Week #10

ProfessorMJ won for the second time in 4 weeks by crushing the competition and scoring 36.5 pts in front of second place Bas.  Despite the big win and Prof taking first place in the standings by virtue of the tie-breaker and having the most total points scored in the league, the GM was seen in the hallway of the stadium during the 4pm games angrily kicking a garbage can and shouting “season is over due to injuries!”  Perhaps the GM ran out of Valium?  The list of injuries to Prof this week was possibly not worth throwing the towel.  (1) J Hicks was benched by Prof this week like he is most of the time.  So his injury had no impact this week and possibly little to no impact for the rest of the season.  (2) D Carr got injured but he has a bye next week and might not even miss a single game.  (3) K Allen briefly left the game but came back and scored a TD.  So possibly his injury is something he can deal with.  (4) Mattison got injured but he’s at best Prof’s RB4, and most likely he is RB5, and all 5 of Prof’s RBs are healthy right now so Mattison is expendable.  So missing Mattison is possibly a non-event.  Back to the week #10 results, Prof had an explosive week not only with strong defense (Oluokun 18 pts, Mosley 14 pts), but also the WRs Lamb + K Allen each scoring over 30 pts making the bye week to AJ Brown an afterthought.  G Smith also had a good game with 26.25 pts.  He will need to remain productive if Prof wants a chance to stay on top.

After four consecutive weeks of average or below average results in weeks 6-9, Bas finished second this week with 159.5 pts.  Ju Herbert had a team-high 34 pts but since a lot of his passing was to K Allen the points were offset by Prof so Bas never really had a chance for first place.  The PQBFL’s best college QB Jayden Daniels had his best week of the year with an eye-popping 234 yards rushing on top of 372 passing yards and 5 TDs without any turnover.  Unfortunately only 3 college weeks remain so Bas’s edge will soon run out.  Daniels is almost already assured of finishing COL1 because he leads all other college players by 2.5 pts per game or more.  The rest of Bas’s offense was fine with TDs from R White, J Chase, and Bijan.  The Cowboys defense made fun of the Giants and could have scored even more than 13 pts if they had not loosened up late in the game when the game was already out of hand.  The main reason Bas could not keep up with Prof was DL C Jordan and LB J Brooks who only scored 2 pts and 3 pts, respectively. 

WaxOnWaxOff was the only team in the PQBFL who had not finished in the top 3 all year but that situation has been rectified this week with 3rd place.  So far TJ Hockenson does not seem overly affected by Cousins’ absence and he led Wax with 24.5 pts this week to move to less than 1 pt per game away from Kelce (Beaud) as the best TE in the league.  In a losing effort Burrow more or less matched his projection with 20.5 pts thanks to two TDs and over 300 passing yards but he was held back by 2 INTs which cost the Bengals the game.  At RB, Wax’s coach decided to start J Warren who is no longer in the shadow of N Harris (Old) because Warren started for the Steelers for the first time.  This week both Steelers’ backs were effective and Warren outscored Harris 15 to 13 and also outscored Wax teammate RB S Barkley who only had 5 pts in a sorry effort of the Giants against Dallas.  Wax individual defenders had a good week with all 4 starters reaching double digits but team defense was the complete opposite with the Chargers being dreadful with a negative score this week and not having a single sack or turnover while giving up 40+ pts to the Lions and losing the game. 

OldNo7 finished fourth, beating Beaud by one so catching them in the standings, but losing to Prof by 3 and therefore got caught from behind which created a thrilling a 3-way tie in first place.  Old was playing with a very incomplete lineup of 11/14 due to having 2/3 DLs injured and the third DL was on bye, college QB McCall remains out, and Old’s backup kicker Maher was waived by the Rams earlier this year and Butker was on bye.  To make matters worse, Tyreek Hill was on bye and backup McLaurin did not do much with 5.5 pts.  Old could have had a very bad week but was mostly bailed out by Prescott who is making Cousins’ injury irrelevant so far because he’s been on fire in weeks 8-9-10 with an average of over 35 pts per game during that stretch, week 10 being the best of all with 42.5 pts in the trashing of the Giants.  RBs McCaffrey and Kamara did not score a TD but CMC had healthy yardage while Kamara had two 2-point conversions so it was almost worth like a TD.  On defense the Browns scored a TD in a surprising road win in Baltimore and both Old’s LBs (Singleton + TJ Edwards) scored into the double digits.  Old will get many of their weapons back starting next week plus the fact that hopefully rookie Levis will get back on track; this week he was outscored by previous Old rookie starter Smith-Njigba for the second straight week with Levis having no TD and one INT.

The BeaudoinBrothers had both Hurts and Kelce on bye and tried to mitigate the damage in week 10 but nobody took charge with a great performance so the Bros had to settle for 5th place.  QB R Wilson was adequate as a backup QB with 18.75 pts which beat his projection so he was certainly not the one to blame and he was instrumental in beating FE narrowly on MNF.  Wilson currently ranks QB11 in the PQBFL which is a fine backup QB and much better than the bad reputation he is credited for at the moment.  The same cannot be said of TE Irv Smith who was awful with 1 measly reception for 6 yds in Kelce’s absence.  He ranks dead last of all TEs if we ignore two injured TEs J Woods (FE) and Dulcich (Adm).  Meanwhile TE T Bride who the Bros traded away to Wax earlier this season scored 14.5 pts so he would have been a fine backup to have this week but alas it was not the case.  CJ Stroud won the game at the last minute for the Texans but he also uncharacteristically had 3 turnovers and was outscored by backup Kincaid on the bench for the second time in 4 weeks since being acquired by trade.  If the Bros had decided to elevate Kincaid from rookie to TE this week instead of starting Irv Smith, the Bros would have beat Old but the GM decided to play it safe in case Stroud gets injured later this season the Bros will need another rookie to start for the rest of the year.

FlyingElvis was trending towards a decent week, perhaps third or even second if Josh Allen could have a big game against the Broncos at home, but he disappointed mightily with three turnovers and only scored 11.75 pts such that FE fell to 6th place instead.  Allen has now lost the top spot of QB1 in the league, a hair behind Hurts (Beaud).  So the week ended pretty much as badly as it started for FE when Bryce Young was held TD-less on TNF against even weaker competition: the un-scary Bears defense.  The coach can also be blamed in part for the result, FE would have finished 5th if the coach had not benched G Wilson who is clearly FE’s best WR but it seems like FE got carried away by the return to the starting lineup of K Murray (Adm) and became overly optimistic about M Brown’s prospects; Brown only caught one pass on 4 targets against the Falcons while G Wilson was a lot more productive with 9 receptions on the bench.  The rest of FE’s offense was a mixed bag, Ekeler and Kittle scored but Etienne was limited to only 4.5 pts which was his worst game since week #2.  The reason FE was in the hunt until MNF was mostly defense with scores ranging from 13 to 15 pts for each of TJ Watt, Wagner, and D James.

The Decepticons finished far away from the top 6 with only 105.25 pts and lost considerable ground in the standings against Wax which saw their lead double from 4 rank-points to 8 rank-points.  This was a week to forget from the get go for Dec with the Chiefs on bye and not having drafted any other team defense, but even more importantly, both Mahomes and Tua Tago were on bye, leaving only D Ridder as the only viable QB, and even the word viable was questionable since Ridder had lost his starting job to Heinicke so Ridder’s projection was nearly zero.  Since Heinicke got injured during the game, Ridder played after all and scored a TD late in the 4th quarter to put some points on the board for Dec which was key to beat Adm by less than 3 pts.  At WR with Waddle on bye, the Dec coach did not need to choose between Hopkins and Lockett for once, and started them both.  As usual one of them was a dud and one had a great game, this time it was Hopkins who was in the doldrums with only 4.25 pts while Lockett starred and led the Hawks to victory with a TD late in the 4th quarter and finished the game with 17.5 pts. 

After some degree of success in week #9 with third place, Adm crashed back to earth with 8th place this week.  K Murray made his first start for the Cards but Adm stuck with Watson which was a mistake, Watson got hurt again and was outscored 14 to 11.5 by Murray, although that alone would not have been enough to beat Dec.  At RB J Gibbs was expected to slow down because of the return to the lineup of D Montgomery (Dec) but Gibbs did not miss a beat despite sharing the load; Gibbs scored twice and had over 100 yds from scrimmage.  It might not be sustainable for the Lions to continue feeding two mouths however, but it was working well in the high scoring affair against the Chargers this week.  Adm’s other starting RB D Henry was a shell of himself with only 1.5 pt which dropped from him RB5 in the league to RB7 after this week.  It seems to be a transition year where Henry who was the PQBFL’s top RB last year for the Bros but now is on the verge of not being top 9 anymore and also has rapidly decreasing prospects for 2024.  The other problem for Adm this week was only having 1 healthy WR to start; Olave did well with 17.5 pts but 2 other WRs were injured and 2 were on bye.

The Ballers finished last for the second straight week and also for the third time of the season, but since Dec and Adm both struggled this week, the impact in the standings was modest.  Ball did not reach the century mark this week, not due to an incomplete lineup like Dec and Adm, but rather because of general suckness.  Actually there was one goose egg this week for Ball and it was LB Golden who did not do anything.  If the coach had started Ju Simmons at defensive flex instead, Ball would have finished 7th instead of 9th because Simmons scored a decent 13 pts on the bench.  At QB the coach had a tough call to make between L Jax and Goff and went with the former (12.5 pts) who was unfortunately doubled by Goff who scored 25 pts.  Another guilty party to Ball’s woes was S Diggs who only caught three short passes for 5.5 pts in the Bills display of ineffectiveness in front of a national audience on MNF.  Defense was also remarkably poor for the Ballers, not only Golden as noted above but also the Bengals D scoring 2.5 pts, K Clark 3 pts, Sauce 5 pts, and Jewell was the best of the bad group with only 6 pts.





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