Written by Cory Puffett
Published November 10, 2020

Exactly one year ago, we saw three managers in a fight for the top playoff seed, with Sean Kennedy and Eric Meyer tied atop the league at 8-1 and Evan Ash trailing just a game behind at 7-2. Sean would go on to win the 2019 AFL championship while Evan ultimately missed the playoffs altogether.

Coming off yet another victory, Stephen April has sole possession of our league’s #1 seed if the season were to end together. He is 8-1 and is ahead of our other division leaders, Brandon Saunders (7-2) and Will Massimini (6-3).

What a week it was for Stephen, with historical implications everywhere you turn! A week ago, I reported that his team score of 140.04 points ranked #100 on our league’s all-time leaderboard. A Thursday stat correction dropped him below 140 and off that leaderboard. There is no such risk this week.

With 162.20 points, Stephen led the league and recorded the 13th highest team score in AFL history. He was aided in particular by Dalvin Cook and Josh Allen.

Entering Week 8 of this season, despite a consistent string of performances that made him the 5th highest scoring running back of the 2019 season, Cook had never had a single-game performance that landed him on our league’s Top 100 list. He now has two of our Top 20 games of all time in the past two weeks.

This time around, it was a 40.4-point outing against the Lions, featuring his fifth and sixth touchdowns of the past two weeks, that lands him at #18 on our league’s all-time running back leaderboard.

Stephen very nearly had a second 40-point outing as Josh Allen fell just short at 39.10 points, which was still good enough to place him in a tie for the 20th highest scoring game by a quarterback in league history.

Their scoring, and several other strong performances on his team this week, helped Stephen secure his fourth career Tom Brady Award, given weekly to our league’s highest scoring team. As he was also facing William Battle in the game of the week, Stephen also took home his second career Peyton Manning Award, improving to 2-2 in game of the week appearances. William fell to 12-7 in his GotW appearances.

This is the 23rd time in AFL history a team has been the top scorer while playing in the game of the week.

Stephen managed all of this even while leaving a Top 5 scoring defense on his bench in the Buffalo Bills. Though they only scored 2.38 more points than the Indianapolis Colts did in Stephen’s lineup, that difference would have moved Stephen up from 13th to 9th on our all-time single game team scoring list.

Joining Dalvin Cook and Josh Allen, Darren Waller also appears as a Top 5 positional scorer among starting players in our league in Week 9, making Stephen one of four managers with three Top 5 scorers in their lineups this week. Alex Kincaid, who hadn’t scored 100 points since Week 4, Evan Ash, who hadn’t scored 100 points since Week 5 and only had two Top 5 scorers in those previous three weeks, and Anthony Battle joined Stephen in accomplishing that feat.

The only manager without a Top 5 player this week was William Battle, who wound up as our league’s second lowest scorer.

Our lowest scorer in Week 9 was Andrew Perez, whose 64.00 points represents the 7th lowest team score our league has seen since 2006. Andrew has been a bottom two scorer for three straight weeks now.

While it wouldn’t have made a difference in the outcome of his game, Andrew joined Stephen in leaving a Top 5 scorer on his bench. Teddy Bridgewater scored 30.80 points as he nearly led the Panthers to an upset win over the Chiefs. That was more than double Andrew’s starting quarterback’s score as Derek Carr failed to reach 15 points for the second week in a row and the third time this season.

Anthony Battle pulled out a much-needed victory and now finds himself in second place in the AFL West and holding the wild card spot if the season ended today, thanks to multiple tiebreakers.

A big part of Anthony’s win was the return of Christian McCaffrey, though he unfortunately suffered a shoulder injury and is now considered day-to-day. Still, CMC had himself a day with over 150 scrimmage yards and 10 catches on 10 targets, plus a pair of touchdowns. In all, he scored 33.9 points, which puts him at #74 on the AFL’s all-time running back list.

If it hadn’t have been for McCaffrey’s strong return, Anthony might have lost himself the game against Sean thanks to a huge coaching mistake. He joined Andrew and Stephen in leaving a Top 5 scorer on his bench. Aaron Rodgers scored 30.9 points on Thursday night and was projected to outscore Tom Brady in Week 9. Anthony rolled the dice with the latter.

Thanks to that coaching decision, which cost him 27.94 points, plus another decision to start Antonio Brown over Jonathan Taylor, Anthony cost his team a league-high 32.34 points in Week 9 to earn himself this week’s Hue Jackson Award.

Evan Ash, meanwhile, bounced back from three straight weeks of scoring in the bottom two of the AFL to record his fourth week of the season of Top 6 scoring. He earns defensive coach of the week recognition thanks to the 18.96 points he got from the Tennessee Titans defense.

He also earned overall coach of the week honors for Week 9. Evan earned a league-high 18.88 points and his victory by succeeding on two of three coaching risks. Though Evan did cost his team 10.2 points by starting Marquise Brown instead of Jerick McKinnon, he earned 8.8 points by picking up Jimmy Graham instead of Mike Gesicki to plug into his lineup and another 20.28 points by picking up and starting Drew Lock instead of starting Matthew Stafford.

Evan did technically have a fourth coaching risk on his docket because Ezekiel Elliott was projected to outscore J.K. Dobbins and did so, but because Elliott was questionable and his status was not determined until well after the Ravens kicked off Sunday afternoon, Evan draws no penalty for taking that “risk.”

Kicker coach of the week goes to Will Massimini, who had a strong week in his own right. Will earned 12.7 points from Atlanta Falcons kicker Younghoe Koo on Sunday. As it happens, Koo was actually only the 7th highest scoring kicker this week with our league’s scoring, but the top six kickers from Week 9 are all free agents.

Will, along with Cory Puffett, continued his streak of 100-point games to begin the 2020 season. He was aided by Kyler Murray, who was the top scoring quarterback this week with 40.62 points, good for 16th on our all-time quarterback leaderboard.

Will now has a two-game lead in the AFL East as he’s won five straight games since opening the season 1-3. He’s also now reached 10 straight regular season games with at least 100 points dating back to the final week of 2019. It equals his longest previous streak of 10 games from Week 14 of the 2017 season through Week 9 of the 2018 season.

Cory, meanwhile, extended his league-leading active streak of 100-point games to 12, tying the fifth longest such streak in AFL history. Another one this week will tie him for the 3rd longest streak.

Cory’s 100-point outing was helped by Travis Kelce, whose 20.9 points tied him for 80th on the all-time single game tight end list. If that feels like déjà vu, don’t worry, you haven’t gone mad. Travis Kelce also scored 20.9 points a week ago!

Unfortunately for Cory, he’s on the wrong end of Will’s AFL East division lead extension. Despite being one of two managers with 100 points in every game, and despite only just this week being overtaken as the league leader in points scored, Cory has lost five games now. This week marked the third time he’s lost a game while being a Top 6 scorer.

Of course, with that unlucky loss, we also had one lucky win, but it was as mild a case as it could be. Anthony finished 7th in scoring for our 12-team league this week but was facing Sean, who finished 10th in scoring.

Week 9 saw 1,309.10 points scored across the AFL, which ranks as the 47th highest scoring week in our league’s 105-week regular season history.

Through 9 weeks, Alex Mayo leads the league in defensive points scored with 127.58 while Alex Kincaid has the fewest points from defenses with just 49.56. Stephen has pulled into a tie with Anthony at the top of our kicker leaderboard with 94.1 points from the position. Alex Kincaid remains in last for kicker points with 56.3.

In Week 9, our 12 managers took a combined 17 coaching risks, up 6.3 percent from last week. We were successful on 10 of them and had a net gain of 1.14 points (pending stat corrections) across the league. If that holds, it will be just the second time this season our league had a net gain of points from coaching risks.

Our luckiest teams through Week 9 by breakdown are Brandon Saunders (2.3 wins above expected), Stephen (1.5 WAE), and Evan (1.1 WAE). Our unluckiest teams by breakdown are Eric (2.9 wins below expected), Cory (2.0 WBE), and Andrew (0.8 WBE).

Our luckiest teams by Top 6 performances, or lack thereof, are Brandon (3 wins above expected), Sean (2 WAE), and Stephen, Evan, Alex Kincaid, and Anthony (1 WAE). Our unluckiest teams by this metric are Eric and Cory (each at 3 wins below expected), and Will, Andrew, and William (1 WBE).

Stephen is getting closer and closer to locking up a playoff spot. Following Week 9, Playoff Computer calculates his chances of winning the AFL Central to be 95.5 percent and his odds of making the playoffs to be 97.8 percent.

The next best odds go to Will, with an 83 percent chance of winning the AFL East and an 84.7 percent chance of making the playoffs. Meanwhile, Brandon now has a 64.5 percent chance of winning the AFL West, thanks to his Week 9 loss and wins by everybody else in the division. He has an 81.8 percent chance of still making the playoffs, however.

Eric was eliminated from the AFL Central division race thanks to his loss. Amazingly, Andrew Perez was not eliminated from the AFL East race or wild card contention.

Speaking of Eric, he came one step closer to champagne popping time this week as Cory went over 30 breakdown losses on the season. Cory’s breakdown now sits at 66-33.

Eric’s champagne will have to wait at least another week, though. Stephen has led the league in scoring two weeks in a row now, marking the 11th time in league history a manager has led the league in scoring in consecutive weeks, two of those going to William Battle when he led the league in scoring three weeks in a row during the 2018 campaign. The last manager to do it was Anthony in Week 5 and 6 last season.

All that is to say, Stephen hasn’t suffered a breakdown loss in two weeks and so still sits at 27 breakdown losses on the year, three shy of the 30 Eric suffered during the 2016 season.

Stephen’s 72-27 breakdown puts him at .727 for the season, which is on pace to be the third best breakdown in league history. It would take something incredible for him to take Eric’s crown, but the door is still open.

And finally, some exciting playoff news could be coming for Stephen in the next week or two. If he defeats Sean this week and both Evan and Alex Kincaid lose, Stephen will clinch at least a tie for the AFL Central title. Evan would still be able to tie and force a points tiebreaker, though Stephen currently has a 200-point advantage over Evan on the season so it would take a catastrophic collapse for that to come into play. For all intents and purposes, a victory this week and losses by both of his division rivals would give him the AFL Central title.

Below is our recap of Week 9 and this week’s power rankings:

Game of the Week: Stephen April at William Battle

William’s team struggled this week as Russell Wilson turned the ball over four times and the only other offensive player to reach double digits was Will Fuller. Stephen, meanwhile, needed just his top three scorers to beat William as Josh Allen, Dalvin Cook, and Keenan Allen combined for more than 100 points. Stephen wasn’t even phased by Justin Jackson leaving with a knee injury before logging a single touch.