Week #9

After a couple of wobbly weeks in 6th place, WaxOnWaxOff went back to the winning road with a league-leading third win in 9 weeks.  Beating Beaud by 5 rank-points turned out to be a very satisfying result considering that Barkley and E Elloitt were both on bye and that backups Ja Williams (6.75 pts) and AJ Dillon (2 pts) did not do much this week.  Even Josh Allen did not carry the load with 18.25 pts, the second straight week where he failed to top 20 pts.  This week was all about defense for Wax, even missing TJ Watt, Warner, and M Jack all on bye did not matter.  Wax was forced to start 2 DBs and B Baker + H Smith are among the best DB duos to have and they delivered with 20 pts combined.  At DL it was even better, N Bosa was on bye but Buckner got the job done with 13 pts.  The best performance was the Pats D however, not only they kept the Colts to only 3 pts and a paltry 121 total yards, but to add insult to injury they also scored a TD, blocked a kick, and sacked the punching bag QB Ehlinger 9 times for a total of 29 pts.  Thanks to that performance the Pats took the top spot as best defense in the PQBFL at the mid-point of the season.  Offense was not entirely bad, receivers did what the RBs could not do: Ju Jefferson and Kirk both scored and combined for 35 pts, and Hockenson did not score on his new team but a stat line of 9-70 was not bad at all considering he was not mastering the playbook yet.

After 3 straight weeks of below-average results, FE went back near the top with second place in week #9 and took sole possession of third place by a large margin by taking advantage of OldNo7’s struggles.  On MNF L Jackson did not have a great game but he did enough to score 18 pts mostly by running as he did not have his best receivers available.  The Ravens defense picked up some of the slack by almost doubling their projection with 12.5 pts by holding the Saints to only 13 pts and 243 total yards.  J Taylor missed the game to injury  and Mostert was pedestrian in replacement with 7 pts and Ekeler moderately underperformed relative to his projection despite 2 TDs because he did not gain much yardage (71 total yards) and he lost a fumble.  At WR things were modestly better despite both A Cooper and CD Lamb being on bye, with replacements JJSS having a good game with 14.25 pts but not Thielen with only 6.25 pts.  However it was newly acquired Goedert who made the difference with Kittle on bye thanks to 8-100-1 for his best game of the year.  Goedert is now TE4 in the PQBFL and actually half a point per game better than Kittle so he might be a part-time starter from here on out.  Individual defenders were all available this week (nobody injured or on bye) and 3/4 scored 9.5 pts or more with the only laggard being DB Vonn Bell with only 2 pts as defensive flex. 

The Ballers finished in the blue for the third time this season and went back to 8th place in the standings by jumping ahead of Prof.  The top scorer was rookie Walker who continues to dominate, this time with 2 TDs and over 100 yards rushing for 20.75 pts.  He now ranks ROO2 in the league, only trailing injured B Hall (Wax) so he’s arguably the most valuable rookie at this point.  If he was a RB he would rank RB9 so enough to be a top half quality starter.  RB C Patterson came back from injury after missing 4 games and he picked up where he left off with 2 TDs for 14.25 pts.  He even did better than D Cook with 10.5 pts and considering the lack of depth at RB for Ball, Patterson remaining healthy is crucial.  Ball could have finished higher if Diggs had a better game than only 9.5 pts which was only the second time of the year that he did not reach double digits.  Higgins did make the cut but barely so with 10 pts even, which was below his projection.  On defense both Kendricks and S Thompson also scored exactly 10 pts, and so did the Bucs D.  DB J Abram was so-so with 6 pts and was surprisingly cut by the Raiders after the game so now Ball is thin at the position unless Abram signs somewhere else. 

The GloriousBastards bounced back from last place to 4th this week and are now only 1 rank-point away from Old in 4th place in the standings.  Bas found some success this week mostly because D Adams had a stellar game with 31.25 pts although most of it was in the first half and he slowed down in the second half when the Raiders lost their lead and the game.  With Adams in the spotlight it left Josh Jacobs in the shadows with only 7.25 pts.  RB A Jones was even worse with 3.75 pts but at least he had a reason – he got banged up in the game against the Lions but he’s thankfully expected to be fine and not injured long-term.  Bas had several key players on bye this week and replacements did ok for the most part.  In the absence of M Parsons and M Fitzpatrick, backups D Davis (11 pts) and J Bates (9 pts) both edged their projection slightly.  Because the Steelers defense ranks last in the PQBFL, arguably the Vikings would have started even if PIT was not on bye and the Vikes held on against the Commanders for 10 pts and the win.  The main bye week replacement who failed was Gesicki with only 1 pt so Freiermuth will probably slide right back into his starting job as early as next week.  At WR the missing element was J Chase not due to bye week but due to injury, and backup Boyd is no Chase, he only scored 7 pts. 

The Decepticons finished in the middle with 5th place and caught Adm into a tie in 6th place in the standings by beating Adm by 2 spots this week.  Dec was able to get this done despite playing without a DB – two were injured and J Kearse was on bye.  Also franchise player N Harris was on bye but he’s worth a bag of peanuts according to the GM so his absence was not really missed, or was it?  Fournette and Montgomery scored 5 pts and 3.5 pts respectively so even Harris’ dreadful average of 6.4 pts per game would have been better.  Kupp and Hopkins scored 33.5 pts combined to match their elevated projection so receivers continue to be a strength for Dec, heck even Fant had a good game this week with 5 receptions for 96 yds.  The only receiver who did not do well this week was rookie Doubs with only 1 reception for 18 yards as the Packers’ offense continues to be in shambles even against the putrid Lions defense and Doubs got injured in that contest.  Defense was also not a bright spot for Dec this week, LB Leonard only scored 5 pts and has clearly not been his normal self even since coming back from injury.  He’s been more valuable to Dec via injury points than when he’s on the field with an average of 5.3 pts per game which ranks LB32 out of 34 active LBs. 

The BeaudoinBrothers had an off week with only 6th place but this was entirely due to a single coaching call to bench Mixon at the least minute who exploded for 5 TDs and jumped from RB19 in the league after 8 weeks to RB7 thanks to his 44.5 pts on the bench.  Very rarely has a top 10 RB been so useless because when the coach stuck with him for many weeks, he was not going anywhere.  This call alone was a 6 rank-point swing against Wax which has quite good chance of being the difference once it’s all said and done at the end of the season.  Starter Stevenson was not bad with 10.75 pts but in a tight week Beaud needed an explosion from someone in the lineup but it did not happen.  The Eagles were simply average against the Texans with 18.25 pts from Hurts and 12.75 pts from AJ Brown, both of which were below their projection and season average.  WR Pittman is sinking as fast as the rest of the Colts offense, even in a game where the Colts played from behind all game he could not do better than 3 receptions for 22 yards.  On SNF D Henry did his part to salvage Beaud from a worse result with 2 TDs and Kelce scored 16.25 pts in line with his projection.  However the problem in that game was Butker who stunk again with a missed extra point and a missed FG for only 1.5 pt; if the coach had stuck with Succop, Beaud would have beat Dec. 

The Admirals finished in the red for the third time in four weeks with 122.5 pts with a league-leading 161 injury points this week.  With both R Penny and D Harris hurt and N Chubb on bye, Adm only had one startable RB Gainwell until Adm traded to acquire J Robinson.  Gainwell scored a TD for 8 pts which was more than expected, and Robinson also scored on his new team for 9.25 pts.  The result was not as good at WR, with M Williams injured and D Samuel on bye, backup Claypool did not make a splash in his first start in Chicago with only 2.75 pts despite the Bears having some success moving the ball, mostly because it came with Fields’ legs not his arm.  The one WR which can be relied upon every week is Waddle and he delivered again with 5-85-1 and 15.25 pts.  At TE Waller continues to miss time to injury and Knox had a poor game with only three short receptions and no TD as his replacement.  On defense Adm had the bare minimum number of active players to start (4) with J Bosa and Winfield injured and the rest on bye.  The four starters combined scored 36.5 pts which was not bad but more was expected of Devin White who only scored 5 pts. 

After a good run in weeks 7-8 with 2nd and 3rd place, Prof fell back to last place in the standings because of 8th place this week.  The only good game on Prof’s starting squad was rookie Etienne who scored twice for 20.5 pts to continue climbing the rookie leaders: he now ranks 7th.  At WR Mooney has had a pretty poor season but he was forced to start this week and surprisingly scored 15.25 pts so his timing was good.  It was far better than M Evans who did very little with 5-40 for 7 pts.  RB was a poor affair, injured player replacement Jeff Wilson was thought to be useless after his trade to Miami so he was benched, however he scored 12 pts which was better than starters Conner and Swift combined who only scored 10.75 pts together (6.75 pts for Conner and 4 pts for Swift).  QB Burrow was not so involved in the offense this week because the Bengals did most of their damage on the ground but at least Burrow threw for a TD pass and ran for one score as well so he ended the week with 18.5 pts, not far from his projection.  LB is the only position where Prof is loaded, this week Prof started Bolton and Mosley who turned out to be the worse two of the week, on the bench J Brooks (13.5 pts) and J Hicks (15 pts) did better than the starters. 

During the stretch from week #5-8, OldNo7 was the second best team in the PQBFL tied with Wax with 25 rank-points during that period, however in week #9 Old finished last for the first time of the season with only 96.25 pts.  It was the second straight week that the previous week winner finished last, after GB had that honor from week 7 to week 8.  TE Andrews missed the game to injury and Njoku was on bye so it forced Old to start Higbee and that loser did nothing at all for a goose egg.  RBs McCaffrey and Gordon were both on bye and since Old only has 4 RBs on the roster there was no choice but to start CEH and Kamara, normally they should be able to hold their own but not this week.  Kamara was poor on MNF with only 5 pts and CEH was even worse on SNF with 1.5 pt.  QB Prescott was also on bye so Lawrence had to start again, his 14 pts were not terrible but below projections nonetheless.  Tyreek Hill was one of the few reliable weapons and he scored this week along with great stats of 7-143 for a total of 19 pts.  Co-WR Godwin did not do as well with 7-36 and no score for 8.75 pts which was below his already low season average of 9.1 pts per game (WR29 in the league).  Defense was nothing special, after a powerful game by DL Hubbard in week 8 (17 pts) to secure the win, Hubbard was flat with only 2 pts this week, Sweat was called into action as flex and only scored 5.5 pts, and LB Werner was terrible with only 3 pts.  DB Sneed did ok with 8 pts and the rest of the Chiefs as well with 9.5 pts but nobody could crack 10 pts on defense.





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