Week
#17
WaxOnWaxOff was having a middling week until TJ Watt and the
Steelers defense dominated the Browns on MNF to catapult Wax to
their first win of the season. Watt had 4 sacks in that game
for 24 pts, the Steelers had 9 sacks total for 16 pts, and even
kicker Boswell blew past his projection with 13 pts by going 4/4 on
FGs including two long ones of 48 and 50 yards. It was overall
a masterful defensive performance by Wax because the Steelers and
Watt even left in the shadow a 19-point game by F Warner not to
mention A Donald who also had a double-digit game. The worse
game was H Smith with 8 pts was not was bad by any stretch of the
imagination, so Wax had 78 defensive points, and including the
kicker it was 91 pts. This was better than Wax’s entire
offense at 79 pts and surprisingly it was not a key position player
which led the way, it was Trey Lance getting his first start and it
was a successful one with 20.75 pts. Kamara had a TD and
Samuel as well but the rest was clearly subpar with 3 INTs from Josh
Allen and RoJo getting injured in his game to finish with only 2.25
pts. With Wax’s win they beat Beaud by 6 spots this week and
now have a comfortable 5.5 rank-point lead with one week left so Wax
will probably finish 5th for the season.
The GloriousBastards had a good week with 158.75 pts which would
have been worth first place until Wax beat Bas at the finish line
with M Fitzpatrick only scoring 5.5 pts on MNF which paled in
comparison with Wax’s trio of Steelers. If more than 3 of Bas’
players had performed well this week, Bas would have finished first
easily but only J Chase, C Jordan, and DK Metcalf beat their
projections by a healthy margin, plus S Michel doing so modestly
with 13.75 pts. Clearly the top gun was J Chase and for a rare
time this year it paid off because most of his big games were from
the bench, but not this time. He erupted for 46.25 pts in the
starting lineup with Fields still injured and created a big lead as
the league’s top rookie over M Jones; he will not drop the top spot
with only one week remaining. Similar to Chase, DK Metcalf
scored 3 TDs for 26.25 pts and C Jordan was the only one to show up
on defense with 3.5 sacks and 21 pts while the rest of the defense
was awful with only 14.5 pts from D White, D Davis, the Chargers D,
and Fitzpatrick combined. Receivers CD Lamb (5.5 pts) and
Engram (1.5 pt) were both poor, Swift did not do anything either
with 3.25 pts, and Ju Herbert was serviceable with 20.75 pts but
short of his projection.
The Admirals finished in the top 3 for the 5th time in 6 weeks and
remain the league’s hottest team during that time span. Part
of it is health because Adm earned the 3rd fewest injury points this
week, which is in contrast with earlier in the season; Adm is
currently in 4th place in injury points for the whole season because
the season start was rough. Adm had built a big lead over Dec
and it turned out to be fully necessary to sustain Dec’s comeback on
MNF and Adm held on to third place by 1.5 pt. Franchise player
D Adams led the way with 23.75 pts and as usual that meant less
rushing stats for A Jones who scored 8.75 pts. However this
week was a bit different, the Packers did score on the ground but it
simply went to AJ Dillon (Old) who had 2 TDs taken away from A Jones
which is ominous for 2022. It might be a similar situation for
D Harris at some point, he scored 2 TDs for 13.75 pts, but got
injured and R Stevenson also scored 2 TDs after Harris left the
game. On defense Oluokun scored 19.5 pts and held on to the
LB1 spot in the PQBFL despite TJ Watt’s big game. The LB who
wins the top defensive player spot will come down to week 18 as only
0.2 pt per game on average differentiates Watt and Oluokun.
For team defense the coach strangely started the Vikings on the road
in Green Bay and they got crushed, not to mention no turnover and no
sack so they finished in negative territory. The WFT did not
do a lot better with 1 sack 0 turnover, but at least they were
competitive in their game so they had a modest score, not a negative
one.
The Decepticons finished 4th and beat FE by 5 ranks so they still
have a chance for second place – they need to beat FE by 2 ranks in
week #18 to overcome the fast sinking FE. Dec kept the best
for last with 24 pts from Najee Harris on MNF who ran mad after
being benched in favor of A St.Brown by Dec’s coach last week, but
St.Brown still beat Harris again with 28.5 pts so that coaching call
cost Dec 3rd place. Mahomes started his game hot with 2 TDs in
the first quarter but he did nothing the rest of the game to finish
with 22.5 pts. C Kupp was excellent again with one more TD and
almost 100 receiving yards for 16.75 pts, but co-WR Lockett was more
quiet with 3-24 but fortunately one of his receptions was for a TD
so his final score was not bad at 9.5 pts. M Sanders and K
Hunt both missed the game to injury which forced J Williams in the
lineup and it turned out to be one of his better games because he
scored a short TD late in the game when the Lions were trying to
play catch-up with the Seahawks. His 8.5 pts was in fact even
better than Mixon who was barely part of the game plan when the
Bengals did all the scoring by air in their win against the
Chiefs. On defense the Saints were dominant to keep their
playoff chances alive with 18.5 pts and D Leonard made his presence
felt with 15 pts after missing week #16. However Dec was still
impacted by not having a healthy DB which was costly with a zero at
the position.
The Ballers finished in the middle of the pack and lost to Bas by 3
spots so they are now down by 5 with one week to go to catch up in
7th place. Rookie Mac Jones took maximum advantage of his easy
matchup against Jax and scored 25.5 pts. He even did better
than banged up A Rodgers who nonetheless clinched the Packers’ first
round bye with 23 pts which is a concern for Ball because Newton is
not the starter in Carolina anymore and Goff has 50/50 chance of
playing in the final week so Ball might be massively hampered
without a QB. In that game won easily by the Packers, D Cook
went nowhere fast with 9 carries for 13 yards and three receptions
for zero yards. S Barkley did not score a TD but unlike Cook
he was able to gain 100 yards on the ground. After a cooling
off period from week 14-16, Gronk was back into the double digits in
an erratic win by the Bucs against the lowly Jets. WRs Diggs
and McLaurin had lesser stats than Gronk and did not score a
TD. The Bucs having a bad game against the Jets also affected
the Ballers on defense because the Bucs D had a high projection but
allowed 374 yards of total offense to the Jets in a surprising
letdown.
ProfessorMJ clinched the PQBFL title with FE’s last place despite
themselves having a so-so result of 6th place. Prof took
possession of first place in the standings in week #5 and never
looked back the rest of the season and now lead by a whopping 18
rank-points over FE and 19.5 over Dec. Congratulations for the
great turnaround from last to first. This week was not a
fireworks effort however, Prof was headed to another top 3 finish
but Chubb was a dud on MNF with only 4.75 pts and Prof lost several
ranks as a result with Dec and Wax having big games. Only one
player from Prof’s starters scored more than 13 pts, with Brady
having to play catchup against a bad team so he was able to beat his
projection with 27.5 pts. Prof has been affected by the RB
injury bug like others recently, this week Conner and D Henderson
both missed the game which forced Pollard in the lineup once again
and he only scored 4.75 pts, exactly the same as Chubb.
Receivers did not bail out Prof like they did all year, Ty Hill was
limited to 8 pts even on a day when the Chiefs scored 4 TDs, K Allen
scored a TD but only had modest stats 4-44, and M Andrews was held
out of the end zone so his 10.25 pt game was below
projections.
The BeaudoinBrothers finished in the bottom 3 for the 7th time in 17
weeks but avoided last place once again so all those bad weeks were
7th or 8th place. This week the Bros were headed for a dismal
week with projections putting the team dead last by almost 10 points
versus any other team. At least T Kelce was back from covid so
injury points were not record breaking like last week, and Kelce
scored a TD to contribute 11 points. WRs Cooper and Pittman
did not do much except for a short TD by Cooper and C Patterson is
in a tail spin and has not scored more than 6 pts since week 14 as
he was limited to 4.25 pts this week as the lone healthy RB for the
Bros. However R Wilson had his best game since week 1 with
31.75 pts in a juicy matchup against the Lions which paid off and
saved the Bros from the cellar. Rookie Zach Wilson also
contributed moderately by avoiding turnover against the Bucs and
almost beat them with 234 passing yards which is a threshold he had
not reached since week 4. On defense Logan Wilson was back
from injury so the Bros were able to start 2 LBs, his 8 pts were
nothing fantastic but better than recent flex production for the
Bros.
Since FE won weeks 8-9, no other team has been able to follow up a
win with a top 3 finish and OldNo7 was no exception with 8th
place. Old dropped 3 rank points further behind Ball in last
place and now trails by 7 so unless Old wins week 18 most likely Old
will end at the bottom. This week CEH missed the game to
injury so on top of McCaffrey out, it forced Gordon to start and he
only scored 6 pts. Regular starter Elliott should have carried
the load but he did not with only 2.5 pts; in that Cowboys game it
was Prescott who did more work with 25 pts. Old had Dionte
Johnson on MNF who had a fine game with 14.5 pts but more was needed
to beat Beaud. It is unclear whether Johnson will sustain his
value next year if the Steelers get a new QB. Old was able to
avoid last place this week with some decent games on defense, first
the 49ers neutralized the toothless Texans offense and scored 15.5
pts. LB Schobert missed the game to injury and the starter
defaulted to D Buckner who luckily had a good game with 12
pts. LB Singleton scored 9 pts this week which was ok but at
the image of Old as a whole, it was not nearly as potent as his 24
pts from the week before which had powered Old to the top.
FlyingElvis finished last for the second time in five weeks and has
almost completely squandered the lead they had over Dec in second
place. FE cannot wait for the season to end to hope to remain
second. FE has slowed down considerably since L Jackson got
injured, and this week Cousins missed the game too so it was down to
Hurts as the only QB available and Hurts had a TD-less game for only
10.5 pts. Without L Jackson, Marquise Brown has also not been
the same player and this week he only caught three short passes and
fumbled one of them away for a total score of only 1.25 pt. TE
H Henry was similarly uninvolved in the offense despite the Pats’
50-point offensive explosion which was a big surprise for FE; Henry
only scored 4.75 pts. B Cooks scored the Texans’ lone TD at
San Fran for 15.25 pts and FE’s RBs dominated again with 14.5 pts
and 14.25 pts each for Taylor and Ekeler, but it was not enough to
make up for big holes on defense. B Wagner got injured on the
very first play of the game to exit with a zero, D Lawrence had his
worst game of the year with only 1 point, and Derwin James came back
from injury with only 7 pts so perhaps he’s still banged up.
He remains DB1 in the league however and likely to finish
there. The only bright spot on defense was the Pats scoring
13.5 pts but their result would have been better if they did not
allow an extra point to be blocked on special teams.
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