Written by Cory Puffett
Published December 10, 2019

The regular season is over, but everybody still has something to play for! The playoffs are here and the all-important consolation bracket deserves some attention, as well.

For the third time in four years, Eric Meyer has finished the regular season with a 12-2 mark and will be the #1 seed in the playoffs. He is joined at the top of the league by Sean Kennedy, who is the #2 seed on the head-to-head tiebreaker thanks to a 12-point loss when he faced Eric in Week 10.

Anthony Battle clinched the wild card and the #3 seed this week despite losing his matchup and falling below 100 points for the second week in a row. His 8-6 record held up thanks to a terrible week by Evan Ash, who posted the lowest score any team has totaled in a game all season! Evan lost five of his last six games, starting with a Week 9 loss against Anthony that cost him the wild card spot on the H2H tiebreaker.

Our 4th seed for the playoffs comes from the AFL East, a division that, as recently as Week 10, was led by a team two games under .500. A four-game winning streak to end the season gave Brandon the division title and a respectable 8-6 record entering the playoffs.

Of our four playoff teams, only Sean did not appear in the 2018 postseason, where Eric and Brandon both fell in the first round and Anthony lost in the championship game against his brother, William Battle.

Speaking of which, William is the fifth manager in a row to miss the playoffs the year after winning the AFL championship. The only exception in league history was Danny Hatcher, who won AFL titles in both 2013 and 2014 before missing the playoffs in 2015 and beginning the current trend.

As I mentioned, our non-playoff teams still have something to play for. The winner of the top bracket of the consolation ladder, which consists of Evan Ash, Cory Puffett, Alex Kincaid, and Will Massimini, are playing with the intention of getting the first choice of where they want to pick in the first round of the 2020 AFL draft.

The bottom bracket features Andrew Perez and Stephen April along with our two most recent league champions, William and Danny. Of the four of them, one will lose both consolation games and he will not get to pick his spot in next year’s draft, taking whichever pick the other 11 managers don’t want.

Before we get to the playoffs, however, let’s take a quick look back on the final week of our regular season. Our twelve teams barely broke the 1300-point mark at 1,300.66 points for Week 14, which falls outside of our league’s 40 highest scoring weeks. We haven’t had a week rank in the top 36 since Week 9 of this season!

Even so, we did have a few notable performances. Cory led the league with 148.98 points, good for the 47th highest scoring game of all-time. That earned him his 6th career Tom Brady Award and his first of the 2019 campaign.

Incredibly, we had seven different Tom Brady Award winners in the second half of our 14-week regular season. That has never happened before in the AFL. The first seven Tom Brady Awards of the season were divided amongst five of the same second-half winners.

Of our playoff teams, only Brandon did not win one this season. It’s the second year in a row Brandon has made the playoffs without leading the league in scoring even once. In fact, the last time Brandon led the league in scoring was Week 1 of the 2016 regular season.

A big help to Cory in leading the league in scoring this week was Zach Ertz. His 25.6 points rank 30th in league history at the tight end position. In fact, his is the only game for a tight end all of 2019 that landed among the top 40 all-time performances at the position, and it would have been just an ordinary outing if it weren’t for a touchdown catch in the final minutes of regulation and then another touchdown reception in overtime on Monday night.

The only other position top 40 performance this week was Jameis Winston, who scored 37.44 points in Eric’s starting lineup, good for 24th all-time among quarterbacks. He won his matchup, but Eric left Drew Brees and his 41.96 points on his bench. That would have replaced Jared Goff for the 10th highest quarterback score in AFL history.

Cory led the league by a large margin in roster strength this week with an optimum point total of 204 points, just the second optimum score of at least 200 points all season. The only other such week was Evan’s 227 optimum score in Week 5.

This week was not kind to Evan, though. His loss knocked him out of the playoffs and he managed to set the lowest point total of the entire year with his 61.04-point outing. Only one offensive player in his starting lineup scored double digits in Week 14.

As I mentioned earlier, Anthony benefited big time from that loss because his own loss to Cory could have knocked him out of the playoffs. Stephen also benefited a bit from Evan’s poor week as he posted the third lowest score in the league but walked away with a win.

Stephen and Evan combined to score just 142.64 points this week. The previous lowest combined score of 2019 was the Week 10 matchup between William and Danny in which the two scored 158.02 total points.

Brandon joined Stephen on the Luck Express this week as he earned just a 4-7 breakdown but was matched up against Andrew, who kept Stephen from becoming the 10th manager in league history to win with a 1-10 breakdown.

Our unlucky managers this week were Danny and Alex. Danny finished fourth in scoring, thanks in part to having the two highest-scoring starting wide receivers in the league this week in Michael Thomas and DeAndre Hopkins. But he was facing Eric this week and so fell to 3-11 on the season. He went 1-2 in the end-of-year round-robin division schedule despite finishing in the top half of scorers in all three weeks.

Alex, meanwhile, wound up placing last place in the ultra-competitive AFL West thanks to his unlucky loss. But he finished the year 7-7 and it’s really rather remarkable that he did.

Never before in AFL history has a division finished a season without a single team under .500.

And perhaps what’s most remarkable about the strength of the AFL West is that Sean went undefeated against his division rivals this season. Thank about that: three teams at or above .500 in his division and Sean didn’t drop a single game to any of them. Each of the past three seasons we had a team go 5-1 in their division (Eric in 2016, Andrew in 2017, and Anthony in 2018), but never had we seen a team go 6-0 in their division.

Note: Evan and Anthony each went 4-0 against their division in 2013 and 2014, respectively, when we had four divisions of three teams.

Our defensive coach of the week is Will, who earned 28.0 points from the Pittsburgh Steelers defense. That effort was a big part of his game of the week victory. It’s Will’s fifth career Peyton Manning Award and the win moved him up to the last spot in that top bracket of the consolation ladder.

Alex was our kicker coach of the week as he repeated from Week 13 with New Orleans Saints kicker Wil Lutz.

Official totals are still pending stat corrections, but Anthony will be our defensive coach of the year and William will be our kicker coach of the year. As we have since 2016, we crown two managers as coaches of the year, one based on wins earned from coaching risks and the other based on points earned from coaching risks.

Cory wins the former COY award as he netted two coaching wins on the year. It is his second COY award, his other being for points back in 2017.

The latter of the COY awards goes to Will Massimini. This is now his third time being recognized as a coach of the year after he won for both wins and points in 2016 when we introduced the award.

Passing, rushing, and receiving coaching honors are to be determined pending a tally of all starting performances from this season.

Looking back to Week 14, our worst coach of the week was Andrew. He failed on one coaching risk, starting the 49ers defense in place of the Cowboys defense, and he failed to replace an injured Le’Veon Bell in his starting lineup. The Cowboys defense and his suggest RB starter, Bo Scarbrough, scored 16.06 more points than the 49ers defense did.

We don’t have a top coach this week as nobody earned points based on coaching risks. In fact, out of eight coaching risks across the league this week, only one was successful. Brandon earned 14 points with his decision to start Tyler Higbee instead of Mike Gesicki at the tight end position. But he cost his team 23.8 points by starting Derrius Guice instead of Joe Mixon and Kareem Hunt instead of Kenny Golladay.

Finally, before we go on to our weekly recap and our final power rankings of the season, let’s take a brief look at how luck shaped our final standings this season.

There are many fantasy football players advocating for “all play” leagues these days. An all-play league is one in which everybody just plays everybody each week. In other worst, your record is your breakdown.

If we operated under that format, Sean would be our top seed with a 115-39 record. Eric would be the #2 seed with a 111-43 record. Our #3 seed would be Alex with his 84-70 breakdown. And our #4 seed would be Anthony with his 81-73 breakdown, since divisions would be rendered obsolete under an all-play format.

There’s also a hybrid all-play/H2H format where you take the breakdown and add teams’ H2H records to that. Continuing to use divisions under that format, the playoff field would look like this: #1 Sean (127-41), #2 Eric (123-45), #3 Alex (91-77), #4 Brandon (81-87)

Finally, if we were to adopt a victory points system, the playoffs could look like this:

Version 1 (one point for H2H win, one point for finishing in the top half of scoring): #1 Sean (25 VP), #2 Eric (23 VP), #3 Cory (16 VP), #4 Brandon (14 VP). Evan and Alex would each have 15 victory points but we would still have Brandon in as the AFL East division winner.

Version 2 (one point for H2H win, two points for a top third score, one point for a middle third score): #1 Sean (35 VP), #2 Eric (34 VP), #3 Alex (23 VP), #4 Brandon (22 VP).

Check out the review of Week 14 and updated power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Will Massimini at William Battle

Thanks in large part to a huge discrepancy between their defenses, Will avoided a second consecutive 10-loss season and clinched the final spot in the top bracket of the consolation ladder, guaranteeing himself a top four selection in the 2020 draft pick draft.

I have charted everybody’s movement through the power rankings, and between power scores, over the course of the regular season.