Week #4

WaxOnWaxOff was leading the league after three weeks but had not won a week yet, and now the league favorites have rectified this situation with a dominant win in week #4 and consolidated their lead at the top of the standings by beating Beaud and FE by more than 40 points.  Josh Allen failed to reach 25 pts for the second consecutive week in a hard-fought battle in Baltimore and he ended with 20.75 pts which was his lowest output of the year.  Wax won the week almost entirely because of a pair of Lions – Ja Williams and TJ Hockenson scored 4 TDs between them for a total of 52.75 pts by taking full advantage of injuries to Swift (Prof) and St.Brown (Ball).  Ju Jefferson was not bad himself either with 22.5 pts with a stat line of 10-147-1.  The other good news for Wax this week was the progress of Breece Hall who scored the game winning TD at the end of the Jets’ road game in Pittsburgh and seems to be taking over the main duties over Mi Carter (Bas).  Defense performed exactly in line with projections with 47 pts for the 4 individual defenders and team defense combined, the best being Nick Bosa on MNF who had 2 sacks and 5 QB hits. 

FlyingElvis finished second for the second straight week and is now tied with Beaud in second place in the standings.  In a week where every point counted, FE was able to edge Adm by 0.75 pt and Beaud by 1.5 pt.  It was a tackle very late in the game by A Donald on MNF which moved FE passed Adm at the finish line with Donald scoring 8 pts in that game, to make up for a poor performance by Kittle with only 3 pts who almost squandered FE’s comfortable lead in second place going into MNF.  Ekeler was FE’s team leader with 28 pts this week, finally waking up after scoring only 18 pts in the first three weeks combined.  It was not all rosy at the RB position however with J Taylor finishing the game with only 0.5 pt and got injured, putting his status for next week in doubt.  L Jackson also did not have his best game with only 10.75 pts but he was playing tough Bills defense; Jackson was about to lead the Ravens victory with a 93-yard drive but he messed it all up with an INT with 4 minutes remaining which led to the Bills’ winning FG as time expired.  Both FE’s WRs had better games than Jackson with 17.25 pts from Ma Brown and 17.75 pts from CD Lamb.  Defense was also quite good for FE notably 19 pts from Oluokun and 14 pts for V Bell, the lone exception being the Saints defense which did not do much against the Vikings and even lost a fumble on special teams.

Adm finished sandwiched in a tight pack right between FE and Beaud thanks to a clutch game by Deebo Samuel on MNF with 19.75 pts which was the first time all year that he scored more than 10 pts so his timing was good.  He made up for Waddle’s poor outing with only 2-39 when Ty Hill (Old) caught 10 balls and was far more involved than Waddle.  The extra concern is how will Waddle perform without Tua Tago in the next few weeks, now that he is out until further notice.  Adm’s best scorer this week was K Murray with 22.75 pts but it was not entirely a convincing effort against the Panthers as Murray only threw for 207 passing yards and had an INT.  Adm’s RBs were more impressive with 12 pts from D Harris and 17.5 pts from N Chubb.  So far after 4 weeks, Harris is a bit shaky but as RB16 he remains RB2 material, while Chubb has been by far the best RB in the league, 2.3 pts per game ahead of Barkley (Wax).  On defense Adm is still performing well but one has to wonder for how much longer that will last.  DL Maxx Crosby leads all DLs in the PQBFL and he was dominant this week again with 14 pts.  LB D White was even better with 14.5 pts and is now tied as highest scoring LB with R Smith (Beaud) if we ignore TJ Watt (Wax) who only played one game.  However after those two, Adm might have emerging issues especially at the LB position.  With Joey Bosa and Deion Jones injured, plus Blake Martinez being waived by the Giants and not picked up by anybody else yet, Adm only has one active LB so Adm had to start 2 DBs this week, both of which were so-so with 6 pts and 5 pts for Byard and Winfield. 

The BeaudoinBrothers fell short of beating their rivals FE and Adm and came up on the losing end of the tight pack, although they beat Bas which was not too far behind.  Beaud’s two QBs were playing against each other R Wilson vs D Carr and despite Carr having the better season start through 3 weeks, Beaud stuck with Wilson in the starting lineup and it paid off with Wilson outscoring Carr 27.25 pts to 9.5 pts.  D Henry has been slowly getting better too with 18.25 pts this week, and Mixon scored a TD like Henry did for 11 pts.  However unlike previous weeks the WR position was very poor with AJ Brown scoring 9.75 pts and Pittman even worse with 4.5 pts.  It was Kelce who was the Bros’ best receiver with 19.5 pts and he took back the lead as the PQBFL’s best TE so far in front of M Andrews (Old).  Defense was not as dominant as in previous weeks with the Broncos only scoring 2 pts and they fell to 4th best in the PQBFL while Chandler Jones continues to be a disappointment with his new team the Raiders with only 2 pts this week.  He is currently DL20 out of 22 active DLs so the Bros urgently need Chase Young or Leonard Williams to come back to health.  The best on defense was the rookie again, Devin Lloyd scored 14 pts and took the lead as the best rookie in the PQBFL, more than 2 pts per game ahead of J Dotson (Old).  Not bad for who was labeled the Beaud’s worst pick in the draft analysis.

The GloriousBastards had a decent week but finished 6.25 pts away from 4th place and 7.75 pts away from 2nd place so they needed roughly one extra TD to have a truly good week instead of an average one.  Bas had the opportunity on MNF to make a comeback with Gould and Wagner but Gould missed a FG and Wagner only had tackles and assists; he would have needed a big play such as a sack, a forced fumble, or an INT to help Bas this week.  Herbert seems to be able to handle playing with his painful ribs, granted he was playing the Texans but nonetheless he did not simply hand off to Ekeler all game long, instead he was 27/39 for 340 passing yards even without his top WR K Allen (Prof) who was out to injury.  So Herbert’s 23 pts was not fantastic but it beat his projection.  The rest of Bas’ offense was not so special with 9.5 pts from A Jones (no TD) and it was a similar affair for Khalil Herbert who had 101 yds from scrimmage but no TD, doing an ok job as replacement for D Montgomery (Dec) who was injured.  WRs were better but barely, Sutton scored a TD but his stats were pedestrian with 5 receptions for 52 yards, and Chase had more yardage but only 4 receptions and no TD.  The receivers who outscored their projections were actually TE Freiermuth and rookie Olave with 12.25 pts each, rather than the non-rookie WRs.  On defense M Fitzpatrick continued to do well with 14.5 pts this week but the rest of the Steelers defense did not, with only 6 pts against the poor Jets offense.

ProfessorMJ finally scored out of the bottom 3 but barely did so with 6th place.  Prof was only 5.75 pts away from finishing last again as the rankings were a bit tight at the bottom this week.  One of the few reasons why Prof avoided finishing last was Mike Evans who had a big game with the Bucs playing from behind and throwing during most of the game.  Evans scored 2 TDs along with over 100 yards receiving for 24 pts.  Burrow also beat his projection but by a more modest margin with a score of 23 pts in a win against the Dolphins.  With K Allen out, Prof benched B Cooks this time and went with D Johnson who had outscored Cooks so far this season, but this week Johnson was poor with only 3 pts against the Jets while Cooks scored and easily topped Johnson with 15.75 pts.  The rest of Prof’s offense was weak with Ja Williams getting injured and is out for the rest of the season.  He was not getting much done as franchise player anyway and this puts an end to his misery.  Conner was barely better with 6.25 pts this week despite the Cards having an ok game offensively, part of the problem is that K Murray carried 12 times to eat into Conner’s workload who was limited to 15 carries.  Rookie RB Etienne had only 32 rushing yards and no reception for another poor score of 2.5 pts which was the lowest of an already slow season start after 3 weeks, although the good news is that he had as many carries as James Robinson (Beaud) did.  Defense saved Prof from a rock bottom week with double digit scores by Burns, CJ Mosley, and J Brooks.

OldNo7’s dominant week #2 win seems a distant past with Old finishing 7th this week with only 118 pts and fell to 5th place in the standings tied with Bas.  While Dak’s injury did not hurt Old early on, it is now becoming imperative that he comes back with Wentz with a bad score on the bench for Old this week (5.75 pts) and T Lawrence who was given his first start for Old but he was abysmal with 5 turnovers and almost finished in negative territory with 1.25 pt.  Equally painful was M Andrews who was playing the Bills defense but nonetheless, elite TEs should never finish a game with only 2 receptions for 15 yards (2.75 pts) regardless of the opponent.  In fact this was Andrews’ worst game since 2020 week #2 when he only scored 2.25 pts.  Rookie D London was barely better with only 3.75 pts, by far his worst game of the year which made him fall to ROO5 on the season.  There were a few starters which helped Old avoid the basement this week, most notably Ty Hill with 18.75 pts despite not scoring a TD, thanks to an impressive 10 receptions for 160 yards even with Bridgewater as the QB for most of the game.  Also both McCaffrey and CEH scored (CEH even scored twice) for 15 pts and 17.75 pts, respectively.  DB Sneed was the leader on defense with 8 tackles, 1 assist, 1 sack, and one forced fumble.

After a decent two week stretch (weeks 2-3), the Ballers nearly finished last with 115 pts, edging Dec by 0.75 pt at the bottom.  At least it allowed Ball to get into a tie in the standings with Dec in 7th place.  The injury bug has hit Ball’s WRs, in fact three of the five were injured so there was no room for manoeuvre to set starters.  Most notably A St.Brown was missing in action which forced back Higgins into the lineup and the timing was good with Higgins scoring 21 pts, which was 3x better than star WR Diggs who was held in check with 4 receptions for 62 yards and no TD.  Ball’s other franchise player D Cook was also limited to exactly 7 pts because his stats were modest and he did not reach the end zone.  Ball’s other starting RB did score however, with C Patterson having a 13-yd TD run in the first quarter but he got injured and left early which will be problematic going forward for Ball given the lack of viable alternative RBs on Ball’s roster.  The problem is similar at the rookie position which was mentioned in previous weeks, K Walker is clearly behind starter R Penny (Adm) both in terms of carries (17 to 8) but also he did not do much with his opportunities with only 3.6 yds per carry compared to Penny who had almost 9 ypc thanks to scoring two long TDs.  Other Ball rookies Jameson Williams and Ty Thornton are still injured and have not played yet.  On defense everybody was below projections, E Kendricks led the way with 8 pts which was ok but not that great, all the way down to only 1.5 pt for the Bucs defense in a blowout loss to the Chiefs.  That one could be blamed on the coach however because the Packers had a more favorable matchup at home against the Pats and their backup QB with Mac Jones injured, and the Pack D easily outscored the Bucs D on the bench (10 pts vs 1.5 pt) which is a call which cost Ball two ranks.

The Decepticons finished last for the first time since week 11 last year with a lowly 114.25 pts.  A modest extra 6 pts would have helped Dec finish 6th instead of 9th but it was not meant to be.  Dec is only 3 rank points from being top in the league in injury points (Prof 356 vs Dec 353) and with bye weeks coming up it could get worse because Dec has injuries concentrated to RB and DB plus the fact that Dec chose to go with a thin roster at some positions such as QB with only 2 QBs and now Tua Tago might be out for a while.  Fortunately in the meantime Mahomes has not been overly affected by the departure of Ty Hill, he ranks QB3 after 4 weeks and beat his projection this week with 26 pts in a convincing win against the Bucs.  On MNF C Kupp attempted a comeback for Dec with a massive 14 receptions for 122 yds but unfortunately he did not score a TD which was the entire difference between finishing 6th and last.  In that same game, rather than blaming Kupp we could point fingers to the Rams defense which was nothing special against the 49ers.  They allowed 17 pts which was actually decent, but they failed to create a turnover and they also did not get a sack.  Back to injuries, TE Schultz does not have Dak to throw to him, and Schultz has been banged up himself; his goose egg this week was painful considering that backup Fant scored the 6 pts that Dec needed, but he was on the bench.  In addition, D Leonard made his first start of the season after missing the first three weeks to injury, but he does not seem to be 100% because he only scored 2 pts which was the worst game of his entire NFL career except for a shortened game in 2020 when he scored only one point and then left due to injury and missed the subsequent few weeks.





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