Written by Cory Puffett
Published September 29, 2020

Luck always seems to play a factor in fantasy football. While I won’t go so far as to say it didn’t play a factor at all this week, for just the sixth time in AFL history our top six scorers all won their matchups!

Still, luck certainly played into things in other ways, as it always does.

A grand total of 10 would-be top-5 positional scorers were left on various managers’ benches. Evan Ash left a top-5 quarterback performance on his bench and also saw Justin Jefferson of the Minnesota Vikings go off for 27 points, the second highest point total in the AFL among wide receivers whether they were in a starting lineup or not rostered at all!

The tight end position was particularly volatile in Week 3. Only two tight ends reached the 15-point plateau and both are available on waivers entering Wednesday morning. In fact, only one of the top seven tight end scorers in Week 3 is currently on a roster; Eric Ebron scored 13.7 points on Will Massimini’s bench.

Of the 10 aforementioned “would-be top-5 positional scorers,” only two were left out of starting lineups against FleaFlicker projections, so I won’t give too much grief to the mangers who left the other six players on their benches. Note that I already gave Evan a bit of grief despite neither of his players being among the 10, but he was the only manager with more than one of the 10, so I felt obligated to do so. Note also that I’m aware I just hit you all with some confusing math; I’m just checking to see if you’re paying attention.

Stephen April and Andrew Perez both left top-5 wide receiver performances on their benches this week despite FleaFlicker projections indicating they should be in their starting lineups. Andrew started Devonta Freeman instead of Michael Gallup, who scored 22.8 points.

Stephen left Keenan Allen’s 23.7-point performance on his bench, though it didn’t hurt nearly as much. Firstly, the player he started in Allen’s place was Kareem Hunt, who had a solid game of his own. Secondly, it didn’t prevent Stephen from capturing his second career Tom Brady Award as he led the AFL with 163.84 points, the 9th highest single-week team score in league history.

Three other managers joined the all-time leaderboard this week, as well. Alex Kincaid and William Battle were less than two points apart at 154.80 and 153.02 points, respectively, and both take positions within the Top 35 all-time. Cory Puffett joins the leaderboard in the 57th position with his point total of 146.78.

Despite those four exceptional outings, the league-wide point total for Week 3 ranks just 18th after 99 regular season weeks of play in AFL history, with 1,407.98 points scored pending stat corrections later this week.

Our six winning teams average 144.4 points, which is the highest winning average in any of those 99 weeks, 1.5 points per team higher than the previous AFL record. Our six losing teams, on the other hand, averaged just 90.2 points, which is the lowest average of any of the Top 40 scoring weeks in league history.

Among individual performers, Patrick Mahomes led the way with an incredible 42.40-point performance on Monday night against a very talented Baltimore Ravens defense. That mark ties Dak Prescott’s league-leading mark from a week ago as well as Tony Romo’s Week 5 outing in 2013 for the 8th best single-game performance from a quarterback in AFL history.

Russell Wilson and Alvin Kamara both scored 38.8 points and joined their positions’ leaderboards at 18th and 21st, respectively.

Wilson’s performance helped spur William Battle to his 11th career Payton Manning Award. You can read more about the Game of the Week in the weekly recap below, but William improved to 11-6 in his career GOTW appearance while Brandon Saunders fell to 5-14 in his.

Kamara, meanwhile, helped Cory to extend his league-leading active streak of 100-point games to six, dating back to last season. William and Alex Kincaid are a game back at five straight. Alex also had a 5-game streak of 100-point outings to begin his AFL career last year, so he’ll look to set a new career high next week when he faces Cory in the Game of the Week.

Let’s get into our coaches of the week. Despite finishing dead last in scoring for the second week in a row, 2019 AFL champion Sean Kennedy takes home two coaching accolades this week. He is the kicker coach of the week thanks to Mason Crosby’s 17.4-point outing for Green Bay.

Sean is also the overall coach of the week, in large part due to Crosby. Sean did get 1.9 points by starting Robby Anderson instead of A.J. Green, but his kicker start was also a coaching risk. FleaFlicker projected Chris Boswell, who was Sean’s kicker in Week 2, to have a bigger game than Crosby. Sean made the switch anyway, and earned 9.1 points from that move.

Our defensive coach of the week is Stephen after the Indianapolis Colts defense contributed 28.5 points toward his Tom Brady Award-winning effort.

Through three weeks, the defensive scoring spread is 50.70 points for Stephen down to 7.50 points for Sean. In the kicker game, Anthony Battle leads the way with 36.1 points from the position while Andrew falls to 12th with 14.5 points.

The Hue Jackson Award for Week 3 goes to Alex Mayo. He cost his team 19.5 points and a win by failing on one of two coaching risks, though the term “risk” is a bit of a stretch in this instance. Alex did earn 1 point by starting Sony Michel instead of Chris Godwin, but he overslept and left Cam Akers in his lineup with an “OUT” designation. FleaFlicker’s suggestion was to start Darrell Henderson in his place, and Henderson scored 20.5 points. Alex’s margin of defeat against Anthony was 12.06 points.

In all, our 12 managers took 19 combined coaching risks, with every manager taking at least one, representing a 58.3-percent increase in coaching risks from Week 2. We were successful on only seven of those risks, however, and cost ourselves a net 60.08 points across the league. Eric and Alex Kincaid took their first coaching risks of the year and failed on their combined three of them.

Following Week 3, Stephen April has the best playoff odds in the AFL at 60.5 percent according to Playoff Computer. William Battle has a 59.8 percent chance and Cory sits in third with a 51.5 percent shot. Stephen and Cory each have a 48.5 percent chance of winning their respective divisions while William has a 44.5 percent chance of winning his.

Before we get into the weekly summary and power rankings, I want to mention that we now have six power metrics incorporated in the power scores.

Record, breakdown, points, roster strength (determined by a combination of optimum points and optimum breakdown), and coaching (determined by points gained/lost, not by wins gained/lost) factor into the power score every week. Beginning this week, consistency will also factor in and then in Week 6, our seventh and final power metric, recency, will also join the fray.

Keep in mind that consistency is just my shorthand for “consistency against league average.” Teams’ consistency scores are calculated by subtracting the league average score (points per team per week) from each team’s average score per week. That number is then divided by the standard deviation of each team’s respective weekly point totals.

Through three weeks, Cory has the best consistency score in the league at 1.31 and Andrew has the worst at -1.86.

Now then, let’s get into the part of my weekly write-up everybody skips ahead to read – our recap of Week 3 and this week’s power rankings:

Game of the Week: William Battle at Brandon Saunders

The game of the week wound up being fairly uncompetitive as William’s Russell Wilson/Tyler Lockett stack alone accounted for nearly 85 percent of Brandon’s total score. Brandon will hope for better performances up and down his lineup when these two division rivals meet again in Week 12.