Stephen finished the week as the AFL’s #7 scorer. It certainly could have been worse, but he definitely benefited from a bit of matchup luck this week as he took home his 4th career Peyton Manning Award, which we give weekly to the victor of the Game of the Week. Stephen’s record in these games is now 4-3 while Evan’s drops to 12-10.

This game was our lowest-scoring matchup of the week despite it featuring the week’s best coach. Stephen took one coaching risk this week, tapping Matthew Stafford for the Week 1 start of Fleaflicker’s suggestion, Joe Burrow. Stafford outscored the second-year quarterback by 6.98 points, which was the most any manager in the AFL earned off a coaching risk this week.

Stephen’s team also featured the #75 all-time single game performance by a wide receiver as Amari Cooper went for 31.20 points in the NFL season opener on Thursday night.

And yes, this game also featured Evan, but honestly there wasn’t much notable about his team this week and I’ll save what little I have to say for my power rankings comments.

We’ll transition from the Week 1 Peyton Manning Award to the Week 1 Tom Brady Award, which we give weekly to the league’s top scorer. This time around it goes to Anthony, whose 165.10 points ranks as the #9 single-week team score in AFL history. This is Anthony’s 17th career Tom Brady Award, which breaks a tie with Eric to give him sole possession of the league’s all-time lead.

Anthony’s squad featured the #72 all-time WR performance from Tyreek Hill [31.22 points] as well as the #58 all-time TE performance from Travis Kelce [23.20 points]. Sunday was a great day to have Patrick Mahomes’s top two targets, but then when is it not a great day to have that duo?

Now we certainly can’t forget Alex in this matchup because he had a pretty strong performance, too, finishing fifth in the AFL in scoring, leaving him with an unlucky loss. In fact, he and Anthony combined for 293.94 points, making this the seventh highest scoring game in AFL history.

Wildly, the game could have been even more high-scoring. Anthony left the week’s WR5 on his bench as Corey Davis went off for the New York Jets, scoring 24.2 points while Alex Mayo left Rob Gronkowski, the week’s TE1, and his 24.3 points on his bench. Both of these decisions constituted failed coaching risks for the managers.

Despite the strong performance by Alex, he was the only manager this week without a Top 5 starter at an offensive position, though he did have the week’s #4 starting kicker and the #2 starting defense/special teams unit.

One last note on Alex, he closed the 2020 season on a five-game streak without scoring 100 points, which is tied for the third longest streak in AFL history. He avoided moving into a three-way tie for the longest streak of such futility by leaving 100 points in his dust this week. Nicely done!

From there, we move to the other Alex and to the other unlucky loss of the week. Cory’s 137.48 points were the fourth most in the AFL this week and constitute the fourth highest losing score in league history.

Cory did everything he could, including taking a coaching risk at kicker and having it pay off as Robbie Gould was the week’s top kicker in the NFL under our league’s scoring settings, giving Cory kicker coach of the week honors.

But it didn’t matter as his squad was run over by Alex’s team, which is led, as it has been for the past three years, by Patrick Mahomes.

Mahomes scored 36.90 points this week, good for the #39 all-time single game performance by a starting quarterback in our league. Alex’s 151.66 points are good for #45 all-time in the AFL. The combined score between Alex and Cory of 289.14 points is the ninth highest score of any of the AFL’s 666 regular season games or 24 playoff games played to date.

Alex did leave the week’s #4 running back performance on his bench as Jamaal Williams went off for 21.98 points. Incredibly, though, Alex didn’t really miss those points considering he had Williams’s teammate, D’Andre Swift, who was the RB6 for this week.

In the only other game to feature two teams with 100+ points, William wiped the floor with the 2019 AFL champion, winning by more than 40 points, the second highest margin of victory in the league this week!

Sean’s team didn’t do much of anything noteworthy this week, but William’s sure did. His 142.22 points just snuck into the Top 100 team scores in AFL history at #98. His team also featured the #74 all-time single-game performance by a tight end as a third member of that Detroit Lions offense had a stellar outing with 22.00 points.

William also earned defensive coach of the week honors thanks to the Pittsburgh Steelers defense, which was absolutely superb, recording five tackles for a loss, seven passes defended, four forced fumbles, three sacks, a defensive touchdown, and a blocked kick, culminating in the league’s top defensive score, 25.76 points in Week 1.

In a fairly inconsequential game from a historical standpoint, Will was the luckiest manager of the week, getting the win despite finishing eighth in the league in scoring.

The most noteworthy thing about this game was Brandon failing to reach 100 points in a regular season game for the first time since Week 3 of last season. His 11-game streak ends one shy of a mark he’s accomplished twice in his career and leaves Anthony and Eric tied for the longest active streaks in the league with both of them on a five-game triple digit streak.

Eric just snuck into the top half of the league in scoring this week, in large part thanks to a phenomenal opening week performance by Kyler Murray, whose 36.02 points rank #51 all-time for quarterbacks in our league.

Eric did leave the #3 quarterback performance for the week on his bench, with Jameis Winston going for 33.22 points, but if you do the math real quick you’ll see why Eric won’t care one bit about that.

Andrew, on the other hand, could have avoided the basement of the league’s Week 1 scores if he hadn’t left the week’s WR3 on his bench. Deebo Samuel scored 26.80 points and did Andrew no good, though he absolutely should have been in his lineup according to Fleaflicker.

Instead, Andrew took a coaching risk and went with Chase Claypool, costing his team a league-high 17.98 points and clinching him the Hue Jackson Award for worst coach of the week.

Looking across the entire AFL, our managers combined to take 11 coaching risks, and though we were successful on five of them we cost ourselves a total of 45.84 points across the league.