Week #7

The GloriousBastards won for the first time since week #1 with an equally crushing win as back then, if not more, this time by beating everybody else by more than 30 pts.  With this performance Bas has scored a total of 1018.5 pts on the season which is almost the same as Beaud in second place (1018.75 pts) and more then FE in third place (986.5 pts) and yet Bas trails Beaud by 10 rank-points and FE by 4 rank-points due to Bas’ dry spell in weeks #2-5, not to mention that winning the week by a hair or by a huge margin does not make much of a difference.  This week Ju Herbert did not even do that much with only 16.75 pts which fell short of his projection; instead one of the team leaders was surprisingly Josh Jacobs with 28.75 pts, leaving A Jones on the bench with 18.25 pts with the second RB starter being Pierce (9.75 pts) who has been elevated from ROO to RB.  It looks like Jacobs is making this move seem questionable with K Pickett struggling as rookie and was benched this week in favor of Olave who did well with 12.25 pts, but with M Thomas’ return imminent it is unclear if Olave can keep up this level of production.  Bas’ other big game was more to be expected with J Chase scoring 29.5 pts and he climbed to WR4 in the league. 

ProfessorMJ finished higher than 6th for the first time of the year and did so easily by scoring a season-high 147.25 pts and finished 2nd.  There were still not many bright spots in Prof’s lineup but by far it was J Burrow who carried the weight with 45.5 pts, to build on his 37 pts scored in week #6.  Thanks to this hot 2-week stretch Burrow is now QB3 in the league, very close behind Mahomes (Dec) at QB2.  Rookie Etienne had a decent game with 11.75 pts but it would have been better if he did not lose a fumble.  However the better news was his teammate J Robinson (Beaud) being traded to the Jets which opens the door for Etienne to have a full time role and he’s possibly going to be one of the most valuable rookies the rest of 2022 which is what he was expected to be at draft time.  He has disappointed so far as ROO13 in the PQBFL but his arrow is pointing up.  At RB things were not pretty with 3 injured players and 2 others on bye, leaving the bare minimum of two active RBs.  Pollard scored 9 pts which is acceptable since he’s only a backup, and injured player replacement Jeff Wilson has been made nearly useless by the acquisition of McCaffrey by the 49ers.  He started for Prof by default possibly for the last time of 2022 and scored only 4.5 pts.  At WR K Allen came back from injury but he would have been better off staying on the bench because he only scored 2.5 pts.  Co-starter M Evans did better with 13.75 pts but did not score like the rest of the Bucs offense. 

The BeaudoinBrothers were in a tight contest going into MNF against Old, Wax, and FE but it ended up not close at all because LB Roquan Smith got the job done as the defensive player who was taken first in the draft so he needs to deliver on his status.  Against the struggling Pats offense, Smith finished the game with 8 tackles, 4 assists, 1 sack, and 1 INT for 21 pts and besides injured TJ Watt, Smith leads all LBs by almost 2 pts per game on average, in front of Oluokun (FE).  Beaud took advantage of Wax’s struggles to shave Wax’s lead in first place from 7 rank-points to 4 rank-points to prevent Wax from running away early with the league title, at least for now.  R Smith was actually the only Beaud starter to score above 15 pts this week, and even the 15 was not great because it was from D Carr who underperformed relative to his projection while most of the damage done by the Raiders was on the ground not by air.  The rest of Beaud’s lineup was lacking fire power, Mixon was the only one who scored a TD besides Carr and he narrowly beat his projection with 12.5 pts.  D Henry had more yardage than Mixon but did not score and his 11.5 pts was worse than Mixon.  WR Aiyuk did a fine job during AJ Brown’s bye week with 12 pts but Pittman was subpar with 6-58 and more importantly he lost a fumble.  T Kelce’s game was similar to D Henry: decent stats (6 rec 98 yds) but none of the Chiefs’ 6 TDs went Kelce’s way which was unusual. 

OldNo7 came out on top of a tight pack from 4th to 7th place by beating FE by 1.5 pt, Wax by 2.25 pts, and Dec by 4 pts.  Dak was back in the starting lineup but did not light up the scoreboard with only 11.75 pts which was worse than T Lawrence on the bench with 15.5 pts.  The biggest news of the week was McCaffrey being traded from Car to SF but will that be the spark that CMC has been missing?  Old’s franchise player only ranks RB8 so far, and this week with limited time to prepare the star RB could not do better than 5 pts.  Time will tell if he can go back to his level of production of previous years.  One who does not appear to be going back to his glory days is Kamara who’s been stuck in neutral all year as RB23 and it was more of the same this week with 8.75 pts.  WR Ty Hill was more quiet this week than some other weeks despite the return of Tua Tago with 7-72-0 for 10.5 pts which was a bit better than Godwin who has not impressed this year so far with 9.25 pts this week against the poor Panthers’ defense and playing from behind all game.  However that was not nearly as shocking as Mark Andrews not catching a single pass in the Ravens win when they ran 44 times and only attempted 16 passes, 2 of them targeted to Andrews.  The only starter for Old who scored more than 12 pts was LB D Campbell who scored a long TD on an INT along with lots of tackles & assists (many of them for a loss) for a total of 29 pts.  Old did not have an active college player this week because the GM drafted two with the same bye week and it nearly cost Old several ranks given how tight the standings were, so Old dodged a bullet. 

FlyingElvis scored a season-low 117.25 pts but nonetheless beat Wax by 0.75 pt to avoid sinking in the standings so FE is now 10 rank-points behind first place.  FE only scored 3 TDs this week, two coming from Ekeler but one of them was in garbage time during a disappointing home loss against the Seahawks.  The other TD came from Kittle – it was about time, only his first TD of the season.  The rest of FE’s offensive lineup was quite poor, mostly Lamar Jackson not scoring a TD and only completing 9 passes all game long.  He also did not take off on the ground with 10 rushes for 59 yards.  In that same game, newly acquired A Cooper did next to nothing although he was going against the strong Ravens corners and his value lies when D Watson comes back in a few weeks.  CD Lamb was equally poor with 4-70 and a rush for negative yardage.  Defense was a bit better than offense for FE, led by Oluokun with 13 pts and the Ravens defense with 11.5 pts.  A Donald was on bye which did not help and backup Chandler Jones was mediocre again with only 4 pts.  If FE had started DL Davenport instead (6 pts), FE would have beat Old for 4th place instead of finishing in 5th.  The same can be said for the choice of defensive flex, Vonn Bell only scored 4 pts, leaving 8 pts on the bench for DB Jalen Thompson which was also the difference between 4th and 5th place. 

WaxOnWaxOff finished out of the top 4 for the first time of the season with 6th place this week.  Miracles were not expected with both franchise players Ju Jefferson and Josh Allen on bye.  Wax originally did not have any active QB because T Lance is injured and Stafford was also on bye so Wax traded to acquire Brady.  The timing was not great because Brady had a terrible day even against a poor defense and Brady was held scoreless.  Thankfully at least he did not have a turnover which is why he could at least crack double digits.  At WR there was no help via trade, Wax did not have any suitable replacement for Jefferson with E Moore sulking, Chark injured, and Allen Robinson also on bye.  This forced the single worst WR in the PQBFL in the starting lineup: KJ Hamler (gulp).  Hamler was averaging less than 2 pts per game prior to this week and this is pretty much what he did with 1.75 pt this week.  If only he could have scored a modest 4.25 pts, Wax would have finished two ranks higher.  Wax had a chance on MNF to salvage a decent week but the Pats defense was awful against the Bears, at home to boot, by giving up 33 pts and almost 400 total yards with only 1 turnover.  The Cowboys’ were on the bench with 22 pts so this was a disastrous coaching call, Wax would have beat not only FE and Old, but also Beaud so it made a swing of 4 rank-points against Beaud in the standings and Wax now leads by only 4 instead of having a comfy 8 rank-point lead.  However the worst news of the week was rookie Breece Hall busting his knee after scoring 14 pts early in the game.  Not only his early exit cost Wax dearly given the close rankings, but Wax’s 3 backup rookies are all terrible: so far this season, they have almost as many games with a positive score (3) than negative scores (2) with lots of goose eggs (14). 

The Decepticons finished in the bottom 3 for the fourth time in seven weeks and Dec’s second place in week #5 is now a distant memory.  This week was unfortunate because Dec could have finished 3 spots higher with only an extra 4.25 pts and it’s very easy to point fingers at the coach for the goof.  Dec’s backup WRs are poor to begin with, C Kupp was on bye, so you would think that Dec would be rushing to start D Hopkins when Kupp is out, now that Hopkins’ suspension is over.  But with the Cards playing on TNF the coach was asleep at the wheel and left Hopkins on the beach by default.  Hopkins scored 15 pts with starters Woods (4.25 pts) and Lockett (9.25 pts) both doing worse so Dec self-destructed.  It also did not help that the Rams defense was on bye, but who’s to blame for Dec only drafting one defense?  Even the worst 2 team defense in the PQBFL (Browns – Prof, Saints – FE) average 5.4 pts per game, which would have been enough for Dec to finish 4th this week.  Besides blaming the coach and the GM, regarding active players none underperformed as much as Fournette this week who had a poor 26 yards from scrimmage and was even outrushed by the backup RB R White.  D Montgomery did score on MNF for 11.5 pts but him too was outplayed by the backup RB K Herbert (Bas).  The only bedrock of stability for Dec was QB Mahomes who destroyed the 49ers defense with 423 passing yards and 3 TDs.  His only miscue was an INT but unfortunately he had to be nearly perfect given the lack of support from his Dec teammates so his -3 on the turnover was costly.

The Ballers could not follow-up the week #6 top 3 finish with another good week, this time they barely scored 100 pts and finished 8th.  Because it was rather Prof who showed signs of life this week, Ball lost 6 rank-points to Prof and their lead in 8th place has almost entirely melted away from 7 to 1 rank-point.  With D Cook, Z Moss, and C Akers on bye plus C Patterson injured, the lone active RB was N Hines who only scored 3.5 pts so the RB position was brutal.  If only Ball had more than one worthy rookie, perhaps K Walker would be an option to elevate from rookie to RB but unfortunately that is not the case.  Nonetheless Ball benefits from Walker’ surge with 28 pts this week when he tore up into the Chargers’ defense.  Walker had a slow season start with only 6 pts total in his first 3 games because he was backup behind R Penny (Adm) but now with Penny out for the year Walker has scored 15.25 pts, 15 pts, and 28 pts for an average of 19.4 pts during that stretch which is better than any other RB, even the best in the PQBFL N Chubb (Adm) who is averaging 16.0 pts per game.  Could it be that the Ballers have a franchise player in the making?  The rest of the Ballers’ starters were mediocre at best, A Rodgers lost against Washington in an unimpressive outing with 16.75 pts, A St-Brown got injured early and only scored a single point, WR Higgins only scored 9.5 pts in the offensive festival by the Bengals by being clearly WR3 behind Chase (Bas) and Boyd (Bas), and even college QB Uiagalelei was benched mid game after a negative score and watched the backup QB for Clemson lead the team back from behind to the win.

After 4 weeks the Admirals were only 2 rank-points away from second place in the standings but the last three weeks have been dreadful, especially the last two with back-to-back last place and sub-90 pts both times, when no other PQBFL team has scored less than 90 pts all year.  The first problem is that R Penny’s injury came at the same time as D Harris’ injury, at least this week Harris was back but he does not look 100% and was limited to 0.75 pt.  Chubb had an ok game with 13.75 pts but it was below his season average, and similar result for K Murray who scored 16.25 pts this week – not enough to carry Adm out of last place.  Then there is Waller who was coming off a bye so expectations were that he would be recovered from his injury but he was not, and Knox was on bye so Adm scored zero at the TE position.  The rookie position continues to be in shambles, C Watson was injured, T Davis-Price came back to health but with McCaffrey with the team D-Price is useless, and Adm started Skyy Moore who did not catch a single pass in a game where the Chiefs had over 500 yds of total offense, and the loser muffed a punt return which was the only time all game that he touched the ball so he ended up at negative 3, almost an exact repeat of week #3 when he also scored -3 pts with no reception and a lost fumble, at least that game he did catch one of his two punts LOL..  Individual defense which is supposed to be a strength for Adm, well it was not this week.  The league best DL by far is Maxx Crosby but his week he did not have a sack so he ended the game with 7.5 pts.  LB D White only scored 6 pts which was his second worst game of the year, and DBs Byard + Winfield were poor with 7 pts combined.





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