Written by Cory Puffett
Published October 27, 2020

Based on win probability, only one game had a different outcome than expected entering Sunday Night Football this week. For the first time since Week 2 of last season, and just the fourth time since 2016, the two lowest scorers in the AFL were matched up against each other.

Entering Sunday night, Fleaflicker gave Andrew Perez a 59 percent chance of beating Evan Ash. Andrew had Arizona’s defense, facing Seattle, and Evan had Tyler Higbee, the Rams tight end who was questionable for Monday night with a hand injury.

Arizona’s defense scored just shy of four points, recording three picks, a couple of sacks, and some other miscellaneous stats, but also giving up 11 more points and 224 more yards than we permit before a defense starts losing points. Still, Andrew held a lead of more than eight points heading to Monday night.

Tyler Higbee was ruled out sometime around 7pm on Monday, less than two hours before the Rams would kick off against the Bears. Fortunately for Evan, LA’s other tight end, Gerald Everett, was available and Evan was able to drop Higbee for him. Everett found the end zone late in the third quarter and, even though he didn’t so much as see a target the rest of the night, his job was done.

Evan won the matchup despite finishing 11th in the AFL in points scored for Week 7, marking the 10th time in league history a team has won its game with a 1-10 breakdown. Evan’s 2.46-point margin of victory is the second lowest point differential in those 10 games. His 86.20 points also ranks as the eighth lowest winning score in our league since starting rosters expanded in 2016.

Elsewhere, we saw much more competitive scores and, despite four teams falling below triple digits, Week 7 ranks as the 31st highest scoring week in our league’s 103-week history with 1,350.82 points scored by our 12 teams.

Leading the way this week was Brandon Saunders, who earned just his third career Tom Brady Award with a point total of 157.66, the 28th highest team score in league history. William Battle and Alex Mayo join him on the all-time leaderboard at 57th and 58th, respectively.

Brandon was helped to that point total by Davante Adams, who had a huge day for Green Bay, racking up just shy of 200 yards and a pair of scores. His 38.1 points ranks 13th on our all-time wide receiver leaderboard, and yet he wasn’t our best receiver of the day. In fact, he wasn’t one of our top three scorers of the week!

Tyler Lockett went bananas on Sunday night against the Cardinals, recording 200 receiving yards and three end zone trips for a point total of 45.5 points, taking over the #1 spot on our league’s wide receiver leaderboard. The previous record was 44.9 points by Julio Jones in Week 12 of the 2017 season while on Danny Hatcher’s team.

Our top scoring non-wide receiver was Justin Herbert, the rookie quarterback for the LA Chargers, who finished the day with 40.48 points, good for 16th on the all-time quarterbacks list, followed by Kyler Murray with 39.50 points, which ranks 19th.

Lockett’s big outing, paired with all of the points Russell Wilson racked up as a result, helped lead William Battle to victory in our Game of the Week.

Cory Puffett, helped by two Top 5 running backs, had reached triple digits for the seventh time this season and held about a 30-point advantage over William, with Jimmy Graham set to play Monday night and only Wilson and Lockett remaining on the other side.

Wilson overcame that deficit by himself and Lockett put the game entirely out of reach as Cory lost for the second time this season as a Top 6 scorer.

William had four Top 5 players in his lineup this week and earned his 12th career Peyton Manning Award, improving to 12-6 in Game of the Week appearances. Cory’s record in his games of the week falls to 11-9.

Herbert helped Alex Mayo earn his first week above .500 in his young AFL career. He has now reached 100 points in six straight games. This week he also took the lead from William in defensive scoring for the season. They are the first two to reach 100 points from defensive units on the year.

Kyler Murray, meanwhile, helped Will Massimini keep pace with Cory as they remain the only two managers to score 100 points in every game this year. Will’s roster ranks only 8th in the league according to optimum points and breakdown, but his has been the second-best team over the past five weeks. He will face Cory for control of the AFL East this week in one of two candidates for the Game of the Week.

Brandon had some really good complimentary games to Davante Adams, including 20-point performances from Deshaun Watson and D.J. Moore. DeAndre Hopkins fell just short of that mark. But he was also helped by his non-offensive players.

He earns kicker coach of the week honors for the 17.2 points earned by Cardinals kicker Zane Gonzalez, who missed a 41-yard game winner but then later made a 48-yard game winner. It still resulted in a net loss of less than half a point, but it was a great points haul.

Brandon also shared defensive coach of the week honors, pending mid-week stat corrections, with Eric Meyer and Stephen April. All three earned 14.00 points from their differences, Brandon had the LA Rams defense on Monday night, Eric had the 49ers defense in Sunday’s late afternoon slate, and Stephen had the Bills facing the Jets early Sunday afternoon.

Through the first half of the season, Alex Mayo leads the way in defensive scoring with 104.26 points while Alex Kincaid brings up the rear with just 36.06 points. The leader and last place remain the same on the kicker side with Anthony Battle getting 78.2 points from the position and Eric now at 40.8 points.

While several Top 5 positional performances were left on benches this week, none of them made a huge difference in their games. Diontae Johnson, T.J. Hockenson, and Rob Gronkowski would have closed the gaps for Cory, Eric, and Alex Kincaid, respectively, but none of them would have turned losses into wins.

The one performance I’d like to point out also wouldn’t have made a difference as Anthony still won his matchup, but his point total could be much higher if he hadn’t left the top scoring defense of the week on his bench – the Kansas City Chiefs and their 29.24 points.

Eric and Cory both suffered unlucky losses this week as the fifth and sixth scoring teams, respectively. Evan, of course, got a lucky, 1-10 breakdown win. Our other lucky winner was, in fact, Anthony. He finished just eighth in scoring, though he would have finished in the Top 6 with the Chiefs defense.

In addition to earning recognition as a defensive coach and the kicker coach of the week, Brandon is the overall coach of the week, as well. He earned a league-high 15.6 points on two successful coaching risks. He earned 3.9 points by starting D.J. Moore instead of Fleaflicker’s suggestion, Giovani Bernard, and another 15.6 points by cutting the Saints defense and starting the Rams instead.

This week’s Hue Jackson Award goes to Andrew. He cost his team 7.94 points and a win by going against projections and starting Jarvis Landry instead of Cole Beasley. Honorable mention goes to Sean Kennedy by costing his team a league-high 23.5 points, mostly for trading Devante Adams for Tee Higgins, in addition to starting Jamison Crowder instead of Julian Edelman despite Crowder being inactive on Sunday.

In all, our managers combined for 14 coaching risks in Week 7, down 12.5 percent from Week 6. They were successful on seven of them and suffered a net loss of 31.42 points.

We’re now at the halfway point of the year, and our league has cost itself more than 130 points by going against Fleaflicker projections. Andrew has cost his team 58.7 points and three wins so far. William has earned his team 40.02 points.

Cory leads the AFL in scoring through the first half of the season with 918.58 points and leads the way with six Top 6 performances. We don’t have a list to show where his points total ranks all-time through Week 7, but it’s 20 more points than Eric had at this point in his legendary 2016 campaign. Eric was averaging 128.3 points per game at this point (Cory is at 131.2), and went on to finish with an average of 130.3 points per game.

Cory is also the only manager in the AFL right now with more than 1000 optimum points for the season, and has 34 more optimum points than second place, indicating he has the best roster strength through this point in the season.

By both breakdown and Top 6 performances, Brandon has been our luckiest manager over the first half of the season. By the former metric, Brandon sits at 2.2 wins above expected, and by the latter he is at 3 WAE.

By breakdown, Stephen is at 1.5 WAE and Evan is at 0.7 WAE. The two of them are joined by Sean at 1 WAE by Top 6 performances.

On the flip side, Eric sits at 1.9 wins below expected by breakdown and 2 WBE by Top 6 performances. Cory joins him on the latter and is at 0.8 WBE by breakdown. Our next two unluckiest teams by breakdown are Sean and Andrew at 0.7 WBE. By Top 6 performances, it’s Will and Andrew at 1 WBE.

Stephen continues to lead the way with an 86.5 percent chance to make the playoffs according to Playoff Computer. He has an 81.5 percent chance to win the AFL Central.

Brandon has the next highest odds with a 76 percent chance to make the playoffs, 52 percent of that coming from his chances to win the AFL West. William has a 56 percent chance to make the playoffs, most likely as a wild card, while Cory and Will each have a 48 percent chance of winning the AFL East and increasingly low odds of clinching the playoffs as a wild card team.

Below is our recap of Week 7 and this week’s power rankings:

Game of the Week: Cory Puffett at William Battle

After Cory got off to a solid start with two 20-point games from the running back position, William needed a big Sunday night performance from either Russell Wilson or Tyler Lockett. He got huge games from both and wounds up with a blowout win to record his fifth victory in the first half of our regular season!