Week #5

Last week it was written that the Bros were trending to finish in 10th place (after finishing 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th) the following week which is not possible.  Well actually 10th is akin to 1st, so it happened.  The BeaudoinBrothers came out of the doldrums to win for the first time of the season with a modest 167.25 pts, the lowest winning score of the year. What helped is that the Bros did not have key players on bye, but the big rebound was because everybody scored on offense.  Really, everybody.  The Bros scored 9 TDs from their QB+RB+RB+WR+WR+TE and even the Lions scored a safety which is almost like a TD, and rookie LB Schwesinger had 12 tackles+assists which is close to an offensive rookie scoring a TD. 

FlyingElvis stayed red hot with 2nd place and made a huge cut to Bas’ lead in the standings from 7 rank-points to 2 rank-points.  We’ve got a race after all.  Drake London was on bye but he was not missed with Diggs scoring 17.25 pts despite no TD.  TJ Watt was also on bye, but both FE’s LBs scored 15 pts with B Wagner doing it mostly via tackles + assists while L David had an INT.  Those two guys are energizer bunnies: they are 35 years old, and yet David produces like 5 years ago and Wagner finds himself at the top of the LB rankings after 5 weeks.  Amazing.  Josh Jacobs is another tough player to replace when on bye, but Javonte Williams scored 23.75 pts so who cares?  Or perhaps it was rather Etienne who would have normally been benched?  He did not do as well this week with 6.75 pts but he’s still RB8 in the PQBFL which means FE owns three of the top 8 RBs in the PQBFL between Jacobs Etienne and J Williams. 

The Decepticons also benefited from the Bas stumble with a second straight finish in the top 3.  J Taylor scored 3 TDs and Mahomes beat his projection with 23.5 pts in a losing effort.  The Cons also had a fairly good week on the defensive side of the ball with 2 sacks from Hendrickson and double digit scores by LBs Jack Campbell and R Spillane.  However there were more clouds to this week for Dec than other teams with rookie O Hampton getting hurt after scoring 7 pts this week.  Thankfully Dec drafted a whopping 6 rookies so there are replacements to choose from, but Hampton was ROO4 so there will be a downgrade during his absence.  What held back Dec was the play of their backup TE Strange who only scored 2 pts while Pitts was on bye.

OldNo7 took 4th place this week with a fairly average 140.25 pts.  Caleb Williams was on bye so Old sent K Murray in the starting lineup, in fact Murray might have started even if Caleb was not on bye, because of a juicy matchup against the Titans.  But Murray fell flat on his face with only 1 TD and 1 fumble lost for an underwhelming 12.75 pts.  The Steelers were also on bye so the Cards defense had to start, and we could make the exact same comments as for the QB.  The Cards were quite disappointing with only 6.5 pts and even found a way to fumble away the ball after an INT.  Old could have finished higher if not for the mystery goose egg by LB Tuli Tuipulotu.  I guess it’s the nature of such boom-bust OLB, after a gigantic 4 sack game in week #4 when Old benched him, as a starter in week #5 he did nothing at all.  The leaders for Old this week were a couple of 20+ games by CMC and Amon-Ra, in other words the usual suspects.

After great weeks #1-2 (3rd and 2nd place) and terrible weeks #3-4 (8th and 9th place), ProfMJ stabilized with 5th place this week.  This week’s result could have been far better but Ju Herbert only scored 13.5 pts, leaving Prescott on the bench who scored 35.5 pts.  Ouch.  At WR Deebo was more than fine with 17.75 pts but backup Jameson Williams was awful with 1.5 pt despite the Lions exploding for 37 pts.  Williams is simply not part of the offense.  Prof left Jordan Addison on the bench who easily beat Williams with 13 pts which was another stinger.  Rookie Horton did his part with another TD despite only three short receptions.  We are starting to be forced to admit that he has a knack for the end zone so he can produce despite low volume, which is rare.  Horton ranks ROO10 so right on the border of being worth a starter, hardly a catastrophe so far.  Prof was hurt this week by having both Kyle Hamilton and Julian Love injured so they scored a zero at the DB position.  Because Prof finished the week 8.75 pts behind Old, it’s possible that missing a DB cost one rank.

WaxOnWaxOff did not exactly have a successful week with only 126 pts but considering that Wax was in danger of finishing last before MNF and that Wax surged in the final game with strong defense and even beat Bas by a quarter of a point, we can say Wax avoided the worst.  On MNF both Oluokun and Nick Bolton were in the Wax starting lineup.  Oluokun was busy with 7 tackles 7 assists and Bolton almost as much with 7+5 but he also had a critical forced fumble to save a TD at the Chiefs goal line.  In weeks 1-3 Wax started QB Mayfield every week but got fancy in week 4 and it paid off (barely) with Maye outscoring Mayfield by 1 point.  Wax did the same this week and Maye did beat the Bills but he had a season-low 10 pts while Mayfield won a shootout in Seattle with 29 pts so Wax left a lot of points on the table.  It is worth nothing that Wax was hampered by having an incomplete lineup.  Two TEs were injured and one was on bye so Wax got screwed although cannot be blamed for these injuries.  But at the college position Wax drafted both players with the same bye which is a GM mistake.  Prof beat Wax by 5.5 pts so it is quite possible it had an impact.

The GloriousBastards were riding high prior to this week with a huge lead in the standings but it almost entirely evaporated with only one bad week so now all 9/9 teams have finished in the red at least once so far this season.  Bas struggling was a bit predictable with Bijan on bye and Conner + A Jones injured, leaving J Mason as the only option and he only scored 7.5 pts in part due to a lost fumble.  Bas was forced to graduate Judkins (ROO5) to the RB position where he’s RB19.  That is far from optimal.  Judkins scored 12.75 pts this week which is fine but the problem is that now Bas is stuck with the underperforming rookie QB C Ward who was bad this week again with 5.25 pts, pretty much in line with his awful season average.  He ranks ROO17 and Bas’ lone other rookie now is Tuten who is ROO19 so not sure that’s any better unless T Etienne (FE) gets hurt at some point down the road.  For now Tuten is on the back seat.

The Admirals started the week positively with a big game from college QB Byrum Brown who had 5 TDs, over 200 passing yards and 162 rushing yards for 11.25 pts.  Then on Sunday Adm benefited from B Irving’s injury (Wax) with R White taking a more prominent role so Adm started him and he scored 17 pts.  The Texans defense was airtight against the Ravens and their backup QB during L-Jax’s absence to injury  with 16.5 pts.  But the rest of Adm’s defense was very week with only 19.5 pts total from the four individual starters.  Josh Allen was also not on his A-game with a bad home loss against the Pats with 17.5 pts.  Franchise player AJ Brown was more involved than recently after his public whining and had 8 targets but the problem is that he was covered by DB Surtain so he only caught 5 short passes, paving the way to DeVonta Smith (Dec) who had the much better game (13.5 pts) than Brown (7 pts).

The Ballers missed L-Jax less than expected due to Goff scoring an adequate 24.5 pts which is not far from L-Jax’s average of 27.3 pts.  Nacua had another big game with 19.25 pts and there were some bright spots on defense with Hutchinson hitting the QB 5 times (one was a sack) for 15 pts and Jordyn Brooks also scoring 15 pts including half a sack.  But there were too many gaping holes in the lineup this week.  Ball finished less than 10 pts behind Wax, Bas, and Adm so they had potential to avoid the bottom 3 but James Cook was awful on SNF with only 4.75 pts which was 8.5 pts below his weekly projection so Cook’s underperformance alone was possibly worth 3 ranks.  RB Jerome Ford started with only 3.75 pts which was a big coaching mistake, leaving Charbonnet on the bench with 9.75 pts.  That would not have been enough to beat Bas and Wax, but Adm can say thank you.  Last but not least, Ertz inexplicably scored a fat zero with only 1 target despite getting his QB J Daniels back.  Less surprising was the zero score from rookie Ollie Gordon who only scored more than 2.5 pts once in 5 weeks.




PQBFL Home | Season 2025 | Standings 2025 | Leaders By Position 2025