Anthony finished the 2021 regular season the same way he began it, by leading the league in scoring.

He joined Evan as the second manager to claim a third Tom Brady Award this season. This also marks Anthony’s 19th career Tom Brady Award, two more than any other AFL manager has in their career.

Though Anthony’s team score was rather low for a Tom Brady Award winner, he did have some outstanding performance, none more impressive than Travis Kelce. Aided by extra time, Kelce scored 35.6 points, the 4th highest score by a starting tight end in AFL history!

Despite finishing with the second lowest point total for the week, Eric did have a couple bright spots. He is the defensive coach of the week thanks to a 24.52-point outing by the Indianapolis Colts.

Eric is also the coach of the week after earning a league-high 7.44 points on his only coaching risk. FleaFlicker projections recommended that Rhamondre Stevenson should have been started at FLEX in Eric’s lineup this week, but he instead went with AJ Dillon.

It wasn’t nearly enough to make the de facto AFL Central title game exciting, but Eric’s decision to start Dillon made a better coaching performance vs FleaFlicker suggestions than anybody else in the AFL had this week.

Evan finished less than a point behind Anthony in scoring this week, just 0.2 points shy of a fourth Tom Brady Award in 2021.

Instead, Evan will settle for a league-best third Peyton Manning Award of 2021 and the 15th of his career. Evan is now 15-11 in game of the week appearances over his AFL career while Cory falls to 12-11 in his appearances.

Cory cost himself the AFL West title thanks to a bad coaching mistake. He cost himself 14.62 points and the win by failing on his only coaching risk, starting Darrell Henderson at FLEX instead of D’Onta Foreman.

Though a different manager, who we’ll get to soon enough, wound up earning the Hue Jackson Award, this is about as brutal of a coaching error as it gets when you consider the gravity of the game Cory cost himself.

Foreman’s 18.64 points were the 4th highest total among running backs this week. Evan, though, left the 3rd highest RB total on his bench, with Jeff Wilson going off for 21.52 this week.

That won’t make Cory feel much better, though, considering the top running back total of the week, Duke Johnson’s 30.24 points, could have been his. He picked up Johnson earlier in the week but after Miami’s top two running backs, including Myles Gaskin, tested out of COVID protocols, Cory dropped him.

Still, Cory wound up with the 4th highest score in the AFL this week, one of just five managers to crack triple digits, giving him an unlucky loss.

With Andrew Perez and William Battle both failing to reach triple digits this week, Evan takes over with the longest active 100-point game streak. He’s done it in five straight regular season games. Cory is right behind him with a four-game streak of his own.

Alex Kincaid had been slumping recently with two straight weeks under 100 points, but he righted the ship this week to get his league-best 10th win.

He’ll enter the playoffs as the #1 seed in the AFL and will attempt to do what Stephen April did last year – win the AFL title in his third year as a league member.

Alex Mayo didn’t quite reach triple digits this week, but he was still the league’s #6 scorer, so he joins Cory with an unlucky loss in the season’s final week.

In fact, with this unlucky loss and a lucky win by William Battle this week, Alex finishes the season as the unluckiest manager, both by breakdown (1.4 wins below expected) and by Top 6 performances (3 wins below expected).

FleaFlicker couldn’t figure out what to make of this matchup as it came down to the wire on Tuesday night. The app’s win probability feature kept switching radically from one to the other’s favor.

Ultimately, Stephen held on. A loss would have given Cory the AFL wild card, but instead Stephen finishes in a three-way tie for the second-best record in the league and will return to the playoffs to try and defend his 2020 league title.

For the second week in a row, we saw two tight ends record Top 100 scores on the positional leaderboard, and for the second week in a row Mark Andrews was one of those tight ends.

Andrews went off, even with Lamar Jackson sidelined, for 31.6 points, the 11th highest tight end score in league history.

Andrew had a rough coaching week and managed to outdo Cory for the Hue Jackson Award, costing his team a league-high 15.68 points and the win by failing on both of his coaching risks.

He missed out on 5.48 points by starting Van Jefferson at FLEX instead of Zach Ertz. That switch alone would have been enough to flip the outcoming of his game, pending a stat correction. But he also cost his team 10.2 points by starting Michael Gallup at WR instead of DeVante Parker.

To add injury to insult, Andrew also left the week’s #5 running back performer on his bench in the form of Devin Singletary and his 18.14 points.

Stephen is this week’s kicker coach of the week thanks to LA Rams kicker Matt Gay scoring 11 in Tuesday night’s victory. Gay was actually only the #8 scorer at the position this week, but six of the kickers ahead of him were not rostered in the AFL and one was on William Battle’s bench.

Stephen finished #7 in scoring and finishes the 2021 regular season as the luckiest manager in the AFL at 1.1 wins above expected by breakdown and tied with Andrew at 2 wins above expected by Top 6 performances.

Once 7-3, Sean finishes the 2021 season on a five-game losing streak.

Will just managed to crack the 100-point threshold this week. Outside of that, the most notable stats from this game aren’t really ones you want to be remembered for.

Sean left the #3 tight end (Hunter Henry scored 23.3 points) and the #4 wide receiver (Gabriel Davis scored 23 points) on his bench.

Meanwhile, Marquez Valdes-Scantling scored 18.8 points and was the #5 receiver for the week but was on Will’s bench.

Not that anybody would have suggested it, but Sean also could have picked up Tyler Huntley for his usual starter, Lamar Jackson.

Like Duke Johnson, Huntley was the top scorer at his position but was not rostered in the AFL. Unlike Johnson, Huntley didn’t score 30 points. He scored 41.26 points!!

This was not just Sean’s fifth straight loss to end the regular season. It was also his fifth straight game with fewer than 100 points. He is one game shy of his career-worst stretch and is tied for the fourth longest streak without 100 points in league history.

After sitting at 3 wins below expected by Top 6 performances for several weeks, William finally got a lucky win this week. That’s two lucky wins to counteract four unlucky losses this season.

William did leave the #5 kicker performance on his bench this week. Daniel Carlson scored 12.8 points but couldn’t contribute them to William’s win.

Brandon finishes the year 3-12, three games behind any other AFL manager and by far the worst year of his AFL career. In fact, that loss total is more than his losses in the past two years combined!

He only scored 100 points three times all season and has failed to do so in six straight games now, setting a new personal worst and tying the longest streak in AFL history.

The other two managers to go six straight regular season games without 100 points were Sean Kennedy from Week 6 to Week 11 of the 2019 season and Stephen April from Week 7 to Week 12 of the 2019 season.

To be fair, there were managers with stretches like that prior to 2016, but for those years we use 88.9 points as the threshold to make up for only 8 starting roster spots (11.1% fewer than we have now).

Brandon now turns his attention to trying to win one of the next two games, to avoid the Sacko, and to drafting better next year to try and avoid extending that streak without 100 points in the opening week of the 2022 season.

Stephen, in his fourth year in the AFL, makes his second straight appearance in the postseason. Alex, in his third year, makes his first career playoff appearance.

Stephen has done very well against Alex over his career. They’ve shared a division twice in the past three seasons. You see Stephen’s H2H record against him above. Stephen also swept Alex this year, with a narrow 100-99.74 victory in Week 3 and a much more comfortable 159.88-73.9 victory in Week 14.

That Week 3 victory came on a manual stat correction. Rondale Moore had a fumble on a punt return on the fourth play of the game, but punt returns don’t count for or against offensive players. Without that correction, Cory would be in the plays so you’re welcome for catching that, Stephen.

Looking ahead to this matchup, it should be an interesting one. Both teams are pretty healthy. Stephen expects to get Tyler Lockett back from the COVID list this week and Alex expects the same for Kendrick Bourne, though he likely wouldn’t use Bourne unless some of his other starters hit the protocols.

Dak Prescott hasn’t scored more than 12 points in any of his last three games, Joe Mixon hasn’t scored in the double digits in any of his last three games, and D’Andre Swift hasn’t played at all in three weeks. That won’t have Alex feeling great about his chances.

Stephen, meanwhile, has won five straight, including three weeks as a Top 3 scorer in the AFL, and has Mark Andrews who has been on fire, as I talked about earlier in this writeup.

While two of the three newest members of the AFL face off in one semifinal, this semi features two OGs of the AFL.

Evan is making just his third career playoff appearance. He is 1-1 in semifinal matchups with his win coming last year before he fell to Stephen in the championship game.

Anthony, meanwhile, is making his AFL-best sixth playoff appearance! He’s had some bad luck, though, going 1-4 in the first round. His one win came back in 2018 when he ultimately lost to his brother in the AFL title game.

Injury and health-wise, Evan is definitely in better shape at the start of this week. Aaron Rodgers is, as always, questionable with his toe injury but there’s no reason to assume the worst there. He hopes to have Darren Waller back this week, too.

Meanwhile for Ant, both Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce tested positive for COVID over the past two days. The expectation is that they’ll be back by Sunday but you never know.

He does get Antonio Brown back from his suspension this week and assuming his ankle is healthy and he can quickly get re-integrated into the Tampa offense, that ought to be a huge boost to his WR corps.

I’ll be back at the conclusion of the postseason with my final writeup to announce the AFL Champ and to announce awards and notable stats from the 2021 season.