Written by Cory Puffett
Published November 19, 2019

In 2018, we saw a team reach 130 points in every single week. We’ve now seen all 12 teams fail to reach that mark twice this season. In both of those weeks, Sean Kennedy has led the charge. They’re his only two Tom Brady Awards of the season, but this week’s 11-0 breakdown keeps Sean at the top of the league in that category.

His 90-31 breakdown through Week 11 is the best in the league, but Eric Meyer was breathing down his neck this week for the weekly award.

Monday night’s tilt between the Chiefs and Chargers in Mexico City came down to the wire, and the battle for the Tom Brady Award came down to the final moments as well with Mike Williams giving Eric the advantage with his insane catch on 3rd & 10 on the Chargers’ final drive and, moments later, Austin Ekeler clinching the award for Sean with an 11-yard screen play.

Speaking of close calls on Monday night, that final drive also decided the matchup between Anthony Battle and Danny Hatcher. Danny has had a rough season and was eliminated from playoff contention after Week 10, but he still had a chance to help spoil Anthony’s journey toward a return trip to the AFL title game.

A late scratch of Tyreek Hill from the matchup left Anthony with a goose egg in his lineup (ironically, his brother, William Battle, also received a goose egg thanks to Robert Woods’ surprise scratch due to “personal reasons”) and offered Danny an opening, trailing by less than 16 points with Philip Rivers left to play.

Rivers nearly pulled it off. Despite several stalled drives late in the 4th quarter, the Chargers defense repeatedly got their offense opportunities to score and send the game to overtime. Inside the red zone, with time running out, Danny trailed Anthony by just two points. Rivers looked Ekeler in the end zone but tossed up a duck that was easily picked off, securing a victory for Anthony. Thanks to a mid-season victory against Evan, Anthony would be the AFL’s wild card team if the season ended today.

Symptomatic of such a low-scoring week, which ranks 39th among the league’s 93 regular season weeks, we didn’t have many players enter the top 40 single game performances at their positions.

Lamar Jackson had a nearly identical week to his Week 10 performance with 35.38 points. That becomes #41 all-time among QBs as his Week 10 game gets pushed to #40 by Josh Allen.

Allen, starting in Evan Ash’s lineup, scored 35.44 points, just beating Jackson’s 35.42-point total from a week earlier.

Unfortunately for Evan, that performance wasn’t enough to give him the win, despite placing sixth in the league in scoring for the week. His Game of the Week opponent, Andrew Perez, finished third in scoring to earn his sixth career Peyton Manning Award and his first since Week 3 of 2018.

Andrew has the 7th most PFM awards of our current and former league members, but it hasn’t been for a lack of opportunity. He has the third most appearances in games of the week but has amassed just a 6-14 record in those games. Evan’s loss drops him to 10-8 in his own GOTW chances.

Despite his victory, Andrew receives distinction as the worst coach of the week. He cost his team 14.32 points by starting Mohamed Sanu instead of Courtland Sutton despite FleaFlicker projections. That’s an odd number to miss out on from a receiver, but Sutton had a 38-yard pass completion in the Broncos collapse against the Vikings.

Our best coach of the week is Brandon Saunders who found himself exactly on the other end of the spectrum from Andrew as he earned 14.3 points by starting DeVante Parker over Zach Pascal in his victory over Cory Puffett.

Stephen April has now gone an incredible five straight games without reaching triple digits, but Cory’s team fell off the rails thanks in part to a dud of a game by Deshaun Watson. Cory’s total of 77.06 points is the third lowest score in the league this season. This also marked the third week in a row, and only the third week all season, in which a team failed to reach 80 points.

We very nearly had our sixth instance of the top six scoring teams all winning. I mentioned earlier that Evan suffered a bit of an unlucky loss as he finished sixth in scoring. The man right beneath him, Anthony, won his game despite finishing 7th in scoring for the week.

Our specialist coaches of the week both came from that lucky victory. Anthony got 12.1 points from Justin Tucker to earn recognition as the kicker coach of the week. Defensive coach of the week goes to Danny, who got 26 points from the Browns in Thursday night’s game against the Steelers.

Eric has won two more games than expected based on his breakdown, which trails Sean’s by just two games. Nobody else in the league is within 15 breakdown wins of Sean. Cory is at 1.0 WAE and Sean is at 0.8 WAE based on breakdown.

Based on top six performances, Eric, Andrew, and Anthony each have one more win that expected.

Our unluckiest teams through Week 11 are Will Massimini (2.2 WBE), William (1.1 WBE), and Danny (1.0 WBE). Will, Cory, and Sean are each at 1 WBE based on top six performances.

Every year we close out the regular season with a round-robin schedule of divisional games. Up to this point, each manager has faced his three division rivals once. They’ll play each of them once more in the next three weeks as we settle things and determine playoff spots.

Danny and Stephen have both been eliminated from the playoffs while Will and William have been eliminated from wild card contention. The two of them must win this week. A loss will eliminate them from the playoffs and, quite frankly, even winning out may not be enough for either of them to clinch the division.

Eric will clinch his division with a win or a tie, or with a loss/tie by Evan. He can also clinch a playoff spot with a loss or tie by Anthony.

Sean is the other manager who could clinch this week. If he beats Cory and Anthony loses to Alex Kincaid, Sean will clinch the AFL West title. Even if Anthony wins, Sean can still clinch a playoff spot with a victory if Evan loses his game against Danny.

Check out the review of Week 11 and updated power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Andrew Perez at Evan Ash

In a huge game with potential playoff implications for both teams, Andrew left a lot of wide receiver points on his bench but clearly had the better team this week as his score wound up beating Evan’s optimum point total, keeping Andrew in the driver’s seat in a tight AFL East division race.