Written by Cory Puffett
Published December 3, 2020

What a league to spend the longest week in NFL history with!

This was a wild week as we dealt with three Thanksgiving games that became two and an edition of one of the NFL’s greatest rivalries thrice postponed and finally played yesterday afternoon.

As much fun as Wednesday afternoon football was, it’s nice to have a reprieve today and get a few days to catch our breaths and prepare our fantasy teams for another week as we’ll have a Monday evening double header and some Tuesday football, to boot.

As wild as Week 12 was for the real NFL, it was a doozy for us, as well.

For the third time in AFL history, and the first time since Week 4 of the 2017 season, the game of the week featured the two lowest scoring teams of the week. Evan Ash recorded the 9th lowest winning score the AFL has seen since rosters expanded in 2016 with just 84.96 points, but he clinched his 12th career Peyton Manning Award, improving to 12-9 in game of the week appearances.

Looking at more than just games of the week, this was the 12th time in our league’s history the two lowest scoring teams faced off. It is also the third time this has happened in 2020, which is now the second season to see this phenomenon occur three times.

Evan beat Stephen April by 1.7 points this week, the smallest margin of victory in those 12 games. Stephen’s poor coaching decision to start Chris Carson instead of Kenyan Drake cost him 11.3 points, far greater than his margin of defeat, and earns him this week’s Hue Jackson Award.

Stephen still leads the league in scoring this season, but that lead has now come down to just a 2-point margin over Cory Puffett, who is coming off his worst performance of the season.

Only one manager had scored 100 points in each of the season’s first 11 games. Cory’s streak came to an end this week as he failed to reach even 90 points. His 100-point streak ends at 14 regular season games, the third longest such streak in AFL history.

What’s worse for Cory, he lost this week to Sean Kennedy, which puts him on the brink of elimination from this year’s playoffs.

Cory left a lot of points on his bench this week, including 26 points from Latavius Murray, who finished as the #4 running back in Week 12. If it’s any consolation for Cory, Sean recorded a perfect roster score and even Cory’s optimum lineup for the week wouldn’t have gotten it done.

Sean recorded his first 100-point game since Week 5, snapping a career long 6-game draught, which ties the league record set last year by Stephen from Week 7 to Week 12. In doing so, Sean guaranteed that he will not finish the 2020 season with the worst record. Granted, he could still take home the sacko in the consolation ladder, so he hasn’t avoided a First to Worst season just yet.

A significant part of Sean’s victory in Week 12 was his coaching, and he earns recognition for it as this week’s Top Coach. He had four successful coaching risks this week and earned a league-high 14.96 points from them.

His biggest payoff was starting Nelson Agholor over Tim Patrick, who finished with a goose egg in Denver’s quarterback-less outing. He earned another 5.6 points by starting Tyler Bass instead of Zane Gonzalez, who he dropped. Another 1.4 points came from choosing Trey Burton instead of Kyle Rudolph from the waiver wire for a tight end spot start. And finally, a whopping 0.06 points came via his quarterback decision as he went with Carson Wentz instead of Ryan Tannehill.

On the other side of things, Eric Meyer cost his team a league-high 14.66 points by failing on two coaching risks. He missed out on 7.76 points by picking up and starting the Minnesota Vikings defense instead of Fleaflicker’s suggestion, the Cincinnati Bengals, and another 6.9 points by starting Mike Williams over Brandin Cooks.

In all, our managers combined to take 18 coaching risks this week and though they were successful on nine of them we saw a net loss of 14.12 points across the AFL.

Eric’s coaching miscue didn’t wind up costing him his game, but he did suffer his fourth unlucky loss of the season as he finished fifth in the AFL in scoring this week. Those four unlucky losses are only balanced by one lucky victory, so it’s been a rough season for Eric.

Only Cory has been unluckier than Eric, as he has no lucky victories to offset his four unlucky losses. By breakdown, Eric actually slightly edged out Cory in bad luck as he sits at 3.1 WBE to Cory’s 3.0 WBE.

Eric’s loss to Alex Kincaid is noteworthy, however, as it is the 9th highest scoring game in AFL history with a point total of 286.50 points between the two.

Alex was the leading scorer for the week, taking home his 3rd career Tom Brady Award. He became the second manager of the season to have five starting offensive players in the top five at their positions! His total of 162.30 is the 12th highest team score in league history.

Patrick Mahomes was a big part of Alex’s victory as he contributed 34.18 points to his cause, which ranks 78th all-time among starting QBs in the AFL.

At the position, only Deshaun Watson had a higher output this week as he scored 34.82 points on Thanksgiving, the 62nd most points scored by a QB in league history. Pair him with Antonio Gibson, whose 36.1 points are tied for 42nd on the running back list, and Brandon Saunders had a pretty darn good week, too, though the rest of his lineup did keep him from entering the all-time team leaderboard.

Instead, the only other manager this week to get a spot in our Top 100 was Anthony Battle, who finds himself in the number 89 spot after his team scored 142.64 points this week. Anthony has been a little overlooked but he’s quietly been one of the best teams of the second half of our season.

The biggest contributor to Anthony’s victory was without a doubt the fantasy player of the week, Tyreek Hill. He became just the fourth player, and the first non-running back, in AFL history to top 50 points in a single game! He scored 51.4 points to replace Tyler Lockett’s 45.5-point game back in Week 7 of this season as the #1 wide receiver score of all-time in the AFL.

Two other players entered their positions’ all-time leaderboards this week. Derrick Henry’s 40.2 points in Eric’s loss rank 19th all-time among running backs. And Will Fuller, who will miss the rest of the season for violating the NFL’s performance enhancing drug policy, scored 32.1 points as part of William Battle’s loss, the 56th most points by a receiver in AFL history.

In all, our 12 managers scored 1,357.20 points this week, which ranks 31st among our league’s 108 regular season week.

Our defensive coach of the Week is Will Massimini, who got 19 points from the Washington Football Team defense on Thanksgiving. Will also repeats as our kicker coach of the week thanks to Younghoe Koo and his impressive 23.1-point outing for the Falcons this week.

Alex Mayo remains our defensive coach of the year frontrunner with two weeks remaining as he’s earned 176.58 points from the position, more than 30 points ahead of William Battle. The fewest points earned from the position is 81.68 for Alex Kincaid. We’ll see if he can reach triple digits before the season end.

Will Massimini took over the top spot in the kicker spread as he’s now earned 121 points from the position. Eric has now fallen to last among kicker coaches with just 86 points.

Not much has changed since last week in terms of luck on the season as a whole. One point of note, only one manager has 0 luck based on Top 6 performances this season. Anthony has been involved in four “luck games,” but he’s gotten two lucky wins to balance out his two unlucky loses.

The following notable players were left on benches in Week 12:

#3 QB, Kirk Cousins – 28.78 points on Andrew Perez’s bench

#5 QB, Tom Brady – 23.10 points on Anthony’s bench*

#4 RB, Latavius Murray – 26.0 points on Cory’s bench

#3 WR, Jarvis Landry – 24.3 points on Andrew’s bench

#3 TE, Evan Engram – 13.9 points on Anthony’s bench*

#5 TE, Richard Rodgers – 12.8 points on William’s bench**

#2 DEF, Los Angeles Rams – 21.00 points on Brandon’s bench

#4 K, Jason Myers – 13.6 points on William’s bench

*Anthony started Aaron Rodgers, who was the #4 QB of the week, and Dallas Goedert, who was the #1 TE of the week

**William started Rodgers but designated Gus Edwards to replace him if the Ravens/Steelers game kicked off

Looking ahead to Week 13, Brandon will face Alex Mayo in the game of the week. Brandon has had terrible luck in Game of the Week appearances as he’s posted just a 6-15 record in those games. He can clinch the AFL West with a victory, while Alex needs a win to keep his slim playoff hopes alive. This will be Alex’s first Game of the Week appearance.

Brandon could also clinch the AFL West with a loss or tie by Anthony in the season’s second edition of the Battle Bowl.

Will can clinch the AFL East with a victory against Sean or with a loss/tie by Cory against Andrew.

And in the AFL Central, Stephen remains the only manager who has clinched a playoff spot, but he has not yet locked up the division or the #1 seed. Evan’s victory against him last week keeps it in play, but a win/tie this week for Stephen, or a loss/tie by Evan, will give Stephen the division title to go along with his first career playoff appearance.

Below is our recap of Week 12 and this week’s power rankings:

Game of the Week: Evan Ash at Stephen April

For the third time in AFL history, the game of the week featured the two lowest scorers of the week. Evan outlasted the Monday Night Football game featuring Chris Carson in Stephen’s lineup, escaping with a narrow victory in part thanks to the first negative fantasy score posted by the Colts defense in 2020