Written by Cory Puffett
Published December 4, 2018

We have arrived at the final week of the 2018 regular season. The playoff picture is very clear as two division races have concluded while the AFL East and wild card have very clear clinching scenarios, with neither race having any possibility of coming down to a points tiebreaker.

While five teams have been eliminated from this year’s playoffs, everyone still has something to play for. Andrew, for example, can play spoiler this week by beating Cory, who sits only one spot above him in the power rankings. If Cory loses, the winner of the other AFL East matchup between Danny and Anthony will clinch the AFL East.

The East division has been a bit of a joke all year. It’s been clear for quite some time that the winner of the East would most likely have a worse record than the wild card. As it stands today, the best we can hope for is that the division winner has the same record as the wild card. But that doesn’t always indicate weakness. It could just be a division with really good teams beating up on each other and suffering a few unlucky non-divisional losses.

That has not been remotely the case this season, though. It’s spelled out in the commissioner’s comments of the power rankings for Will. He has clinched the lowest seed in this year’s consolation ladder and despite having 17 more points than the leading scorer in the AFL East.

If I didn’t feel so bad for Will, his rotten scheduling luck would border on comical. He ranks second worst in his division in scoring, but ranks second best among the eight teams notin his division. Cory, meanwhile, ranks second in his division in scoring but ranks dead last among the other eight teams with only Brandon remotely in his sights entering the final week of the season.

In addition to Andrew trying to play the role of spoiler, every team that has been eliminated has something to play for during the postseason. Two years ago our league instituted a rule to discourage tanking. The rule was born out of one of the funniest things, in my opinion, that has happened in our league’s history.

Flash back to Week 14 of the 2015 season, our first season with three divisions of four teams rather than four divisions of three teams and our last season with just one required RB spot in the starting lineup. Andrew is facing Will in the final week of the season and both teams have been eliminated. The only thing to be gained from this game was draft positioning, which meant losing would actually benefit you.

Andrew started a team consisting of Daunte Culpepper, Clinton Portis, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, Jeremy Shockey, Chris Henry, David Akers, and, for good measure, the Jacksonville Jaguars defense. I’m convinced Andrew was attempting to score negative points that day with the Jaguars defense, but with Luck hospitalized halfway through the 2015 season with a lacerated kidney and Matt Hasselbeck starting for Indianapolis, the Jaguars scored 26.8 points.

The game meant nothing and I quite enjoyed Andrew’s failed attempt to lose points, we wanted to come up with a way to encourage people to play through the end of the season and to hold on to good players through the playoffs. Our consolation ladder games now have an indirect impact on draft order. The winner of the consolation ladder gets first choice of where in the first round they want to draft the following season, then the second best team in the consolation ladder picks, and so on down through the seventh person. Then the four playoff teams go: third place, fourth place, runner up, and champion. And finally, whoever loses the consolation ladder is that season’s “sacko” winner and gets whatever pick is left.

Will and Andrew can’t get out of that bottom bracket of the consolation ladder, but they can avoid the sacko by winning one of their two consolation games during the postseason.

We have also broadened keeper rules, which will go into effect this offseason after being passed over the summer, that further incentivize keeping players through the season.

Anyway, enough league history and rules analysis. Let’s get to last week’s games.

Pending a stat correction, Adam was the week’s top scorer by just two-tenths of a point over William, who won the game of the week in convincing fashion over Brandon to clinch the AFL Central division title.

Adam’s 149.2 points rank 33rd in league history for single-game team scores. William ranks 34th on that list.

Travis Kelce was the only player this week to get on a top 40 positional list for single-game player scores. He put up 32.8 points for Eric, good for the 4th highest score by a tight end in AFL history.

Despite those two huge team scores by Adam and William, our 12 teams combined for only 1,319.1 points this week. That ranks 29th out of 81 weeks in league history and is the lowest scoring week of the 2018 season. It is just the third time this year we have come in under 1,400 points for a week.

Our six losing teams averaged 99.7 points, the only week this season that losing teams did not average at least 100.

In fact, five teams failed to reach 100 points this week. The previous high this season was four teams in Week 3. Anthony won his matchup with 80.1 points, the lowest winning score this season. Cory also won his matchup with just 93.6 points. It’s only the second and third time a team has won a game with less than 100 points this season after Danny won with 98.6 points in Week 3. Is it coincidence that those are the three players competing for the AFL East title this week?

Our defensive coach of the week is Sean, who got 21 points from the Houston Texans.

Will has been dominant this season and leads the defensive streaming category with 211 points over 13 weeks (12 starts by the Bears defense). He’s trying to catch Evan’s record 237 points from last season, which saw him use the Ravens defense eight times and the Jaguars defense the other six games.

Sean deserves some recognition for getting the Texans defense though. They have him solidly in second for defensive coaching with 179 points, starting 12 of 13 games this season.

Every team has reached 100 defensive streaming points now as Andrew reached 101 from six different defenses.

Our kicker coach of the week is Will, who got 17 points from Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn. Adam dropped Fairbairn after using him last week. Fairbairn is the highest scoring kicker in the league this season – granted, Adam has Greg Zuerlein who spent five weeks injured and has the highest per game average in the league when you take that into account. Both Will and Adam have used Fairbairn three times this season.

Adam is our kicker points leader through 13 weeks. He has 127 points from the position. Danny is in second with 116 points. Eric is in last place with 71 points. The lowest kicker-streaming total over a season we’ve seen since we changed kicker scoring is 92, set by Nolan in 2016.

Our best coach this week was Evan. He earned 21 points, succeeding on one of two coaching risks. He earned 27.3 points by starting Tarik Cohen over Tevin Coleman and cost himself 6.3 points by starting Josh Reynolds instead of Doug Baldwin.

Sean earns honorable mention for coaching. He earned 14 points by starting the Texans defense instead of the Packers.

Andrew was our worst coaching this week. He only coast his team 2.4 points but that was more than his 1.9-point margin of defeat, meaning he also cost his team a win. He did earn two points by dropping Mason Crosby and starting Sebastian Janikowski, but he lost 4.4 points by starting DeSean Jackson instead of Frank Gore. DJax wound up being inactive, but Gore was projected to outscore Jackson even before that.

Sean was our unluckiest team this week. He was our fourth highest scorer but lost to Adam and his Tom Brady Award. Stephen was also unlucky as he had a 6-5 breakdown but was facing Eric, who had a 7-4 breakdown this week.

Our luckiest coach was Anthony, who won with a 2-9 breakdown because he was facing Andrew, our lowest scorer this week. Cory earns honorable mention for that category as he won with a 4-7 breakdown over Danny and his 1-10 breakdown.

Eric is undoubtedly the best team in the league this season, but he is also the luckiest by WAE measurements. He has a 1.91 WAE, higher than Cory (+1.45), Brandon (+1.18) and Evan (+1.00).

Will continues to be our unluckiest player this season as he now sits at 3.55 WBE. The next three on that list are Sean (-0.91), Stephen (-0.82) and Danny (-0.59).

William and Anthony register slightly on the lucky side while Andrew and Adam are slightly on the negative side of things.

Based solely on matchup luck, Eric is actually unlucky and should have 12 wins instead of the 11 he currently has. Stephen should have 8 wins based on matchup luck (i.e., how many times each team has had a breakdown above .500 this season). Evan, William, Sean and Danny should have 7 wins, Anthony and Will should have 6 wins, Andrew and Adam should have 5 wins, and Cory and Brandon should each have 4 wins.

The three hottest teams over the past four weeks are Adam, Sean, and Stephen. Meanwhile, Andrew, Cory, and Evan are the coldest teams of late.

Eric has 100 breakdown wins on the season. He can’t reach his record for 124 from two years ago but a 2-9 breakdown or better will beat Will’s league-leading 101 breakdown wins from a season ago.

Andrew, meanwhile, has clinched the worst breakdown of the season. If he doesn’t finish in the top half of scoring this week he will finish with 100 breakdown losses. He is within reach of Adam’s 103 breakdown losses from last season, but Sean’s 116 breakdown losses in 2017 are the most in league history and that number is not under threat this year.

Speaking of breakdown, Eric has incredibly had just one week all season with a sub-.500 breakdown. Brandon and Cory, on the other hand, have just four weeks each with a breakdown over .500. This stat comes directly from that matchup luck mentioned a few paragraphs back.

Check out the review of Week 12 below, followed by next week’s playoff scenarios:

Game of the Week: William Battle at Brandon Saunders

With a bit of help from Adam, the only player to outscore him this week, William clinched the AFL Central title with a monster performance and a win over Brandon.

Week 14 Playoff Picture

This is pretty much spelled out in the power ranking comments, but I figured I’d put it down here for clarity.

Eric and William have clinched their divisions. Only the AFL East and the wild card are up for grabs.

Will, Andrew, Stephen, Adam, and Sean are all eliminated from playoff contention.

In the AFL East, Cory faces Andrew and will clinch the division title with a win or tie. He can also clinch if Anthony and Danny tie each other, a highly unlikely scenario.

Danny faces Anthony in that other AFL East matchup.

Danny and Cory are 1-1 against each other this year but if Danny wins and Cory loses, Danny will win the AFL East with the division record tiebreaker – Danny would be 4-2 while Cory would be 2-4.

Meanwhile, Anthony is 2-0 against Cory this season, so if he wins and Cory loses, Anthony will win the AFL East with the head-to-head tiebreaker.

In the wild card race, it’s down to Evan and Brandon. Evan has a one-game advantage so he will clinch the wild card with a win or tie against Eric. He’ll also clinch if Brandon loses or ties against Sean.

Meanwhile, if Brandon beats Sean and Evan loses to Eric, Brandon would clinch the wild card since he beat Evan in their only meeting of the regular season.

Good luck to everyone in the final week of the season and thanks for another great year of competition!