The Admirals bounced back nicely from their week #8 last place with third place, which was Adm’s best result since week #2.  Adm jumped to 4th in the standings but 4-5-6 are all very close so Adm’s lead is very thin, only 1 rank-point in front of 6th place Beaud.  Adm finished in the blue despite K Murray being out to injury, what helped is that ODB was released by the Browns and strangely B Mayfield performs better without him, just like what happened last year.  Mayfield was the only active QB on Adm’s roster and finished with 21.25 pts in an impressive road win in Cincy.  After a multi-week absence Kittle came back to health and made his presence felt with 6-101-1 for a total of 13 pts, he will make a pretty big difference for Adm in the second half of the season because backups Ebron and Trautman were very poor during Kittle’s injury, as they rank 21-22 out of 23 TEs, the only TE below them being Irv Smith (FE) who has not played a game this year due to injury so Ebron and Trautman are effectively the worst two TEs in the PQBFL while Kittle will arguably be top 5 if healthy.  None of the rest of Adm’s offense did anything worth noting, all 4 starting RBs-WRs failed to reach double digits, not even D Adams because he was affected by A Rodgers missing the game due to covid.  The best besides Mayfield was rather J Waddle who seemed to have a good connection with backup QB Brissett; Waddle did not score but 8-83 for 13 pts was a good result for a rookie.  On defense things are getting thin for Adm with star DL Hunter (DL3 in the PQBFL) now being out for the year, plus with B Martinez also out for the year and Jaylon Smith being fired by two teams already, options are limited for defensive flex.  Justin Reid started this week but he only scored one point. 

ProfessorMJ finished out of the top three for the first time since week #3 and FE has been even hotter than Prof during this period, Prof now has 46 rank-points from week 4-9 versus FE with 48 rank-points.  Prof was looking to run away with the PQBFL early but that might not happen after all, at least not yet.  With Brady on bye, Prof’s lineup was considerably different and Burrow happened to have his worst game of the year by far, the timing could not have been more awful.  He had not scored into the single digits all year but this week he crashed and burned with only 1.75 pts in a stinging loss against the Browns.  He remains QB11 which is supposed to be the level of a quality backup QB but it was not meant to be.  Prof had a few more issues for example D Henderson only scoring 4.75 pts and Ty Hill 5.5 pts, which similar to Burrow it was Henderson’s worst game of the year, and for Hill it was not, but close.  Prof could have easily finished in 6th place because Dec and Old were only 2.75 pts behind, thankfully R Smith saved Prof from further pain with his big game on MNF with 17 pts.  The rest of Prof’s defense was also key with the Bills (14 pts), Burns (12 pts), and Mosley (10 pts) all reaching double digits, only leaving Rapp (4 pts) as a laggard.  To close the loop on offense, Prof was able to finish in the top half mostly because of Chubb’s 26.5-point performance, easily leading the scoreboard for Prof ahead of R Smith, while rookie T Lawrence played overly conservative to preserve the Jaguars’ win and only finished the game with 118 passing yards, no TD and no INT.

The Decepticons finished tied for 5th place with OldNo7 and lost ground to both Prof and FE in the standings as injuries are starting to mount.  With Hunt, Sanders, and Evans injured and J Williams on bye, Dec only had one active RB who did the work of two, Mixon scoring 21.5 pts.  However the lack of RB2 was easily worth 2.5 rank points because Dec only needed 5.25 more points to finish 3rd.  With Hopkins also out to injury and Lockett on bye, Dec was forced to start a pair of Rams WRs which is suboptimal in the best of times, and it just happened to be the one week where Stafford was held in check so Woods and Kupp did not score although their stats were decent with 12 pts and 15.75 pts, respectively.  Noah Fant was another injury problem for Dec, with the TE missing the game due to covid at a bad time because Everett was on bye so Dec got not one, but two goose eggs in the starting lineup.  Franchise player Mahomes could have erased most of those injury and bye issues if he simply had an average game against the less than impressive Packers defense, but he only scored a short TD and a modest 166 passing yards to barely finish in the double digits to drop to QB10 in the PQBFL – a stunning turn of events for who was QB1 on everybody’s list before the draft.  One of the few bright spots of the week was defense with all four individual defenders scoring between 10 and 14 pts, most notably DB JJIII who had good timing unlike others listed above, he had an INT and a forced fumble to finish with 11 pts, his only game of the season above 8 so now he can go back to the bench with J Adams’ bye week being in the rearview mirror. 

OldNo7 attempted to play trouble maker towards the top of the standings and came close to doing so, but only robbed Dec of half a rank-point as Old came up short from a bigger week.  CMC finally came back from injury but his presence was barely felt as he scored 7.25 pts while backups AJ Dillon and Gordon scored 7.5 pts and 7.75 pts on the bench.  Starter E Elliott did not do much better with 8.25 pts.  Old had the courage to start Wentz in a juicy matchup against the Jets while Prescott was banged up and it paid off with Wentz scoring 26 pts compared to Prescott 17.75 pts on the bench, most of which came in garbage time – the Cowboys were down 30-0 with just over 4 minutes left and Prescott only had less than 6 pts after 55 minutes of play.  Receivers D Johnson, AJ Brown, and Higbee were all mediocre with 23.75 pts combined, the best receiver for Old this week was rather rookie DeVonta Smith who scored an important game-tying TD in the 4th quarter before the Eagles lost the game on a FG with 2 seconds left.  Smith finished the game with 5-116-1 for 17.75 pts to move up to ROO8 in the league, a borderline starter status rookie.  There were several holes in Old’s lineup on defense with 3 of the 9 individual defenders out to injury, not to mention that regular starting LB Singleton might have lost his starting job for the Eagles (now a special team player?) because he only had 2 tackles 1 assist on defense but strangely he did most of his scoring on special teams with 1 tackle, 2 assists, and one fumble recovery to salvage the day with 7.5 pts.  Also Schobert continued to be in the shadow of TJ Watt and not have nearly the same tackle opportunities as he did in Jacksonville, this week he scored 5 pts on MNF, a marginally better game could have put Old in 3rd place this week but he did not deliver the goods.

The BeaudoinBrothers’ multi-year streak of avoiding last place remains intact but came close to being put to an end for the second straight week.  The Bros were handicapped by only having one active RB; newly joined C Patterson scored 9.75 pts otherwise Beaud would have been entirely RB-less because both J Robinson and D Henry got injured the exact week that C Carson and Fournette were on bye so the timing was bad.  To make matters worse, C Ridley is taking time off due to mental issues, M Thomas will remain out for the rest of the year, and A Cooper plus Claypool are both playing banged up.  Thankfully M Pittman delivered again with another TD to reach a double digit score.  However the coach messed up by starting D Carr who only scored 6 pts as R Wilson’s absence continues to hurt, although the coach can be excused into thinking that Carr could have some success against the Giants whereas M Ryan (26.75 pts) was playing without Ridley against a potent defense in New Orleans.  One lucky break which the Bros caught was A Rodgers testing positive for covid which brought Love into the starting lineup as a rookie.  Love did not do much but 12 points was better than Beaud’s backups and was a welcome relief as Zach Wilson is still in recovery mode.  Defense was hit and miss for Beaud this week, the Colts started badly on TNF by allowing a bunch of garbage-time points to the Jets and finished with only 2.5 pts.  However at DB, high-priced J Chinn who had been benched recently in favor of L Collins, had to return to the starting lineup with Collins on bye and he responded with his best game of the year with 16 pts.  He has been slowly coming alive, it was his 3rd double digit game in the last 4, after starting the first 5 weeks with poor scores between 4 and 6.5 pts each week. 

The Ballers’ week 7 win is now a distant memory following 7th place in week 8 and now 8th place in week 9, both weeks Ball scoring barely above 100 points.  The Ballers’ odds were destroyed right out of the gate with Rodgers’ covid diagnostic exactly the week that Goff was on bye – so Ball was another PQBFL team affected by terrible timing.  However it does not help that Ball drafted a QB who was cut before the season start – Newton has been a wasted pick.  Until this week Newton’s firing was not bad to the Ballers because it put Mac Jones as the starter but this week was a different story, with Jones being limited to 6.25 pts and backup Micah Parsons lighting up the scoreboard with 21 pts.  Ball now has two of the top 5 rookies at the mid-point of the season.  The Ballers coach was asleep at the wheel on TNF so RB N Hines started by default and left D Cook on the bench but it was actually a blessing in disguise because Hines outscored Cook 16 to 10 which was the difference between 8th and 9th place.  The rest of Ball’s offense was nothing special for example Diggs 10.25 pts and on MNF A Robinson failing to do enough to beat Beaud, ending the game with 7.25 pts.  It was defense which kept the Ballers out of last place with 18.5 pts from the Browns which included a 99-yard INT return for a TD early in the first quarter, and 17 pts from E Kendricks who has been a reliable tackling machine all year as per his LB4 ranking so far, and this week was no exception because all 17 pts were from tackles and assists – he did not make any big play.  One weakness for the Ballers which has been somewhat under the radar is the college position, Ball only drafted Kedon Slovis and he sucks – he did not score a TD this week and had 1 INT so he finished with 0.25 pt.  He ranks 17th out of 18 active college players and with no bench depth Ball has no alternative at the position.  The only good news is that college players will be done sooner rather than later which will help the Ballers compared to competitors who have significant contributors at the position.

The GloriousBastards finished last for the second time in three weeks and are now closer to 8th place than 6th place in the standings.  Bas started the wrong rookie again, this week Bas went back to league-leading J Chase but he had a bad game with only 49 receiving yards and a lost fumble, whereas Ju Fields was decent against the Steelers and almost led his team to the win.  This coaching call alone was the difference between 7th and 9th place.  Unlike many other teams, Bas was able to field a complete lineup so the last place was not due to injuries, although Bas was affected by Gibson and Swift being on bye while starters Josh Jacobs (7.75 pts) and Mike Davis (1.5 pt) did not do much.  DK Metcalf being on bye did not help either considering that starters C Sutton and CD Lamb were dreadful with 6.25 pts combined.  But in the injury department, Bas only earned 17 injury points this week which was the lowest of the entire PQBFL and kept Bas last in that department for the full year, which does not bode well for 2022.  One of the few injuries for Bas this year has been kicker Gould, and his return from injury was perfect timing with Succop on bye this week, although Gould only scored 4 pts.  Bottom line it was a bad week for Bas due to poor play not injuries, for example on defense everybody scored 9 pts or less, the Chargers not making big plays against the Eagles and D Davis only scoring 6 pts during D White’s bye week.  The other starting LB Cunningham scored 9 pts which is not great, but it was his best score since week #3, partially helped by teammate Kirksey who is now on IR, leaving more tackle opportunities to Cunningham. 




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