Week
#16
FlyingElvis won for the third time of the year with a season-high
180.25 pts. Who would have thought that old man Joe Flacco
would be so beneficial for FE? A Cooper was supposed to have a
big year in 2023 with the return of D Watson, but it did not turn
out that way. Cooper has been having a subpar season not even
worthy of starting WR (top 18), part of it is because Watson has
missed many games but even in the games that Watson played, Cooper
was simply not performing well. But with Flacco out of
retirement and chucking balls left and right, suddenly Cooper found
his magic with 11 receptions for a whopping 265 yards and 2 TDs,
plus a 2-point conversion to boot. Another player who came out
of nowhere to help FE was rookie B Young and threw for 300+ yds and
2 TDs without a turnover for 23.5 pts. In the previous 7
weeks, Young had not exceeded 7.5 pts a single time – a terrible
output for a rookie QB.
The GloriousBastards finished second for back-to-back weeks and
suddenly find themselves only one rank-point behind second place
Beaud. The trade made at the deadline has worked wonderfully
for Bas and has been a turning point. This week Conner ran for
a TD and had over 100 yds from scrimmage, M Evans added two more TDs
for 23.25 pts, and with Ju Herbert injured he cannot possibly be
missed but this week the Bas coach had the courage of benching
previously red-hot Purdy in favor of the horrible Ju Fields and it
worked perfectly, Purdy was dismal with a negative score while
Fields scored over 20 pts. What also helped was TE Okonkwo who
had not done anything all year who doubled his previous season high
7.5 pts with 15 pts this week. This was another great coaching
call to bench Freiermuth who scored zero.
The Admirals finished third this week which was the second time in 3
weeks in the blue, and third consecutive week in the top 4.
This is by far the best 3-week stretch for Adm all year, and
surprisingly, Adm has also been the PQBFL best team during the last
3 weeks with 21 rank-points, ahead of Bas with 19 rank-points.
Having K Murray back to health has been a big difference maker and
he scored 21.5 pts this week. D Henry looked a bit more like a
first round pick this week than recently with 2 TDs and 19.5
pts. Henry has struggled at times this season but when it’s
all said and done, he nonetheless ranks RB3 in the PQBFL which was
probably worth the high pick which was required to get him.
But as been mentioned before, for next year the man will be J Gibbs
who is averaging 11.6 pts per game, even better than Henry at 11.4
pts per game. Gibbs was productive again this week with 2 TDs
and 100 total yards although he lost a fumble.
ProfMJ took 4th place this week and mitigated the damage to losing 3
rank-points against FE and saw their lead in 4th place shrink of 6
to 3 over FE. At the rookie position Prof went back to Addison
as starter after starting Josh Downs in weeks #13-15. It did
not turn out great because Addison got injured early and exited
after scoring only 2 pts. The rest of Prof’s offense did well
notably CD Lamb scored 20.5 pts which exceeded his already high
projection, and TE Engram caught 10 balls for nearly 100 yds.
Even kicker Elliott had a productive night by hitting on all 7
kicks, 4 of them being FGs. The main laggard was Pollard who
was limited to 3.5 pts – as RB21 this year he’s been a dreadful
franchise player and one key reason why Prof is not ranked any
higher than they currently are.
WaxOnWaxOff is pretty much locked into 6th place for the season and
by finishing 5th this week, it only solidified this outcome since
Wax beat Dec who had gotten a bit closer recently. Ju
Jefferson had his first good game since coming back from injury with
22.5 pts which was his best score of the season after scoring
exactly 22.25 pts in both weeks 3 and 4, what seems ages ago back
when Cousins was still healthy. QB Stafford also contributed
with 20.5 pts which was better than his projection and surprisingly
the Rams are now in position to make the playoffs. S Barkley
also scored a TD and 14 pts while E Elliott took advantage of R
Stevenson’s injury to get the lion’s share of the RB playing time in
a road win in Denver. Elliott did not have much success on the
ground (27 yds) but he caught 9 passes, one of them being a
TD.
The normally very consistently high performing OldNo7 finished in
the bottom half of the rankings for the first time since week #2 but
nonetheless Old beat Beaud by one spot which is all that mattered in
the end. Old extended their lead from 13 to 14 rank-points
which will be nearly impossible to lose despite the final week
sometimes having quite surprising results. Old should be able
to wrap up their first PQBFL title in week #17 and avoid any
possible meltdown in the final week which has happened to many PQBFL
teams in the past when various stars are being benched. Old
did not have a bad week with 141.75 pts but there were a few more
holes in the starting lineup than normal for example Kamara only
scored 3.75 pts and Butker missed his only FG try to finish with 0.5
pt. Ty Hill was banged up and not as productive as normal with
9-99 without a TD but Amon-Ra picked up the slack with 23.25
pts. CMC also continued his dominance at RB with 16.75 pts and
his lead over the second best RB (D Montgomery) is over 6 pts per
game – double the lead between 1st and 2nd of any other
position. In other words, no position leader is ahead of #2 by
more than 3 pts per game. If the NFL cannot see that CMC is
the best MVP candidate and instead has this crazy talk of Purdy
being the MVP (before he crashed down to earth with 4 INTs this
week) and now replacing Purdy with even more crazy talk of Lamar
Freaking Jackson being the MVP, perhaps they should look at his
stats a bit closer to realize he’s even worse than Purdy (Jackson
QB6 vs Purdy QB5). Jackson’s stats are barely better than
Jordan Love for christ sakes, and while the Packers won’t make the
playoffs, the Lions will, and yet nobody is making the crazy talk
that Goff should be MVP. So for PQBFL purposes, there is not a
snowball’s chance in hell that CMC is not MVP even if he fumbles 4
times per game in weeks #17-18 like Purdy had 4 INTs per game this
week.
The BeaudoinBrothers finished in the bottom 3 for the third straight
week and bottom 4 for the 4th straight week, in a stunning tail
spin, being dead last over this period with only 10 rank-points,
even worse than the Ballers with 13 rank-points. CJ Stroud
being out did not help and Kincaid not doing much once again in his
absence with 1.25 pts, but Beaud finished so far behind 6th place
that even having Stroud as starter would not have mattered.
Pittman missed the game which also hurt and D Adams had a dreadful 1
pt despite the Raiders winning. J Cook was put back in the
starting lineup after being benched with 31.25 pts against the tough
Dallas defense last week, and Cook bombed out with 1.25 pt this
week, losing one fumble and having another fumble not lost.
Meanwhile Montgomery was benched and scored double digits. So
nothing worked for Beaud, even Kelce failed to come close to his
projection and only scored 7 pts. He still leads all TEs in
the PQBFL but he has not scored over 11 pts since week #7 so that’s
now 8 consecutive weeks below his season average of 11.4 pts per
game. Only C Ridley had a decent score with 20.75 pts but
that’s because his teammate Kirk (Wax) is injured so the Bros simply
got lucky about injuries.
After good success from weeks 13-15 with 22 rank-points which was
tied for league best with Old during that time frame, Dec dropped to
8th place this week with a season-low 103.75 pts. Offense was
terrible for Dec with all starters underperforming their projection
except for the kicker Zuerlein who outscored everybody except
Mahomes (!). Achane was awful with 2.5 pts, LaPorta barely
better with 4.75 pts, Waddle got injured and only scored 3.5 pts,
Hopkins only scored 3 pts with Lockett scoring 12 pts on the bench,
Mixon was limited to 6 pts and J Taylor scored but had bad rushing
stats 18 carries 43 yds and no reception. In complete
contrast, defense was strong with the Chiefs limiting the Raiders to
6 offensive points, P Queen had one of the 4 INTs of Purdy, and LB
Franklin had lots of tackles+assists as he usually does as the
league’s 2nd best LB.
The Ballers finished last for the 7th time of the season and with
the Admirals clicking on all cylinders recently, the Ballers are a
near lock to finish last on the season. While the comments
above about L Jackson might be harsh, he nonetheless scored 22 pts
on the road against a good defense this week and outscored his
projection so it was an acceptable result for PQBFL purposes (but
MVP talk is another matter). The rest of Ball’s offense was
awful, almost as bad as Dec and perhaps more, since the kicker
McPherson did not provide a boost with only 2.5 pts (unlike Dec’s
kicker). Diggs + Kupp combined for only 15.5 pts even with
both their teams winning the game. Both Ball’s WRswere
outscored by another WR on their team – Gabe Davis (Prof) for the
Bills and Nacua for the Rams. Who would have thought that
Nacua would be a rookie WR to slow down Kupp and prevent him from
being the target hog that he was in recent years. Kupp had
more targets this week (12) than Nacua (11) but Nacua easily
outperformed Kupp with 9-164-1 compared to 6-52-0.
PQBFL Home | Season 2023 | Standings 2023 | Leaders By Position 2023