Written by Cory Puffett
Published November 6, 2018

It certainly was a nice couple of week for William Battle atop our power rankings, but Eric Meyer has reclaimed the top spot after losing it for the second time this season.

Back in 2016, Eric found himself in the top position of our power rankings just two times all season, despite an AFL record 124-30 breakdown. This was one of the main reasons I spent the last two years trying to rework my power rating formula to strike a better balance between the teams with great records from the teams that are strong and deserve some accolades despite being buried in the standings for various reasons, most often due to scheduling luck.

William posted an 0-11 breakdown this week as the league’s lowest scorer, just two weeks removed from leading the league in scoring for the third consecutive week, an AFL record.

With that breakdown, William has now suffered more than 30 breakdown losses. Eric leads the league now this year and has just 28 breakdown losses. He is the only owner still with a chance to beat that AFL record breakdown from 2016, but something tells me his old record will stand for at least another year.

Sorry to pile on, but there were a couple other things of note involving William this week. He became the eighth league member to fall below the 100-point threshold for week. In no previous season did we have even one owner last nine weeks without falling below that threshold and we have four owners who have yet to score below triple digits this year.

Additionally, William entered Week 9 with sole possession of the league’s best record as 7-1. He was matched up against Will Massimini, owner of the league’s worst record of 1-7. Will finished less than a point shy of an 11-0 breakdown. It would have been the ninth time in league history that the top scorer and low scorer of a week played each other.

The AFL Central went 0-4 this week as a division. Andrew Perez and Stephen April were the only members of the AFL East and AFL Central divisions, respectively, who suffered losses in Week 9. It is the second time this week a division has gone 0-4 after the AFL East did it back in Week 5.

A week after our league set a new fourth highest scoring week in league history, we’ve done it again and set a new second highest winning average.

Our 12 teams totaled 1448.2 points and four owners found themselves among the top 75 single-game team performances in league history.

Danny Hatcher led the league in scoring with 159.6 points to earn his first Tom Brady Award since the 2016 season. It is Danny’s seventh time leading the league in scoring in our league’s 77 weeks.

Will Massimini scored 158.8 points this week. Danny and Will find themselves at #8 and #9, respectively, on our league’s all-time single-week team score list.

Eric scored 145.3 points to take position of the number 37 spot on that list and Cory Puffett is tied for 57th after totaling 138.6 points.

We had four starting running backs in the league this week score 30 or more points. Kareem Hunt led the way, giving 34.3 points to Evan Ash in a winning effort. That total was just enough to tie Hunt for the 40th spot among all-time running back performances in league history (I only track the top 40 at each position).

Michael Thomas led receivers in scoring this week with 33.1 points, or 20.7 percent of Danny’s team total. That performance was good enough to tie Thomas at 28th on the wide receiver list.

Eric got 25.4 points from Travis Kelce, the 26th best tight end performance in league history.

Our defensive streamer of the week was Will, who got 31 points from his Chicago Bears defense. They’ve been a consistent performer for him. This was Will’s fourth time leading the league in defensive points this season and his third time doing so with the Bears.

Sean Kennedy was our kicker coach of the week after earning 10 points from Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker, who has been in Sean’s lineup all nine weeks this season. Only Cody Parkey, who was sitting on William Battle’s bench, outscored Tucker last week in a low-scoring week for kickers.

Sean is one of two league members who have started the same kicker and defenseevery week so far this season. That will change this week as both Tucker and the Houston Texans defense are on bye for Sean.

Will extended his season-long advantage in defensive scoring as he’s now up to 152 points, more than double Andrew’s total of 74 so far this season. Cory moved from sixth to third and Danny moved from tenth to seventh in defensive streaming after the Minnesota Vikings and Miami Dolphins defenses each scored 25 points this week.

On the kicker side, Anthony moved into a tie with Danny as both of them now have 84 points from that position while Will remains at the bottom of that leaderboard with 52 points.

Our unlucky coach of the week was Stephen. He was our fifth highest scorer but was very unfortunate to be matched up against Danny. Evan, meanwhile, got a lucky win with a 4-7 breakdown while matched up against Andrew, who had the third lowest score of the week.

Our best coach this week was Danny, who earned his team 33.8 points with two successful coaching risks. He started Duke Johnson Jr. instead of Matt Breida and he dropped the Detroit Lions defense to pick up the Miami Dolphins defense despite Detroit having the higher projection from ESPN.

Will earns honorable mention as he earned 28.5 points, also with two successful risks. For some reason, ESPN projected Joe Flacco to outscore Ben Roethlisberger. While most people disagreed with that projection, it still counted as a coaching risk. Additionally, Will started Dalvin Cook instead of Paul Richardson.

Will did leave Cordarrelle Patterson on his bench for Dalvin Cook, and final ESPN projections suggested that was the wrong move. But those projections shifted after Sony Michael was confirmed as inactive, which happened after Will had to make a decision between Cook and Richardson during the early afternoon window.

Our worst coaching this week was Andrew, who cost his team 14.6 points and a win with one failed coaching risk. ESPN said he should start George Kittle andGreg Olsen, but Andrew went with DeSean Jackson in the flex spot, leaving Kittle on his bench.

After nine weeks, we have six teams on the lucky side of things and six unlucky teams. Our two luckiest teams are Evan and Brandon Saunders as both of them find themselves at 1.36 wins above expected based on breakdown. Will remains the unluckiest owner at 3.09 wins below expected. Andrew is the second unluckiest owner at 0.82 wins below expected.

Andrew and Will each had three starting players among the top five scorers at their positions this week. Six other owners at two each while Cory and William had none. Evan won his matchup against Andrew despite having just two such players and Cory also won despite his opponent, Brandon, having one such player.

Check out the review of Week 9 below:

Game of the Week: Stephen April at Danny Hatcher

In the highest scoring game this week, Stephen and Danny combined for more than 275 points. Danny accounted for nearly 160 and is the fourth owner this year to win the game of the week and lead the league in scoring in the same week.