After
taking sole possession of first place last week, the Decepticons
followed up with 185.75 pts and their first win since week #4 which
opened up a 4-rank point lead over struggling Wax and 7 rank-points
over Adm and Bas. The ‘Cons are now the clear favorites to win
this year given that Wax ranks 5th in total points scored and 5th in
strength of starters. Given results since week #5 it might
actually be the GloriousBastards that are the most dangerous opponents
but they have considerable ground to make with only 4 weeks left.
This week Dec won because of stellar defense - actually offense left a
lot to be desired and it’s surprising that Dec could even approach 200
pts with so little production on offense. AJ Green got injured
during the game and finished with only 1.25 pts and Kamara had a rare
off game with only 5 pts. TE Rudolph did not do much as
usual. Fortunately Mahomes was productive as his normal self, in
fact more so than usual with 35 pts. McCaffrey also had a good
day at the office with 19.25 pts. Defense did the damage this
week. LB Wagner was an absolute monster and he did everything you
can imagine besides a safety and a blocked kick. He finished the
game with 8 tackles, 4 assists, 1 sack, 1 INT returned for a TD, 2
passes defended, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, and 2 QB
hits. Unreal. Deion Jones came back to health with a bang
scoring 18 pts and DB J Adams also scored 18 pts. Not to mention
the Saints’ 12 pts in a tight game.
The BeaudoinBrothers continued their late season surge but the
narrative remains the same: most likely too little too late. They
are still 7 rank-points behind Bas in the standings. This week
the Bros were hampered by bone head Fournette’s suspension and D Lewis
did not do much as a replacement with only 3.75 pts. Starter D
Johnson was disappointing again despite winning on the road and saw 2
TDs vultured by the backup RB. Fortunately the coach started
Winston instead of Luck because Luck was playing the Jaguars and that
move paid off, Winston outscoring Luck 23.25 pts to 6.5 pts. At
WR K Allen had been a complete loser in the first 7 weeks but since his
bye in week 8 he has been explosive and week 13 was his best yet with
29.25 pts. He was WR24 after week 7 and he now ranks WR11 so
quite a drastic change. On defense the Bros welcomed back
Schobert to health with 13.5 pts, but it was the Ravens D which was the
highest scoring with 19.5 pts as they dominated the Falcons and also
scored a TD on a fumble return after a sack.
The GloriousBastards finished in the top 3 for the 7th time in the last
9 weeks and have not finished lower than 4th during this stretch.
However there are clouds on the horizon with K Hunt being released
which might slow the team down. Backup A Jones is serviceable and
scored 9.25 pts but he is no Hunt. At QB Goff was the starter
over Brady but this time around was not a success with Goff being
limited to 5.75 pts. Even Mayfield had an off game with 3 INTs
and only 10 pts. However similar to Dec, Bas had a strong week
thanks to defense led by 19 pts from C Jordan, 14.5 pts from the
Texans, and double digit scores from both LBs B Martinez and D
Davis. DB R Jones is the only one who did not score double digits
but 7 pts was all right and better than backup M Peters (3 pts) or
traded DB T White (Beaud) with 4 pts. College QB Finley was
involved in the bowl games unlike Adm, Beaud, Dec, Ball, and FE who did
not have anybody to start, so Bas had a 6.75 pt bonus at the COL
position but it turned out to be moot because GB finished far ahead of
Wax and quite behind Beaud.
WaxOnWaxOff had a weak 134.5 pts but kept their head above water by
beating teams not involved in the race at the top. As mentioned
Wax remains in the race thanks to weeks like this where they are only
lose limited ground against the leaders despite a low score. A
Rodgers was expected to have a big week at home against the lowly Cards
but lost the game and finished with only 15.25 pts, a significant
embarrassment. RBs Mixon and C Carson both failed to reach 10 pts
and WR Evans was not very busy with only 6.25 pts. Wax’s top
scorer was A Brown who scored 24.5 pts which was his best game of the
year and he took the top spot in WR leaders in front of Thielen (Old)
and Ty Hill (FE). On defense Wax got enough production to edge
the Ballers, in part due to 2 sacks and 4 QB hits by A Donald (18
pts). Donald is the top DL in the PQBFL at the moment and in fact
no other defender has scored more than his 139 total points except for
rookie D Leonard with 167 pts.
The Ballers made a modest move towards 6th place in the standings by
beating OldNo7 by two ranks this week, finishing 5th compared to Old
7th. Ball is now 3 rank points behind Old in the standings and
has a legitimate chance of beating Old. This week was very much
up and down for the Ballers, led by 31 pts from R Wilson, 14 pts from
DB Ju Simmons, and ODB only caught 3 passes but one of them was for a
TD and he threw a 49-yd TD pass to his teammate Shepard which padded
his stats as well. D Henry also scored a rare TD to help at the
RB position. However were there too many big letdowns for the
Ballers to compete at the top. Ju Jones was disastrous with only
2-18 in a game where the Falcons were fully contained by the Ravens
D. Breida got hurt and finished the game with only 4.75
pts. Also the Bears defense was unusually porous in a 30-27 loss
against the Giants and they finished with only 4 pts. The
Ballers’ rookies have not been commented on for a while, but it should
be noted that after some early season success, there has been a recent
slowdown. Edmunds scored 6.5 pts this week which is not great,
and the pair of rookie LBs for the Ballers has not been nearly as
productive as D Leonard and they rank ROO8 and ROO9 in the PQBFL which
means borderline starter material.
The Admirals could not bounce back from last week’s last place and
their slide continues; they finished 6th and lost more ground to all
their major competitors in the standings. This is the fourth
straight week that Adm is in the bottom half of the standings, after
doing so only once in the first 9 weeks. Adm is now tied with Bas
in the standings and does not hold the tiebreaker, having scored fewer
total points. Unlike recent games, at least this time Gurley had
a good game with 24.75 pts which helped Adm not finish as low as Old
and FE, but Adm was hurt by a bad 2.25-pt game by Ingram and Newton’s 4
INTs against the Bucs. Also WR monsters Hopkins and M Thomas were
fairly quiet with 19.5 pts combined and they have been ticking down the
WR rankings recently, now WR5 (Thomas) and WR8 (Hopkins). TE
Ebron had a big game with Doyle (Wax) injured again, but he did not
score a TD and he fumbled one of his 10 receptions. Besides
Gurley, Adm’s best player this week was the kicker which is never a
good sign. Rookie Ridley was stifled along with other Falcons
players and finished with 4 pts, at least it was better than Ju Jones.
OldNo7 finished 7th and with the Bros recent improvement it is now very
unlikely that Old will be able to catch up, lagging by 11 rank points
behind Beaud. Old scored 102.5 pts which was the team’s lowest
score of the entire season. M Ryan started and given comments
above about the Falcons it is no surprise that Ryan put out a dud with
only 6.5 pts. In that same game T Coleman was even worse with
only 0.75 pt. Given that D Freeman (FE) has been injured all year
except for 2 games, one would have thought that Coleman would have
seized the opportunity and put up big stats, but he has been a massive
disappointment, ranking only RB20 in the PQBFL. Thielen caught a
short TD but only had 28 receiving yards, a far cry from his production
in the first half of the season when nobody could hold him below 100
yards. Cooper was also more quiet than last week with 8-75 which
is not bad, but no TD and a fumble lost so he finished below his weekly
projection. The one OldNo7 player who can be counted on is Kelce
who scored 2 more TDs on top of 12-168 so he is taking maximum
advantage of K Hunt being booted off the team. Kelce grabbed back
the top TE spot from Ertz (Beaud) as these two have been going back and
forth all year and leaving others in the dust.
FlyingElvis went back to a familiar spot after a short 2-week hiatus:
last place. This is the 5th last place in the last 7 weeks for FE
and FE fell 11 rank-points behind the Ballers with 4 weeks left so
pending a miracle FE will finish the season last. FE scored a
season-low 94 pts, not getting any traction from any position on the
roster except perhaps the 15 pts by Telvin Smith who was the team
leader, due to 9 tackles, 3 assists, and a forced fumble. However
others underperformed, for example Barkley scored 12 pts but it was
lower than his projection of 14.5 pts, Cousins was benched which was
the right call (5.5 pts) but starter Prescott was subpar with 13 pts
relative to his projection of 17.5 pts. RB Drake scored a short
TD but he was limited to 44 yards from scrimmage and co-RB Duke Johnson
only scored a point. Johnson had some success with Mayfield early
on but he did not even carry the ball once this week and only caught
two short passes. Even TE Gronk was bad this week, only scoring
4.25 pts. He has been banged up and missed a few games, but the
games where he has played he is simply no longer a dominant force, he
currently ranks TE8 in the PQBFL which means the worst starting TE in
the PQBFL in a league of 8 teams.
