Evan Ash

Now hold on just a second. How is a manager who made it to the championship game in 2020 the comeback manager of the year in 2021?

According to our CF metric, Evan had the 10th ranked team in 2020 with a CF score of -5.9 while averaging just 105.92 points per game. His 9-5 record was inflated by a +2 win differential compared to his Top 6 scoring weeks.

This year, Evan went 9-6, half a game worse than in 2020, but his average score rose to 124.18 points and his CF score was 10.3, a 16.2-point improvement, by far the biggest of our 12 managers.

This is the third straight year that the eventual league champion had the largest CF improvement from his previous season. Sean Kennedy was the most improved manager from 2018 to 2019 and Stephen April was the most improved from 2019 to 2020.

Andrew Perez

Andrew finished the 2021 season 6-9, and while his final few weeks saw his team become a legitimate threat, he did finish with a +2 luck differential. His team finished among the Top 6 scorers in only four weeks all season.

William Battle & Alex Mayo

William finished the season 8-7 while Alex finished with a 7-8 record. Both finished with -2 luck differentials. In fact, they arrived at that luck differential the same way.

Both William and Alex got two lucky wins over our 15 regular season weeks, but they also each suffered four unlucky losses.

Their -2 luck differentials pale in comparison to last year’s unluckiest manager, Cory Puffett, who had a -4 luck differential, but it definitely becomes frustrating when you could have competed for a playoff spot, as was the case for both managers, William especially.

Andrew Perez

Andrew earned a league-high 325.84 points from passing stats this season, 1.2 points per game more than the next best manager, Alex Mayo.

It certainly helps when you have a quarterback who focuses on passing and is defying the laws of aging. Tom Brady scored 309.92 points from passing stats in his 14 starts this season. In just those 14 games, Brady alone accounted for more passing points than Alex’s quarterbacks did in all 15 regular season games!

Anthony Battle

In the past, we’ve split awards by the scoring discipline rather than the position group. As part of my attempt to more completely capture our league’s history, I am adding positional coaching awards and will be assigning past winners in our league documents over the course of this offseason.

Anthony Battle had the best quarterback in the AFL this year, Josh Allen. In fact, dating back to at least 2017 (I’m still working through historical records from 2013-2016), Allen is the first quarterback to repeat as the highest-scoring quarterback in the AFL!

Rushing is a big part of Allen’s game, which might explain why Anthony finished 6th in scoring from passing stats. But Anthony’s 388.28 points from the QB position were 9.5 more than Alex Mayo, who also finished second in the running for this award.

Josh Allen

It doesn’t always work out this way where the QB coach of the year has the best quarterback, in part because the previous two awards are determined solely on regular season performance. Last year, for example, Alex Kincaid was the QB coach of the year but because he didn’t make the playoffs and Stephen April got two extra games with Josh Allen, Allen wound up being the Best QB.

This year, though, it wasn’t close. Allen scored 66 more points than Tom Brady in just one additional game. His 26.6 points per game were 5.1 more than the average starting QB across the AFL’s 186 recorded QB starts in 2021.

Only Justin Herbert, who made three fewer starts than Allen, was within two and a half points per game of Allen’s average, and Herbert averaged 26.5 points per game.

Eric Meyer

Eric had a rough season from an injury standpoint. At one point, his first eight draft picks were all out due to injuries.

Derrick Henry had by far the highest per game average this season at 26.1 points per game, but he finished just 6th among AFL running backs in total points because he only appeared in eight games before losing the rest of his fantasy season to injury.

Despite a depleted roster he recorded 42 running back starts through the regular season, just three shy of the maximum and second only to Alex Kincaid’s 44 running back starts. And because Henry does almost all of his damage on the ground, as does Eric’s second running back, Nick Chubb, Eric finished 21 points ahead of Alex in fantasy points from rushing stats with 661.50 points.

This is Eric’s third Rushing COY title in our league’s nine years of operation!

Alex Kincaid

While Eric was the top dog from rushing stats, Alex rode his 44 running back starts to the top point total from the position in the regular season.

His 748.44 points from running backs, spurred by the top running back in the AFL plus D’Andre Swift and mid-season acquisition Joe Mixon, were 11 more than Eric recorded.

Alex was also the running back coach of the year in 2020, so congratulations on the repeat title!

Jonathan Taylor

This wasn’t particularly close. It likely would have been had Derrick Henry remained healthy, considering he was averaging nearly 2 more points per game than Taylor finished the year with, but no other Top 20 running back in the AFL even topped 20 points per game.

Taylor finished the year with 389.14 points in 16 games played for an average of 24.3 points per game. The next highest total came from Austin Ekeler at 277.86 points in 14 games, an average of 19.8 points per game.

With Taylor’s win, we have never had a repeat Best RB winner. In fact, we don’t even have any running back in the AFL’s nine years to win in two different seasons!

Evan Ash

Evan earned 1064.30 points from receiving stats this year. No other manager has ever recorded even 900 points from receiving in a season!

His squad recorded 477 receptions, a league record, and 6,251 receiving yards, also a league record. His 40 touchdown receptions are the second most in league history behind only the 41 touchdowns his squad caught back in 2014, when he last won this award and when we had one less regular season game!

Evan Ash

With all of that, it should come as no surprise then that Evan was the best wide receiver coach in 2021.

The AFL’s three top wide receivers by fantasy points scored were all on Evan’s team. Cooper Kupp, Davante Adams, and Justin Jefferson had three of the four best averages in points per game, with only Deebo Samuel sneaking in a couple of points per game ahead of Jefferson and just a tenth of a point per game behind Adams.

Evan recorded 54 wide receiver starts in 2021, just six shy of the maximum and second only to Andrew’s 58 wide receiver starts. Evan’s receivers totaled 860.40 points, more than 200 points ahead of Andrew.

Cooper Kupp

As with the running back position, we have never had a player win this award in consecutive seasons. Only Tyreek Hill has multiple Best WR awards in AFL history.

Kupp was the only receiver to average 20 points per game. Granted, Davante Adams appeared in one less game than Kupp this season, but Kupp finished 63.16 points ahead of the Packers receiver regarded by many to be the best in the game entering this season.

Anthony Battle

Nine AFL managers recorded the minimum 15 tight ends starts this season. Two used a tight end in the flex once.

Anthony recorded 20 tight end starts this season. Combine that with the only offensive in AFL history who has been the best at his position more than twice and you get the tight end coach of the year. Travis Kelce started 14 games, Robert Tonyan started three times in the flex, and Dan Arnold started twice in the flex and in the TE slot during Kelce’s bye week.

Anthony’s 224.62 points from the position were 20 points clear of the runner-up for the award, Stephen April.

Mark Andrews

Speaking of Stephen April, his tight end unseated one of the greatest players in AFL history.

Travis Kelce had been the Best TE in the AFL each of the past five seasons, dating back to 2016 when he was part of Eric Meyer’s historic campaign.

Andrews scored 203.40 points during the regular season, then added another 22.80 points in his wild card appearance. Travis Kelce totaled 190.82 points in his campaign, so even without the playoff appearance Andrews would have been the best tight end in the AFL this season.

Alex Kincaid

Only three managers totaled at least 200 points from their defensive/special teams units. Of them, Alex reigned supreme.

His 224.74 points from the regular season were the most in the AFL. He used a combination of five different team defenses over the course of the season and all five had at least one game with 10+ points, including the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1, the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 3, the New York Giants in Week 7, the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 11, and, on seven different occasions, the best defense of 2021.

Dallas Cowboys

Despite starting only 10 games over the course of the regular season and playoffs, the Dallas Cowboys outscored every other team defense while in an AFL starting lineup.

Their average of 17.2 points per game was the best among the Top 10 defenses in the league and allowed them to finish four points ahead of the Buffalo Bills on the season, despite Buffalo starting two more games than Dallas did.

Dallas posted their best performance of the season in Week 16 during our wild card round, where their 30.62 points helped Alex overcome two goose eggs in his lineup and come back to defeat the defending AFL champ, Stephen April. Unfortunately, they failed to reach even 5 points the following week, setting a season-low in the Sabol Bowl.

Cory Puffett

By just a tenth of a point, Cory edged out Stephen April for this award.

After using three different kickers over the first five weeks of the season, Cory settled on Nick Folk for the rest of the season minus his Week 14 bye. Folk would have been the best kicker in the AFL had he started all season, but wound up just 6th because he only appeared in 10 games.

Folk’s 11 points per game ranked #1 among kickers, though, and helped Cory to finish with 159.70 points from the position, just ahead of the 159.60 recorded by Stephen.

Matt Gay

Two kickers averaged 10 points per game while in starting lineups this season. Nick Folk was one and the other was Justin Tucker, who averaged 10.6 points per game and finished as the second-best kicker with 147.70 points.

Thanks to Stephen’s wild card playoff appearance, however, Matt Gay is the best kicker of 2021. He ranked third among the Top 10 kickers in per game average with 9.9 points per game, and he finished with 148.00 total points this season.

Najee Harris

For at least the fifth season in a row (I still have four more seasons to complete records for), the top scoring rookie is a running back.

Harris started 14 games for William Battle in 2021 and scored 229.28 points, the fourth most among running backs in the AFL. Only seven total non-quarterbacks outscored Harris in 2021 while in a starting lineup.

Ja’Marr Chase, who some might have thought could be in the conversation, really wasn’t. It didn’t help that Chase started three fewer games, but also, in those games, he averaged just 12.7 points per game compared to Harris’s 16.4 points per game. As a result, Harris finished nearly 90 points ahead of Chase.

Cooper Kupp

In the regular season and postseason, 523 wide receiver starts were recorded in the AFL. In those 523 starts, wide receivers averaged 11.06 points per game.

Cooper Kupp finished his season with 330.66 points in 16 games for an average of 20.7 point per game, or 9.64 points over average. That was one of the best margins of any candidate for this award except for Jonathan Taylor, who averaged 10.1 more points per game than the average running back.

Both were major contributors to their respective team’s runs to the title game. What ultimately set Kupp apart to the voters was the fact that he stepped up with strong performances in the playoffs. Both of Kupp’s point totals were greater than Evan’s margin of victory in his two playoff games.

Additionally, Kupp was exceptionally valuable compared to his draft position. Taylor was the fifth running back and sixth player overall off the board this season. Kupp was the 17th receiver and 42nd player overall off the board and will be available to Evan to keep in the fourth round, should he choose, in 2022.

Congratulations to Cooper Kupp, adding an MVP award to his third career AFL Championship victory.

Brandon Saunders

We won’t spend much time on this because I’m not in the business of embarrassing anybody or talking too much trash. But we do have an award for the worst team each season so we have to mention it.

This year’s Snyder Medal goes to Brandon who suffered an historically bad season. His CF score of -21.4 is by far the worst in AFL history. The previous worst CF score was Andrew Perez’s -13.4 score from last season.

Brandon will get whatever draft pick none of our other 11 managers wants during our draft pick draft this summer. This was the first time Brandon has ever finished more than a single game below .500 so there’s no reason to think he won’t bounce back next year.