WaxOnWaxOff won for the fourth time of the season and are now tied with
the Admirals in first place. However Wax does not own the
tie-breaker because the team benefited from many close wins unlike Adm,
so Wax should consider themselves in a good position given that they
scored fewer total points than not only Adm but also Dec so far.
Before SNF, Wax still had the Rams D and A Donald, going against Gurley
for Adm, Mahomes for Dec, and Goff+Hunt for Bas. Who would have
thought that in a 54-51 game, the one team having the defense would
come out on top? Despite giving up 44 pts and 546 yards to the
Chiefs, the Rams D scored 16 pts thanks to two critical defensive TDs
and 5 turnovers. A Donald scored 18 pts, more than crushing his
weekly projection, and just like that Wax emerged victorious. The
rest of the week was heavy defense for Wax as well, with 18 pts from TJ
Watt, 11 pts from Kuechly, 9 pts from H Smith, and rookie Leonard
scoring in all kinds of ways again with 1 sack, 1 INT, 1 forced fumble,
and 1 QB hit. Offense was more questionable with 3 INTs from
Roeth, sub 10 pt games by both RBs Mixon and Carson, and only 5.25 pts
from Hooper.
The Decepticons were trailing the Bros before MNF but a monster 41-pt
game by Mahomes clinched second place by half a point despite 5
turnovers by the star QB. It might be the first time in history
that a player scores more than 40 pts despite 5 turnovers. R
Woods was also key in that game to edge Beaud with a short TD.
What helped Dec for once was Diggs outscoring Thielen (Old) which has
not happened much so far this season, this time Diggs contributed 24.25
pts while Thielen was held to 12.25 pts. However the flip side of
that is that TE Rudolph continued to have only a marginal role in the
offense so Dec only scored 3.5 pts at the TE position. On
defense, Dec was held back by not having a DB because K Neal is injured
and J Adams was on bye. The Saints picked up the slack with 16
pts against the normally potent Eagles offense. At the rookie
position, Dec was intrigued by L Jackson getting the start with Flacco
injured, but Jackson did not get much done except running and ended the
game without a TD and 12.75 pts. That was less than Rosen on the
bench with 17.5 pts.
The BeaudoinBrothers followed up last week’s win with a decent score of
176.75 pts but it was no better than 3rd place this week. TY
Hilton is now recovered from his injury and exploded for 30.75 pts,
which also benefited A Luck who is looking more and more like a top 5
QB with 28.75 pts this week. Fournette in the lineup also made a
difference with 16.75 pts against the Steelers defense. K Allen
found the end zone for the second straight week and finished the game
with 18.5 pts to make up for a dud from Ertz who would have been better
off scoring some points this week given the close finish vs Dec and
Wax, rather than his 30+ pts last week where were useless. Ertz
only scored 2.75 pts which was by far his worst game of the year and it
could not have come at a worst time. On defense the Bros continue
to be banged up and with only half a LB healthy, Burfict scored 4 pts
and the defensive flex had to be DL Ingram who did not do much with
only 2 pts.
The GloriousBastards got their lowest score since week #3 with 146.25
pts, finished 4th, and lost some ground to Dec. Bas participated
in the offensive festival on MNF with 36.25 pts from Goff, but other
players were near their weekly projection and not enough to keep up
with high scoring teams. For example, in that same game K Hunt
scored 16.25 pts, B Cooks 13.25 pts, Zuerlein 8.5 pts, and M Peters 6
pts. Bas needed more from Hunt and B Cooks than a single TD
between them considering how many TDs were scored in that game. E
Elliott did well with 22.75 pts and so did D Adams with 18.25 pts,
however being without Mayfield on bye had a big impact on Bas with only
1.5 pt from J Washington off the bench. The other problem for Bas
was that defense was terrible this week – the fact that DB Peters was
the top scorer with 6 pts is not a good sign. Notably, D Davis
only scored 3 pts, C Jordan 3.5 pts, and even worse the Chargers D only
1.5 pt. TE Burton also did not do very well during Kittle’s bye
with only a short reception.
The Admirals finished 5th for the second straight week and have now
seen their lead in the standings completely evaporate against
Wax. Adm was in decent position to finish reasonably well this
week but who would have thought that Gurley would only score 7.75 pts
when the Rams score 54 pts? Gurley’s worst game before that was
11.5 pts so everybody expected at least 15 pts in a high scoring
game. Gurley got banged up in that game which cost Adm
dearly. The coach can also be blamed for not beating Bas because
DB Baker started while injured and both Byard and Clinton-Dix would
have scored enough to beat Bas. The rest of the team did not do
so bad for example 19.5 pts from Ingram and 15.5 pts from M
Thomas. However with high standards, if D Hopkins scores a TD but
is limited to 10.75 pts that is not what we are used to, in part due to
a fumble lost. Also rookie Ridley once again let the team down
since being acquired in a trade by being held to only 4.75 pts.
FlyingElvis will not be re-writing the record book after all and
avoided finishing last for the 5th straight week thanks to an explosive
35.75 pt performance by Ty Hill on MNF. This game has moved up
Hill to WR1 in the entire PQBFL, who would have thought that he would
actually perform better than M Thomas and D Hopkins (Adm) so it turns
out that FE acquired a starting WR from Adm rather than a backup.
Barkley also had a good game with 27.5 pts and took back the lead in
the rookie rankings ahead of D Leonard (Wax). Where would FE be
without Barkley and Hill? The team is littered with injuries (D
Freeman, C Kupp, Gronk), a holdout (L Bell), and busts (T Montgomery,
Drake, K Benjamin, Jags defense). This week even the freakin
kicker was a disaster, Gano missed a 34-yard FG and an extra-point
which caused his team to lose a 1-point game in Detroit. On
defense it is also worth noting that T Smith is close to being a bust
too along with the rest of the Jags defense, he was supposed to be a
top-5 LB but instead this week he scored 6 pts and ranks LB11.
OldNo7 finished 7th for the second straight week and is now closer to
the Ballers in the standings in 7th than the Bros in 5th place. M
Ryan has slowed a bit recently as noted with his 13.5 pt game this week
in a loss at home to Dallas. Fortunately backup Wentz did not get
the start because he was dreadful with -3.5 pts. At RB D Cook was
back to health or so we thought, instead he only had 10 yards from
scrimmage and a fumble lost. As noted above Thielen gave way to
Diggs this week and the other Old starting WR A Cooper is not doing
much better in Dallas than he was in Oakland, this week he scored 4.75
pts. On MNF Kelce provided some boost with 21.25 pts but it paled
in comparison to other players in that game. On defense, Old did
not have a DL to start because both were on bye, the coach started P
Brown who is injured, and LB O Vernon scored zilch. Those three
goose eggs will not help any PQBFL team to stardom. One of the
few good news was that rookie DJ Moore finally found the light with
19.75 pts after a very slow start. This means that even if S
Michel is not fully healthy it might not be as big of an issue than
previously thought.
The Ballers finished last for the 3rd time of the year with a season
league-low 89.75 pts. The coach started three players on bye and
with better starting picks the team could have finished 6th rather than
last. LB V Williams scored 15 pts on the bench and should have
not only started instead of T Flowers (bye) but he should also have
started instead of M Jack who only scored one point and ranks LB23 in
the league compared to V Williams who is starter material at LB8.
The other problematic coaching call is at QB where D Watson was
outscoring R Wilson early but as of late it has not been the case;
despite that Watson has remained the Ballers’ starter. This week
Watson scored 6.25 pts compared to 19 pts for R Wilson, which means
Wilson expanded his average over Watson to more than 2 pts per
game. RB was never expected to be a team strength but with Breida
on bye it did not help and D Henry and Gio Bernard combined for 5.75
pts. The strength was supposed to be WR and Ju Jones + ODB had a
decent week with a TD each and 32 pts combined but they rank WR8-9 in
the PQBFL so a tad below expectations.
