Written by Cory Puffett
Published September 21, 2017 to Puff on the NFL

The second week is in the books and Week 3 begins tonight as the Rams face off with the 49ers in San Francisco.

Four teams in the AFL remain undefeated, and two of them will face off in the game of the week as Cory and Evan face off in the first week of divisional play with an opportunity to take sole possession of first place in the AFL West.

Will [Massimini] won the Peyton Manning Award with his game of the week victory over Brandon in a battle between the two highest scoring teams from Week 1. Will came within half a point of a second straight Tom Brady Award.

Instead, this week’s Tom Brady Award goes to Drew, who led the league with 127.8 points, which ranks #80 on the league’s all-time single week team scoring list. His win against Viroj marked the seventh time in AFL history that the league’s leading scorer faced the league’s lowest scorer in a week. Drew’s 48.3-point win is the lowest margin of victory in such games.

Meanwhile, two teams won their games by less than a point this week. Evan beat Anthony by 0.3 points and William [Battle] beat Sean by 0.7 points. They are the 13th and 14th teams in league history to win a game by one point or less and this was the third time two teams have accomplished this feat in the same week.

All-time, Evan is 1-1 in games decided by one point or less and William is 5-0 in such games.

The leading scorer in a starting lineup this week was Tom Brady. His 33.0 points was good for #40 on the all-time single week list at the quarterback position, though it wasn’t enough to give Anthony a victory in his narrow defeat.

This was the 13th highest scoring week in AFL history as the 12 teams combined for 1301.8 total points. It was also the 8th time in league history that the losing teams averaged 100 points or more. For reference, this was the 56th regular season week in AFL history.

Our luckiest performer this week was Evan, who had a 2-9 breakdown (10th in the league), but got the win over Anthony. Our unluckiest team was Sean, whose 7-4 breakdown was good for fifth in the league but was not good enough to defeat William.

Our top coach of the week, by virtue of points gained by going against projections, was Evan. He gained 12.1 points by starting Trevor Siemian and Adam Thielen over Kirk Cousins and Sterling Shepard. He and William both earned wins with their coaching decisions this week.

Our worst coach of the week was Danny, who lost 5.7 points by starting Isaiah Crowell over Mark Ingram, who was projected by ESPN to score more points than his counterpart. This decision, however, did not cost Danny a win and, in fact, no owners cost their teams games by going against projections this week.

Evan gets one more shout out this week. Our biggest, and only, upset this week was his win over Anthony. Evan’s narrow victory countered his +4.3 line in the matchup.

Taking a quick glance at our free agent auction from this week, our worst over-spender was Viroj, who bid $20 on Rashard Higgins, the wide receiver for Cleveland. Not one other owner offered a bid, so this was a waste of 10 percent of Viroj’s budget for the season. This was not nearly as bad, however, as Brandon wasting 20 percent of his budget by bidding $45 on Kerwynn Williams last week, when the next highest bid was just $5.

Will and Adam led all teams with three players each finishing among the top five starters at their respective positions this week. Five other owners put two players each in those groups, and Sean had two top scorers, with Michael Crabtree leading all wide receivers and Jason Witten pacing the tight ends. This is a bit of a parallel to last week as we then also had two owners with three players, five with two, and an owner with two positional leaders. This is the second week in a row that three of Will’s players have accomplished this feat.

Check out the review of Week 2 below:

Game of the Week: William Massimini at Brandon Saunders

Brandon had two players score more than anybody on Will’s roster, bench included. In fact, C.J. Anderson was the second highest scoring starter in the league. The effort fell short, however, as even the Monday night tandem of Matthew Stafford and Odell Beckham Jr. could not overcome Will’s team, which came within half a point of leading the league in scoring two weeks in a row to start the season.