Week #12

No team has won more than two weeks this season except Wax, which has won 4.  Wax has now won two consecutive weeks and is also the only team to have done so.  It was not looking good early but everything changed on SNF when Barkley scored a silly 41 pts to take over as the league’s top RB.  He was trailing Mixon (Dec) by 0.2 as of last week and is now ahead by 3.5 pts – a huge swing in only one week, so late in the season.  This is the largest lead of any position so Barkley should temporarily considered MVP of the PQBFL with a few weeks remaining.  Prior to Barkley making a splash, Wax was a bit behind the 8-ball because LB Ivan Pace got injured during his game and earned a goose egg.  In addition, Wax’s WRs were poor particularly Ju Jefferson who ended the game with a surprisingly low output of 2 receptions for 27 yds and most of it was because the game went into OT otherwise he would have been limited to a single short reception.

The GloriousBastards finished a satisfying second but it felt lukewarm because they gained a rank-point on Beaud but lost one to Wax so no ground was gained in the aggregate.  Mahomes received a rare start because Purdy was injured but the timing was great as he was playing the Panthers.  He responded well with 30.25 pts but such cannot be expected again often if Purdy does not come back soon.  Bo Nix also had an excellent game with 20.25 pts, and so did McBride with 18.5 pts despite not even scoring a TD.  Bas was hampered this week playing without J Chase on bye so they could not expect miracles especially that M Evans was just coming back from injury and was still a bit rusty; he only scored 8.25 pts.  This was better than Bas’s other starting WR Pickens who spent more time complaining about the refs and the snow than his own performance, finishing the game with 6.25 pts.  What a sore loser.

One might normally expect that if finishing in 3rd place every single week, it might be enough to win the PQBFL.  The Bros have finished 3rd in 6 of the last 8 weeks and in the top 3 in each of those 8 weeks, and yet amazingly they now only hold on first place by the slimmest of margin, ahead of Wax by only one rank-point.  It did not help that D Montgomery got injured during the game, finishing with 12.5 pts on only 11 touches when he could have had more.  But there were other minor holes in the lineup such as J Hurts only scoring 14 pts by leaving Barkley (Wax) having the spotlight all to himself.  Also, Ty Hill is a shell of the player he used to be, only scoring 7.25 pts in a week where the Fins scored 34 pts on the Pats defense.  Hill is bench-bound because Tee Higgins was on bye this week and C Kupp is now obviously healthy, scoring 16.5 pts this week.  The team leader for Beaud was J Daniels with 31 pts and he was almost a hero with a last minute TD pass but his kicker could not send the game in OT when he missed the extra-point.

The Admirals finished 4th and moved up to 6 rank-points behind 7th in the standings, behind FE.  In order to crack the top 3 this week and play troublemakers, Adm would have had to get more production out of K Murray but he was limited to 7.25 pts.  He continues to be maddingly inconsistent, alternating between single-digit games and 20+ pts games.  College player D Gabriel was on bye and B Brown has been injured for several weeks so Adm was playing with an incomplete lineup.  The core position players made up for it with J Gibbs, N Chubb, AJ Brown, and N Collins all scoring 1 or 2 TDs, all of them ending the game in a tight range between 14.5 pts and 18.25 pts.

Dec finished in the middle in 5th place and took advantage of OldNo7’s problems to take over 4th place in the standings which is probably the best they can aspire to this season, with the top 3 behind so far ahead.  Dec has juggled Tua Tago and J Love decently since they came back from injury, this week the starter choice was not obvious but the Dec coach picked the right one, sending Tago into the action and he delivered with 33.5 pts while Love scored 16.25 pts on the bench.  Caleb Williams was almost as good with 27 pts to partially recover from his funk – he had severely underperformed since his bye week #7.  The problem for Dec this week was having drafted 2 DLs on the same bye week so they got a zero at that position.  But the bigger issue was RBs-WRs-TE scoring a combined 18.75 pts for all 5 starters together which was amazingly bad.  Dec was planning on starting DeVonta Smith but he was injured and then the coach elected to start Tank Dell instead (6.5 pts), leaving Waddle (22 pts) on the bench which was a mistake.

FE finished in 6th place, only 1.75 pts behind Dec, but 1 point ahead of Prof where the rankings were quite tight in the bottom half.  The engine of FE Josh Allen was on bye so FE never expected a great result for the week and was stuck with Bryce Young as the lone active QB now that D Jones has been cut.  While Young is totally hopeless, actually this week he led the Panthers to a competitive effort against the mighty Chiefs with 13.75 pts which was his best game of the season and above his weekly projection.  Josh Jacobs was team leader with 23.75 pts and has quietly moved to top 10 RB for the season, he is not being talked about much because of the success of his QB Love (Dec).  Also Jacobs’ own defense was stellar in that contest by holding the 49ers to peanuts and the Packers D scored 16 pts.

ProfMJ had an incomplete lineup after having traded away T Kelce and both remaining TEs being on bye.  Prof paid a dear price because they finished so close behind Dec and FE so they felt the sting.  But the blame can also be put on RBs Swift (5.25 pts) and B Robinson (3 pts) although for the latter, injury was part of the story.  Deebo Samuel was also affected by his own QB being injured and he did diddly squat with only 1 reception despite the 49ers trailing the Packers all game long and having to play catch-up.

The only good news of the week for the Ballers was that they did not finish last, taking 8th place.  L Jackson ensured on MNF that Ball would avoid the cellar by scoring 26 pts in an important road win.  Like many other teams, Ball was fielding an incomplete lineup due to both the Saints and Bengals being on bye.  Also rookie J Wright hardly touches the ball for the Dolphins in any given week so his score is almost always between 0.25 and 2.75 pts every week.  But this week the turd fumbled so he finished in negative territory.  RB J Williams is equally frustrating, every time he’s buried after a bad game, then he comes back to shine, and after he does, he goes back to being irrelevant.  This week was a disaster with only 4 yards from scrimmage and nothing else against a poor opponent, after having been startable last week with 13.25 pts. 

OldNo7 had not finished last all year but that changed this week with a season low 100 pts even.  The defending champs will certainly not repeat and are now stuck in a fight with Dec and Prof for the middle of the standings.  Old did not have an active kicker for the week and Burrow + Kamara were on bye so it was problematic.  You would think having CMC and Kyren Williams that Old would be able to handle the absence of Kamara, but they cannot.  CMC only scored 2.5 pts which included a lost fumble.  Is he even healthy?  He has scored 20 pts total in 3 weeks since coming back from injury.  He was more useful to Old when he was earning injury points because the duo Kyren + Kamara was just fine as starters.





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