Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 2, 2018

My team’s demise was staved off for a week at least, but it’s likely more of a blip in the radar than a sign of things to come. Meanwhile, the scoring lull our league saw as a whole in Week 3 was most certainly the calm before the storm.

Week 4 saw, for the first time in league history, more than 1500 points scored by our league’s 12 teams. Both the six winning teams and six losing teams set league records for average weekly scores. The winning teams averaged 137.8 points while the losing teams averaged 116.0 points. This week broke the record set in Week 1 of the 2016 season by 68.1 points.

This was the first time in league history that all 12 teams scored at least 100 points, with Danny Hatcher coming in right at that mark. Even using the pre-2016 threshold of 88.9 points, we’ve never before had a week with all 12 teams scoring above that threshold.

Mitchell Trubisky had a huge week with 44.8 points, which would have placed him at number 3 all-time and bumped Drew Brees’ performance last week out of the top three. Unfortunately, Adam Perez left him on his bench and his game will forever be lost within AFL history.

Instead, this week’s top scorer in the AFL was Jared Goff, whom Anthony Battle took a coaching risk on by starting over Tom Brady. Goff put up 41.4 points in the most exciting Thursday night game in history and has the 7th highest single-game score among quarterbacks in our league’s history.

Alvin Kamara and Ezekiel Elliott both joined the top 40 single-game running backs list this week. Kamara ranks 9th after scoring 40.5 points for Eric Meyer and Elliott holds the number 32 spot after giving Adam 34.5 points.

Jared Cook has had fast starts in the past but this is the longest stretch of sustained success he’s had to start a season. He scored 27.0 points for Sean Kennedy to tie for 15th on the single-game tight ends list.

We also saw four managers enter the top 75 for team scoring in league history. Eric led the way with 158.0 points, tying him for 9th in AFL history. Evan Ash joins the list at number 14 with 152.8 points, Brandon Saunders’ 143.1 points are good for 34th, and Andrew Perez is number 54 with 137.4 points.

Brandon’s score is also notable because it is the highest score in league history by a losing team, breaking Andrew’s record of 132.4 points from last year’s wild card round.

And to go one step further, in the matchup between Brandon and Eric there were 301.1 total points scored. This breaks the record of 297.5 points in a Week 1 contest in 2016 where Brandon beat Nolan, who now sits at 4th among those with the most points scored in a loss.

Our defensive streamer of the week was Brandon, and this time it really was a streamer. After starting the Patriots defense for three straight weeks to start the season, Brandon made a move to the Green Bay Packers for Week 4. It is the first time anybody has started the Packers in our league this season and they repaid his belief with 23 points.

Our kicker coach of the week is Danny as he earned 15 points from New Orleans Saints kicker Wil Lutz. Danny was our kicker coach of the week last week with 13 points from Lutz, who Danny has started in each of this season’s first four weeks.

Through four weeks, the defensive streaming spread ranges from 72 points, scored by Will Massimini, down to 26 points, scored by both Andrew and Adam. All of Will’s defensive points come from the Bears defense, Andrew keeps holding out for Atlanta to get it together, and Adam stuck with New Orleans for two weeks before switching to Miami for the last two.

Our kicker spread ranged from 41 points scored by Wil Lutz for Danny down to 18 points for Eric, who keeps rolling the dice on Steelers kicker Chris Boswell.

As mentioned earlier, Brandon was (just a bit) unlucky this week being matched up against the highest scorer in the league while posting the third highest point total himself. And where you have an unlucky manager, there stands to be a lucky one, too. This week our lucky winner was Stephen April who had just a 4-7 breakdown but matched up with Anthony who was our fourth lowest scorer.

Despite earning the moniker of “lucky” for this week, Stephen was no doubt our best coach of the week. He earned his team 31.6 points and a win with two successful coaching risks. He dropped Ryan Fitzpatrick to pick up and start Andy Dalton and he started Geronimo Allison instead of Chris Hogan. I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention that Stephen would have earned his team even more points had he started Andrew Luck at quarterback, who was already on his bench and also would have counted as a coaching risk.

Anthony earns honorable mention status for earning his team 21.5 points with one successful coaching risk, starting Jared Goff instead of Tom Brady. If Stephen has elected to forego either one of his two coaching risks this week, Anthony’s would have earned him a win in their matchup.

Our worst coach this week was Cory Puffett who cost his team 17.2 points by starting Tyler Boyd instead of Cooper Kupp. This is the second straight week that Cory has cost his team points by ignoring ESPN projections and sitting Kupp. While this risk didn’t cost him a win like it did last week, it digs Cory an even deeper hole in the coach rankings.

This week, Andrew and Evan led the way, each with three offensive players among the top five at their positions. Five other members had two such players each. William Battle was the only owner to win his matchup with fewer such players than his opponent. William was the only owner with a single top five player while he beat Danny who had DeAndre Hopkins.

Check out the review of Week 4 and this week’s power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Brandon Saunders vs Eric Meyer

We couldn’t have asked for a better game of the week. Brandon posted the highest score ever for a losing team in league history and the he and Eric combined for more than 300 total points, breaking the old record of 297.5 points in a 2016 victory for Brandon over Nolan.