Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 8, 2019

I’m sure we’ll see another huge dip in scoring next week because that’s how this roller coaster of a season has gone so far.

What a week! We had some very high scores, some huge performances left on benches, and the craziest waiver wire snafu we’ve seen in our league’s history.

Last week we had just two starting players record top-40 performances at their positions and one manager record a top-75 team score in league history. What a difference a week can make.

Cory Puffett was the big winner this week with two top 10 performances. Deshaun Watson scored 42.44 points thanks to his five touchdown passes, good for sixth all-time among fantasy quarterbacks in the AFL. Meanwhile, his big waiver wire pickup of the week, Aaron Jones, went off for four rushing touchdowns against the Cowboys on the way to a 47.6-point performance, fourth all-time among running backs.

Just behind Jones, Christian McCaffrey gave Anthony Battle 46.5 points, fifth all-time among running backs. That helped Anthony lead the league in scoring for already the second time this season. His 156.40-point game ranks 23rd in AFL history.

At wide receiver, Danny Hatcher got 35.7 points from Michael Thomas, tied for 18th in AFL history, and Alex Kincaid received 34.1 points from Amari Cooper, which ties for 30th all-time.

Meanwhile, Evan Ash left a whole lot of points on his bench as Will Fuller caught three of Deshaun Watson’s touchdown passes and had a 45.7-point performance that would have ranked #1 all-time at the wide receiver position in AFL history, beating out Julio Jones’s 44.9-point outing in Week 12 of the 2017 season on Danny’s roster.

Instead, Fuller’s performance will be forgotten, at least as far as our league’s history goes.

Despite all those points sitting on the bench, Evan finished second in scoring this week with 147.76 points, which ranks 42nd in league history. He finished just ahead of Cory’s 147.12-point outing, which is 44th all-time, and Eric Meyer’s 141.56-point game, 65th in league history.

In all, 11 of our 12 teams scored at least 100 points and the league totaled 1499.92 points, which ranks as the 2nd highest scoring week in league history through 87 regular season weeks. Our six winning teams averaged 138.8 points, which is the second highest average winning score, and it is the sixth time our six losing teams averaged at least 110 points, despite Stephen April barely cracking 80.

By leading the league in scoring, Anthony earns his 13th career Tom Brady Award, which ties him for first all-time with Eric who just got his 13th last week.

Our game of the week featured Evan and Brandon Saunders. Evan earned his 9th career Peyton Manning Award with the win and improves to 9-7 in game of the week appearances. Brandon, meanwhile, falls to 4-13 in his appearances, which is the worst winning percentage of any manager who has appeared in at least three games of the week.

Evan won that game despite a wild, wild week. His team’s optimum score this week was 227.96, which means he left 80.2 points on his bench. Most of that came from Will Fuller, but he also lost out on 25 points by starting the Bills defense, which played well and scored 16 points, over the Eagles defense, which recorded ten sacks, four forced turnovers, and two touchdowns!

And those 80.2 points left on Evan’s bench don’t even account for the waiver wire gaff alluded to at the top of this post. Evan spent $14 of his FAAB to claim Nyheim Hines off waivers last week. He intended to drop Green Bay Packers running back Jamaal Williams to complete the transaction. He mistakenly dropped Aaron Jones, instead.

Only five managers realized Jones was available and placed claims (how fortunate that this week, of all weeks, is when Fleaflicker rolled out the ability to see all waiver claims and not just the winning one). Evan placed a claim for $37. Sean placed a claim for $81, which was the second most.

Cory, meanwhile, decided to put the last $134 of his remaining FAAB on Jones. Nine out of the twelve managers in the AFL had more FAAB than that remaining, but didn’t feel it was worth it. Time will tell who made the right decision.

Cory is the first manager since the AFL began using a Free Agent Acquisition Budget, to run out before the final week of the season. Of the other 11 managers, only Danny has less than $100 remaining.

Now, while dropping Aaron Jones doesn’t count against (or toward) Evan’s optimum score for the week, it does count against his coaching. That and the decision to go against projections and start the Bills defense instead of the Eagles cost him 65.90 points. At least his risk of starting Josh Allen over Andy Dalton paid off and earned him 0.08 points back. In all, Evan cost his team a season worst 65.82 points via coaching. But he actually does not earn the distinction of worst coach of the week.

That is because Evan didn’t cost his team a win. In fact, he still won his matchup by more than 25 points. But one manager did cost his team a win. Andrew Perez went against projections and started Stefon Diggs instead of Courtland Sutton, and while that only cost his team 11.3 points, that was more than his margin of defeat against Alex this week.

After three straight weeks of being designated the league’s worst coach due to an unprecedented streak of costing his team games via coaching risks, William Battle is our best coach this week! He earned 18.9 points with one very successful risk, starting D.J. Chark in his flex instead of Jordan Howard. This helped him earn his first top 6 scoring performance of the season.

Unfortunately, he was facing Eric and still lost the game, making him our unlucky manager of the week. But at least things are looking up and William is still only one game out of the AFL East division lead.

Our defensive coach of the week is Sean Kennedy, who got 22.5 points from the Minnesota Vikings defense, and our kicker coach of the week is Anthony, who started Justin Tucker and got 17.4 points from him.

Speaking of Anthony again, I already mentioned he was the league’s top scorer this week. He also happened to be facing Stephen, who scored just 80.82 points. It is the 10th time in league history that the league’s highest and lowest scorers matched up in the same week. Anthony’s margin of victory, 75.58 points, is the second highest of those 10 games. The only larger margin was Danny’s 91.8-point win against Nolan Soter in Week 9 of the 2016 season.

Speaking of scoring anomalies, which I love keeping track of, I dug back through my historical documents because I wanted to know what the longest streaks are of scoring at least 100 points, or 88.9 points in seasons prior to 2016, when we added the second starting RB spot to our lineups.

Danny and Stephen own our longest inactive streaks in league history at 13 games each. Sean is currently on an 11-game streak of scoring at least 100 points, dating back to Week 9 of last season.

Eric is on an absolutely unprecedented run of success. We already knew that last year he became the only manager to date to go an entire season without failing to meet that threshold. He also is one of three managers who has scored at least 100 points in every game so far this season, the other two being Sean and Alex.

But Eric’s streak actually dates back to Week 11 of the 2017 season, meaning he has gone 23 consecutive regular season games scoring at least 100 points. That is mind boggling that he’s on a run that has lasted 10 games longer than any other such run in AFL history.

Now, speaking of the three owners who have hit that mark every week this year, Alex has gotten the short end of the stick as he sits at 2-3 so far. By breakdown, he is the unluckiest manager in the league as he sits at 1.1 WBE (wins below expected). Will Massimini trails just behind Alex at 1.0 WBE and Cory is the third unluckiest manager through five weeks at 0.5 WBE.

To be fair, though, Alex did get a lucky win this week as he finished 8th in the league in scoring but was facing Andrew who had the third lowest score of the week.

This year I am also looking at the luck factor using Top 6 scoring performances and those three managers all have one fewer win than they have top six performances, meaning they all sit at 1 WBE.

Now, unless you lead the league in scoring every single week, any undefeated team will also be considered lucky if you look at the breakdown metric. Sean is currently at 1.4 WAE (wins above expected), which makes him the luckiest manager in the AFL.

Eric trails Sean at 1.2 WAE and Andrew is actually the third luckiest at 0.5 WAE when using breakdown.

When we look at top 6 performances, though, Sean is actually exactly where he should be. Despite having a worse breakdown than Eric, Sean is the only manager who has finished top 6 in scoring every single week this season, so he has earned his 5-0 record.

Our three lucky managers by this metric, each sitting at 1 WAE, are Eric, Andrew, and Danny.

I’d like to close on Eric and Sean. Though both may be considered a little lucky in some respects, I’ve offered plenty of reasons through this post that neither should be considered all that lucky. Sean has finished in the top half of the league in scoring every week this season. Eric hasn’t failed to score 100 points in a regular season contest since five weeks before we found out how well endowed Nick Foles is.

To put into perspective how remarkable it is that Eric and Sean have made it to 5-0, only two other managers in league history have made it to this mark – Evan did it in 2013, our inaugural season, and Eric did it just a season ago.

Only Evan managed to continue that streak as he made it to 7-0 before losing a game.

This coming week, Sean will face Alex, who finally got his second win of the season after a three-game skid. Meanwhile, Evan will try to hand Eric his second straight Week 6 loss following a 5-0 start (yes, it just so happens Evan was the team that stopped Eric from reaching 6-0 last season).

It’s the second week of divisional play for our fantasy season next week, so strap in as those races come into a little clearer focus!

Check out the review of Week 5 and updated power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Evan Ash at Brandon Saunders

Evan made some serious coaching gaffs this week via coaching risks and a huge mistake working the waiver wire, he left 80.20 points on his bench, and he still wound up winning by 26 points and posting the second highest score of the week. Brandon had a solid week; he just couldn’t keep up.