Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 30, 2018

Our league bounced right back after a low-scoring Week 7 to record the fourth highest scoring week in league history. We passed our halfway points of the regular season and got our third week of divisional games in. There will be no more divisional matchups until the final three weeks of the season, during which time every team will play each of their division rivals one last time as we flesh out the playoff picture.

The interesting thing this year is that the two teams on bye in Week 12, the first of those final three weeks, are the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Rams, the teams with the most prolific offenses in the NFL to this point.

Adam Perez will have to play without Patrick Mahomes, but he has Mitchell Trubisky who has been eating just fine in fantasy (and Adam is well out of the playoff race right now). Anthony Battle, though he has the same record as Adam, is only two games out of his division. He’ll have to play Cory Puffett without Jared Goff, but at least he has Tom Brady to take that spot.

The guys who will really be hurting are William Battle, who will face Sean Kennedy without Todd Gurley, and Eric Meyer who will play Will Massimini without Tyreek Hill. William doesn’t have anybody at running back besides Gurley and Saquon Barkley and Eric doesn’t have anybody reliable at wide receiver after Hill period.

Guys like Evan Ash, who will have to do without Kareem Hunt that will, may still be okay thanks to better roster depth.

This makes these next three weeks of interdivisional play very important to those teams as they try to get an advantage and avoid losing a division lead in that final bye week of the NFL season.

Cory Puffett led the league in scoring for the first time this season, winning the game of the week over division rival Andrew Perez and moving into a tie atop the AFL East with Danny Hatcher. His 157.8 points are the 11th highest single game total in AFL history.

James Conner gave Will Massimini 38.1 points, the 15th highest running back score in league history. It wasn’t enough to give Will his second win of the season, though.

Eric was our defensive coach of the year. He picked up and started the New England Patriots off waivers and got 20 points from them. This also earned him 15 points in our overall coaching category since the Indianapolis Colts defense was projected to outscore New England’s but managed only 5 points on Eric’s bench.

Our kicker coach of the week is Anthony, who got 13 points from Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski on Monday night.

Through 8 weeks, Will still leads our defensive scoring with 121 points, mostly from the Bears defense, and Danny still leads our kicker scoring with 78 points.

We had two unlucky losing teams this week. Andrew suffered his first unlucky loss of the season despite an 8-3 breakdown because he was facing our league’s top scorer. Danny had a 7-4 breakdown but lost to Anthony, who managed the third highest total of the week.

William Battle was our luckiest owner of the week. He had a breakdown of just 3-8 but won because his opponent, Adam, was one of two owners to fall below triple digits this week. Evan also earned a lucky victory with a 5-6 breakdown.

For the second week in a row, and despite being the lowest scorer for the second week in a row, Sean is our coach of the week. He earned 20.3 points with one successful coaching risk, starting Will Fuller V on Thursday Night Football instead of Kenjon Barner for the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. Barner was projected to outscore Fuller but managed less than a point.

Our worst coach of the week was Stephen. He is our best coach on the season with two coaching wins, but this week he cost his team 13.8 points by starting Ricky Seals-Jones over Jack Doyle at the tight end position.

In our league’s first five seasons, we never had a team score more than 100 points in each of the first nine games of the season. Even if we adjust for roster size changes and make that number 88.9 points during the first three years of the league, that statement holds true.

We have five owners who could change that next week. Eric, William Battle, Brandon Saunders, Will Massimini, and Evan have all scored at least 100 points in each of the first eight weeks of the 2018 season.

Last year Andrew made it through Week 8 before scoring just 98.2 points in Week 9. In 2016, Andrew and Anthony both made it through Week 8 before scoring 78.4 points and 96.0 points, respectively, in Week 9.

Could we have someone make it through all 14 weeks without falling below 100 points a single time? It will be difficult with some of the more substantial bye weeks looming. Six teams will be on bye this coming week and another six will be on bye in Week 11. But for reference, through Week 8 we had 27 sub-100 point performances in 2016 and 34 of them last year, in 2017. We have had just 15 so far this season!

Danny led all teams this week with three offensive players in the top five at their positions. Six other teams had two players each and everyone had at least one. Anthony was the only owner to win his matchup with fewer players in the top five at their positions than his opponent.

Check out the review of Week 8 and this week’s power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Andrew Perez at Cory Puffett

Cory team set a new franchise scoring record and won a high-scoring game of the week against Andrew, who lost despite being the 4th highest scorer of the week.