Written by Cory Puffett
Published November 26, 2019

If any of you have been paying attention, ESPN’s Monday Night Football has been getting a lot of criticism this season and it may be finally coming to a head after last night’s broadcast nearly made Lamar Jackson’s thorough destruction of the LA Rams defense unwatchable.

Despite ESPN’s pathetic excuse for a weekly football broadcast this season, we’ve seen a number of games come down to that final game of the week in the AFL this season. An AFL West tilt between Sean Kennedy and Cory Puffett went into Week 12’s final matchup with Cory in the driver’s seat, leading by 43 points with nobody left.

It became very apparent early on, when the Rams showed absolutely no ability to slow down the Ravens, that Cory’s lead was unlikely to hold consider he had no players left and Sean had Lamar Jackson and Mark Ingram, who Sean acquired from Will Massimini one month ago via trade in exchange for JuJu Smith-Schuster.

In an incredible effort, the two Ravens superstars put up nearly 63 points to deliver Sean his 10th win of the season and clinch him a playoff spot with a chance to secure his division with a win against Anthony Battle this week.

Lamar Jackson alone contributed 37.06 points, his fourth straight game with at least 30 fantasy points and the 25th most single-game points by a quarterback in AFL history.

That big Monday night effort also extended Sean’s 100-point streak to 18 games dating back to last season, now just five games shy of Eric Meyer’s all-time best streak.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this victory for Sean is that he did it with three players on bye who are among the top 10 scorers at their positions this season, including the top scoring tight end Travis Kelce.

The heartbreaking defeat does not end Cory’s season, but it very nearly does. Not only does he need a lot of help, but even if he can pull into a tie with Anthony for the wild card spot, which would mean a 1-1 record head to head and identical division records, he currently trails Anthony in points by more than 175 points.

It would take not only a remarkable two weeks of scoring on Cory’s part but two abysmal efforts by Anthony’s squad to hand Cory that fourth playoff spot.

Sean is not the only manager who has clinched a playoff spot. Our platform apparently saw a way in which Eric might be able to miss the playoffs as he did not have a playoff designation last week, but his monster victory against Stephen April locked up his fifth career division title, a remarkable number in just the seventh season of the AFL.

Eric led the league in scoring with 148.74 points, good for 46th on the league’s all-time leader board. The performance earns Eric his 14th career Tom Brady Award and extends his consecutive 100-point games streak to six, the second longest active streak in the league.

Chris Godwin was a major contributor to Eric’s second highest point total of the season. His 33.9 points rank 33rd all-time among wide receivers in the AFL.

At 11-1, Eric is still alive to set an all-time record for single-season wins. He’s already won 12 games in a single season twice and with victories against Evan Ash and Danny Hatcher in the final two weeks of the season, he could push his total to 13 for the year, which would give him 65 victories in his first seven seasons and 44 in his last four.

The latter of those two managers standing in Eric’s way, Danny, has also enjoyed a 12-win season and will certainly be looking to play spoiler in the season’s final matchup, should Eric make it through his matchup against Sean unscathed.

Danny doesn’t have a whole lot else to play for at this point. He’s been out of playoff contention since the close of Week 10 but his starters showed up this week as he pushed Evan out of the wild card, at least temporarily, on his way to the third highest score of the week and by far his best point total of the season. He scored 131.8 points despite his starting tight end and one of his running backs each scoring just 0.6 points.

Evan finds himself out of contention for the AFL Central title, but his loss played no part in that. What his loss did do was put him a game behind Anthony for the wild card. Thanks to a Week 9 drubbing against the 2018 league runner-up, Evan’s only chance at a playoff spot is to end his four-game losing streak and rattle off two straight wins and have Anthony lose his final two games of the season.

Anthony, for his part, benefited from a bad opposing effort. Anthony did not reach triple digits, but took home his 13th career Peyton Manning Award, tying Danny for the second most all-time, and improved to 13-9 in game of the week appearances. He posted just the 8th highest point total of the week, but Alex Kincaid was #11 in that regard.

It was the third opportunity for Alex in his first season in the AFL to win a Peyton Manning Award and he has fallen short all three times. The loss brings Alex’s first year to an end as far as the playoffs are concerned, but he has a chance to end Cory’s season and secure a spot in the top consolation bracket with a win this week, which would guarantee him one of the first four choices on where he’d like to pick in next year’s draft order.

Anthony was not out luckiest owner this week by breakdown, though. Brandon Saunders finished one spot below Anthony on the Week 12 scoring leaderboard but was facing William Battle, our lowest scorer for now the third week this season.

Lucky or not, the victory guarantees Brandon at the very least a chance to play for the AFL East title next week against Andrew Perez. He could clinch the division this week with a win and a loss by Andrew.

The only reason a division title matchup is not a guarantee next week is because Andrew suffered an unlucky loss last week against Will. Andrew scored 118.50 points, the fifth highest total in the league, but came up about seven points short of Will, who keeps his own AFL East division title hopes just barely alive.

Will needs to win out and he needs Andrew to lose to William this week and then beat Brandon next week. Thanks to his 2-0 head-to-head record against Andrew and what would be a one-game advantage in the division record compared to Brandon, Will would win the AFL East in a three-way tiebreaker.

Going back to that first game mentioned, Cory is our second unlucky loser of Week 12. He finished just behind Andrew in scoring. It’s now the third unlucky defeat Cory has suffered this season, a league high, and his -2 differential in luck games makes him the unluckiest manager based on top 6 performances. Only Will and Sean, each at 1 WBE, also have a negative differential in luck games.

The flip side to that, Anthony has a +2 win differential in luck games. Only Brandon has more lucky victories than Anthony does this season with three of them. He and Eric both have a +1 win differential in such games.

Some of our coaching awards are starting to shape up as we enter the final two weeks of the regular season. With yet another top QB performance from Lamar Jackson, Sean now leads all AFL teams by more than 60 points at the quarterback position. Will Massimini had this week’s top running back performer as Leonard Fournette found the end zone for just the second and third times this season, but Anthony has a 20-point lead over Eric on the season for points scored by starting running backs (not yet including those designated as flex players, which could give Eric the advantage when the season ends).

The wide receiver position has been dominated by Danny thanks to both DeAndre Hopkins and Michael Thomas lighting it up as top five fantasy receivers, and that’s despite missing out on about 20 points when he forgot to plug Thomas back into his lineup in Week 10 following the Saints’ bye week.

The tight end position leader right now is Sean, but Andrew and Evan aren’t far behind and Cory has played tight ends in his flex frequently and that could put him in the mix when everything is officially tallied at the end of the season.

Our defensive coach of the week for the second week in a row is Danny. The Cleveland Browns defense netted him 19.3 points. Danny still sits in 9th on the season for defensive points with Anthony continuing to lead the way with now more than 230 points scored, nearly 30 more than had been scored by the defensive streaming leader at this point last season.

Our kicker coach of the week is Eric, who earned 14.8 points from San Francisco 49ers kicker Chase McLaughlin. That total helped him leapfrog Evan into 9th on that streamer list, which is still paced by William with his 129.3 points, 14 more than the kicker streaming leader had through 12 weeks in 2018.

Our coach of the week is Danny. He made two successful coaching risks, starting James Washington over TY Hilton while cutting Daniel Carlson to pick up Atlanta Falcons kicker Younghoe Koo. Those two decisions netted him a league best 21.7 points.

The worst coach of this week was Sean. He needed a kicker to fill in for Dan Bailey on his bye and, instead of signing Dustin Hopkins, who had the highest projection among free agent kickers and wound up scoring 15.8 points, he picked up Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicker Matt Gay, who missed three extra points against the Falcons. Sean lost out on a league-high 13.6 points and is fortunate that didn’t come back to bite him.

Sean has taken a league low four coaching risks all season. With one successful risk and four failed risks, he has cost his team 34.6 points, the third most in the AFL.

The worst coach so far this season in terms of points lost has been Evan with 93.16 points lost vs projections. He’s been successful on 5 of his 13 coaching risks this season. Despite that, Evan actually has a +1 win differential compared to what he’d have if he simply went with projections all season.

William has cost his team 22.44 points with 6 successful and 8 failed coaching risks, which is only the fifth worst coaching point differential in the AFL this season, but he still sits at a -3 win differential after his coaching decisions cost him close games in Weeks 2, 3, and 4.

Cory has been successful on 9 of 14 coaching risks, the second highest success percentage of coaches who have averaged at least one coaching risk per week this season. He has earned his team a league-high 2 wins compared to what he’d have going chalk all year, but his +46.02 coaching point differential is only the second best mark in the AFL so far.

Will hasn’t taken as many risks, with only 9 logged so far in 2019, but he’s been successful on 7 of them and has earned his team 63.74 points so far. While those coaching decisions haven’t earned him any victories, the most important thing is that they haven’t exacerbated the poor scheduling luck Will has had this season.

Check out the review of Week 12 and updated power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Anthony Battle at Alex Kincaid

In the second lowest scoring game of the week, Anthony took a one-game lead in the wild-card race with his second victory of the season against Alex, which eliminates Alex from playoff contention.