Written by Cory Puffett
Published September 11, 2018

For the first time in a few years, I made it through the entire 2017 season publishing weekly recaps for my fantasy football league, named after the Emmy-nominated show “A Football Life.” Now I have a new platform on which to share the spirited competition we all enjoy so much with the new Sportsballers blog.

This is the sixth year of our 12-team league, abbreviated AFL. Nine of our members are still here from our first year, though Sean Kennedy did take a one-year sabbatical and has struggled to find a rhythm since. He’s off to a fast start this year so maybe that struggle is over. We’ll get to that in a bit.

We do have one new member this year with my old classmate, Stephen April, joining the fold. He got off to a rough start, but there’s no doubt he’s got an eye for talent in fantasy (he won his week 1 matchup 181-80 in another league we share).

Danny Hatcher is our returning champion. He took his third league title by a large margin against William Massimini and, as always, our first game of the week was a title game rematch.

Things got off to a rough start for Will during the NFL Kickoff Game between the Eagles and Falcons. Devonta Freeman only managed 7 points while Jay Ajayi sat on his bench with 21. Things looked a little better on Sunday when James Conner nearly reached 35 points, earning himself a spot with the 27th best single-game performance by a running back in our league’s history. (Note: I only count performances by players who were in a starting lineup toward our league’s leaderboards.)

But as Conner went off, so did Michael Thomas and Joe Mixon for Danny. Even with Kenny Stills on his bench, Danny earned a comfortable 24-point victory as he looks to win consecutive AFL titles for the second time.

The season’s first Tom Brady Award, given to the top scorer each week, went to Eric Meyer of our very own Sportsballers Podcast. Alvin Kamara and Tyreek Hill, each with more than 30 points, and an impressive 2nd half display by Aaron Rodgers on Sunday night, spearheaded Eric’s 146-point outburst.

Eric’s week 1 total ranks 26th in league history. Kamara’s 39.4 points earned him the 10th highest single-game running back performance in AFL history while Hill’s 33 points are 38th on the wide receiver list.

Cory Puffett (sorry if it bothers you, but I do talk about myself in the third person for these recaps) earned a playoff birth last year but suffered an embarrassing loss in the playoffs when only two of his starters managed double digits. He has started the 2018 season on a much better note with a 40-point victory over Stephen.

With 139 points, Cory’s week 1 total ranks 40th in league history and he did it with only one offensive starter cracking the top 5 at his position. The only starter on Cory’s roster who didn’t manage double digits was Packers kicker Mason Crosby.

Drew Brees, starting for Sean, scored 34.3 points in our league, which ties him for 36th in league history among quarterbacks. That performance, along with an impressive outing for Jared Cook in an otherwise putrid display by the Raiders on Monday Night Football, helped Sean erase a deficit entering Monday and earn himself the third highest point total of week 1.

Our 12 teams totaled 1417.5 points this week, making it the third highest scoring week in the 69 regular season weeks our league has competed. The average score for our winners was the highest it’s ever been at 134.6 points while the average losing score was the 8th highest in league history.

For just the fifth time in AFL history, all six of the highest scoring teams of the week won their games. The last time this occurred was in week 11 of last season and before that it had been nearly three years since it had happened. Coincidentally, the first occurrence of this scoring anomaly was in the very first week of the league’s inaugural season in 2013.

While this means we did not officially have any unlucky coaches, meaning that every losing manager had a sub-.500 breakdown for the week, Anthony Battle scored 122.4 points in his loss to Sean. This is within a point of Evan's score when he was the seventh highest scoring owner the last time there were no unlucky owners by breakdown (see the last paragraph).

Despite the unfortunate loss, Anthony still earns coach of the week honors as he earned 20.5 points with one successful coaching risk, starting Emmanuel Sanders instead of Ty Montgomery. For future reference, I define a coaching risk, quite simply, as any lineup decision that does not coincide with ESPN’s game-day projections.

Our worst coach of the week was Adam Perez, who cost his team 13.5 points by failing on two coaching risks. He started Duke Johnson Jr. instead of Peyton Barber and LeGarrette Blount instead of Allen Robinson. Adam actually subbed Robinson into his lineup after I first made note of coaching risks and then changed his mind within the last couple hours leading up to the early games on Sunday.

Incidentally, Adam is also the kicker coach of the week, which is an overly ceremonious name for the manager with the highest scoring starting kicker in the league. He earned 15 points from Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein, more than 20-percent of his total points for the week.

It will be much more meaningful to be the kicker coach (read: streamer) of the year by earning the most points from the position over the course of the season. This is the first year I will be keeping track of kicker streaming across the league.

Meanwhile, it is the second year I am keeping track of defensive streaming in the AFL. Last year our worst streamer was Adam, who earned just 105 points from the position (we don’t have negative defensive points in our league, so at 7.5 points per game, that’s a pretty bad total).

Evan Ash (sorry it took so long to mention the third member of the Sportsballers crew) was our defensive coach of the year in 2017 as he managed 237 points (16.9 points per game) starting only the Ravens and Jaguars defenses, never starting either more than three games in a row.

Our defensive coach of the week is Cory, as the Vikings defense earned him 22 points. The only defense in the NFL that scored more fantasy points under our settings was the New York Jets, and they are on waivers until Wednesday morning.

Sean gets one more shout out as he pulled off the bigger of two upsets in week 1 based on ESPN projections. He was a 5-point underdog to Anthony.

Every league owner had at least one offensive starter finish among the top five at their respective positions this week. Eric and Brandon led the way with three such players while five others had two each. Cory, with only a top-5 tight end in his starting lineup, was the only owner to win his matchup with fewer players in the top five at their positions than his opponent, Stephen, who had two such players.

Check out the review of Week 1 below and this season’s opening power rankings below:

Game of the Week: William Massimini at Danny Hatcher

Danny defended his 2017 AFL championship, albeit by a narrower margin. It’s a strong start to his quest for a fourth league title.

In the past I never published my power rankings in a public forum, but I’ll be doing so this year. To close out this week’s post, enjoy our first power rankings of the 2018 season, featuring a new weighted formula that uses, in order, breakdown, points, record, coaching, perfect breakdown, and perfect points, all cumulative as the season continues.

A perfect score, located to the right of each player’s record, is 100. The worst power ranking score an owner can earn is an 8.33.