Week #6

After being denied of first place on MNF a few times this season, this time there was no last minute comeback by either FE or Prof who still had key players remaining, and Old could hang on to first place for their first win of the season.  Old moved up from 4th to 2nd in the standings and is now only half a rank point away for first place.  Old is also the highest scoring team so far with an average of 148.5 pts per week so the second place is not only due to luck and winning the close matchups so far, quite the contrary.  This week Old did most of the damage via WRs with Ty Hill and Amon-Ra scoring 22 pts and 25 pts which was by far the best starting WR duo in the PQBFL this week, ahead of Ball who was second with 35.25 pts for both WRs combined.  Back to Old, QB Cousins started over Lawrence again but his performance in his first game without Ju Jefferson injured (Wax) was a dud with only 7.25 pts.  Week #6 was the lowest scoring week of the season by far so Old was able to afford bad QB play and still win.  Both RBs underperformed projections with CMC scoring 10.25 pts and Pacheco scoring 8 pts, but the bigger issue was CMC getting injured which put a cloud on Old’s win this week.  Thankfully Old has good depth at the position with Kamara and N Harris on the bench so Old should be all right for the next few weeks, should CMC miss some time. On defense the leader was DL Sam Hubbard who had one sack but more importantly he rattled Geno Smith with no less than 5 QB hits.

The BeaudoinBrothers scored an unimpressive 135.5 pts but escaped with second place by closely edging Ball by 1 pt and Wax by 1.25 pt.  Beaud has been less hit by injuries than other teams this season until A Richardson was lost last week but Beaud promptly reacted by acquiring CJ Stroud from Wax in a trade.  Without this trade Beaud would have finished 5th this week so it has already been paying dividends.  Stroud did not light up the scoreboard and failed to reach 200 passing yards for the first time of the season and also threw the first INT of his career.  However he had 2 TDs and led the Texans to the win against an above average defense (Saints) so 13.5 pts was good enough.  J Hurts also had 2 TDs but unlike Stroud he had 3 INTs and lost the game so his 14 pts was more of a disappointment than Stroud.  K Walker (13.25 pts) and Kelce (15 pts) were the only two on offense who outscored their projection and it was not by much.  The main reason why Beaud could (barely) separate from the pack this week was the LBs.  Quay Walker is normally the best LB for Beaud (he ranks LB3 in the PQBFL) but he was on bye so Logan Wilson and Lavonte David were both called into action and responded with 16 pts and 18.5 pts. 

The Ballers finished in the top 3 for the first time of the season and jumped back above Dec in the standings, taking back all rank-points lost in the previous week.  Banged up Deebo Samuel was benched for the first time of the season, right in time for the healthy return of Cooper Kupp who scored 20.25 pts, even better than Diggs who scored 15 pts.  Javonte Williams also returned to health and scored a more modest 6.25 pts but even that was better than what backups are scoring which is nearly zero (0.5 pt from Cordarrelle on the bench this week).  If Williams had missed another week, Ball would not have beat Wax.  While offense is getting healthier, it is not the case for defense and it easily cost Ball second place, if not first.  Out of 10 individual defensive players, three were on bye, three were injured, and one is not even on an NFL roster (Logan Ryan) so that left only three active players for 4 starter spots so Ball played with an incomplete lineup.  Thankfully all three active players did fairly well by scoring between 9 and 11 pts, and the Bengals defense did as well (10.5 pts). 

WaxOnWaxOff threw the towel on 2023 by trading away CJ Stroud but nonetheless finished a season-high 4th place this week even without injured Ju Jefferson and was only 1.5 pt away from finishing second.  Go figure.  Newly acquired DK Metcalf started instead of Jefferson and was pedestrian with only 7.25 pts while Kirk did better with 13.25 pts.  After showing signs of life in week #5, Burrow had another subpar game with less than 200 yds passing and one INT for 13.25 pts which was far less than his projection.  Backup Stafford barely did better with 13.5 pts but that quarter of a point difference would have put Wax into a tie in third place with Ball.  At RB Barkley came back to health but did not score a TD and therefore did not reach his projection with 8 pts.  The RB2 spot continues to be a mess for Wax.  With Dillon and Warren on bye and Herbert injured, Wax started Perine who had a negative score: he had no rush, only two receptions, and lost a fumble on one of them.  Wax’s love for Perine is puzzling and left E Elliott on the bench who easily outscored Perine with 9 pts which cost Wax not only third but also second place.  Wax’s top two scorers of the week were both on defense with Okereke scoring 19 pts on SNF and K Curl also easily exceeding expectations with 15.5 pts.  Curl has quietly climbed to DB2 in the entire league – not bad for who was Wax’s last and least valuable saved player.

ProfMJ finished out of the top three for the second straight week; Prof jumped ahead of Bas in the standings but gave way to Old and Beaud so it was one step forward and two steps back.  After scoring a season-low 129.75 pts in week #5, Prof scored even lower with 127.5 pts this week.  Like many other teams, the best results were on the defensive side of the ball for Prof with Oluokun scoring 19 pts this week while Mosley also beat his projection with 13.5 pts.  Prof could have done even better if DB Kyle Hamilton had not viciously hit an opponent on the helmet and got ejected from the game for a premature exit with only 1 pt.  Rookie Addison was expected to see a big jump in production now that Jefferson is injured but there was no notable difference: he scored a TD again (4th time in 6 games) but only 3 receptions for 28 yds is not nearly what was anticipated so Addison’s 10.25 pts was below projections despite the TD.  Prof’s other WRs are the only thing that worked this week with 16.25 pts from K Allen and 13.5 pts from AJ Brown.  M Andrews did not do much with only 7.25 pts and Pollard failed to get the job done on MNF with only 30 yards rushing.  He was only saved by 80 receiving yards but no TD.  At QB, D Jones was injured so Prof was not tempted to use him unlike in recent weeks; Geno Smith started and he was poor with 0 TD and 2 INTs for 6.25 pts.  Perhaps the next starter will be D Carr who was better with 15.75 pts on the bench.

After the week #5 win, FlyingElvis missed a big opportunity to follow up with another strong week, instead FE reverted back to finishing in the 4-5-6 range which was the 5th time it happened in 6 weeks.  FE gained ground on the previously first place GloriousBastards but lost it all to Old, Prof, and Beaud so FE remains two rank-points away from 4th in the standings and is now farther away from first (was 5 rank-points, now 7.5 rank-points).  FE was fairly well set up to finish second after the 4pm games with a juicy matchup for Josh Allen on SNF against the weak Giants defense but Allen disappointed with only 14.25 pts.  On MNF Ekeler could have redeemed his FE teammate but he only scored 5 pts while star DB Derwin James only scored 3 pts so SNF+MNF turned out to be a debacle that relegated FE to 6th place and barely avoided the red by finishing 2 pts ahead of Dec.  The best result of the week was T Etienne who did not explode yardage wise but at least he scored 2 TDs for 18.75 pts which was the highest score of the week for any RB in the PQBFL, starter or benched.   In fact Etienne is now RB2 in the entire league and with the injury to CMC, Etienne is poised to take the top spot soon at least in terms of total scoring if not per game average.  Another moderately bright spot was rookie Bryce Young scoring 12 pts.  He was not lights out but at least he did not turn the ball over this week.

Dec could not string together two consecutive weeks in the blue and fell back into the red this week with 7th place.  Dec started Mahomes again and has not had the balls the bench him yet; Mahomes underperformed again with only 14.5 pts while backup Tua Tago scored 25 pts which was the difference between 5th and 7th place.  One way to resolve this QB dilemma would be for Dec to trade one of them but it has not happened yet; Tago sits at QB3 in the league while Mahomes is behind at QB7.  RB J Taylor is now healthy but Dec left him on the bench, still waiting to see if his workload will pick up steam.  Taylor only scored 5.25 pts on the bench but starter Montgomery got injured so perhaps Dec will need to start Taylor sooner rather than later.  Breece Hall might not be the one who will be benched as long as he’s healthy; he scored 12.75 pts against the Eagles defense which was an impressive performance.  WR Waddle has been in the shadow of Ty Hill (Old) all year and it does not look like it will change, but at least Waddle scored a TD this week and finished the game with 14.5 pts, the second straight week he’s in double digit territory and his best score of the year.  It’s rather the WR2 position which is a headache for Dec, the coach has been going back and forth between Hopkins and Lockett in the first 4 weeks (starting each twice and benching twice) until week #5 when the coach lost patience and benched both and started Doubs instead.  Well in week #6 it was back to Hopkins/Lockett and the coach started the wrong one with Hopkins only scoring 2 pts while Lockett scored 10.5 pts on the bench.

The Admirals finished in the bottom 2 for the fifth straight week and are sinking deeper into last place in the standings.  Adm earned a league-high 172 injury points this week and also lead the league in that regard after 6 weeks.  Interestingly, the rankings for injury points so far is almost the perfect mirror image of the standings: Adm-Ball-Dec have the three most injury points and are also in 7-8-9th place in the standings.  Old-Beaud-Prof have been the least affected teams by injuries and they are the top three teams in the standings.  Bas-FE-Wax are 4-5-6 in that order in the standings and for injury points it’s exactly 6-5-4. With both D Watson and K Murray injured, Adm had no choice but to start Tannehill but he got injured too and had a negative score.  Unless Watson can come back in week #7 then Adm will be 0/3 on healthy QBs.  With Chubb out for the year, elevated rookie Gibbs injured, and R Penny a healthy scratch (again), Adm had to start D Harris but he was hurt badly and was taken out on a stretcher; he did not score a point this week.  Only starter D Henry was healthy and scored 15.25 pts in a rare bright spot for Adm.  The second best score was rookie Z Flowers who had 6-50-1 this week for 14.5 pts; he has been a serviceable rookie so far, ranking ROO7.  Unlike many other teams this week, defense was poor for Adm with only 4 pts from DB Winfield who is the league’s top DB this year so it was a rare off game for him.  His teammate Devin White was also a disappointment with only 7 pts.  How can this guy be outscored by his teammate old man Lavonte David (Beaud)?  White is LB27 while David is LB16 so far.  

The GloriousBastards’ roller coaster ride continued, Bas finished 1st in week 1 but 8th in week 3, followed by twice second place in weeks 4-5 but now it was rock bottom last in week #6.  Just like that, GB dropped from first in the standings to 4th and FE not far behind.  Fields was huge in week #5 while Herbert was on bye, which tempted the coach to start Fields again this week and benched Herbert.  That did not turn out well, Fields got hurt but he was playing poorly anyway even before the injury and finished the game with only 2.5 pts when he left early in the third quarter, while Herbert scored 16 pts on the bench.  J Chase’s 42.5 pt explosion in week #5 was short lived and he reverted back to a mediocre score of 11 pts this week which did not help Bas out of last place.  But the real problem was RB with A Jones on bye and J Williams injured, it was bare bones for Bas who had only two active RBs this week.  D Pierce does not even seem to be the leading RB on his own team with 13-34 (dismal 2.6 yds per carry) while backup Singletary was better with 12 carries for 58 yds for an average of 4.8.  Bas’s other RB R White is the clear starter (unlike Pierce) but White sucks, this week he scored 3 pts which tied for his lowest output of the year.  Defense did not bail out Bas this week, LB Warner had an INT but for the rest nobody reached double digits and the Cowboys scored 7 pts which is far less than their season average which is more than double that score.





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