The
Admirals became the second team of the season to crack 200 pts in a
week with a crushing performance of 216.75 pts. This is a
phenomenal explosion given that Adm had not scored more than 127.5 pts
in the previous 7 weeks. Everybody came alive at the same time,
first in line was K Hunt who had been hibernating since week #3 but he
got out of his cage with 27 pts this week. Greg Olsen missed
several games and came back too early and reinjured himself, but now
he's clearly in top shape as shown by his 21.75 pts this week.
The Vikings D had been so-so recently but they dominated the Bengals
with 21 pts. However the top production came at the RB position
where Adm has been stellar all-year. Gurley piled on to his RB
lead on top of the PQBFL in front of L Bell (FE) with 39 pts this
week. Ingram was not bad either with 25.5 pts. Adm is
likely to end up the season with 2 of the top 4 RBs in the PQBFL, and
if we exclude E Elliott (Bas) who has missed many games, then 2 of the
top 3. Unfortunately for Adm, the 5th-ranked Old finished second
this week so Adm did not make a lot of ground, but now has FE in sight
rather than Old.
OldNo7 has remained in the hunt all year even though they have been
lagging Wax, Dec, and Beaud for quite a while now. However with a
second straight 2nd place finish, Old find themselves only 2
rank-points for first place and can smell the PQBFL title for the first
time in history. Like what happened to so many other teams this
season, exactly when everybody thinks a team will fall out of the race,
they surprise to the upside. Wentz got injured last week and is
out for the year. Instead of folding, Old surged with 35.75 pts
from Newton in a masterful replacement performance, even better than
Wentz's own average of 23.8 pts per game this year. Old's RBs are
not as strong as Adm, but several notches ahead of all other contending
teams and this week was no different. McCoy and Gordon each
scored 19 pts. Not wanting to be left behind, the Rams D also put
19 on the board for Old to end up with over 150 pts for the first time
since week #8.
The GloriousBastards had their highest finish of the year with 3rd
place, as they did in weeks #3-4. Alex Smith was picked up to
replace injured Luck but he has not been used much recently. This week
he came in and scored 21.5 pts in an important win against the
Chargers. D Freeman is fully recovered from his concussion and
scored 21 pts, taking advantage of T Coleman's (Old) injury. WRs
Cooks and D Adams had a respectable 12 pts and 13.75 pts which was
important given the low scoring of many teams this week. This was
enough to beat the top 4 teams in the standings (before this week) Wax
Dec Beaud FE all in the same week. Bas's offense overcame the disaster that the Giants D was, scoring a shocking -6.5
pts. Rarely can we see a defense so far in the red, but my god,
how often does a defense allow a blocked punt, a blocked FG, and a blocked
extra-point all in the same game. Geez.
WaxOnWaxOff had a third straight lackluster week with 123.75 pts but
find themselves back in first place, by 2-rank points to boot rather
than just a small 1-rank point lead. It's almost as if nobody wants to
win the league. It is rare that someone will limp into first
place rather than explode with a strong week, but this is what happened
for Wax. Offense was very mediocre except for Gronk who was dominant with
19.25 pts. At QB, R Wilson had a bad game but managed to score a
TD and just reach double-digits. At RB, L Murray has been taking
advantage nicely of D Cook's (Old) injury recently and added an
important 13.5 pts. Murray has been steadily climbing the RB
rankings, now 19th best. Wax was able to beat Dec and Beaud
mostly because of defense. A Donald led the way with 21 pts while
regular starter Griffen was benched with only 2 pts. This DL
decision was key to beat Dec. At LB, Mosley scored 13.5 pts and
now has a good shot at finishing top LB in the league because he's only
0.2 pt per game behind Wagner (Dec) who has been slowing down due to
injuries.
The Decepticons finished 5th for the second straight week and magic
seems to be gone, even with the return of A Rodgers. The Dec
coach was skeptical of Rodgers' health and benched him in favor of
Rivers, which was a bad mistake because Rodgers crushed Rivers 24 to
4.5 pts. At RB, Dec continues to get no useful production with
only 8 pts combined from L Miller and D Murray. Rookie Kamara was
fine with 13.25 pts but not as explosive as he was a few weeks
back. On defense, all 4 individual defenders were limited to a
single-digit score, but fortunately the Ravens team D bailed Dec out
with a solid 20.5 pts against the still-winless Browns. Dec
still has a clear shot at the league title because they are likely to
own the tiebreaker against Wax so they still own their destiny if they
can beat Wax by one spot in each of weeks 16-17. However they'll
need more from Ju Jones who has been up and down recently, and only
scored 5.5 pts this week.
FlyingElvis might be the 3rd team to fall out of the race after a
disappointing 6th place this week. They are still only 5 rank
points behind first place but with 4 teams in front and all of them 3+
rank-points in front, FE would have to pretty much finish 1st or 2nd in each of
the last two weeks and hope that Adm and Bas can play spoilers
too. There is simply not enough time left for FE. The FE
coach benched rookie McCaffrey (why?) with 16.25 pts and started C Kupp
who was a dud with 3 pts. Perhaps FE did not want two offensive
Panthers: Funchess was a surprise start at WR over AJ Green, but Funchess
folded with only 1.75 pts. We should note that starting AJ Green
would not have made much of a difference though, scoring only 3.5
pts. On defense, the Jaguars did their usual thing and scored
another 14 pts and will most likely finish as the top D in the PQBFL in
front of the Ravens (Dec).
The BeaudoinBrothers proved that week #14 was possibly the last hurrah and
finished last for the second time this season. Unless some
underperformers like Ajayi, Lynch, or D Thomas have a late-season
bounce, the Bros will be happy to move on from this injury-riddled
season and get the first pick overall next year. This week,
injuries hurt at a new position: LB. Three of 4 LBs were out and
L David started despite his injury and got a goose egg. The
lone healthy LB was Kuechly but he was off his game with only 4 pts.
The Broncos defense did well with only 228 yards allowed, but could not
score double digits because of their lack of turnovers. Offense was
subpar with Brady only scoring a short TD and had an INT, and the three
underperformers mentioned above Ajayi, Lynch, and D Thomas did not
score a TD. However the big problem this week was rookie Kizer who
finished in negative territory which was a let down after having a few
decent weeks recently.
