Week #6

6 weeks in, 6 different weekly winners.  The Decepticons have been moving in the right direction by finishing 8th, 8th, 7th, 5th, 2nd, and now they won for the first time of the season.  That early season start was dreadful so it’s quite a bit to overcome but nonetheless Dec has been the PQBFL hottest team in the last 3 weeks and are now closer to 5th place in the standings (Prof) than 7th place (FE).  The Cons turnaround has tracked almost perfectly with the gradual improvement of first round pick Caleb who was horrible at first but now has scored 57.75 pts in the last two weeks, including a stellar 31 pts this week when the Bears demolished the Jaguars.  In week #5 he also did it against a weak team (Panthers) so now the key will be to do it against the NFL top teams, not only against doormats.  As mentioned in the weekly summary of previous weeks, the other big difference for Dec has been the return to health of J Love.  In the last three weeks he’s averaged 26.2 pts per game including his best game of the season in week #6, outgunning even Caleb with 32.5 pts.  Love has taken over as the overall best QB in front of Baker Mayfield (Wax).  It is amazing that Dec could win this week by such a huge margin over second place Bas (25.5 pts) without J Taylor who remains injured and Dec having benched Mixon (24 pts) in favor of Dowdle (4.5 pts).  So it could get even better for Dec once Mixon returns to the starting lineup.

The GloriousBastards were not close to first place but fought a tough battle for second against Beaud and came out on top by half of point on MNF thanks to 8 pts from LB Bernard who outscored the Bills defense (Beaud) by a sliver.  Similar to Dec, a key to Bas’ recent success especially the last two weeks has been the play of their high prized rookie.  Bo Nix scored 20+ for the second straight week which was Bas’ second best score of the week.  The difference with Caleb however is that much of it was in garbage time so it remains unclear that Nix can keep this up.  The top scorer for Bas was Burdy with 29 pts in an important road win against the Seahawks.  Franchise player Bijan has not done the job in the first five weeks – he ranked RB20 in the PQBFL as of one week ago, but at least this week he was much better with 18.75 pts to move up to RB14.  That’s still not franchise player worthy, but at least it’s starting RB material.  Bas almost got stung by the dreaded intra-game injury when James Conner went down after scoring only 0.75 pt (including a lost fumble) but in the end thankfully Bas beat Beaud anyway.  On defense Bas did well with 15.5 pts from F Warner and 15 pts from the Steelers.

The BeaudoinBrothers had an up and down week and had to settle for third place due to inferior defense.  The Bills underperformed on MNF with only 5.5 pts, in addition to both LBs Roquan and Wilson scoring in the single digits.  Offense was excellent for the most part with a total of 8 TDs, two each for J Daniels, Hurts, D Henry, and D Montgomery.  The problem remains receivers however.  Both Kupp and Ty Hill were on bye but it did not matter much because they were not starting recently due to injuries anyway, that said, backups continue to disappoint.  Aiyuk had a good week 5 but he returned to mediocrity with only 3.75 pts this week despite the 49ers scoring 36 pts.  Higgins was ok with 7 receptions but he did not reach the end zone.  TE Ferguson also had his worst game of the season with only 3.5 pts so we can point the finger at him for Beaud not beating Bas.

WaxOnWaxOff was not very competitive this week but escaped with 4th place by beating FE and Old by relatively small margins so they are now in a triple-tie in first place with Bas and Beaud.  QB Mayfield continued to throw the ball like a madman with the Bucs scoring a jaw-dropping 51 pts on the road in New Orleans, but he was partially held back by 3 INTs.  Nonetheless he almost scored 30 pts (29 pts to be exact) so nobody will complain.  Wax’s RBs and WRs were awful this week.  Achane was on bye so Wax had to start McLaughlin for the second straight week (Barkley was on bye the week before) which is a big hole in the starting roster.  McLaughlin scoring only 2 pts could have been expected, but Barkley scoring only 4.5 pts was far more problematic.  Ju Jefferson was also on bye and Wax’s depth is simply not there.  A Cooper started and did very little with 6 pts, but similar to the RB position it’s the regular starter which was the main problem with DK Metcalf only scoring 5.25 pts.  Wax was entirely bailed out this week by two unlikely heroes.  TE Kmet continues to do very well in Hockenson’s absence and scored 20.5 pts this week to climb to TE3 in the PQBFL.  One has to wonder, when Hockenson comes back, maybe he’ll be rusty, so maybe Kmet might very well stay in Wax’s starting lineup.  But the biggest unexpected boost for Wax this week was on defense.  With their backs against the wall with 5 individual defenders on bye or injured, Wax  had the bare minimum of 4 healthy starters including DL Will Anderson who is always on the bench for Wax in favor of Nick Bosa, but not this week.  Wax was forced to start two DLs but Anderson was lights out with a monster game: 6 tackles, 2 assists, 4 tackles for a loss, 3 QB hits, and one pass defended.

FlyingElvis could have hoped to finish in the top half of the standings this week but it was not meant to be and FE finished 5th.  Josh Allen scored 23 pts on MNF which was good but not enough.  The problem was the untimely injury to Etienne during the game – he exited early after three carries for minus one yard.  A goose egg at the RB position is hard to recover from.  If only FE had only one intra-game injury, but unfortunately it was two.  Goedert also got injured and scored a goose egg of his own.  Considering the two zeros it is even surprising that FE did not finish in the bottom half but defense was rock solid.  The only starter to miss the 10-point mark was Crosby but he had half a sack and 9 pts so not bad at all.  The leader was DB Brian Branch with 2 INTs for 20 pts.  So far he’s averaging 14.5 pts per game, which is 3.0 pts more than the second best DB (Winfield, Adm).  That’s the second largest margin of any position in the PQBFL so needless to say that Branch has been a big surprise and arguably the defensive MVP so far.  His worst score of the year has been 12.5 pts – many DBs have not even been able to score that much, even in their best game.

OldNo7’s slowndown continued with 6th place this week and finally dropped out of first in the standings to 4th, although only one-rank point behind Wax-Beaud-Bas.  This week we cannot even blame CMC’s injury for the poor result of Old because backup N Harris scored 17 pts by shining in the absence of Kyren Williams on bye week.  The problem was rather defense for the most part.  The four individual defenders combined for less than 20 pts – an exceedingly poor performance, with all 4 coming in below their weekly projection.  Even the Browns defense was nothing special in a loss in Philly except for a single play: a blocked FG returned for a TD which gave Old 8 pts, to help the Browns finish with 11.5 pts otherwise they were on track to finish with a paltry 3.5 pts.  The defensive futility was compensated on offense by a single man: C Godwin.  He torched the Saints again and again and again.  Result: 11 receptions 125 yards and 2 TDs for 30.25 pts.  That game catapulted him to WR3 in the PQBFL.  Little birdie says that if cut players had to be re-done now, other PQBFL owners would not let Old keep Godwin.  Instead it was DJ Moore (Bas) who was cut and he’s only WR22 so far.  Big mistake.

The Admirals ended up with their second highest score of the year with 128.25 pts but it was not good enough to get out of the red.  Adm was handicapped by an incomplete lineup with a stunning 4 RBs injured out of 5 (none of them on bye week!) with the lone healthy body being J Gibbs who did little with 7.5 pts.  At QB Carr was injured as well, D Watson is so bad (QB22) that would be more useful to Adm if he was injured and earning injury points, which leaves only K Murray.  He’s been a decent starter for Adm at times but not this week.  The Cards were blown away by the Packers and Murray finished the game with only 11 pts.  As mentioned above Old was poor on defense this week, well Adm was almost as bad.  Individual defenders only scored 20 pts, barely more than Old’s squad (19.5 pts). Adm was able to beat Ball and Prof thanks to receivers alone.  After spending time in the coach doghouse with a suspension, Doubs came back in force with 2 TDs for 19.25 pts.  AJ Brown came back to health after missing 3 games (plus his bye week) for 18.75 pts.  LaPorta only caught one pass but he made it count: a 52-yard TD reception.  Even rookie Legette scored a short TD for 9 pts.

The Ballers finished out of the red in week #5 but quickly returned there in week #6 with 8th place.  With a combined record of 6 wins 42 losses in 6 weeks, the Ballers have a winning percentage of 0.125 so far which needless to say, is piss poor.  The Ballers are already 9 rank-points behind 8th place in the standings.  However the bad result this week was part due to bad luck rather than suckness, after all Ball finished only 17.5 pts behind Wax in 4th place so the week #6 outcome could have been far better with only minor differences.  The main problem was RB Javonte Williams scoring a goose egg: 36 yds from scrimmage negated by a fumble lost.  The other problem was DL Chris Jones’s bye week and the injury to D Brown leaving Ball without a starting DL this week.  Otherwise the Ballers were competitive, notably 18.25 pts from G Wilson on MNF which helped Ball beat Prof.  Zay Flowers did not score but his stat line of 9-132 was solid.  TE Kittle was at it again with two more TDs for 18.75 pts.  Even before last week he was already the most dominant player in the PQBFL at his own position, but now he has increased his lead over all other TEs to 4.6 pts per week, even better than what it was one week ago.  Last year CMC (Old) was the PQBFL MVP by leading all RBs by 5.8 pts per week – Kittle is not far off.

ProfMJ are in a major tailspin – after 8th place in week #5 now it was even worse with last place which is something which did not happen to Prof all of 2023, the last time Prof hit rock bottom last place was 2022.  What looked like a 5-team race last week is becoming a 4-team race with Prof sinking 6 rank-points behind Old in 4th.  The problem with starting a QB-WR duo from the same NFL team is that when things go wrong, it can doom the entire team which is exactly what happened to Prof this week.  The Cowboys got their ass kicked at home 47-9 and did not even score a single TD so Prescott+Lamb scored a miserable 11.25 pts combined, less than a third of their joint projection of 34 pts.  The Jets D could have prevented Prof from finishing last on MNF but they were ineffective with only 3.5 pts.  It did not help that rookie Harrison got concussed during his game, on top of fellow rookie Nabers missing a second game due to his own concussion.  That is certainly giving headaches to Prof’s GM who concussed himself on the locker room wall.  Prof did have a few bright spots this week but they ended up for nothing: a TD each or Swift and Pollard; their combined 27.5 pts was even better than the season average of the regular starting RBs J Cook and B Robinson both of which were injured this week (13.0+11.5=24.5).  





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