Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 4, 2017 to Puff on the NFL

There was no shortage of scoring in the AFL this week as two thirds of the league hit triple digits and one team cam within a point of doing so. In all, it was the 17th highest scoring week in league history and came within 12 points of being the highest scoring week so far this season.

Despite the relatively high scoring week, it was just the ninth time in league history that the six losing teams in a week averaged at least 100 points, week 4 featured the league’s seventh “toilet bowl,” a game in which the two lowest scorers faced each other.

In what happened to be the game of the week, Cory took home a second Peyton Manning Award in as many weeks despite having the second lowest score in the league this week as he defeated Brandon. This was Cory’s 7th career game of the week victory and he is 2-0 in “toilet bowl” games. Brandon is now 0-2 in such matchups. It is the first time that the Peyton Manning Award winner had a 1-10 breakdown.

On the opposite end of scoring, Viroj led the league in scoring and took home his first career Tom Brady Award just four weeks into his AFL run. His league-leading 138.4-point performance came after three straight weeks of being one of the league’s two lowest scorers. This was the 33rd highest single game team score in league history.

In a relatively high scoring week such as this, you figure to have some special individual performances, but maybe more of them than we had this week. As it stood, three players joined the AFL top 40 all-time lists at their positions. Rookie Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson made it into Evan’s starting lineup and recorded 35.6 points, the most by an individual player this week and the #21 quarterback score in league history.

Two running backs put together top 40 performances at the position. Le’Veon Bell gave Drew 35.1 points, the 16th highest running back performance in league history, to help Drew capture a rivalry win against his brother and catapult himself to the top spot in this week’s power rankings. Todd Gurley gave William 33.3 points, good for no. 33 all-time.

Our luckiest coach of the week, as you’ve gathered from the beginning of this post, was Cory, who had the second lowest score in the league this week but faced Brandon, who posted the lowest score. Despite their poor performances, both are still among the top 4 in scoring through four weeks.

Any time a team finishes outside the top six and wins, it means someone in the top six came out on the short end of the stick. This week’s casualty was Evan, was the fifth highest scorer but was matched up against Viroj and lost by 25 points. In fact, the spread between Evan and our second highest scorer, Anthony, was less than 5 points.

The top coach in the league this week was Evan, who picked up 16.2 points with decisions to start Deshaun Watson over Kirk Cousins and Austin Hooper over Jack Doyle, despite ESPN projections recommending otherwise.

Our worst coach this week was Will, who cost his team 7.5 points and a victory by going against ESPN projections, starting Jarvis Landry over Chris Hogan. He lost to Danny by less than two points.

Viroj, Andrew, and William all put three players in the top 5 at their positions this week. Three other players had two such players.

Check out the review of Week 4 below:

Game of the Week: Cory Puffett at Brandon Saunders

Cory remained undefeated by a narrow margin in the seventh “toilet bowl” in AFL history. Cory is 2-0 and Brandon is 0-2 in such games. Not much more to say about this one.