For the first time this season and the 10th time in his career, Cory led the AFL in scoring to capture the Tom Brady Award. He is the sixth manager to reach a 10th career Tom Brady Award.

This was the 8th time in AFL history that the Top 6 scorers for a week all won their games. Cory has led the scoring in three out of those eight weeks, which is quite an anomaly, mathematically speaking.

Cory has led the league in scoring in 8.2% of all weeks played in the AFL, which makes sense considering that’s just shy of 1 out of every 12 weeks. But the Top 12 teams have all won in just 6.6% of all weeks played and Cory has led the league in scoring in 37.5% of those weeks.

Cory’s score was not quite high enough to be a Top 100 team score in AFL history, though it would have cracked the list if he hadn’t left the week’s top defense on his bench. The Miami Dolphins scored 28.84 points. It’s the second time this season that Cory was the only manager with a Top 6 defense. He’s had two of them both times.

With only one Top 5 offensive player, it’s a bit surprising that Cory led the league in scoring, but he was helped by the top starters at both kicker and defense.

Patriots kicker Nick Folk was the top starting kicker last week for Cory and he outdid himself this week scoring 22.3 points! The Patriots defense gave Cory defensive coach of the week honors, too, with their 20.2 points.

Cory now leads the league in scoring this season at both positions. He passed Alex Kincaid this week in defensive scoring and now has 174.54 points from the position this season. He jumped into first in kicker scoring last week and extended his lead. He now has 138.2 points from kickers this season.

Alex lost his 100-point streak this week. He had scored at least 100 points in all 11 games leading up to this Thanksgiving weekend. Now every manager has had at least one game in which they failed to reach triple digits this season. He’ll play in the Week 13 game of the week. More on that later.

We’ll just go straight down the list from the highest scoring to the 6th highest scoring as we work through our Week 12 matchups.

Alex had a Top 5 scorer at all five offensive positions including the #2 scorer at running back. He now has the longest active 100-point game streak with four of them in a row.

Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon scored 34.76 points this week and has been a huge boost to Alex’s scores since acquiring him from Cory in Week 8. That point total is good for #69 all-time on the AFL’s running back performances list.

According to PlayoffComputer, Alex now has a 99.3% chance of making the playoffs and an 84% chance of winning the AFL East.

As I mentioned at the top, Brandon is the first manager to be eliminated from playoff contention. He won the consolation ladder last year to get the first pick in our draft pick draft. He elected to pick first in the draft and selected Christian McCaffrey, who has now been lost for the rest of the season. This year, it looks like Brandon will just have to fight to avoid the Sacko.

Despite scoring the third most points in the AFL in Week 12, there isn’t a whole lot of noteworthy news from this game.

Sean was the only manager in the AFL without a single Top 5 scorer at any position, including defense and kicker.

Sean also earned an honorable mention finish in the running for this week’s Hue Jackson Award. He cost his team a league-high 14.2 points by failing on his only coaching risk. He started Hunter Henry at tight end instead of Dawson Knox, who scored two touchdowns in Buffalo’s Thanksgiving blowout victory against New Orleans. Knox was the #2 tight end in fantasy this week.

On a positive note, Stephen is this week’s best coach! He also attempted only one coaching risk, but he earned a league-high 17.92 points from it. He traded away Dalvin Cook in the blockbuster trade I talked about in last week’s writeup. In the deal, he got Cordarrelle Patterson and started him where Cook would have started. Patterson wound up outscoring Cook by that margin. That doesn’t continue to work as a coaching risk beyond this week, but Stephen did avoid having to deal with Cook’s dislocated shoulder and any time he may have to miss going forward.

Eric has been dealing with a hellish slew of injuries but, somehow, he’s remaining afloat. He remains at the top of the AFL Central by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker with Anthony Battle and has a 59.6% chance of making the playoffs according to PlayoffComputer.

After we saw two all-time great running back performances from Jonathan Taylor and Austin Ekeler in Week 11, Eric enjoyed one of his own this week. Leonard Fournette scored 43.14 points, the 11th highest total by a starting running back in our league’s history. He could have had another six points and jumped to #6 on the list if Ronald Jones hadn’t vulture a short-yardage touchdown in the game.

Eric was just a bit lucky to get this win. Evan is this week’s Hue Jackson Award winner, doubling up on last week’s Hue Jackson Award “victory.”

Evan cost his team 11.46 points and the win by failing on two of his three coaching risks.

As part of his trade with Stephen, he sent away Mike Williams, who should have been in his starting lineup this week according to FleaFlicker projections. Instead, Evan started Brandon Aiyuk and that move actually earned him 5.52 points. If he had stuck with that as his only coaching risk, he would have won the game.

Unfortunately, he made errors with both of his non-offensive starting spots. First, he cut Cairo Santos, who was projected to outscore Brandon McManus and, in fact, did outscore him by 7.3 points. Then he started the LA Chargers instead of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense, which had the higher projection and ultimately outscored the Chargers by 9.68 points.

The Battle of the Williams was this week’s game of the week. Both teams entered the week 4-7, badly needing victories to remain in the playoff hunt. While Will is not mathematically eliminated yet, his chances are about as low as the chances that the events of the Star Wars canon have actually played out, exactly as depicted in our movies and TV shows, in a galaxy far, far away.

William survived leaving the fifth highest scoring quarterback on his bench this week in the form of Carson Wentz and his 22.4 points. He clinched his 13th career Peyton Manning Award, improving to 13-7 in his game of the week appearances. Will drops to 6-8 in his appearances.

Following this loss, Andrew has the same miniscule chance as Will of making the playoffs. Still, he’s put together some relatively competitive showings lately, finishing in the top two-thirds of the AFL in each of the past three weeks. In fact, his three-week 100-point game streak is the second longest active streak behind Alex Kincaid’s.

Andrew’s biggest weakness this year is at defense. He’s done a little bit better at the position recently with at least 9 points from the position in three of his last four games. But he still is the only manager with fewer than 100 points this season. In fact, with 89.66 points on the season, he’s the only manager with fewer than 125 defensive points this year!

Anthony, meanwhile, has usurped Eric as the lowest scoring kicker coach in the AFL in 2021. He has just 71.3 points from his kickers after Greg Joseph scored just 1 point for him this week.

Alex won in his first meeting with Stephen back in Week 7. This will be the game of the week due to the wild card implications. They are in the AFL East with Alex Kincaid, who holds a two-game lead over the rest of the AFL.

It’s unlikely that even the winner of this game will have a chance to catch Kincaid to win the AFL East. With eight AFL teams at or above .500, this game could go a long way toward determining the wild card situation.

Luckily, there don’t appear to be any bye week issues for either team in this matchup, though Alex Mayo may be without Alvin Kamara for Thursday’s game between the Saints and Cowboys. Kamara did put in a limited practice on Monday so we’ll see what happens.

Evan won their first meeting and led the league in scoring in Week 3. With three teams all within a game of each other at the top of the AFL West, this is a critical game since the two of them will face Cory Puffett, the highest ranked AFL West team in this week’s power rankings, over the next two weeks.

Evan will be without both Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams this week due to Green Bay’s bye week. Sean expects to welcome back CeeDee Lamb who has cleared the concussion protocol and put in a full practice on Monday. That will be big for his wide receiver situation with Jarvis Landry on bye.

We love the Battle Bowl in the AFL and this year we get two of them!

Anthony won the first matchup back in Week 3. William has been the unluckiest manager in the AFL this season at 3 wins below expected based on league median performances.

Anthony has a few players on bye this week, most notably Kareem Hunt, and will have to watch the injury situation with Antonio Brown, Odell Beckham, and Corey Davis.

William, meanwhile, only has to navigate DJ Moore’s bye week, which shouldn’t be a problem with James Conner back from bye and ready to plug into a flex spot.

Alex won the first matchup of the season by the relatively narrow margin of just 12 points back in Week 7.

Andrew will have to find a way to overcome the loss of Deebo Samuel, who figures to be out for at least a week if not longer due to a groin injury. Samuel had scored a rushing touchdown in three straight games as the 49ers have gotten creative with finding ways to get the ball in their star’s hands.

He’ll also have to find a good defensive option for this week with the Browns on bye.

Alex is waiting for news regarding D’Andre Swift’s injury. He left the Lions’ Thanksgiving game early but recent reports suggest he might be able to play on Sunday. Alex has been a Top 2 scorer in four straight weeks, though, so he ought to be able to withstand that loss if Swift can’t suit up.

With a win this week, Alex will clinch a playoff spot. Add in a Stephen April win over Alex Mayo and Alex will clinch the AFL East division title!

Cory enters the divisional round robin as one of the hottest teams in the league, but he’s got to beat the last place team in his division if he wants a realistic shot at making the playoffs. He’ll have to face Sean Kennedy and Evan Ash over the next two weeks.

Cory will be without Aaron Jones again, this time due to a bye week, but he gets Patrick Mahomes back, who was on bye in Week 12 and was not part of Cory’s Tom Brady Award-winning performance.

Will doesn’t have much to worry about on the bye week front, but he’ll have a couple of injuries to monitor through the week. Jalen Hurts is managing an ankle injury and Pat Freiermuth is in the concussion protocol.

While Carr did outscore Hurts this past week, that was just the third time all season it’s happened. He certainly would prefer to have Hurts in the lineup this week. If he has to sub in Dallas Goedert for Freiermuth, he doesn’t lose much in terms of season-long tight end ranking. Goedert is the TE12 on the season right behind Freiermuth, who is the TE11.

Eric got a lucky win, the first of three he’s had this season, when he played Brandon back in Week 3. At the time, Brandon was in the middle of an 0-4 start that has turned into the worst series he’s had in his AFL career.

Like Cory, Eric has to take advantage of this game to solidify his playoff hopes before he faces William and Anthony Battle over the final two weeks of the season.

Bye weeks will factor heavily into this game, but at least they’re going to affect both teams.

Brandon will hurt badly with the loss of Ryan Tannehill due to Tennessee’s bye week. Jimmy Garoppolo is still starting for San Francisco, so he can’t play Trey Lance this week, and Justin Fields is dealing with a rib injury that may keep him out of this week’s game.

Brandon also has lost Christian McCaffrey for the rest of the season, though he would have been without him this week anyway due to Carolina’s bye week.

On Eric’s side, he’s got a few key bye weeks and injuries to manage this week. The Panthers defense in on bye, but he’s got the Colts defense which is facing Houston for a plus matchup. More crucially, AJ Dillon and Nick Chubb are both on bye and his bench is looking thin on flex options.

Kyler Murray’s ankle injury and Kadarius Toney’s quad injury will also be on Eric’s mind this week. He’d love to have Toney in one of those flex spots and while Mac Jones may have to throw a lot as the Patriots visit the Bills on Monday night, Buffalo’s defense hasn’t been kind to opposing quarterbacks in our league this season.