Week #17

In this highly unusual week which turned the PQBFL from a friendly competition into a life-threatening experience for D Hamlin of the Bills, suddenly fantasy football was not nearly as entertaining as it used to be.  Nonetheless Burrow threw a TD pass in the limited time that he had which was enough to overcome the poor game by Cousins as backup QB and Prof won for the first time of the season.  D Swift was the team leader with 22.75 pts – his best game of the year which comes a bit late.  It’s been a wasted season for Swift who ranks RB17 – a poor result for a second round pick.  Rookie Etienne has continued his upward trajectory with also his best game of the year with 21 pts.  He ranks ROO8 but if we remove his first 4 weeks of the season his average of 10.0 would rank ROO3 and actually ROO2 if we ignore injured B Hall. 

In such a low scoring week, Bas managed to finish second despite scoring less than 140 pts.  Bas had a chance at first place but unfortunately J Chase was not at the receiving end of the lone Burrow TD so Bas barely missed out on what would have been a league-leading 5th win this year.  Nonetheless by beating FE by 4 this week, Bas has most likely secured third place in the standings in front of FE unless there is a big turn of events in the final week.  After three straight single digit weeks (#14-16) by D Adams, now that D Carr has been benched Adams did not seem bothered to lose his friend with 27.5 pts against the tough 49ers defense.  Bas had 4 Steelers going on SNF and it was laborious but in the end Bas came through with an INT from Fitzpatrick, a late game-winning TD by Pickett, and only 240 total yards allowed by the Steelers. 

OldNo7 is now almost sure to finish in the middle of the standings with 3rd place this week, putting enough distance with Dec behind in 6th place.  The coach hesitated and benched T Lawrence who had little to play for, and started Dak.  Prescott was fairly unimpressive but the move paid off nonetheless with Dak outscoring Lawrence 12 to 0.75.  Points were at a premium this week so TDs by Ty Hill, Pacheco, and CMC were all helpful.  In addition both Godwin and M Andrews caught 9 balls and 100+ yds which were fairly juicy stats.  Old could have finished higher in the standings if the Chiefs D had played better against the sorry Broncos offense. 

The Ballers finished 4th place which was not bad but lost ground against Prof so they will probably finish the season in last place.  In a courageous move the coach benched A Rodgers and started Goff which was the right call to make because Goff outscored Rodgers 25.5 to 17.25 pts and was Ball’s team leader for the week.  D Cook was clobbered like the rest of the Vikings this week with only 5 pts, but C Patterson had his first double digit game since week 9 in the Falcons’ win over the depleted Cards.  The Ballers benefited from the unusual BUF-CIN situation because backups Tonyan (12.5 pts) and Prater (11 pts) unexpectedly scored as starters. 

The BeaudoinBrothers were playing without injured Hurts and D Henry this week, plus the fact that AJ Brown’s outlook was dimmed by not having his regular QB.  In such circumstances the Bros were fearing the worst but the actual result in 5th place was not as bad as what it could have been.  R Wilson had two more turnovers but he scored 3 TDs and kept the Broncos competitive in a tight game against the Chiefs so he easily beat his projection with 21.5 pts.  AJ Brown only caught 4 passes but thankfully one of them was a 78-yd TD which made a huge difference in the final results.  The Bros have increased their lead over Wax to 3 rank-points with only one week to go and the Bros might have both D Henry and Hurts back for the final week so the scenario has flipped completely from what it looked like before week #17 started: it’s now the Bros who look like they have the upper hand. 

FlyingElvis could do no better than 6th place and got distanced by Bas in the standings enough such that FE looks like they are locked into 4th place unless week #18 comes up with big surprises.  Ekeler and A Cooper had solid games with 2 TDs each while Lamb had the best stats of the lot with 11 receptions for 100 yards.  Kittle added one TD and Dobbins had decent yardage with 93 on the ground to round up a relatively good offensive day, except for the disastrous 1.75 pt scored by Mayfield who is most likely on his last legs in the PQBFL and perhaps in the NFL as well at least as a starting QB.  FE was held back at the DL position to due having 2/3 DLs injured and starter Davenport scored a goose egg.

WaxOnWaxOff had a golden opportunity to punch the Bros in the mouth because of Beaud’s injury woes combined with an excellent week #17 outlook for Wax because Pollard (Prof) was out to injury so it was expected that Elliott would get lots of carries.  Also the Titans rested most of their starters in a meaningless game for them so the Dallas defense was supposed to dominate.  However no matter how great projections are, real life can differ and Wax did not perform this week with the Cowboys allowing more than 300 total yards to a toothless offense and Elliott having an awful 19 carries for only 37 yards against the Titans B team – Elliott averaged less than 2 yards per carry but thankfully he scored a TD to salvage a mediocre game.  However the Vikings were even worse than the Cowboys.  Wax had the trio of Jefferson-Hockenson-H Smith in the starting lineup against the Packers.  Hockenson was not terrible with 9.75 pts but Jefferson was stunningly bad with only 1 reception for 15 yards, and Harrison Smith was pedestrian with only 5 pts.  This was also the score of Nick Bosa (5 pts) who did not even get a single tackle all game – he only scored via QB hits. 

The Admirals finished in the bottom 4 for the seventh straight week with an increasingly injury-filled roster.  Without K Murray, D Watson did well for the first time since he came back from suspension with 29 pts, so QB was not the problematic position this week.  At WR, D Samuel missed another game to injury and M Williams was average as a replacement with 11.5 pts.  Waddle did not have an injury excuse and he only scored 5.5 pts.  Chubb rushed for over 100 yards but he did not score which held him to less than 10 pts this week, and Adm has not had a worthy RB2 for several weeks now; M Mack started but he did not even carry the ball once, he only touched the ball on a kickoff return.  On defense, Byard had 2 INTs but the other starters were poor with only 4 pts from M Crosby which was his worst game of the year and LBs D White and D Jones were not dominant either with 8.5 pts and 5 pts, respectively.

The Decepticons finished last and almost entirely lost hope to catch up with Old in the standings.  Mahomes had a decent score of 24.75 pts but it was slightly below projections.  The main outperformer was Schultz who caught 2 TDs for 20.75 pts.  RBs Fournette and Montgomery were dreadful with 6.75 pts combined while franchise player N Harris was on the bench and scored 16.25 pts.  At WR with both Kupp and now even Hopkins injured, the coach started Lockett who is himself banged up and was limited to only 2.75 pts.  Injured player replacement Meyers did better with 13.25 pts, the first time this season that he was useful to Dec.  Defense was an abomination for Dec with the Rams scoring in negative territory, Hendrickson not getting a tackle in his shortened game, and Queen-Baker-Kearse all scoring 7 pts or less. 





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