Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 6, 2020

I’m so excited to acknowledge that we have officially made it to 💯 regular season weeks of fantasy football in A Football Life!

Evan Ash, Anthony Battle, William Battle, Will Massimini, Eric Meyer, Cory Puffett, and Brandon Saunders have played in every single one of those weeks. Sean Kennedy is another charter member of the league, though he did take a year off in 2015 and so has another 14 weeks to reach his 100th regular season game.

Of our seven managers to reach 100 weeks, Eric has had by far the most successful career to date with 65 regular season victories. The second and third most regular season wins are 56 for Cory and 53 for Brandon, to put into perspective just how good Eric has been, despite a terrible start to the 2020 season.

The main story from Week 4 was the game postponements. The Steelers were supposed to play at Tennessee, but a COVID-19 outbreak within the Titans organization forced the NFL to postpone their game to Week 7 and to investigate whether the Titans broke the league’s Coronavirus protocols, as positive tests continued to be reported into the weekend.

Fortunately, Tennessee’s Week 3 opponent, the Minnesota Vikings, were not affected beyond closing their facilities for a few days and they were able to face and beat the Texans, mercifully bringing the Bill O’Brien era to an end in Houston.

The Steelers, Titans, and Ravens only need to make minor adjustments to their scheduled in Weeks 7 and 8, and Week 4 simply became a bye week for Pittsburgh and Tennessee. So, while Fleaflicker’s efforts to create a new injury designation for those players, called COVID-19 Postponed (CVP), are greatly appreciated, I elected to not include it as an IR-eligible injury designation. If such a postponement occurs after a team’s bye week, I expect that I will include it at that time.

Meanwhile, a positive test for Cam Newton put New England’s status for Week 4 into doubt, as well. Their 4:25 kickoff in Kansas City was pushed back to Monday as the league conducted tests. The Patriots reported no additional positive cases through the rest of the week, but we made preparations just in case the game was ultimately postponed to a different week of the regular season.

Managers in our league were instructed to replace their Patriots and Chiefs players in their starting lineups with other options and to notify me before Sunday’s 1pm kickoff if they wanted a specific NE or KC player to replace a specific player in their starting lineup in the event their game did kick off in Week 3.

A few managers elected to simply keep those players in their lineups at their own risk, but a few managers took advantage of that opportunity and we’ll continue to offer that option in future weeks should similar postponements occur. Obviously, we hope they don’t, but it’s the reality of playing a season in the middle of a pandemic.

For the 22nd time in AFL history, the Tom Brady and Peyton Manning Awards went home to the same manager for the week as Cory won his 7th and 11th of each award, respectively. Cory is now 11-8 in Game of the Week appearances. Alex Kincaid has now had four opportunities to take home a Peyton Manning Award and has yet to win one.

Cory’s 162.48-point outing is the 11th highest single game score in league history, and was largely spurred by yet another big fantasy day for Dak Prescott. His late-game interception bumped him down under 40 points for the week, but he still takes over the #17 spot on the all-time quarterbacks list in the AFL.

One of the most remarkable things about Cory’s Week 4 performance is that he left three potential Top 5 scorers on his bench this week. Latavius Murray scored 22.2 points, Antonio Gibson scored 22.1 points, and D.J. Chark came back from injury to score 25.5 points! All three would have been top five in the AFL at their positions if Cory had plugged them into his lineup.

With the big week, Cory extends his league-leading active streak of 100-point games to seven, followed by William and Alex at six games apiece. Alex’s six-game 100-point streak is a new career high!

On the opposite end of our Week 4 results, Eric was the only manager who failed to reach triple digits. It is the second time this season we had just one manager fall under that mark. Our league is still looking for its second ever perfect week in that regard.

Eric could have had 100 points if he had started T.J. Hockenson at flex. It’s a bit unconventional to start a tight end at the flex, but the second year Lion out of Iowa became the fifth tight end in as many weeks to score a touchdown against the Saints defense, precisely why he was my value play at the position on DFS in Week 4.

Hockenson scored 9.9 points, which is 9.9 more points than Brandin Cooks scored this week, would have been a Top 5 tight end performance in the AFL, and would have nudged Eric every so modestly over the 100-point threshold.

While Cory may have set the tone for Week 4, Brandon deserves his own share of recognition for a fantastic week of his own. His first two wins of the 2020 campaign were both lucky victories as he was outside of the top six in scoring. Brandon didn’t need any luck this week as he finished second in scoring and, while his 140.30 points aren’t enough to put him on our all-time leaderboard, he did add two individual players to our league’s leaderboards.

Joe Mixon found the end zone three times on Sunday to help propel the Bengals to their first win of the Joe Burrow era. Mixon’s 41.6 points rank 14th all time among running backs in our league. Odell Beckham, who took a one-year hiatus from Brandon’s team to try his luck with Will, is back with old AFL team and finally had the breakout game Cleveland has been waiting for. He scored 36.1 points on Sunday against Dallas, the 17th most by a wide receiver in AFL history and just a tenth of a point shy of his own mark from Week 6 of the 2016 season vs Baltimore.

We also add two tight ends to our all-time individual leaderboards. George Kittle scored 32.7 points to vault Andrew Perez to his first victory of the season, good for the 5th highest tight end score in league history. Meanwhile, a huge game for Robert Tonyan gave William 30.8 points toward his fourth straight win to start the season.

It is the first time in league history two tight ends have scored 30 points in the same week and it beats the previous combined record of 58.2 combined points from Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham in Week 2 of 2014 when they were on Sean and Cory’s teams, respectively.

Fun fact, the third highest total by two tight ends in the same week came in Week 3 of our inaugural 2013 season when Jimmy Graham and Jordan Cameron combined for 56.0 points, both starting in Cory’s lineup. Starting a tight end at flex isn’t always a bad idea.

Back to that big game from Robert Tonyan, William earns Coach of the Week honors for that move. He added Tonyan off waivers this week, but there was another free agent option with a higher projection for the week according to Fleaflicker. Logan Thomas of the Washington Football Team was supposedly a better start, but scored just 1.3 points in his game against the Ravens. William earned 29.5 coaching points with that decision, and that is a greater total than his 25.8-point margin of victory over Eric.

As it happens, Cory does have to carry one unfortunately moniker as he takes home the Hue Jackson Award for Week 4. He cost his team a league-high 15.9 points by starting John Brown over Fleaflicker’s suggested start of Antonio Gibson.

In all, our managers took a combined eight coaching risks this week, down 57.9 percent from Week 3. We were successful on six of them for a net gain of 33.2 points, our first week out of the red for the season.

Our defensive coach of the week was Sean. He fell to 0-4 on the season but made an interesting choice to start the New York Jets defense on Thursday night and earned 13.98 points for his troubles.

Evan is the kicker coach of the week thanks to the 18.7 points Denver Broncos kicker Brandon McManus scored against Sean’s defense. As long as you keep them out of the end zone, right?

Our defensive and kicker scoring leaders, and last place holders, remain the same as they were following Week 3. Stephen leads in defensive scoring with 59.2 points from the position while Anthony has gotten 44.7 points from kickers. Despite the solid defensive week, Sean still holds the bottom spot in defensive scoring with just 21.48 points from the position while Eric has earned a similar 21.8 points from his kickers.

We have had no lucky winners or unlucky losers in the past two weeks by Top 6 performances, but as we are entering Week 5 it is time to start our weekly look at our luckiest and unluckiest managers by breakdown and by Top 6 performances.

By breakdown, our luckiest manager has been William at 1.4 WAE (wins above expected). Brandon sits at 1.2 WAE and Stephen is at 1.0 WAE. Looking purely at Top 6 performances, Brandon has 2 more wins than expected and William has 1 more win.

Our unluckiest manager by breakdown has been Eric so far, at 1.2 WBE (wins below expected). Will is at 0.7 WBE and Sean is at 0.6 WBE. By Top 6 performances, we have three managers all sitting at 1 fewer win than expected: Eric, Will, and Cory.

Through four weeks, Stephen continues to lead the league in playoff odds as he now has a 72.3 percent chance of making the postseason according to Playoff Computer. William trails just behind at 71.5 percent and Cory has a 63.5 percent chance of making it there.

Stephen and Cory each have a 60.5 percent chance of winning their divisions while William has a 54.5 percent chance.

Sean and Andrew are the only two managers in the AFL who do not currently control their own playoff destinies.

Below is our recap of Week 4 and this week’s power rankings:

Game of the Week: Cory Puffett at Ahoy Me Boy

Cory led the league in scoring to ensure his victory. His Prescott/Cooper stack paid off this week as he left Alex still searching for his first ever Game of the Week victory after four appearances.