Week #9

The BeaudoinBrothers won for the first time since week #1 and took sole possession of first place in the standings.  Once again the Bros did most of the damage on offense, not defense.  Hurts, Daniels, D Henry, and even Chuba each had multi-TD days for a total of 9.  College QB Dart had 6 TDs of his own, on top of 500+ passing yards.  Beaud’s receivers did not score but Kupp had 11 receptions and TE Ferguson had 7 so they both beat their projections despite not reaching the end zone.  Ty Hill was the only offensive player who failed to exceed his projection when he was limited to 8 pts.  Defense left to be desired again but this week it did not matter.  Dugger was out to injury and CJ G-J only scored 4 pts.  The only good news was that Buckner is clearly healthy now, and after missing 5 games from weeks #3-7 he scored 12 pts this week.

FlyingElvis scored a season-high 162.25 pts and had their best finish of the season with second place.  After the Sunday games it looked like FE would finish in third place but on MNF D Hopkins was productive with his new team the Chiefs by scoring 2 TDs.  On the other side of the field in that same game TE Otton rewarded the FE coach who benched M Andrews – Otton scored 17.75 pts.  Otton is now TE3 in the PQBFL and clicking on all cylinders with M Evans (Bas) and Godwin (Old) out which makes Goedert’s injury an after thought for the FE coach.  Another WR who recently changed NFL jersey is D Adams; he also had a good game similar to Hopkins by scoring 18.5 pts in a rare Jets win.  This week FE was weak on defense similar to Beaud, perhaps even worse because nobody reached double digits.  Even DB Branch was quiet with only 2 pts which was by far his worst game of the season but that’s simply because he was ejected in the second quarter, rather than because of poor play.

The Ballers finished in the blue for the first time of the season so after a very rough weeks #1-4 the improvement over the last 5 weeks is real.  From weeks 5-9 Ball now have 18 rank-points which is ahead of Adm with 14 and even Prof who won a week during that time frame but nonetheless only has 15.  The fact that Ball could finish top 3 without star TE Kittle (bye week) who is one of the league’s MVPs in the first half of the season, is even more impressive.  Backup Ertz did next to nothing as starting TE with 1.25 pts so it was almost like playing with an incomplete lineup.  The Ballers did most of the damage at the WR position with 2 TDs each for Zay Flowers and G Wilson on top of excellent stats (5-127 and 9-90) so they ended up scoring 24.25 pts and 27.5 pts respectively.  L-Jax tied Wilson with 27.5 pts but that’s more to be expected of him than Wilson who struggled at times this season so this week was more of an eye opener.  After this week Wilson has climbed to WR9 in the league which is more respectable than where he was after the catastrophic first 4 weeks of the season at WR28.

For the first time in recent memory there was a triple-tie for 4th 5th and 6th place between three of the top 4 teams of the PQBFL: Wax, Bas, and Old.  It looked like Wax was headed for 6th place but B Mayfield drove down the field to score the game-tying TD in KC to send the game to OT in a losing effort.  Nonetheless Mayfield beat his projection with 19 pts which was quite honorable considering his lack of healthy WRs and playing on the road against a good defense.  Wax scored two goose eggs this week with TE Kmet and DL W Anderson doing nothing at all (they were not injured).  They were partially bailed out by RBs Barkley (26.5 pts) and Achane (21 pts) who scored 2 TDs each otherwise Wax was in danger of finishing in the red.  Note that another unexpected positive contribution came from C Sutton who started because Metcalf+Cooper+Kirk were all injured.  Sutton has not done anything special this year (WR26 in the league) but this week he had his best week of the season at the best time possible with 18 pts which saved Wax.

The GloriousBastards went back and forth on MNF with Mahomes taking the lead over Mayfield (Wax), losing at the end of regulation, and coming back in OT, but in the end nobody could come out on top.  Mahomes ended the game with 25.25 pts which was his first time above 20 all year – a timely performance during Purdy’s bye week as the latter has mostly been Bas’ starting QB instead of Mahomes.  The GB coach also made the crucial last minute call to bench RB A Jones (6.75 pts) in favor of Chase Brown (18 pts) which helped Bas sneak into this tie.  The other Bengals’ Chase, JaMarr that is, did not do as well with only 9 pts which was shocking considering that Burrow threw for 5 TDs and Higgins (Beaud) was out to injury.  Bas was thin at WR this week with Evans+Rice+Pickens all injured or on bye so similar to Wax, Bas was down to the minimum of 2 WRs which threw DJ Moore into the action.  The result was not as good as C Sutton for Bas – Moore was limited to 4 short receptions and no TD.  The doofus even took himself out of the game and went to the sidelines during an active play.  What a loser.

OldNo7 was the third team in the tie but unlike Wax and Bas which had the QBs, Old had defense and special teams on MNF.  Butker could have made the difference in OT with a FG but unfortunately the Chiefs scored on the ground and there was no extra-point.  On defense Karlaftis did well with one sack but DB Ju Reid was quiet for 6.5 pts so more was needed.  Old’s coach can also be blamed for benching Burrow (36 pts) and started Cousins instead who matched his projection with 20 pts but it was an odd call to suddenly bench Burrow after starting him so many weeks and his matchup was not even bad against the Raiders at home.  WR McLaurin scored 2 TDs but the problem is that they were his only two catches of the game so with 13.75 pts he had as little as can be expected considering two scores.  This week Old was partially held back by college WR/DB Travis Hunter being on bye and his backup TreVeyon only scored 1.5 pt.

The Decepticons finished 7th for the second straight week.  After the hot streak from week #5-7 perhaps the Cons still had a sliver of hope to compete at the top by trailing first place by 10 rank-points, but now Dec are 18 rank-points behind with half a season remaining  - this would require a mini-miracle.  Caleb Williams had some good moments this season but he’s too inconsistent.  This week he only scored 7.25 pts which is significantly below his season average of 13.0.  Considering that top rookie J Daniels (Beaud) averages 18.6, it’s safe to say that if that second round of the draft had to be redone, it would unfold differently because Dec took Caleb 7th overall and immediately after Beaud traded up with Prof to get the 8th pick and secure Daniels.  Speaking of trades, last year when Dec threw the towel and focused on improving their team for 2023, they traded away D Montgomery to Beaud in return for Mixon and a draft pick swap. This has turned well for Dec.  Both RBs were worth a saved roster spot and both are playing well enough to be starters, but Mixon is clearly the better one ranking RB3 in the league compared to RB12 for Montgomery.  This week Mixon scored another TD and 13.75 pts, the offensive struggles of the Texans has been limited to the air and are not overly impacting him.  However the week’s best score for Dec was on defense, not offense.  DL Hendrickson had a massively dominant game against the Raiders QBs Minshew and Ridder with 4 sacks, 7 QB hits, and a forced fumble for a total of 27.5 pts.  With this game alone, he climbed from DL6 to DL2 in the PQBFL and because the best DL Hutchinson (Adm) is out for the year, Hendrickson is arguably the best DL, just ahead of Crosby (FE).

After the week #8 win, ProfMJ went right back into the doldrums with 8th place this week.  Part of it was injury-related because both Prescott and CD Lamb got hurt during the game so these were significant headwinds although they had enough time to score 11.75 pts and 13 pts, respectively.  But there were plenty of other issues in Prof’s starting lineup.  First off J Cook had an off game with only 5.75 pts, second the coach benched regular starter Pollard (12.75 pts) in favor of Swift (5.25 pts) which did not turn out well.  With Deebo on bye, Prof started K Allen who is a shell of the player he was with the Chargers, he only scored 5.75 pts which is even lower than his already awful average of 6.7 pts this season.  He ranks WR37 in the PQBFL – the coach should have started Jordan Addison instead who scored 12.5 pts and is a more respectable WR24.  Defense was equally problematic.  Prof has 8 defenders on the roster and three were injured, leaving 5 healthy players with 4 required to start so only one could be benched.  The coach chose to bench M Garrett who was the best of all 5 with 19 pts.  If the coach had made these three coaching calls correct, Prof would have finished 3rd instead of 8th – quite a massive swing.

The Admirals finished last for the third time of the season.  Prior to this week Adm was much closer to catching FE in the standings than the Ballers behind them, but this is not the case anymore.  Adm is now 10 rank-points behind FE and leads Ball by 7.  Adm only scored 83 pts this week which was the lowest score of any team all year.  It is not because Adm had an incomplete lineup; Adm ranks 2nd in the league for injury points and some of them are painful (Nico Collins, Aidan Hutchinson) but nonetheless Adm had backups to play at every position this week.  The problem is rather that they were almost all awful, for example Doubs started at WR but only scored 5.25 pts and Madubuike started at DL and only scored 1 pt.  AJ Brown getting injured during the game was a major issue and he was limited to 3.75 pts.  If he misses more time this is not a position where Adm can manage well given Nico’s absence.  Adm had other major underperformers such as rookie Worthy having a negative score due to not catching a pass and his lone rush being for negative yardage.  Kyler Murray was an even bigger drag with only 2.5 pts which is a killer for the QB position.  Sam LaPorta was a disappointment again with only 3.25 pts – he now ranks TE16.  What a bust.





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