Week #10

The Decepticons were playing without a single healthy RB this week but the double goose egg did not matter – Dec edged Prof by 0.5 pt on MNF to win for the second time of the season and gained some ground on FE in the standings, Dec is now 2.5 rank-points away from second place.  Mahomes did all the catching up required from his recent 5-week stretch where he only averaged 11.9 pts per week from week 5-9, he exploded for 42.5 pts this week which was worth multiple ranks, in fact if he had scored his projected score Dec would have finished 7th instead of 1st.  C Kupp was slightly below his projection but his 17 pts on MNF were a contributing factor to secure first place but it was actually Nick Bosa’s sack with 4 minutes left which sealed it, prior to that he had hardly done anything so he finished with 7.5 pts, which was necessary because the Rams defense did not get the job done with only 3 pts.  It was J Adams who was the best defensive player for Dec with 18 pts, only his third double-digit game of the year to move up to DB7 in the PQBFL.  Other than Kupp and Mahomes, Dec’s best offensive player was N Harris the ignorant who did not know NFL games can end up in a tie, but having a high IQ or football knowledge does not seem necessary to be an excellent RB.  Apart from his bad week #1, N Harris has scored at least 12.5 pts every single week since week #2, a very impressive display of consistency which is valuable in the PQBFL.

ProfMJ scored a subpar 137.25 pts, barely above last week’s 136.75 pts, but it was good enough for second place and avoided a low finish which would have tightened the standings.  Prof extended their lead to 9 rank-points ahead of FE with 8 weeks remaining so all they need to do from now on is to avoid a bad week in the red, which both FE and Dec have had so far this year.  Prof did not have lots of notable high performers this week but since not much was needed, similar to Dec only one good game from a Chiefs player was sufficient with Ty Hill catching 2 TDs for 21.25 pts.  M Evans caught a long TD but only one other pass the rest of the game; 13 pts was below his projection, but that too was sufficient in a low scoring week.  Brady threw for 2 INTs and was not in his best element with only 14.25 pts so he was probably what was lacking for first place this week, but he is still the PQBFL’s top scorer despite the low score.  As was the case often this year, defense was there to bail Prof out, this time it was the Bills scoring 12.5 pts thanks to 5 turnovers against the Jets, and backup J Brooks did well during R Smith’s bye week with a season-high 14 pts which was great timing for his big game.  Some minor issues remain on Prof’s team however for instance T Lawrence did not score a TD and was limited to 7 pts.  At ROO4 he has not delivered as a franchise player and his value next year will certainly not be great.  Also, RB2 D Henderson who had not scored less than 9.5 pts from week 1-6 has slowed down considerably, this week he scored a season-low 3.25 pts which was the third time in 4 weeks that he did not exceed 5.25 pts. 

OldNo7 made a strong push to win this week but needed an extra 3 pts to finish first but had to settle for third place, the first finish in the blue of the season for Old.  Prescott seems to be fully recovered from his injury with 26 pts although perhaps it was simply the weakness of the Falcons defense, we’ll know soon enough.  The second best player for Old this week was rookie DeVonta Smith who scored twice for 19.25 pts and moved up to ROO7 in the league.  Both of Old’s RBs matched or slightly beat their projection with 14.25 pts for McCaffrey and 13.5 pts for Elliott – given the RB problems experienced by many teams, this was a difference maker for Old.  A couple of issues which were untimely for Old and robbed the team of first place was unfortunately their college QB having his bye week in exactly the closest week of the season when a few extra points would have been valuable, but that’s part of the problem of drafting only one college player and Old paid the price.  Also the coach made a big mistake of starting LB Singleton despite this column pointing last week to the fact that he might have been benched by the Eagles because his contributions seemed to have become mostly on special teams; this week Singleton scored a big fat zero, while Schobert was benched and scored 14 pts – easily the difference between third and first place.  Poyer was the star of the defense with 17.5 pts and helped Old finish in the blue. 

The Ballers escaped the weird week with a satisfying 4th place thanks to 129.5 pts which was only the second time in the last 6 weeks that the Ballers scored more than 116.5 pts.  The 4th place was quite a surprising result given that A Rodgers did not even score a TD and seemed rusty following his covid self-isolation.  In addition, the Ballers were playing with an incomplete lineup due to college QB Slovis being on bye on top of the coaching mistake to bench Mac Jones (23.5 pts) in favor of M Parsons (13 pts).  Those headwinds were partially compensated by strong defense with double-digit scores from E Kendricks (17 pts), S Thompson (14 pts), and J Abrams (10 pts).  On offense Diggs was the leader with 22 pts – he has not been having the season that Ball hoped for but it was his best game of the year and fourth straight game of 10+ so he has been doing better as of late.  Franchise player D Cook has also been a disappointment but similar to Diggs he produced this week with 118 yards from scrimmage and a short TD for 14.75 pts.  For RB2 the coach was worried about Z Moss who was questionable so the team started N Hines with Barkley on bye, and unfortunately Hines had a forgettable game with 2.25 pts with Moss doing better on the bench with 8.25 pts.  At TE both Gronk and Tonyan were injured so that left no choice but Z Ertz, we are still waiting to see the trade to Arizona pay dividends, Ertz only scored 6.25 pts.  However K Murray (Adm) being out certainly did not help Ertz this week. 

WaxOnWaxOff finished in the middle in 5th place, it could have easily been a better result but it could have been worse too.  Deebo Samuel scored twice on MNF and a total of 24.5 pts to get Wax out of the doldrums, he had Wax’s best score of the week.  In that same game A Donald and F Warner also did their part with 10 pts and 9.5 pts respectively, but neither of them had big plays like a sack or a turnover so it left Wax 0.75 pt behind Ball and less than 10 points from first place.  Like many other teams, Wax had RB injury issues this week with Kamara out, in fact 4/5 RBs were out to injury and the fifth is RoJo who is essentially useless and he did not even gain a single yard this week despite being healthy so Wax scored zero at the RB position.  That’s not to mention TJ Hockenson who shockingly also scored a goose egg.  Wax earned much needed points from rookie E Moore again who scored a useless TD for the Jets with 2 minutes left when the Jets were already getting their ass kicked, but the TD counted for Wax anyway and it was worth 2 ranks in the standings this week.  On defense, besides Donald and Warner who played on MNF, TJ Watt scored 11 pts before getting injured which is a concern for Wax if the injury turns out to be serious because M Jack is nowhere near the caliber of Watt - a nearly irreplaceable LB.  In that game the Steelers defense scored 8.5 pts which left Wax on their appetite because the matchup was good against the Lions so the Steelers could have done more but were unable to even win.  To close the loop with defense, B Baker could not string together a second good game, this time he was limited to 5 pts after his excellent performance in week 9.

FlyingElvis started the week poorly on TNF with L Jackson only scoring 13 pts and M Brown doing even worse with only 6.25 pts, not to mention that college QB M Willis was on bye and backup Ibrahim is out for the year so projections as of Sunday morning were not kind to FE.  In this whacky week FE did not do too well and lost 4 rank-points to Prof but managed to avoid the worse as other teams were not far behind this week but FE’s 125 pts was enough to beat Beaud and Bas (while Adm was not so close).  FE’s story line this week was entirely from the Pats game, the defense crushed the Browns and finished with 16.5 pts and H Henry scored twice for 15.75 pts; those were FE’s top two scores of the week.  DB D James was not bad either with 13.5 pts to further consolidate his lead as the top DB in the PQBFL.  However the rest of FE’s defense was shaky with three players injured and two more on bye so FE had the bare minimum number of 4 active players, starting two DLs is rarely optimal and this week Q Williams and JPP only combined for 7 pts.  RBs J Taylor (15.5 pts) and Ekeler (9.75 pts) were reasonably productive given injury issues of other teams so it helped FE avoid finishing in the red.  A 7th place finish was in the cards for FE on MNF because the Rams offense was going nowhere and kicker M Gay only had a single point late in the game, however one of the most ridiculous NFL coaching decisions turned out well for FE this week because the Rams elected to kick a FG while being down by 24 points with 4 minutes left in the game and Gay made it to edge the Bros at the finish line. 

The BeaudoinBrothers flirted with last place once again but escaped to survive one more week without visiting the bottom.  None of the key offensive players scored even a single TD (QB-RB-RB-WR-WR-TE) which was a horrible result.  It first appeared as if the Bros were getting healthier with the return of R Wilson but the team got hammered at the QB position again with only 1.75 pt from Wilson who was not his normal self while Carr did alright on the bench with 19 pts.  That starting call alone was the difference between 1st place and 7th place – a whopping 6 rank-points gone out of the window by a single call, that’s how close the standings were this week.  J Robinson came back to health but unlike Wilson the coach was worried about his condition and benched him; he scored 12 pts which was better than both starters Fournette (7.5 pts) and C Patterson (3.25 pts) who got injured mid game.  WR A Cooper has been banged up and seemed to be trending up but scored only 6.5 pts when Dallas lit up the scoreboard with 43 pts - that leaves some doubts about his status.  The only offensive help came from rookie R Stevenson who started for the first time and took maximum advantage of D Harris (Adm) being out to injury with 100 yards rushing and two TDs.  Defense was far better than offense for Beaud with the Colts scoring a TD on a blocked punt and L David was quite active with 5 tackles 9 assists and one forced fumble – unlike offensive players he seems to be fully recovered from his previous injury. 

The GloriousBastards started the week towards the top based on weekly projections only to see a forecasted strong week to be squandered by several major underperformers especially on offense.  RB A Gibson was benched in favor of Josh Jacobs and D Swift but he outscored both of them despite a difficult matchup against the Bucs, scoring 16.5 pts and easily beating Swift who nonetheless had an acceptable game (11.25 pts) but it was Jacobs who was the problem with only 3 pts.  QB Herbert lost at home against the Vikings in what was a winnable game and only scored 10.25 pts – a major let down for GB.  DK Metcalf was shut out like the rest of the Seahawks offense and was limited to 4.25 pts, and Waller was barely better with 5 pts on SNF.  For a change Bas did not need to choose between J Chase or Fields at the rookie position because they both were on bye, instead the coach started Freiermuth but the turd lost a fumble in the only game he was needed by Bas and only scored 3.5 pts.  The lone decent game on offense for GB was CD Lamb who scored twice and finished with 22.25 pts which helped Bas avoid last place.  The top scorer of the week was Devin White who woke up after a lackluster first half of the season where his top score was no better than 13.5 pts.  He finally exploded this week with 28 pts which was far more than the rest of the defense (Broncos, C Jordan, D Davis, and M Fitzpatrick) who combined for only 19 pts. 

The Admirals finished last for the second time in three weeks and lost ground to Beaud and Wax in the standings.  Like most teams Adm was affected by injuries, K Murray is a cornerstone of Adm’s team and with D Watson’s season wasted, it forced B Mayfield in the lineup who was destroyed by the Pats and could not finish the game due to injury; he exited after scoring 2.75 pts.  D Harris missed the game to injury as well and backup Gaskin was quiet with 3.75 pts.   Adm hoped Gaskin could be sent back to the bench after this week but A Jones’ injury might change that plan, and Adm might end up being another PQBFL team missing their top two RBs.  D Adams got Rodgers back but only finished the game with 10.75 pts which was below his high weekly projection, and a similar thing can be said of Jeudy who scored 7 pts and underperformed his more modest expectations.  Kittle scored a TD on MNF but it was not nearly enough to get Adm out of the basement, that said it was Kittle’s second double digit game since coming back from injury so it was a rare bright spot this week.  While Kittle was Adm’s best offensive starter this week, on defense Oluokun did even better with 14 pts, entirely via tackles and assists when the Falcons got destroyed by the Cowboys and their defense was on the field for a long time.  Oluokun moved up to 4th best LB in the PQBFL and has significantly outplayed his 13th round draft status so far.  The other double digit scorer on defense was J Bosa who had a sack and forced fumble in a losing effort against the Vikings. 





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