Week #11

The writer of this column has been bullish on the GloriousBastards until a horrible 3-week stretch from week #8-10 shook confidence and saw Bas fall from grace.  But week #11 was back to normal with Bas winning for the third time of the season and now again within striking distance of first place and seeing the Decepticons’ woes accumulate, further boosting Bas’ chances.  However it’s not all clear skies for Bas, if star WR J Chase could cut down on the lama-like activities it would help but he will be suspended.  Chase scored a paltry 4.5 pts this week but thankfully it did not hurt Bas but next week might not be the same story.  It was G Pickens who carried the load with 23 pts on MNF to edge Adm at the finish line.  There were a few 20+ pt performers this week to propel Bas to the top, such as Purdy coming back to health with 23 pts, Bijan scoring twice for 24.25 pts, and McBride extending his lead as best TE in the PQBFL with 21.25 pts.

The Admirals finished second for the second time in 3 weeks and in the top 3 for the third time in 5 weeks.  Adm remains in 8th place, but amazingly is only 15 rank-points away from first place, making it one of the tightest spreads ever from 1st to 8th at such point of the season.  Adm came close to winning the week but unlike Bas it was not due to a bunch of contributors, it was mostly just one: a giant score of 46.5 pts from Josh Allen.  The rest of starters were not bad, but nothing noticeable except perhaps LB Brian Burns who stood out with two sacks and 16.5 pts.

OldNo7 finished in the top 3 and far ahead of Wax in 4th place so it was a more dominant performance than the ranking indicates.  Old cut their distance from Dec in first place by more than half, from 6 to 2 rank-points but probably need to worry as much, if not more, about Bas 2 rank-points behind.  Similar to Bas, Old had several 20+ pt efforts this week led by CMC scoring 27 pts and rookie T Henderson scoring 24.25 pts, and even the Steelers defense scoring twice for 23 pts.  Old mostly fell short of Bas and Adm because of only one player: Caleb was a big disappointment with zero TD and 7.25 pts, although the Bears won the game so it's hard to blame him too harshly. 

WaxOnWaxOff finished 4th this week which is not all that bad but with a big logjam in the standings, 4th is not enough to make a big dent over teams ahead, winning some ground on some teams, but losing ground versus others.  Wax only scored 135.25 pts which is quite low for 4th place and there were more underperformers than outperformers despite the above average result.  Bucky Irving’s injury seems never ending, he was not put on IR leading everybody to believe his injury was short term but he has not played since week #4 and backups behind Saquon are not good enough.  This week J Warren only scored 6.5 pts, significantly below his projection.  Saquon himself only scored 10.5 pts which is not that good by his standards.  The same can be said of Ju Jefferson scoring 8 pts, he simply has not been dominant this year, his best week being 16.25 pts in week #4 which is not really an eye-popping score like he could do in previous seasons.

ProfMJ finished 5th this week which was the 5th straight week of finishing average or better.  Prof could have easily finished 4th this week but the coach made the startling move of going with D Hunter at DL and benching the almighty M Garrett.  Hunter had a good game with 1.5 sack and 11 pts but Garrett had a monster game of 4 sacks on the bench, ouch!  Rookie Tyler Shough was on bye so it was back to crumbs at the rookie position with only 0.5 pt from Tahj Brooks which kept Prof firmly out of the leaders this week.  Another problem was the head scratching 1.5 pt score from Ju Herbert with Prescott on the bench who scored 28.5 pts.

Another week, another mediocre result for Beaud with 6th place this week.  The Bros have not finished top 2 since week #5 so they have gradually been sinking in the standings, now in 4th place.  Perhaps WR Waddle had jet lag, but he was dropping balls as often as catching them in Spain with a poor showing of 5.5 pts.  D Montgomery and the rest of the Lions offense was entirely shut down by the Eagles with only 3.5 pts although backup Hubbard did not do better on the bench so the coach had no alternative.  At least D Henry scored for 17 pts and Nico Collins did as well for 18.5 pts which kept the Bros out of the doldrums.

The Decepticons had a bottom 3 finish for the second time in 3 weeks so the week #10 explosion might have been a mirage.  With J Taylor on bye it was not expected for Dec to shine; Dowdle was adequate as a replacement with 10 pts.  However the WRs were awful with 1.25 pt from D Smith and 7.75 pts from R Rice, compounded by Mahomes who was off his game with only 13.25 pts.  Having the Mahomes-Rice combo is bound to lead to extreme results of great weeks and poor weeks so Dec needs to stomach the yo-yo scores.  Dec came close to finishing last again and only beat Ball and FE by 3.5 pts and 2 pts, respectively.  The difference maker was probably LB Jack Campbell who scored 16 pts and was the only one to beat his weekly projection by a notable margin.

FE had not finished in the bottom 3 since the team’s poor season start in weeks 1-2 but a piss poor score of 104.5 pts this week was by far the team’s worst showing of the season.  WR D London scored 12.75 pts but got injured and is expected to miss time which will be painful so the 8th place this week was not the only bad news.  Rookie Jeanty went nowhere fast on MNF with only 3.25 pts and failed to beat Dec which were lame ducks and vulnerable after the Sunday games.  The week’s best score for FE was T Etienne who received a rare start when the coach benched Javonte Williams.  This was the right call with Etienne outscoring Williams 18.25 pts to 9.25 pts which saved FE from finishing last.

The Ballers finished last for the third time of the season and now trail Adm by a whopping 20 rank-points in 8th place due to Adm’s recent successes.  L-Jax had a catastrophically bad 1.25 pt game this week to single handedly underperform his weekly projection by nearly 20 pts.  Since the 2025 season is dead for the Ballers, looking ahead to 2026 James Cook is a prime candidate for franchise and he did well this week with 18.25 pts.  On defense J Brooks was all over the field with 10 tackles and 10 assists and he could return to Ball if the defensive player cut happens to be Hutchinson instead of Brooks.  Surprisingly Brooks is sitting at the top of all defensive players at this stage with an average of 13.2 pts per game.





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