Written by Cory Puffett
Published December 19, 2018

And then there were two. We have had quite a season, the highest scoring ever for us and perhaps for all scoring formats based on my lurkings on various fantasy football sites as well as the FantasyFootball subreddit.

For us, it comes down to Anthony and William Battle; two brothers going head to head for a championship just before Christmas. That ought to make for some fun dinner chatter amongst the family.

Their paths to this title game couldn’t have been more different though. Before we get to that, let’s take a look at our two losing owners from the wild card round.

Brandon Saunders started the season on a three-game winning streak but managed back-to-back wins only once over the final 11 weeks of the regular season. He won a nail-biter in Week 14 against Sean Kennedy thanks to a coaching error on the latter’s part but still only clinched the wild card spot thanks to a loss by Evan Ash. Brandon beat Evan back in Week 10, Evan’s lowest scoring week of the year, for the head-to-head tie breaker.

Unfortunately, once again Brandon failed to secure consecutive victories as his team scored just 75.8 points, the lowest score ever in AFL playoff history. He got only 2.7 points from his running backs. While his move to pick up and start Josh Allen was a good one – only Sam Darnold had more points among unowned quarterbacks – it wasn’t nearly enough to avoid a first round exit in Brandon’s first postseason appearance since our inaugural season in 2013.

In the other game, Eric Meyer was the heavy favorite entering the matchup. Eric was 12-2, the only team in the league more than one game over .500. He was riding a six-game winning streak and is the only owner in league history to score at least 100 points in every game over the course of the regular season. Even adjusting for the number of starting roster positions prior to 2016, during which seasons we use 88.9 points as the threshold, he is the only owner to surpass eight consecutive games above the threshold to begin a season.

In a case of very poor timing, Eric failed to score 100 points and his 89.4 point total stands as the third lowest score in AFL playoff history, including those first three seasons in which we had only eight starting roster spots. Only Sean’s score of 85.5 in a loss against Eric in the 2014 semifinal joins Brandon’s score below Eric’s.

Eric averaged an incredible 129.8 points per game this season, only half a point per game fewer than during his 2016 title run. Had he matched that total, he still would have lost this week thanks to an impressive performance by Anthony’s crew.

Anthony made a nice pickup to grab Damien Williams ahead of Kansas City’s Thursday night matchup with the LA Chargers. Between him and Mike Williams on the other side, Anthony jumped out to a 61.4-16.0 lead as Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce couldn’t get much going for Eric. Despite some strong efforts from his first round pick (Kamara) and his fourth round keeper (Johnson), Eric never came close to making up that gap as Anthony actually stretched that lead over the remainder of the weekend.

In fact, Mike Williams’s 33.1-point game on Thursday night ties for 30th on the all-time single game wide receiver performance list. Anthony’s 152.5-point team total stands at 25th all time in league history.

William’s lineup had some good performances and quite a few poor ones. Todd Gurley had a very poor game in Week 14 against the Bears but bounced back to post his 7th game of at least 30 points on the season to help lift his team to the championship.

William started the season 7-1 and was even number 1 in our power rankings in weeks 7 and 8, but faltered down the stretch, losing four straight games before winning two of his last three.

Anthony, meanwhile, was 0-5 and for a time appeared to be on track for some of the worst schedule luck we’ve ever seen, though Will Massimini did beat him by a wide margin on that front by the end of the season.

An unlucky loss in Week 10, despite scoring 132.6 points, appeared to signal that it just wasn’t meant to be this year, but Anthony has rattled off five straight wins since then.

Anthony and William both cost their teams points with coaching decisions in their wild card games. Anthony lost out on 9 points by starting the Rams defense instead of the Jaguars defense. William cost his team 5.5 points by starting Demaryius Thomas in the flex instead of Elijah McGuire.

Both Anthony and William have scored 150 points in consecutive games this season. William followed those two games up with a 119-point game for his seventh victory of the season. We shall see how Anthony backs his games up.

The consolation ladder is headed by Cory Puffett and Stephen April, with draft pick positioning on the line. The winner of that game will get first choice of where he wants to pick in the first round of the 2019 AFL draft. The loser of that game will get second choice.

Meanwhile Will Massimini and Danny Hatcher managed to avoid the “sacko” game in the bottom bracket of the consolation ladder. Instead it will be Andrew Perez, who started 3-1 but then lost five straight on the way to a 5-9 record, and Sean Kennedy, who had a rough start the season but scored 130 or more points every week from Week 10 through Week 13, competing to avoid that designation. Sean played in this game last year and beat Adam Perez, Andrew’s brother.

The loser of this “sacko” (you’ll recognize the term from the old FX series “The League”) matchup will decide who gets the 7th choice of draft pick position and who gets last choice, after all other consolation and playoff teams choose.

Finally, before we wrap this up, I’d like to congratulate all of this season’s award winners.

William Battle led the league with four Tom Brady Awards, earned by leading the league in scoring for a week. In fact, he won three straight from Week 5 through Week 7 and is the first manager in AFL history to accomplish that feat.

Eric, Adam, and Sean each won two Tom Brady Awards this season while Will, Cory, Danny, and Anthony each won one.

The Peyton Manning Award is earned by winning each week’s Game of the Week, as chosen by me, sometimes with input from Eric (our co-commissioner) and/or the rest of the league.

Danny and Eric each won two Peyton Manning Awards this season, William, Evan, and Cory each won two, and Andrew and Brandon each took home one.

As of the conclusion of this season, Eric leads all owners with 12 career Tom Brady Awards, followed by Anthony with 11 and Will with 10.

Danny now has 13 Peyton Manning Awards, ahead of Eric who has 12 and Anthony who has 11.

Anthony’s AFL East division title is his second division title. His other title came back in 2013, our inaugural season. William is making his second championship game appearance, but he made it the first time off a wild card birth. This was his first career division title.

Meanwhile, Eric enjoys his league-leading fourth division title.

Finally we have our coaching awards. Stephen and Anthony are the coaches of the year. Stephen led the league by earning two wins by outcoaching ESPN projections while Anthony earned a league-best 43.9 points over ESPN projections and led all managers with 12 successful coaching risks this season.

Coaching awards are new this year and while I did try to go back to previous seasons, I only have ESPN projection data, which is used for these two coaching awards, dated back three years. Thus we have no “wins” or “points” coaches of the year prior to 2016.

Coaches of the Year (wins)

2016 – Will Massimini

2017 – Danny Hatcher

2018 – Stephen April

Coaches of the Year (points)

2016 – Will Massimini

2017 – Cory Puffett

2018 – Anthony Battle

Our offensive positional coaching awards are not divided by position but rather by discipline. The passing coach of the year award is given to the owner who earned the most fantasy points over the course of the regular season strictly from passing the ball (quarterback runs or receptions do not count toward this award, but running back or wide receiver passes do).

Our passing coach of the year for 2018 is Adam Perez, who earned 333.1 point from Patrick Mahomes (12 games), Dak Prescott (1 game), and Mitchell Trubisky (1 game).

This is the first year that I’ve awarded these so I do want to formally acknowledge the winners of past awards based on this construct, which does go all the way back to our league’s first season.

Passing Coaches of the Year

2013 – Evan Ash

2014 – Sean Kennedy

2015 – Saswat Misra*

2016 – Sean Kennedy

2017 – Anthony Battle

2018 – Adam Perez

The rushing coach of the year is given to the player who earned the most fantasy points over the course of the regular season resulting from rushing attempts, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, rushing fumbles, and rushing 2-point conversions.

This year’s rushing coach of the year is Eric Meyer. His 488.7 points from rushing blew away everyone else, thanks in part to not only having Alvin Kamara and an underused, but still effective, David Johnson but also Sony Michel (when healthy).

Rushing Coaches of the Year

2013 – Andrew Olsen*

2014 – Danny Hatcher

2015 – Will Massimini

2016 – Will Massimini

2017 – William Battle

2018 – Eric Meyer

The receiving coach of the year is given to the manager who earned the most points from receptions, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, fumbles by receivers, and receiving 2-point conversions.

This year’s receiving coach of the year is Danny Hatcher with 816.4 points. He used only four wide receivers all season but got a lot of production from them. Michael Thomas and DeAndre Hopkins both averaged around 16 points per game in their 13 starts, Alshon Jeffery scored 88.2 points in his 9 starts, and Kenny Stills was his only whiff. Danny also got good production from Joe Mixon and Matt Breida in the receiving game, three touchdown catches from Duke Johnson, and adequate production from a combination of David Njoku and Evan Engram at tight end.

Receiving Coaches of the Year

2013 – Sean Kennedy

2014 – Evan Ash

2015 – Brandon Saunders

2016 – Brandon Saunders

2017 – Danny Hatcher

2018 – Danny Hatcher

The defensive coach of the year goes to the owner who earned the most points from their defensive starters over the course of the regular season.

Will Massimini is this year’s defensive coach of the year and only the third player ever to surpass 200 defensive points in a season in our league. With defensive scoring setting about to change for next season, that may become slightly more common, but it already was doing so as all three of those occurrences have come in the past two years.

Will won the award by starting the Chicago Bears 13 times while the Arizona Cardinals started and scored 25 points during the Bears’ Week 5 bye. In all, Will’s defense scored 231 points, or 16.5 points per game. Our worst defensive coach this year only earned 7.8 points per game on average from his defenses.

Defensive Coaches of the Year

2013 – Eric Meyer

2014 – Sean Kennedy

2015 – William Battle

2016 – Cory Puffett

2017 – Evan Ash

2018 – Will Massimini

And finally, the kicker coach of the year goes to the player who earned the most points from their starting kickers over the course of the regular season. In a reversal of the defensive scoring, the winners of this award over the past three years have all scored fewer points than the winners of this award in our league’s first three years. Kicker scoring will also chance next year and will likely be very similar to those first three years, maybe only slightly higher.

This year’s kicker coach of the year is Adam Perez. With one exception, he always started a kicker in more than one consecutive week, but he switched frequently between Greg Zuerlein and Ka’imi Fairbairn for much of the season, with the exception of a Week 3 to 4 stint with Robbie Gould.

In all, Adam earned 133 points from his kickers, or 9.5 points per game, almost four points per game better than our worst streamer of the year.

Kicker Coaches of the Year

2013 – Eric Meyer

2014 – Andrew Perez

2015 – Saswat Misra*

2016 – Brandon Saunders

2017 – Evan Ash

2018 – Adam Perez

Congratulations to all of this year’s award winners, to the winners of past awards who are only finding out today that they earned them, and good luck to Anthony and William Battle as they battle it out (sorry, couldn’t help myself) for the 2018 AFL Championship!

*Denotes owner who is no longer a member of the AFL. Coincidentally, also denotes owner who won a positional coaching award in their last year of membership in the league.