Week #12

After a rough patch of four straight weeks in the bottom 3, the BeaudoinBrothers found their mojo this week with their first win since week #1 and jumped back into the race for 4-5-6th place in the standings with Wax and Adm.  Fournette scored 4 TDs to lead the way with 32.75 pts and climbed up to RB11 in the PQBFL, far better than what was expected before the season began.  He had a slow start with scores of 5.75 pts or less in the first three weeks, but in 5 of his last 8 games he reached double digits.  R Wilson had his first decent game since coming back from injury with 21.25 pts but it required a TD with 15 seconds remaining otherwise he was having another pedestrian game.  The main problem for Beaud remains receivers especially with A Cooper out to covid again, and Pittman+Claypool could not do better than 15.5 pts combined.  Pittman’s performance was particularly disappointing considering that Wentz attempted 44 passes and Pittman only caught 4 of his 10 targets.  D Goedert was called on the field for the first time with Kelce on bye and the turd thought it would be the best time to have a crap game, one reception for exactly zero yards.  On defense the Ravens were tough by holding the Browns to only 10 pts which gave them a score of 14.5 pts and Garrett returned to the sack column in that same game for 11.5 pts. 

The Admirals finished the highest of all season at 2nd, same as week #2 despite a fairly low score of 137.5 pts but week #12 was the lowest scoring of all season in the PQBFL so Adm’s performance was good enough to beat the very tight cluster behind of Dec-FE-Prof.  K Murray was not injured this week but he was on bye so Adm’s problem remained the same: Mayfield was the only starting QB available.  He could not beat his modest projection with only 12.25 pts in a loss to Baltimore.  Adm’s top game was from an unlikely source, rookie J Waddle had a big statistical game with 9-137 and also added a TD for 20.75 pts, the second time this year he exceeded 20 pts.  It allowed Waddle to move up to ROO5 – a decent result for a sixth round pick who was the 8th rookie taken in the draft.  Adm also got help from RBs this week, the normally awful Gaskin scored twice for the Dolphins, and D Harris was able to overcome teammate Stevenson eating into his workload by being the one scoring the short TD and finishing the game with 10.25 pts.  Results were not as impressive at WR with D Adams scoring 13 pts which is below his high standards and M Williams having an off game with 5.75 pts, those kind of games being more and more frequent for Williams recently, it was the 6th time in his last 8 that he scored less than 6 pts.  Defense was a mixed bag with Byard continuing his excellent season with 17 pts but Maxx Crosby not doing the job done as defensive flex with only 2 pts. 

The Decepticons rebounded from their last place in week #11 with 3rd place in week #12 and a very narrow margin over both FE (0.5 pt) and Prof (1.25 pt).  Beating the two leaders was nice but it was not enough to make a big dent on the standings so Dec remains almost 10 rank-points behind second place, although Dec has an even bigger lead over Wax in 4th so odds are quite high that Dec will finish 3rd this year.  On MNF Lockett did not do much with 3-96-0 but it was J Adams who did the heavy lifting with 6 tackles 3 assists and one INT which proved to be the difference maker between 3rd and 5th place.  As good as Adams was this week, LB Leonard was even better with a monster game of 12 tackles 3 assists 1 forced fumble and a pass defended.  Leonard has not been having the kind of season which can justify his status as top defensive player drafted (LB8 so far) but at least this week was a flashback of his previous years’ success.  On offense Mixon had another dominant game with 23.5 pts despite playing the tough Steelers defense and at RB3 he is starting to look like franchise player material ahead of Mahomes.  For once Dec could not be disappointed by Mahomes because he was on bye but Tua Tago did not do much better with 11 pts even with the Dolphins putting 33 points on the scoreboard.  Dec could have finished higher this week if C Kupp had not been kept out of the end zone (although he did score on a 2-pt conversion), if M Sanders did not suck as often as he does (5.25 pts this week), and if N Fant did not have a bad game with only 3.25 pts. 

FlyingElvis was not able to beat Dec on MNF but the most important was beating Prof which happened by a slim 0.75 pt margin.  On MNF it was a duel between Prof and FE for who the best Seahawks LB would be, with both teams almost tied going into the last game and each having a LB remaining.  FE’s B Wagner and Prof’s J Brooks both brought their A-game with exactly 10 tackles and 4 assists each, and the difference was Wagner’s pass defended which resulted in an INT by J Adams which was the winner for FE.  FE is now 5 rank-points behind Prof rather than 7 behind because of Wagner’s PD.  This week Thielen was the most productive with 2 TDs and 20 pts which made up for L Jackson’s terrible game with 1 TD and 4 INTs for a total of 5 pts.  RBs Taylor and Ekeler had a good game once again with 13 pts and 14.25 pts respectively.  FE clearly has the best RB duo in the PQBFL as they rank RB2 and RB4 and if we ignore D Henry who is injured, FE effectively has the RB1 and RB3 in the league.  On defense it was not only Wagner who had a big game, DB D James was almost equally good with 15 pts and the Pats defense was solid in a home win against the Titans by holding the Titans to 13 pts.  The laggard was JPP who started instead of Q Williams and it was not the right call with Williams outscoring JPP 8 pts to 1 pt.  Also defensive flex Vonn Bell was nothing special with only 3 pts. 

ProfessorMJ lost to both Dec and FE but limited the damage by not losing by more than 1 or 2 ranks.  Brady was a key underperformer as the Bucs RBs did most of the scoring and Brady ended the game with only 9.5 pts, which was only the second time of the year he failed to reach 10 pts.  Prof was hit with a double whammy because they also started WR M Evans who did very little with only 3 receptions for 16 yards – this is the potential downside of starting a QB-WR combo on the same NFL team.  RB Chubb also had a game to forget with only 39 yards from scrimmage in a game when the Browns could not find any running room against the Ravens.  D Henderson was better with 11 pts which was needed because J Conner was on bye.  TE M Andrews was Prof’s top scorer this week with 17.25 pts and he has quietly been climbing the TE rankings – now TE2 only behind Kelce (Beaud); the difference between Kelce and Andrews is only 0.5 pt per game on average, and Andrews was drafted at a far more modest cost than Kelce.  It is interested to note that Andrews’ score this week was materially helped by whopping 4 points on defense: 3 tackles and 1 assist because he had work to do on all those INTs from L Jackson.  Prof was criticized for drafting Andrews instead of Hockenson (Wax) but so far the choice has paid off with Hockenson scoring 2.8 pts per game less on average compared to Andrews.  Rookie Lawrence had another mediocre game of 13.25 pts, not bad but not worthy of franchise player as the Jaguars lost again, this time against a weak Falcons defense and Lawrence could not do better than a single TD. 

OldNo7 finished 6th which is not all that great but Old gained some ground on Bas and now trails by only 3 rank points to get out of the league basement.  Prescott was without his top two weapons Lamb and Cooper but was helped by poor defense which meant the Cowboys had to play catch up which boosted Prescott’s stats.  He finished the game with 27.75 pts in the loss.  Teammate Elliott scored a short TD but did not do much otherwise because he’s banged up and scored only 9 pts.  McCaffrey was the worst news of the week with only 2.75 pts and getting injured for the rest of the season so Old will face head winds from here on out to get out of last place.  WR Godwin was affected by the Bucs game plan in the same way as Prof was, as noted above, but the worse is that he fumbled one of his few touches so he only scored 2.25 pts.  At TE Logan Thomas came back to health after a 7-week absence but Old benched him out of caution.  Starter Higbee did not reward his coach as he only scored 1 pt so he’s probably headed to the bench with Thomas back from IR.  On defense the coach stuck with A Singleton despite the words written in this weekly summary and it paid off this time around, Singleton is apparently out of the dog house and clearly a starter for the Eagles again.  This week he was productive with 8 tackles 4 assists and 3 passes defended for a total of 17.5 pts. 

WaxOnWaxOff struggled this week and finished in the bottom 3 for the first time since week #2 so the 9-week favorable stretch is over, during weeks #3-11 Wax was the third best team in the league behind Prof and FE.  Wax now has to contend with both Beaud and Adm only half a rank-point behind in 4th place.  RB woes continued for Wax, after taking M Ingram as a replacement player for DK Dobbins and insurance for Kamara being out, Ingram missed the game as well in a never-ending and maddening string of RB injuries so Wax only had one active RB again, the lowly RoJo, but thankfully he scored a TD this week.  Deebo Samuel was used mostly as a RB again, and still found a way to the end zone twice to beat his projection with 16.75 pts despite only catching one pass.  So it bears repeating: it’s not sustainable unless he is active in the passing game.  Ju Jefferson did not do as well with 4-83-0 because it was Thielen (FE) who was on the receiving end of the TDs.  TE Hockenson was not heavily involved in the game with only 3 targets out of 25 pass attempts by Goff, but he made the most of it by catching all three targets and scoring a TD on one of them.  DB Harrison Smith had to start with B Baker on bye and he was active with 6 tackles 5 assists and 1 INT for a total of 17.5 pts, however the rest of Wax’s defense was piss poor.  TJ Watt started but he is affected by an injury and only scored 2 pts which dropped him out of the LB1 spot in favor of Wagner (FE).  Watt’s play had an impact on the Steelers defense as a whole who gave up 34 pts to the Bengals and only created one turnover for a measly result of 3 pts.  It was the same score for LB Fred Warner, 3 pts is pretty weak for any starting LB. 

The Ballers could not string two good weeks, after 2nd place last week they fell to 8th place this week but nonetheless extended their lead to 4 rank-points in the standings over Bas in 7th place.  With only 104 pts scored this week, the bright spots were few and far between, first of all starting Cam Newton was a disaster with only 2.25 pts with a woeful 5 completions in 21 attempts for only 92 yards (and 2 INTs) before being benched.  Meanwhile A Rodgers was on the bench and scored 25 pts despite being hurt – this starting call alone was the difference between 6th and 8th place so Old and Wax benefited.  At RB D Cook only scored 5.5 pts and got injured, while Barkley was even worse with 4.25 pts.  The only good news was Gronk being healthy and was the most used receiver by Brady in a low output game with 7 receptions for 123 yards.  Diggs did slightly better with 7-74-1 and was overall the best performer of the week for Ball.  Diggs would have been exceeded not only by A Rodgers but also by Mac Jones who was benched again by default because Micah Parsons was playing on Thursday.  Parsons did well with 14 pts but M Jones easily outscored him with 24 pts.  At DL the Ballers were handicapped because C Jones was on bye and Flowers missed the game to injury so Ball got a zero at the DL position.  LB Kendricks was having a fantastic year before this week, he had scored double digits every single game (10 out of 10) for a model of consistency, but was inexplicably limited to 6 pts this week.
 
The GloriousBastards finished last for the third time in six weeks with a team low and league low of 82.25 pts this week – a paltry score by all accounts.  Ju Herbert was Bas’ best player with 19 pts but it was below his projection and his 2 INTs contributed to the Chargers getting beat handily and the final score 28-13 was closer than it looked simply because of a garbage time TD thrown by Herbert with less than 5 minutes left.  A Gibson was one of the very few GB players to beat his projection but he did not blow it away with only 12 pts and it came with a lot of hard work: Gibson had to carry the rock 29 times in addition to catching all 7 of his targets in the passing game to reach 146 yards simply based on volume and no TD.  RB Swift got injured early and fumbled to finish in negative territory, DK Metcalf had a stunning low score of 1.5 pt by catching only one pass, and C Sutton was barely better with two short receptions.  D Waller was uncharacteristically uninvolved in the game with only two receptions on a day when D Carr was airing it out like there was no tomorrow and threw for 373 yds, but Waller had crumbs.  Rookie Fields was injured so this time Bas did not have a dilemma but J Chase had his worst game of the season with only 4.75 pts and dropped out of ROO1 position in favor of Mac Jones (Ball).  Defense was equally poor except for D Davis who was ok with 11 pts, but Devin White with only 3 points was awful for such a premium LB, DB Bates was terrible with only 1.5 pt, and C Jordan rounded things up in similar fashion with 2.5 pts. 





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