Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 23, 2018

This was our second lowest scoring week of the season despite all but one team reaching triple digits. The question is: was this just another one-week blip in an otherwise explosive fantasy season or will we have to temper our scoring expectations as we enter the second half of the season.

William Battle earns special recognition this week after a league-leading 157.3-point performance. Last week he became the seventh owner in AFL history to lead the league in scoring in two consecutive weeks. He is now the firstowner to accomplish this feat in three straight weeks! This is only his fifth time overall in our league’s five and a half seasons that he has been the league’s leading scorer, so (knock on wood) this certainly appears to be his year.

William’s score places him at 11th all-time in single-week scoring in AFL history! Our only other entrant on the top 75 list was Brandon, whose 137.1 points ties him for 61st.

Evan Ash won his sixth game of the week, and only his third since our inaugural season in 2013. His team hasn’t drawn as much attention as it deserves, but with Kareem Hunt’s production over the past four or five weeks complimenting the consistent play of Kirk Cousins and Adam Thielen, Evan should no longer be considered under the radar.

Hunt scored 36.1 points this week, tying him for 21st on the all-time running back list. Our only other entrant on the offensive lists was Patrick Mahomes, who scored 34.8 points in Adam Perez’s second win of the season. Mahomes joins the quarterback list in a tie for 37th.

In all, our twelve teams scored 1360.1 points, the 12th most points scored in our league’s 75-week history. Of the seven weeks we have played in 2018, only Week 3 saw a smaller output.

Our defensive steamer of the week is William Battle. He earned a season record 35 points from the Denver Broncos defense on Thursday night. Their performance moves William from 11th all the way up into a tie for third in defensive scoring this season.

Through seven weeks, Will Massimini leads the league in defensive scoring with 113 points, most of which is from the Chicago Bears defense. Andrew trails at the bottom of that list with just 51 defensive points.

Our kicker coach of the week is Eric, who finally moved on from Chris Boswell (now that he was forced to do so on Boswell’s bye) and earned 14 points from Matt Prater in the Detroit Lions’ win in Miami.

Danny leads our kicker scoring for the season with 76 points while Will is in the cellar with 39.

We had two lucky and two unlucky coaches this week. Will was our most unlucky as he was our fourth highest scorer but was matched up with Brandon, who was mentioned earlier as our second highest scorer for the week.

Danny also suffered an unlucky loss as he had a 7-4 breakdown but was facing Evan, who was third in scoring.

Cory was our luckiest coach this week as he came in 9th in scoring but was fortunate enough to be matched up against Sean Kennedy, who posted the lowest score of the week and of the season so far.

Adam also earned a lucky win with a 5-6 breakdown.

On the season, Brandon has been our luckiest owner with a 1.18 WAE. Stephen and Eric are tied for second at 0.73.

Our unluckiest owner of the season, by far, is Will. His breakdown of 44-33 suggests he should be exactly 4-3 on the season. His record of 1-6 puts him at -3.0 WAE. Only Anthony (-1.32 WAE) and Adam (-0.27) are also considered unlucky owners this season. All nine other owners are on the positive side.

Sean was the first owner this year to fall below 70 points in any given week, but he also earned a bit of positive recognition as our top coach of the week. ESPN projected Andy Dalton to outscore Drew Brees, but Sean decided to drop Dalton from his lineup entirely. That move earned him a league-leading 10.6 points.

Our worst coach this week was Evan, who cost his team 14.1 points with two unsuccessful coaching risks. First he dropped C.J. Uzomah, who was projected to outscore all three of his alternatives at tight end, to start Hayden Hurst, who did not score. Then he started Austin Ekeler instead of Tevin Coleman.

While no owners officially cost their team wins this week, Danny does deserve a bit of bad press for his coaching this week and this season in general.

Danny is one of four coaches who have cost their teams wins this season, but his overall point margin is far worse than anybody else’s in the league.

At the halfway point of our season, Danny has cost his team 44.1 points despite being successful on half (6 of 12) of his coaching risks.

Evan has actually cost his team the second most points at -26.8 but has a +1 coaching win differential from Week 5 when he made his second of two successful coaching risks this season.

This week, Danny made four coaching risks, and was successful on three of them. Despite his 75-percent success rate for the week, he only earned his team 1.5 points.

In the FLEX spot, Danny started Alshon Jeffery over Corey Clement. He also dropped the Dallas Cowboys defense and Wil Lutz to start the Detroit Lions and Dan Bailey. All three of these were considered coaching risks by ESPN and from them Danny earned 24.3 points, which would have won him his matchup against Evan if he had stopped there.

Unfortunately for Danny, he made one too many risks. While he did not officially cost his team a win for power ranking purposes, his decision to start Matt Breida (who did not score) instead of Latavius Murray cost his team 22.8 points, which is far more than his margin of defeat.

William Battle had four offensive players in the top five at their positions, including two running backs. It is the third week in a row, and the fourth time this season, that both Todd Gurley and Saquon Barkley were among the top five starting running backs in the league.

Danny had three players in the top five at their position and four other owners had two each. Sean, for the second week in a row, was the only player with no such players. Evan (2) and Eric (1) both won their matchups with fewer top five starting players than their opponents, Danny (3) and Andrew (2), respectively.

Check out the review of Week 7 and this week’s power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Danny Hatcher at Evan Ash

Danny led the league with four coaching risks this week and one in particular, starting Matt Breida instead of Latavius Murray, cost him a win. Evan is off to his best start since going 5-2 to start the 2016 season. He hopes to not repeat his 1-6 finish that left him out of the playoffs that year.