The
Decepticons won for the second straight week and are on the cusp of a
first PQBFL title since 2015. This week the ‘Cons dominated with
183.75 pts and it was necessary otherwise Wax would have cut Dec’s lead
in first place in a significant fashion given that Wax had a good
week. Dec now leads by 6 rank-points and have the tie-breaker
over Wax so all they need to do is avoid finishing last and Wax first
to have the championship wrapped up. In a season where everything
is going right, Dec is getting unexpected production left and right
from different position each week. This time it was R Woods who
continued to take advantage of C Kupp’s injury, he caught a TD pass and
even ran for a TD, unreal. Diggs scored a TD and lo and behold,
TE Rudolph came out of the woodwork to score the other two TDs to
ensure that Dec got all three of the Vikings’ TDs while OldNo7 got
nothing from Thielen and D Cook. Mahomes is finishing the season
as he started without having any material slowdown all year, scoring
31.75 pts this week even though the Chiefs lost the game. Similar
for A Kamara who scored 2 more TDs and almost reached 20 pts despite
only rushing for 23 yards. He slowed down after Ingram came back
from his suspension (21.5 pts per game in the first 4 weeks, 13.4 pts
per game after that) but even that level of production is good enough
for top 5 RBs.
WaxOnWaxOff kept their season on life support until the very end by
finishing 2nd. The inevitable will happen in week #17 unless Wax
can pull a rabbit out of a hat and use some voodoo doll tricks on
Dec. But at the very least, Wax was able to distance Bas and will
probably finish in second place pending a late collapse. The Wax
coach made a rare mistake by starting injured LB Ogletree but Dec
finished too far ahead to make it possible for Wax to beat Dec
regardless of the defensive flex starter this week. Wax was in
danger of having a bad week but Roeth+A Brown ensured it did not happen
by scoring 67 pts together. It could even have been better if Wax
had started A Rodgers who topped Roeth with 43 pts. C Carson and
M Evans did well with 19.5 pts and 15.5 pts to make up for Mixon’s 6.5
pts which was not that great, and Hooper who came up small with 3.75
pts. On defense A Donald was on fire with 3 sacks and took back
the lead of the DL rankings ahead of K Mack (Beaud). Rookie
Leonard was not as efficient with 9 pts, only the third time of the
year that he did not reach double digits.
The BeaudoinBrothers finished third and took over 4th place in the
standings ahead of struggling Adm. The Bros now lead Adm by 2
rank-points and will try to hang on during week #17 to avoid finishing
in the bottom half of the standings for the first time ever in 22
years. This week was so-so for Beaud and they were not anywhere
near Dec and Wax at the top, mostly because defense was subpar this
week. The coach started the shitty Panthers and benched the
Ravens because he got scared of the Chargers’ offense, but the Ravens
scored 21.5 pts in an impressive win in LA while the Panthers sucked
again with only 2 pts. Individual defenders all failed to reach
10 pts. Offense was better but several were just ok but not
great, for example J Allen scored 10.5 pts but mostly due to garbage
time scoring. A Luck finished the game with 19.75 pts but it took
a last minute rally to get the job done against the lowly Giants.
Both RBs Johnson and Fournette scored a TD but were otherwise
unproductive yardage-wise. The only dominant player this week was
Ertz who was a monster with 12-110 and 2 TDs. He is only 1 point
behind Kelce (Old) in total scoring for the entire year (214 pts vs 213
pts) so it will all come down to week #17 for who finishes as the best
TE in the PQBFL.
The GloriousBastards partially recovered from their week #15 meltdown
but finished no better than 4th with a lackluster 133.75 pts. Bas
are virtually assured of finishing the season in 3rd place except if
Wax crashes during the last week. This week rookie Mayfield was
GB’s top performer with 26.5 pts. Veteran QB Brady did not need
to do much to beat the Bills and finished with only 6 pts in part due
to 2 INTs. Goff was benched and did better with 16.5 pts.
Without K Hunt and now with A Jones injured, P Barber started but he is
no starting caliber and he scored only 4.5 pts which was even lower
than his modest weekly projection. WRs D Adams (20.5 pts) and
JJSS (13.75 pts) had decent games but JJSS fumbled the ball and the
game away late in the 4th quarter to cost Bas and the Steelers.
On defense, nobody stood out with C Jordan being the laggard with 5.5
pts and the best being B Martinez who scored 11 pts which is not enough
to carry the team.
The Ballers finished 5th and beat Old for the fourth straight week,
this time by two ranks to extend their lead in 6th place to 3
rank-points without the tie-breaker so the expansion team is in good
position to finish in a respectable spot in the standings. Most
of the Ballers’ scoring came from R Wilson with 30.75 pts but backups D
Watson (36.25 pts) and N Foles (37.5 pts) did even better on the
bench. D Henry scored another TD and extended his hot streak to 3
weeks although this week he was in line with his weekly projection with
12.5 pts. Co-RB Breida did not fare as well and got hurt during
the game and finished with only 2 pts. Both Ballers WRs were also
below their projection with 10.25 pts from Ju Jones and 8.75 pts from
Golladay. The coach also started the wrong TE and the wrong
kicker, with starters V McDonald (3.25 pts) and Gostkowski (5 pts) not
doing much compared to Njoku (11.5 pts) and Crosby (10.5 pts) both
easily outscoring them on the bench.
FlyingElvis avoided last place which is an accomplishment for this
squad and finished 6th. This guarantees that FE will not finish
last for more than half of the weeks this season even if they are last
in the final week. Playing only for FE pride, Cousins scored
26.25 pts and the Jaguars defense scored a TD and allowed less than 200
total yards in a dominant win in Miami and finished the game with 21
pts. That defensive TD could have paid off even more if the coach
had started Telvin Smith who scored on an INT return but instead the
coach started injured E Kendricks. Hitchens and K Joseph both
topped 10 pts and beat their weekly projection to add on to the Jaguars
defensive scoring. Star rookie Barkley was held to 77 total yards
but he scored a TD to salvage a decent game with 11.25 pts.
Pending a week 17 miracle he will finish as the top rookie this
year.
OldNo7 finished 7th and will need to beat the Ballers by 3 rank points
to avoid finishing 7th and have the embarrassment of being beat by an
expansion team after having invited that team in the PQBFL.
Except for DB Poyer scoring 16 pts thanks to an INT and rookie Michel
scoring 14.5 pts, the rest of Old’s lineup was quite bad, all of them
scoring less than 10 pts except Trubisky barely doing so with 10.25
pts. It is worth noting that the coach benched M Ryan which was
not a good idea with Ryan easily beating Trubisky with 25.75 pts.
On offense, everybody scored below their projection (including
Trubisky) and some materially so, for example Kelce was surprisingly
quiet with 7.5 pts even though the Chiefs scored 31 pts. WR
Cooper might have been a brief mirage after being traded to Dallas,
scoring 5 pts this week after last week’s 6 pts, a very far cry from
his 84.5 pts scored in weeks #12-14. WR Thielen was held below 10
pts for the third straight week after scoring above 10 pts for each of
the first 13 weeks – quite a disappointing turnaround.
The Admirals finished last for the 3rd time in 5 weeks and got knocked
out of 4th place by the Bros. The nightmare slide only has one
week to go or perhaps Adm can bounce back to finish in the top half of
the standings. C Ridley scored a 75-yard TD and 15.5 pts but like
in week #12 when he had a good game, it was worthless because Adm
finished last anyway. When scores mattered in other weeks, Ridley
stunk and cost Adm dearly. Other than Ridley, Adm’s top scorer
was M Thomas with 21.25 pts to climb his way back in the top 5 WRs in
the PQBFL, immediately behind T Hill (FE) and D Hopkins (Adm).
With A Smith and C Newton injured, Adm had to start D Carr and even
though the Raiders won on MNF, Carr was quiet with 5.25 pts. Adm
started RB Gurley who was injured and a surprise scratch, leaving J
White on the bench with 11.5 pts which could have spared Adm of last
place if White had started instead of Gurley. TE Ebron also got
injured during the game and left after scoring only 4.25 pts and could
not contribute to the Colts’ comeback win. So injury-wise Adm has
been affected recently and earned the most injury points this week, but
the team was so healthy early on that the best they can hope for is to
jump above Wax in week #17 and finish 5th in injury points, otherwise
Adm will draft from the #6 slot next year.
