Week #16

WaxOnWaxOff won for the third time in six weeks and are now on the cusp of their first PQBFL title since 2017.  All season-long it looked like it was going to be a close race but in the last three weeks Wax has been dominant.  This week it took an injury to Jalen Hurts (Beaud) which benefited Barkley (25.5 pts) for Wax to win, but anyway even if Wax had not beat Beaud, they would still be up by 6 rank-points over Beaud/Bas with two weeks remaining so the conclusion would not be materially different.  Wax scored 180.5 pts this week which was their best score of the season.  The leader this week was franchise player Ju Jefferson who scored 30 pts.  After 13 weeks this season, Jefferson was not looking like franchise player material because he was ranking WR9 in the league.  However he has exploded in weeks 14-15-16 with an average of almost 25 pts per game during that time fram so it should not come as a surprise that he’s been key to Wax’s late season push which catapulted him to WR4, not far behind Amon-Ra (Old) and if we exclude injured Godwin (Old) then Jefferson is almost WR2 behind Chase (Bas).  At the rookie position Wax made the bold move of benching Maye because he was playing the Bills.  This is the move that was the difference between 1st and 2nd place.  B Thomas scored 23.5 pts as he benefited from injuries to pretty much all Jaguars receivers (Engram, Kirk, Gabe Davis) and he was the target hog.  He easily beat Maye who was not terrible himself with 17 pts but in a tight matchup with Beaud it was what Wax needed.

The BeaudoinBrothers’ season went up in smokes when Hurts got injured early in the game after scoring only 3.5 pts.  Beaud trails Wax by 8 rank-points with only 2 weeks remaining so first place won’t happen but second place is still within reach.  It won’t be easy if Hurts misses time however especially with backup CJ Stroud losing Tank Dell (Dec) to injury.  It is surprising that Beaud could finish as high as 2nd without a QB after finishing 7th two straight weeks in weeks 14-15 but rookie J Daniels picked up the slack with an amazing 45.25 pts against the NFL top passing defense of the Eagles no less.  Daniels will most likely win rookie of the year and even as a QB he would rank 5th in the PQBFL which is clearly starter material, behind household names like L Jax (Ball), Burrow (Old), J Allen (Wax).  Daniels still has a chance before the season ends to surpass B Mayfield (Wax) who ranks QB4 at the moment.

The Decepticons picked up a critical 3rd place this week to leapfrog both FE and Old in the standings and took sole possession of 4th place.  As in most weeks, Dec’s success was closely related to rookie Caleb’s level of play.  The Bears were crushed by the Lions but Caleb could nonetheless post decent stats with 22.25 pts.  The biggest boost for Dec was from J Taylor who scored a season-high 39 pts in the dismantling of the sorry Titans defense.  Taylor scored 3 TDs along with over 200 rushing yards.  The running game was unstoppable so there was no reason for the Colts to throw the ball.  The Colts ran it 50 times while Richardson only attempted a measly 11 passes so Taylor was the big beneficiary of the Titans being so porous.

The GloriousBastards finished 4th for the second straight week which means they lost 5 rank-points against Wax during that period and dropped to 7 rank-points behind.  Bas has not been awful but has simply missed a spark to compete at the top which will probably cost them the PQBFL championship.  The regular high performers J Chase (18 pts), Nix (19.25 pts), and Bijan (18.5 pts) all had good games but none of them exploded like some others on Wax’s lineup which prevented Bas from finishing in the blue.  QB Mahomes made a valiant effort with a bum ankle with 22.25 pts which easily beat his subdued weekly projection which reflected his injury, but he also cannot be the one doing miracles with 30-40 point games if he’s not healthy and it’s not backup Purdy who will come to the rescue.  TE McBride also had an off-game with only 4 pts which was his weakest output all year after having been dominant post week 11 bye with 4 straight double-digit games in weeks 12-15.  It was also mildly humorous that starting kicker Folk was injured and that Bas was forced to start the mistake-prone D Hopkins.  Hopkins was benched by the Browns in week #15 when they signed another kicker temporarily, and therefore Hopkins had a goose egg last week.  The Browns coach thought it would help Hopkins to re-focus and play better in week #16 when he returned as starter.  That was wrong.  Hopkins only had one kick to make all game and it was an extra-point but he missed it.  It was the 4th time in the last 9 games that Hopkins had a negative score so perhaps a goose egg is not too bad after all.

The Ballers finished in the middle 3 for the third straight week so they earned 15 rank-points during that period, exceeding above-average teams like Beaud (14) and Dec (13) so the Ballers have stabilized the ship and it is now confirmed they won’t have one of the worst PQBFL seasons ever due to their recent moderate success.  In many weeks L-Jax did everything by himself for Ball but it was not the case this week; Jackson scored a decent 20 pts but it was below his projection.  Instead, this week the Ballers outperformed on the defensive side of the ball with the Bengals holding the Browns to only 6 pts with 3 turnovers and 5 sacks.  Also three out of four individual defenders scored double digits, Judon was the best with 18 pts thanks to a TD on pick-6.  The other starting LB Luvu was quite good as well because he also had an INT although his was not returned for a TD.  Eagles DB Blankenship had the third INT for Ball, leaving DL C Jones as the only defender without an INT but instead he hit QB CJ Stroud 4 times so he made his own impact on the game.

The Admirals ended their funk of 3 straight weeks in the red with 6th place but the story remains the same: Adm will end the season in 8th place without a realistic chance of 7th or 9th.  The best of the week were K Murray (17.75 pts), AJ Brown (18.75 pts), J Gibbs (17.75 pts) and X Worthy (15.75 pts).  Those were ok scores but none enough to put Adm in the top half of the pack.  Adm was held back by RB R White who only scored 2 pts including a lost fumble, while backup Gus Edwards scored 15.75 pts on the bench.  This coaching call made a difference of two spots this week because Adm was not that far behind Ball and Bas. 

OldNo7 only gained 1 rank-point on FE this week and lost 4 versus Dec so it was not a good net outcome in the close race for 4th-5th-6th in the standings.  Burrow was the best of the week again for Old with 23.75 pts with support from Amon-Ra (14.5 pts) and Kyren Williams (15.75 pts).  By all accounts rookie TE Bowers had has a fantastic year but he was very poor in weeks 14-15 with only 11.25 pts.  He returned to productivity this week with 15.75 pts which is a bit better than his season average.  For the first time Old suffered from CMC’s injury because this time Kamara also missed the game to his own injury so this is a double-whammy that Old could not longer sustain.  Backup Najee Harris was forced into the starting lineup and he came up empty-handed with only 3.5 pts.  Old leads all PQBFL teams in injury points by a hefty margin over Adm in the second, so they will benefit in 2025.

After a superb run of 25 rank-points between weeks 13-15, FE suffered from the same ate as many PQBFL teams : consistency is hard.  FE finished this week with a disappointing 8th place so part of their recent efforts have been wasted and more is needed to overcome Dec with time running out.  The streak of monster scores by Josh Allen is over – he was not effective in a tight win against the Pats with only 9.5 pts in part because he got banged up.  At RB FE started Charbonnet again even though this week K Walker (Ball) came back to health.  The result was predictable.  Charbonnet can do well when Walker is out, but otherwise Charbonnet is clearly the backup RB of the Seahawks.  He only had one carry against the Vikings so he returned to being a useless PQBFL RB.  He has only had good games early this eason when Walker was out, and also recently when Walker was injured for the second time. 

ProfMJ finished last this week to further cement their expected 7th place finish this season.  Prof did not really have a bad week: the team scored 127.75 pts in total.  This was the highest score for a last place result all season long.  The problem is that week 16 was fairly high scoring and everything is relative so Prof was relegated to the cellar.  With such a decent score there were bright spots such as Ju Herbert beating the tough Broncos defense with 23.5 pts and J Cook scoring 22 pts against the Pats.  CD Lamb had good stats 7-105 despite his shoulder injury and J Addison scored a TD.  However Prof was not good enough on defense with all 5 starters including the Dolphins being unable to reach double digits.





PQBFL Home | Season 2024 | Standings 2024 | Leaders By Position 2024