Written by Cory Puffett
Published September 15, 2020

Entering the final game of the Week 1 schedule, after just being glad that fantasy football was happening at all in a year plagued by uncertainty, all that defending AFL champion Sean Kennedy and his commissioner Cory Puffett could do was watch and pray.

Sean entered Monday night with a narrow lead and a 73-percent win probability according to Fleaflicker. Chris Boswell extended Sean’s lead over Brandon Saunders out to 10.8, with only Noah Fant left to play for the man he defeated in the 2019 title game to hoist his first league championship trophy (not to mention the title belt he bought this offseason).

Meanwhile, Cory was all done after Sunday night. Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper didn’t give him nearly as much as he hoped for, but they did leave him a lead of nearly 21 points against Eric Meyer, his co-commissioner and one of the best players in league history, with three 12-win seasons and a league title to his name.

Eric’s third-round keeper, Derrick Henry, and Titans kicker Stephen Gostkowski still had to play, giving Eric a 65-percent win probability according to Fleaflicker. Adding to Cory’s dread was Eric’s history of success against him; six victories in their seven meetings all-time (they’ve never shared a division in the AFL’s eight seasons). Back in 2014, the two had a meeting that went down to a Monday night tilt between the Colts and Giants where Larry Donnell caught a touchdown pass in the 4th quarter to give Eric the victory by a margin of just 0.8 points.

Despite the higher win probability, Sean saw his hopes for a 1-0 start dashed pretty early in the late half of the Monday night double header. Noah Fant’s third catch of the game was a 9-yard touchdown grab late in the first quarter that gave Brandon a 0.1-point lead. Fant added two more receptions for 47 yards in the second quarter and Brandon was able to head to bed at a reasonable time despite his tight end only being targeted one time in the second half.

Cory and Eric, meanwhile, were forced to watch the game all the way through to its conclusion just before 1:30 a.m. Derrick Henry had a solid game with 17.7 fantasy points, aided mightily by his 31 rushing attempts. Denver did more than Cory had dared to hope they could do to contain him.

But that shouldn’t have been enough to stave off defeat. Cory’s saving grace was Stephen Gostkowski, the former Patriot, who missed four kicks on the night. His three missed field goals and one missed PAT officially accounted for -2.7 points on Eric's ledger. In reality, they represented a 17-point swing from what Eric could have had. In fact, Gostkowski could have missed all three field goals and Eric still would have won if he had just made that second PAT.

It was a nail biter, and Eric will be holding out hope for a couple of miraculous stat corrections. Cory walked away with a 1.98-point victory and not once last season was a defense or player awarded more than 1.7 points on a correction.

Brandon’s comeback earned him his 5th Peyton Manning award, given weekly to the winner of our designated Game of the Week. We always begin the season with a rematch of last year’s title game to serve in this role. This was Brandon’s first GOTW victory since Week 10 in 2018 and it improves his record to 5-13 in such appearances. Sean’s loss drops him to 5-8 in his Peyton Manning award opportunities.

Last year, Evan Ash opened the year with a loss before rattling off seven wins in a row. Unfortunately, he then lost four straight and wound up missing the playoffs. He settled for a consolation title, earning the first overall pick in this year’s AFL draft, which he used on Ezekiel Elliott. That pick paid off along with his third-round pick, Josh Jacobs, as the two combined for 64.8 points and led him to his 13th career Tom Brady Award, given weekly to the league’s highest scorer. Only two managers in AFL history have led the league in scoring more times than Evan has.

Evan was matched up with our league’s newest member, Alex Mayo, who had a rough introduction to the AFL thanks to a few poor performances by players like Michael Thomas who should be expected to bounce back. It was the 12th time in league history that the AFL’s leading scorer was matched up with the lowest scorer. As far as low-scoring performances go, it could've been worse for Alex, though. Evan’s 45.1-point margin of victory is the lowest point differential in those 12 games.

For his performance, Jacobs joins Nick Chubb in a tie at #31 on the all-time single game running back performance list in our league's history. Davante Adams joins the wide receiver list at #28 in a losing performance on Sean’s roster with his 34.6-point effort.

A silver lining for Sean is his continued streak of 100-point games. Last year he became the second manager in AFL history to reach that mark in every game of the regular season, and the first to continue that mark through the playoffs. Counting only regular season games, Sean extended his active 100-point streak to 21 games this week, now just two shy of Eric’s all-time record of 23 straight 100-point games, which ended early last season. The second longest active streak in our league is Cory’s four-game streak.

No manager joined the single-game team scoring leaderboard this week as our 12 managers combined to tally 1,391.16 points, the 17th highest mark in our league’s 97 regular season weeks. Our six losing managers averaged the third highest score among losing teams in weeks with fewer than 1,400 points scored across the league.

Brandon earns defensive coach of the week honors. He drafted the New Orleans Saints in the 14th round as the 11th defense off the board and they put up a 22-point performance against the Bucs, the highest score of the week with our league’s defensive scoring settings.

The kicker coach of the week is Cory, who earned 12.6 points from Lions kicker Matt Prater, tied for the best mark of the week in our league with Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo, who was unowned in Week 1. Cory drafted Eagles kicker Jake Elliott with the second-to-last pick in the AFL draft but made the decision to drop him for Prater, a decision that earned his team 6.8 points.

The best coach of the week is William Battle, who also wound up with the second highest score of the week. His decision to start the Baltimore Ravens defense over the Kansas City Chiefs may not be controversial, but it did go against Fleaflicker projections and it wound up earning his team 9.74 points.

Alex Mayo takes home the newly-named Hue Jackson Award for Week 1 (thank you Sean for the suggestion!) for worst coach of the week. While it didn’t make the difference in his matchup against Evan, Alex’s decision to go against Fleaflicker’s projections and start Drew Brees instead of Cam Newton cost him a league-high 13.1 points.

In all, managers took just six coaching risks this week. Though they were successful on three of them, they resulted in a net loss of 9.36 points across the AFL.

Our unlucky manager of the week is Eric, who had the fourth highest score in the league but lost to Cory. And Brandon is our lucky manager of the week as he won despite finishing just outside the top half of the league in scoring.

According to Playoffcomputer.com, Cory leads the league after Week 1 with a 43.5-percent chance of making the playoffs and a 36-percent chance of winning the AFL East. Evan and Stephen come in right behind him as each have a 40.8-percent chance of making the playoffs and a 31-percent chance of winning their AFL central division.

Playoff computer uses league settings, past schedule, and remaining schedule to generate playoff odds using a blend of Monte Carlo simulations and real possibilities (trending more and more to the latter as the season progresses) to determine playoff odds and, later in the season, paths to clinch. It should be noted that this is not strictly a fantasy football tool so it does not take rosters into consideration.

Check out the recap of Week 1 and this season’s opening power rankings below:

Game of the Week: Brandon Saunders at Sean Kennedy

Our annual season-opening rematch of last season’s championship pitted Sean’s mighty Sean Kennedy against Brandon and for the first time since 2016, the defending champ lost, thanks in part to Brandon’s defense, the New Orleans Saints.

Power Rankings

Last year I created a brand-new formula for our power rankings, and I really liked the formula. What I didn’t like was the switch from a high score being better to a low score being better. Last year a perfect score would be a 1.0 while the worst possible score would be a 12.0.

This year I have taken the same formula but re-calculated the final score in such a way that a perfect score will be a 100 and the worst possible score will be an 8.3. I know that floor seems a bit random, but it’s better than the 158.3 mark of a “perfect” passer rating.

Anyway, this year you are looking for a higher power score like we used to. Beginning next week, I will track changes to each manager’s power score within the spreadsheet.

Congrats to William Battle on opening the season in the top power position, a spot he hasn’t occupied since Week 8 of the 2018 season.