Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 22, 2019

For the first time in a few years, I pre-wrote my intro to this week’s recap before Monday Night Football. I had the storyline all planned out. I might have even swapped out my normal, simplistic headline for something more flashy, such as “William Battle Does It Again!”

Back in our inaugural season of 2013, Evan Ash looked like he was starting a dynasty from the get-go. He ran through the first seven weeks of our then 13-week season without a loss.

He was slated to face William’s 1-6 squad, a remarkably consistent team but one that had not yet scored triple digits on the season (only 8 starters on the roster back then – but still, only one other team had failed to reach 100 points at least twice through the first seven weeks).

William finally reached 100 points and he knocked off Evan’s undefeated squad in that game.

With his 1-5 team facing Sean Kennedy’s 6-0 squad, it appeared history might be repeating itself this week when, after Sunday’s 1pm games, he held a 102-37 lead over Sean with three remaining players to Sean’s four.

In one of the most remarkable comeback victories in league history, Sean earned 65 points from three players in Sunday’s late afternoon window to 11 points from two players on William’s squad and then closed it out when Sony Michel outscored Julian Edelman 24-11 on Monday night to give Sean the win by less than two points.

Considering it looked as though Sean’s streak of 100-point games, the longest active streak in the league at 12 games, was in serious jeopardy, it was an incredible comeback to extend that streak to 13 games, to extend his undefeated season through Week 7, and in fact to earn the Tom Brady Award as the week’s highest scorer.

In an extraordinarily low-scoring week, even more so than Week 4, Sean’s 125.50 points was enough to lead the league in scoring. It is Sean’s 7th career Tom Brady Award, which is tied for fifth all time with Danny Hatcher.

The fact that Sean won by less than two points means exactly what you’d think it suggests. William was the second highest scorer of the week, and he lost.

It is just the second time in AFL history this phenomenon has occurred. The only other instance was in Week 9 of the 2015 season when Eric Meyer lost to Evan Ash despite a 10-1 breakdown, but Evan at least won that matchup by almost 35 points.

This was a heartbreaker for William who could have moved to within a game of the AFL East division lead with a win. Instead he’ll have to settle for the consolation prize of being the defensive coach of the week, thanks to the 25.5 points he got from the Jaguars defense. (It should be noted, though, that the Chiefs defense was sitting on William’s bench and they scored 29 points.)

The league’s 12 teams scored a combined 1,232.14 points. Only five teams reached triple digits, the first time that’s happened since only four hit that threshold in Week 14 of the 2016 season.

No team posted a top 75 single-game score, but one player managed to record a top 40 score at his position.

Aaron Rodgers scored 45.86 points for Stephen April, good for the third highest quarterback score in league history. Unfortunately for Stephen, some shenanigans from the Cardinals left him no choice but to start David Johnson, who ran the ball once for two yards and then did not see the field again.

Thanks in large part to that, Stephen lost his matchup in a game where Rodgers scored more than half of his team’s total points. Like William, he will have to accept kicker coach of the week recognition as a consolation. He got 14.5 points from LA Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein.

Speaking of David Johnson, his backup Chase Edmonds had a game! 36.7 fantasy points, good to tie for 27th all-time among running backs in AFL history. Sadly, Edmonds was sitting on Will Massimini’s bench. How was Will to know David Johnson wasn’t actually healthy despite being listed as active before the game began.

I bring up Edmonds not because it reflected poorly on Will’s team management, but because he was a part of a three-headed monster of players who had top 40 performances waste away on the bench.

One such performance came on the bench of Stephen’s opponent, Cory Puffett. Less than two hours before kickoff of the 1 o’clock Sunday games, Cory replaced Darren Waller with Zach Ertz in his starting lineup. Waller went on to score 28.1 points, which would have been 13th all time among tight ends.

The headliner of that trifecta, however, was on William’s bench. Marvin Jones hauled in ten catches and four touchdowns in a 38.3-point outing that would have been 11th all time on the AFL’s wide receiver list.

Of those three, only Waller would not have changed the outcome of his team’s matchup since his team pulled a win out anyway.

 Week 7’s game of the week featured Eric and Anthony Battle, two of the league’s highest scoring teams. Anthony was coming off of winning back-to-back Tom Brady Awards. Eric has one of those this season plus a couple game-of-the-week victories already in tow.

Anthony’s victory was sitting on his bench in the form of Kirk Cousins. He topped 30 points for the first time this season (though, to be fair, he did score 29 just a week earlier). Matt Ryan, meanwhile, was ineffective in the starting lineup, scoring less than 3 points and leaving the game during garbage time.

The matchup was never particularly close and despite another great performance by the Patriots defense for Anthony on Monday night, Eric took home a 24-point victory.

It is Eric’s 15th career Peyton Manning Award and he improves to 15-7 in game of the week appearances. He has appeared in 24.7 percent of the league’s games of the week all-time, a testament to his consistency as a contender.

With William’s remarkably unlucky loss this week, we of course have one lucky victor. Alex Kincaid was slightly lucky with his victory over Brandon, as he posted a 5-6 breakdown for the week. Based on top-6 weeks, Alex now has a luck factor of 0.

AFL managers combined for 11 coaching risks this week and were successful on eight of them, the best success rate of the season. This was also the highest number of successful risk in a single week this season.

The coach of the week is Cory, who earned 8.1 points and a win with two successful coaching risks, starting the Bears defense and dropping the Packers defense while also adding and starting Allen Lazard instead of Nelson Agholor when Josh Gordon was ruled out and Cory didn’t have another active receiver on the roster.

Andrew Perez, despite being the lowest scorer of the week, earns honorable mention for coach of the week because he earned the most points from coaching. His successful coaching risk of starting Stefon Diggs over Michael Gallup netted his squad 11.8 points.

The worst coach of the week was Evan, who for the second week in a row lost points by starting Mark Andrews over Austin Hooper despite the projections favoring the Atlanta tight end. This week it cost him 7.7 points.

Through Week 7, the luckiest teams in the AFL by breakdown are Sean (1.7 WAE), Evan (1.4 WAE), and Eric (1.3 WAE). Looking only at top 6 performances, Brandon, Evan, Eric, and Andrew all have one more win than they’d be expected to have.

The unluckiest teams by breakdown are William (1.5 WBE), Will (1.3 WBE) and Cory (0.7 WBE). From top 6 performances alone, Cory has two fewer wins than he’d be expected to have while William and Will are each at 1 WBE.

This is the time of year I start looking at season-long defensive and kicker streaming. Anthony leads everybody with 147.54 defensive points on the season. Last year the highest defensive streaming total through Week 7 was 113. That’s a significant difference, though to be fair the Patriots might be better than any defense we’ve seen in our lifetimes and have been playing a very weak schedule and Stephen, who is second in defensive points to date, is a few points below last year’s leader with 107.64 points to date.

The more interesting thing is that at the bottom end in defensive streaming we have Cory, who has 70.16 points, mostly coming from last year’s top scoring defense, the Chicago Bears (though it should be noted they were on his bench for their matchup with the Redskins). The lowest defensive streaming total at this point last season was 51 points, so there’s a somewhat significant difference in the floor of defenses this season, even with the ability to score negative points.

On the kicker side, the spread is much more similar to last year, when the top kicker streaming score was 76 and the lowest was 39 through Week 7.

Our leading kicker streamer is Anthony (doubling up on the non-offensive positions!) with 79.1 points to date while our lowest is undefeated Sean with 39.3 points.

Check out the review of Week 7 and updated power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Eric Meyer at Anthony Battle

After leading the league in scoring for two straight weeks, Anthony’s team took a week off with his quarterback, top wide receiver, and his top running back not on bye combining for less than 10 points. Even another solid defensive performance by the Patriots couldn’t bring him back against Eric, who rebounded after falling below 100 points for the first time since 2017.