Week #9

OldNo7 won for the second time in 4 weeks which allowed Old to get back into the race, trailing first place by only 4 rank-points.  If Old did not have a poor 2-week stretch in weeks 7-8, Old might be sitting in first place right now.  It is somewhat incredible that Old won the week despite not submitting a starting lineup which meant that WRs defaulted to Olave and Coleman who combined for a paltry 8.5 pts, leaving superstars JSN and Amon-Ra on the bench with 28.75 pts total.  While the coach did not show up, at least some of the players did for example Caleb had his best game of the year with 40.75 pts after being in large part responsible for the week 7-8 slump when he only scored 1 pt and 8.75 pts.  CMC also pulled his weight with 2 TDs and over 170 total yards.  Old also had a good week defensively with 16 pts from DB McDuffie, 15 pts from the Steelers, and 14 pts from T Edmunds.

The Admirals had their best score of the year with 172 pts, and finished the highest of the year in second.  That is the second time in three weeks that Adm makes the top 3 and are the third best team in the PQBFL during that period.  Adm is now within striking distance of Prof and Wax in 6th and 7th place.  Adm was able to overcome an incomplete lineup, having no college player this week with B Brown on bye and D Taylor injured.  Adm played great defense this week, led by DB McKinney who scored 20 pts, the Rams 14.5 pts, B Burns 12.5 pts, and a couple of DLs who barely missed the double digit mark at 9 pts each but nonetheless 9 pts from DLs is more than an average starting DL in the league – only the very best average more (N Bosa, Garrett, Crosby).  On offense Josh Allen got his groove back after two losses by the Bills with 27.75 pts and Tee Higgins even bested him with 28 pts.  The Admirals would have finished 1st this week if franchise player Gibbs had as little as a pedestrian high single digit score, but he stunk so much with only 2.75 pts that it cost the win for the week.

In a year with some much parity, it would be logical for the team at the top of the standings at the mid-point of the season to be one of the weakest 1st place teams ever.  Logic seems to be respected here.  The BeaudoinBrothers have a very uninsipiring lineup at almost all key positions and yet find themselves in first place so they look like the worst first place team at mid season ever.  Another sign that the Bros are lucky to just be there is that they currently rank 4th in total points behind Dec, FE, and Bas, in that order.  That means the Bros have won the tight matchups more often than not, but it’s probably not to be counted on in the second half of the season.  This week the Bros got two players back from injury but lost one.  At TE Ferguson did an amazing job during Bowers’ absence by leading all TEs in the league except McBride (Bas), but he’s still no Bowers.  There are reasons why Bowers was drafted with potential for franchise player status and it was on full display this week with 3 TDs and 35.5 pts, although helped by overtime.  Rookie McCarthy was also back from injury and impressively beat the Lions on the road with 21.75 pts.  However the Bros lost DB T Hunter exactly when he was starting to emerge and now the Bros have to start scraps at the position for the foreseeable future.

ProfMJ finished this week with a respectable 150.75 pts and 4th place to pad their lead over Wax in 6th place in the standings.  Prof had a chance for 3rd this week but CD Lamb did not do much on MNF with only 11.25 pts and Deebo was even worse on SNF with 7 pts.  Prior to that, Prof was originally put in good position with Ju Herbert taking advantage of a good matchup against the Titans and getting the job done, scoring 26.75 pts.  Also Kincaid dominated the Chiefs with a stat line of 6-101-1 to climb to TE6 in the league, good enough for being starter-worthy.  After a long string of exceedingly poor scores at the rookie position, Prof welcomed the Saints changing QB, Rattler is now on the bench and rookie Shough is in.  Shough scored 8.75 pts this week which is bad for a QB but good for what Prof is accustomed to scoring at the ROO position this year.  But the irony is that rookie Horton scored 18.25 pts on the bench in the exact week that he was no longer needed.

The hot-and-cold FE finished in the middle 3 positions for the third straight week, after starting cold in weeks 1-2 (8th and 8th) and going hot in weeks 3-6 (1st 1st 2nd 3rd).  With Jalen Hurts on bye, no other PQBFL team was as affected as FE who have no suitable backups with A Richardson riding the pine and B Young being a horrible QB, in fact Young’s mother scored more PQBFL points this week (zero) than Bryce himself with minus 0.5 pt.  Also RB Javonte Williams was held out of the end zone for a rare time this season and was limited to 6.75 pts.  It is mostly receivers who provided the juice for FE this week with D London coming back from injury with a splash, scoring 3 TDs for 29.75 pts.  D Adams and M Andrews scored 2 TDs each for 18 pts and 15.25 pts, giving FE 8 TDs from receivers alone, while J Jacobs and Jeanty adding one each for a total of 10.

WaxOnWaxOff took 6th place this week in a fairly mediocre performance which was mostly due to S Barkley + B Irving both being on bye, Pacheco being injured, forcing Wax to start a dreadful RB duo of J Warren and T Tracy.  Luckily Warren saved face with 2 TDs otherwise yardage was simply not there, with only 29 yds from scrimmage.  Tracy was barely better with 37 yds and no score.  Mayfield was also on bye so Maye started and he underperformed his weekly projection with 16.5 pts.  A rare bright spot was the play of ROO Dart who scored 29.75 pts and took sole possession of the top rookie spot in the PQBFL with an average of 15.7 pts per game, despite scoring a total of zero in the first three weeks when he was still behind R Wilson.  That means in the six games that he was actually a starter, he has averaged 23.5 pts per game, crushing all other rookies including his Wax teammate Egbuka who was previously best ROO in the PQBFL, currently with an average of 12.3.

The GloriousBastards finished in the red for the second straight week, a fate suffered by all teams in the PQBFL at some point this season except Beaud and Dec.  However because Dec had an even worse week, Bas actually moved from 4 rank-points away from first place, to 3 rank-points away so it was not entirely negative unlike week 8 which was bad from A to Z.  Bijan had a second straight scoreless week but at least this time he had decent yardage and his final score was not as horrible with 9.5 pts (week 8 was 1.75 pt).  The biggest problem was that J Chase was in the shadow of Higgins (Adm) this time with only 11.5 pts which is unusual for his standards considering that the Bengals scored 42 pts so there was potential for a giant week for Chase.  TE McBride scored a TD on MNF to help Bas edge the Ballers, otherwise finishing below the Ballers again would have been a black eye.  Bas struggled this week due to bad defense.  The Packers were actually the best of all starters with 9 pts but considering they were at home against the Panthers, more was expected.  Every individual defender scored in the single digits.  And what to make of rookie Cam Ward.  Bas will live and die with Ward because they have no other option.  Bas thought they were given a gift when Ward was not cut by other PQBFL owners but Ward has been a curse, this week he scored 2.25 pts and sunk to ROO18 in the league.

The Ballers did not submit a lineup and this benefited Bas this week because Ball finished only 1.75 pts behind and could have easily beat Bas.  There is no way that Ball would bench Puka if submitting a lineup, he scored 18.75 pts while starters were disastrous: B Thomas scored 5.75 pts and Rome Odunze scored a goose egg when the Bears exploded for 47 pts.  What was that!  In that game it was rather teammate rookie Loveland who stole the thunder with 24.75 pts including the game winning TD with 17 second remaining in the game.  Like a few other teams, the Ballers had an incomplete lineup this week but it was not due to injuries – it was because the GM drafted 2 DBs with the same bye and elected not to draft a third DB.  Back to the issue of not submitting a lineup, the starting QB was A Rodgers by default and he scored 12.75 pts, leaving L-Jax on the bench despite returning from injury and he scored 30 pts.  So L-Jax and Puka being benched cost Ball two spots this week.

After a stellar run in weeks 4-8 with five straight top 3 finishes, Dec hit the wall and was finally caught by injuries.  This week alone Dec earned 250 injury points which was more than double anybody else, with Beaud being second with 120 injury points.  Nowhere are injuries hurting more than ROO with Hampton + Skattebo + Burden being injured, and this week M Taylor was on bye and Milroe will not play considering how Darnold is doing.  So Dec had no choice but to start kicker Loop who scored a modest 4 pts.  But it was not only a matter of injuries.  At RB Dec started regulars J Taylor and Achane who are not injured, however they had subpar games with 16 pts combined, especially Taylor being the main underperformer with only 57 total yards and no TD.   QB Mahomes is also not injured but he had a plain bad game with no TD and 10.75 pts.  Dec was forced to start the Chiefs D in that same game – very bad timing for the Eagles to be on bye given that the Chiefs were playing the Bills.  Unsurprisingly, the Chiefs only scored 1.5 pt when they were overwhelmed by the Bills.  TE Pitts has shown signs of life at times but this week was not it with only 5.75 pts.  He currently ranks TE10, right outside starter status. 





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