Week #16

As soon as it was assumed that OldNo7 would finish the season last, they beat the Ballers by the largest margin 9 rank points to 1, which suddenly raised Old’s prospect of getting out of last with Old’s first win of the season.  Dak Prescott led the charge with 32.25 pts in the massacre of the WFT defense and he could have done a lot more if the Cowboys were not up by as much as 42-7 at halftime, making Prescott expendable in the second half of the game.  In that game Elliott did not gain a lot of yards but he scored twice to finish with 16 pts.  Similarly, CEH was limited to 31 yards from scrimmage but he scored a short TD; nonetheless his final score of 7.5 pts was short of his projection.  Antonio Brown was back from his suspension and he took advantage of both Godwin and M Evans being out – he was the main target of the passing offense and caught 10 balls for 101 yards although no score.  OldNo7 also did well on the defensive side of the ball with the Chiefs holding the Steelers to 10 points, but most importantly A Singleton returned an INT for a TD to pile onto an already productive day tackle wise with 10+2 tackles+assists.  After being temporarily benched by the Eagles earlier this year, Singleton has been recovering nicely and now ranks LB11 in the PQBFL.

The Admirals almost caught up with OldNo7 in first place on MNF with a valiant effort by J Waddle with a performance of 10-92-1 for 19.5 pts but Adm came up short by 2.25 pts behind Old.  Adm beat Beaud and Wax by several ranks this week so they are now all but assured of at least 4th place for the season.  Unfortunately Adm only beat Dec by 1 so they did not gain much ground so third place is probably out of reach.  Since week #12, Adm has finished second 4 times in 5 weeks and has been the best team in the PQBFL during that stretch, but the four bottom 3 finishes in weeks 1-10 have been too much to overcome.  This week the star of Adm’s team was D Harris who controlled the carries with R Stevenson out and made the most of it with 100+ yards rushing and three TDs to move up to RB13 in the PQBFL.  Surprisingly Aaron Jones now ranks below Harris at RB15 in a moderately disappointing season, this week A Jones did well on the ground with 5.5 yards per carry and 5 short receptions, but AJ Dillon has been eating into Jones’ workload too much for Jones to have a big day.  Jones outrushed Dillon 12 to 9 so Jones is gradually falling into a part-time role, and this week he did not score to end the game with 7.25 pts.  Like is often the case, when A Jones does not perform, it’s D Adams who picked up the slack, as shown by his 10-114-2 stat line this week for 25.5 pts.  QB K Murray did not have a very good game with only 1 TD but he did not turn the ball over and his 74 rushing yards helped his stats to finish with 21.75 pts, slightly below his projection.  Defense was mostly mediocre for Adm with scores between 7 and 10 for Byard, Ju Reid, Crosby, and the Vikings, but Oluokun was the star with 20 pts.  Oluokun has been under the radar all year but he is now only 0.1 pt per game on average below the top defensive player in the PQBFL: B Wagner (FE). 

The Decepticons finished 3rd for the second straight week and despite gaining some ground on FE, Dec will probably end the season third as well unless they can catch up FE by 7 rank-points in two weeks which is a tall order.  The coach made the surprising decision to bench N Harris in favor of A-R St.Brown and the result was a success with St.Brown easily outscoring Harris 21.5 pts to 9 pts.  However Dec finished so far ahead of GB in 4th place that it did not make any difference in the rankings this week.  St.Brown came close to being the weekly scoring leader for Dec but Mahomes narrowingly beat him with 23 pts which was in line with his projection.  The third Dec player to cross 20 points this week was Mixon with 2 TDs and 135 yards from scrimmage in the destruction of the Ravens defense.  Dec’s coach also made another bold move in the starting lineup by benching Fant in favor of Everett and it also paid off with Everett scoring 14.25 pts compared to only 4.5 pts for Fant.  However Everett’s production put Lockett in the shadow as he was limited to 4.5 pts and slipped to WR21 so far in the PQBFL.  C Kupp had another big day 10-109 but no TD so he could not beat his high projection with 15.5 pts.  On defense, the Saints, D Jones, and P Queen all scored exactly 11.5 pts, which was decent with D Leonard out due to covid.  Dec were also playing handicapped without a DB with both J Adams and JJIII injured.  Considering that Dec finished 13 pts behind Adm, having a DB could have resulted in a better outcome but it would have required a somewhat above average game from a healthy DB. 

The GloriousBastards finished 4th for the third time in 4 weeks and leapfrogged the Ballers in 7th place.  D Swift missed the game to injury but it turned out to be good news because backup S Michel was the best starter of the week for Bas with 17.25 pts.  Bas did not have a choice to make at the rookie position with Fields injured so Chase started and had a decent game with 13.25 pts.  With Mac Jones’ poor week, Chase has recaptured the ROO1 position in the PQBFL by 0.4 pt per game.  The Bastards did not finish close to the top 3 this week because Ju Herbert had a poor game against the weak Texans, he had 2 INTs (including a pick-6) and did not throw a TD pass until the last minute during garbage time to end at 13.25 pts but in reality his performance was worthy of single digits.  On the other side of the ball the Chargers D was expected to have a feast in that game but instead they allowed 34 pts against rookie QB Mills and journeyman Burkhead who ran roughshod over the Chargers who finished with a goose egg while the Broncos on the bench scored 10.5 pts.  Considering the matchup it was nearly impossible to bench the Chargers but it shows the perils of starting a bad defense (D17 out of 18 in the PQBFL) instead of an above average one (Broncos D6) regardless of the matchup.  C Jordan and M Fitzpatrick were the better ones on defense for GB with 13 and 13.5 pts which helped beat the tight pack of teams behind GB: Prof, Wax, and FE. 

ProfMJ had a relatively average week for the 5th time in 8 weeks but nonetheless beat FE so with a lead of 15 rank-points with 2 weeks left it would require an absolute miracle for Prof to drop the title, in fact in all likelihood they will clinch one week before the end of the season.  Prof’s 124.5 pts scored this week was the team’s lowest output all year and below the league’s average only for the first time since week 3 when Prof finished 6th.  Brady is not injured but he might as well be, because the majority of his weapons are out which means Prof is affected but without gaining injury points.  Brady finished the game with only 13.25 pts despite the easy win in Carolina.  Burrow was on the bench, it is not clear if the coach considered him but he exploded for 42.25 pts so Prof could have finished 3rd instead of 5th if the coach had made this difficult coaching call.  Mike Evans missed the game to injury and starters K Allen and Ty Hill had poor games with 8.5 pts combined, Hill being the more surprising of the two because Kelce was out so one could have assumed Hill would be the centerpiece of the Chiefs offense who scored 36 pts on the Steelers but Hill only had 2 receptions for 19 yards.  N Chubb and M Andrews were the co-team leaders with 20.25 pts each to score the necessary points to edge FE, while on defense the familiar names Mosley and R Smith were active as usual with 28 pts combined.  The largest disappointment for Prof this week was T Lawrence who could not score a TD against the Jets so even in good matchups he’s not getting the job done and dropped to ROO8 – barely starting material.

WaxOnWaxOff was headed towards a rough week but the Dolphins defense saved Wax from finishing last and even powered them up to 6th place by scoring a TD on an INT return and holding the Saints to only 3 points for a total of 28 pts.  This was the Dolphins 7th consecutive win to get back into the playoff race, mostly thanks to their defense, not their offense.  The Fins have moved up to 5th best defense in the PQBFL, far ahead of the Steelers (D15) and yet Wax’s coach has started the Steelers more often than not until this week.  The second best score of the week for Wax was Deebo Samuel who does not let up, this time it was back via the air with 9 receptions for 159 yards while he only carried five times because teammate J Wilson had the bulk of carries.  Regardless how he does it, D Samuel finds ways to put stats on the board and if we ignore Antonio Brown who missed many games, Samuel currently ranks WR3 behind C Kupp and D Adams which is a stunning result.  In fact he’s been even better than high-priced Ju Jefferson who is not having a bad season either, only one rank behind Samuel, and this week Jefferson was adequate with 8-116 but no TD.  It would have been difficult for Wax to finish higher in the standings without a starting rookie this week again, but perhaps Trey Lance will finally see the field with the news that Garoppolo is injured.  A couple of defensive players which helped Wax this week were A Donald with 15 pts and H Smith with 11.5 pts, with the former taking a lead over M Garrett by 10 total points (0.6 pts per game) during the season as the league’s top DL. 

FlyingElvis had an off week after their week 15 win and finished as low as 7th with only 120 pts.  Not much was going well for FE, L Jax was out to injury again and the coach correctly started Hurts over Cousins but he only scored 15.5 pts against the Giants, far below his projection.  While Hurts’ stats are decent (QB11 on the season), in real life it is not clear he is the long-term solution for the Eagles so his 2022 value is uncertain.  J Taylor’s streak of 10+ pts game took a break with only 9 pts this week.  He rushed for over 100 yards but no reception and no TD which limited his upside.  With Ekeler out to covid, Montgomery had a rare start, and the luxury of having one of the best backup RBs in the PQBFL paid off with 13.75 pts.  Montgomery might not have been used much this year, but as RB16 he will have good saved player value in 2022.  The problem this week for FE was mostly receivers; Thielen got injured mid game and exited after scoring only 5 pts, Gallup made a start over M Brown but it did not end well with only 4.5 pts, although M Brown did not do much either with 7 pts on the bench.  TE H Henry has been very up and down recently and this week was a down week with only one short reception.  In that game the Patriots were dominated by the Bills and finished in negative territory while the Bills (Prof) did much better with 8.5 pts so their positions 1 and 2 got swapped, the Bills now average 11.0 pts per game vs 10.7 pts for the Pats.  FE avoided the doldrums thanks to a defensive TD by D Lawrence on an INT return plus a sack, and double-digit scores by B Wagner and Vonn Bell who did a fine job as a replacement for DB league-leading Derwin James who was out, in fact V Bell scored more than James’ season long average. 

The apocalypse has hit the BeaudoinBrothers, already affected by lots of injuries but more have been piling up to hit a new record of 339 injury points in a single week.  This week the Bros’ first three draft picks were out plus the franchise player as well so Beaud were down to razor thin lineup at most positions, even on defense 3 out of 4 LBs were out and in addition now also DB L Collins is out for the rest of the year so the Bros had to start two DLs, both Garrett and Chander Jones had poor games with 2 pts and 4 pts, respectively.  That does not even count the Ravens defense which has been ravaged by injuries recently and scored in negative territory, but the coach can be blamed for not starting the Colts defense because he was scared of the matchup against the Cards but the Colts scored 8.5 pts.  Thankfully the choice of starting defense did not have an impact on the standings.  TE Goedert had good games on the bench in week 13 (25.25 pts) and week 15 (13.75 pts) with a bye in between in week 14, however the only two times that he was called into action with Kelce on bye or on covid list were weeks 12 and 16, he stunk both times with 1 pt in week 12 and 4.75 pts this week.  The Bros were able to avoid last place thanks to a respectable total of 6 TDs without any turnover, 2 from R Wilson, 2 from Z Wilson, and 1 each from C Patterson and A Cooper.  It is Cooper’s TD on SNF which saved the Bros from reaching the bottom for the first time since 2017 with his 18.75 pt effort, his best game since a 31.75 pt explosion in week 1. 

The Ballers returned to the bottom for the first time since week 6 with only 101 pts.  WR McLaurin was limited to 3 receptions for 40 yards on SNF and could not keep up with A Cooper on the other side of the field so he was one of the reasons why the Ballers finished last.  The week had not started too badly with 3 TDs and 22.5 pts from A Rodgers on Saturday and the Ballers were well positioned based on weekly projections because before the start of Sunday games Ball was projecting only 7.5 pts away from the top.  However rookie Mac Jones had a miserable day against the Bills and was affected by the same turnover bug as so many other rookie QBs this season: 2 INTs, one fumble no lost, no TD, and only 145 passing yards.  None of the individual defenders provided a boost, all 4 failed to reach double digits with the worst being Chris Jones with only 3 pts.  The only good game on defense was the Bucs with 17.5 pts, they only created one turnover but they sacked the QB 7 times and held the Panthers to only 6 points.  In that game, Gronk disappointed massively with only 2 pts considering that Godwin and M Evans were both out.  The only decent receiver for the Ballers was Diggs who scored a TD and caught 7 balls for 17.25 pts.  RBs Barkley and Hines were awful with 2.25 pts and 1.5 pts so D Cook’s injury was painful and was most likely the difference between 9th and 8th place this week.




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