Normally I like to start with the game of the week, but Sean stole the week and absolutely deserves first billing here considering the way he earned his ninth career Tom Brady Award.

Sean’s squad totaled 188.26 points this week, breaking the all-time single week team scoring record by a comfortable margin. The old record was set by Eric Meyer in the 2016 AFL Championship game when he obliterated Andrew Perez, who has only one winning season since then. Hopefully with this game not having the same stakes, William can avoid the cliff dive Andrew has taken.

Sean was led by Lamar Jackson’s incredible Monday night performance. He was playing rather poorly through the first half and even into the third quarter but wound up scoring 49 points, a new single-game record for a starting quarterback in the AFL.

Now, Jackson’s total was aided by our new scoring system. Under the settings we had in place through last season, he would have scored 46.38 points, which is still incredible but would have ranked third on our all-time list.

The previous record was set by Peyton Manning, who scored 47.6 points in Evan’s lineup in the very first week of our league’s history. This was the last record standing from that inaugural week of the AFL.

Sean’s total could have been even higher, to be fair; his optimum score for the week was over 200 points! He left the #5 tight end performance of the week on his bench with Hunter Henry scoring 16.6 points. He’ll take the tradeoff at the position since Dawson Knox was in his lineup and had the fourth highest tight end score of the week. But Henry would have been better in his lineup than Clyde Edwards-Helaire.

In fact, Sean actually earns honorable mention as our second worst coach of the week. He cost his team a league-high 13.08 points by starting CEH instead of FleaFlicker’s recommendation, CeeDee Lamb.

William had a rough week, starting with Thursday night when Russell Wilson had to leave early with a hand injury that will likely keep him out for some time. He still holds the distinction as our unluckiest manager of the season so far, though, at 2 wins below expected by league median scores and 1.6 WBE by breakdown.

Evan had a strong performance to even his season-series with Stephen. The two met in the opening game of the week of 2021 in a rematch of last year’s AFL title game. Stephen won last year’s championship and defended it in Week 1, but Evan has forced us to consider our league’s second tiebreaker if the two find themselves tied for the wild card spot at season’s end.

This is Evan’s 13th career Peyton Manning Award, tied with 3-time champion Danny Hatcher for the third most all-time. He is now 13-10 in his 23 career game of the week matchups. Stephen falls to 4-4 in his appearances.

Mark Andrews did everything he could to bring Stephen back on Monday night when he scored 35.8 points, the third highest single-game tight end score in AFL history. Evan had enough of a lead built up, though, to hold off Stephen’s late surge.

A big part of that was Davante Adams, who had his best day of the year so far. He scored 32.2 points in Green Bay’s thrillingly bizarre win against Cincinnati. While it only ranks #58 on our league’s all-time wide receiver scoring list, it almost completely nullified the Baltimore Ravens tight end.

Both teams had great games go to waste on their benches. For the first time this season, Stephen benched the Buffalo Bills defense and they scored 18.92 points, good for the second highest defensive score of the week. Of course, he started the Tennessee Titans, who scored 19.2 points and were the highest scoring defensive unit in Week 5, so his only complaint might be that we aren’t allowed to FLEX a defense.

Stephen won defensive coach of the week and has now earned 91.84 points from the position, more than 30 points more than our next best defensive coach this season.

Evan’s missed opportunity was much worse. After benefiting from a great day in Week 3 and being disappointed by a low score in Week 4, he benched Mike Williams who wound up with 31.8 points, the second most by a wide receiver in Week 5 and his highest output of the year so far.

Stephen is our second luckiest manager of the season so far with 1.3 wins above expected by breakdown, but he did suffer an unlucky loss in this game as our league’s fifth highest scorer for the week.

Stephen and Evan have the second and third highest playoff odds through a third of our regular season according to PlayoffComputer.com, with Stephen given a 63.7% chance of making the playoffs and a 49.8% chance of winning the AFL East and Evan given a 43.8% chance of making the playoffs and a 36.4% chance of winning the AFL West.

Going back to Evan’s decision to bench Mike Williams, it may not have factored into this week’s coaching scores but he may need to rethink leaving any of Justin Herbert’s receivers on the bench going forward after the day he had for Alex.

He was no Lamar Jackson, but he did find the end zone five times, once on the ground, and his 45.34 points rank #5 all-time in the AFL at the position. Take any one of those five touchdowns away and Alex would have lost this game.

As it stood, Alex got a lucky win this week after finishing 8th in the league in scoring.

Cory was the only AFL manager without a Top 5 offensive starter this week, but he did earn kicker coach of the week honors for his decision to role with Minnesota Vikings kicker Greg Joseph despite his 1-point outing in Week 4. Joseph led NFL kickers this week with 19.40 points.

That output was enough to push Cory up into fourth among AFL managers in kicker scoring, but Alex leads the way with 56 points from the position, less than a point ahead of Andrew Perez, who was the league leader after Week 4.

Speaking of Andrew, he was locked in a battle between winless teams this week. Not only was Brandon also winless entering Week 5, he was the only manager who had not yet scored 100 points in a game.

He finally changed both of those distinctions despite Andrew, like Sean and Alex, benefiting from a 40-point performance from the quarterback position.

Tom Brady threw for 411 yards and five touchdown passes in a beatdown against Miami, his 41.96 points good for 14th all-time among AFL quarterbacks.

Unfortunately for Andrew, he’ll remember this week more for what could have been. His margin of defeat was 4.1 points. He cost his team 5.28 points by failing on two coaching risks. The less impactful one was his decision to start A.J. Green at FLEX instead of Odell Beckham, which cost him 0.8 points. The one that really hurt and that by itself cost him 4.48 points and his game, was his decision at kicker.

Andrew spent $1 at the start of the week to add the Green Bay Packers defense, then he spent $1 to drop them and add the Las Vegas Raiders defense. In both cases, the Atlanta Falcons defense, which was set to play the Jets, was FleaFlicker’s suggested defensive pickup. The Falcons scored 4.48 more points than the Raiders did and would have given Andrew enough to win his game.

For what it’s worth, he Andrew had stuck with his Packers addition, he would have earned even more points from the position.

As it stands, Andrew remains our worst defensive coach of the season so far. Through 5 weeks he is averaging just 3.62 points from the position. Our next worst defensive coach is Alex Mayo, but he’s averaging 9.9 points per game from the position, so it’s a very wide gap from Andrew up to 11th place in defensive scoring.

Interestingly, the gap between Andrew and 11th is about the same as the gap between Stephen and 2nd, at just over 31 points. The gap between 2nd and 11th? Less than 11 points.

A big part of Brandon’s victory was the Falcons rookie tight end Kyle Pitts. He scored 21.8 point in the first double-digit fantasy game of his career. Brandon also had a positive coaching risk starting Trey Lance at quarterback instead of Ryan Tannehill. That positive coaching decision was undone, almost to the cost of a victory, by his decision to start Laviska Shenault instead of Michael Pittman.

Brandon got the lucky win after falling just outside our Top 6 in scoring for the week. Still, by finally scoring 100+ in a game, he has ended his drought at four games, tied for the sixth longest drought in league history.

There wasn’t much unlucky about Andrew’s loss, but he does remain our second unluckiest manager so far this season by breakdown at 1.5 wins below expected.

Until Lamar Jackson’s spectacular second half effort on Monday night, it looked like Anthony was going to become the first manager to win a second Tom Brady Award this season. Instead his 166.12-point effort will simply be remembered as the still-impressive 10th best week in AFL history.

Josh Allen was the fourth highest scoring starting quarterback in our league this week with 40.82 points. That’s right, four quarterbacks scored 40 points in the same week! Twice in league history we had seen two quarterbacks hit that mark in the same week, but never three quarterbacks, much less four.

Allen’s score is tied for the 19th highest single-game score by a starting QB in AFL history.

Through most of Monday Night Football, it looked as though we would come one manager away from everybody scoring 100 points for just the second time in league history. Will was well under that mark until Marquise Brown’s career day lifted him to 102.72 points. Still, his team was the lowest scorer of the week.

Will’s one consolation will be his designation as the coach of the week. He earned a league-high 16.38 points for his decision to ignore FleaFlicker’s suggestion to start Derek Carr over Jalen Hurts, who was looking like every bit the dud Carr was until the final 20 minutes of Philadelphia’s comeback win in Charlotte.

The kicker position has been a real Achilles heel so far this season for Will. After Week 3 he made the switch from Ryan Succop to Daniel Carlson. Carlson had a far higher output than Succop in each of the first three weeks and they have completely switched since Will made the move.

Through five weeks, Will has just 23.7 points from his kicker, which is the worst in the league, about five points behind 11th place and 32 points behind Alex Mayo in the lead.

Finally, Eric defended his unbeaten record, which if you remember was only still intact because of a fortuitous stat correction on Thursday morning following Week 4’s matchup with Will Massimini.

Where most of the league seemed to see their points coming from their quarterbacks and receivers, both Eric and Alex benefited most from their running backs.

Derrick Henry led the way for Eric with 35.58 points, half of those coming from his three rushing touchdowns. That’s good for #52 all-time among starting running backs in the AFL. Jonathan Taylor contributed 33.50 points to Alex’s losing cause on Monday night, which is tied for 83rd on our league’s running back list. Nearly 15 of Taylor’s points came on his first touch of the game, but he was spectacular throughout the contest until the Colts decided the best way to defend their lead was to put the ball in Carson Wentz’s hands.

Eric had a couple of top scorers sitting on his bench this week. Jameis Winston scored 28.26 points, which was the fifth highest quarterback score and more than double what Kyler Murray produced in his starting lineup. He also left the #3 defense on his bench in the form of the Carolina Panthers and their 18.88 points.

Eric’s league-leading active 100-point game streak is now at nine games. Despite being one of four managers with 100 points in every game this season, Eric is our luckiest manager of the year. Twice he has fallen below the league median, so by Top 6 performances he sits at 2 wins above expected. His breakdown also suggests he should have a record of 3.2-1.8.

Still, there’s no doubt that his team is a very strong one. He currently has a 71.4% chance of winning the AFL Central this season and an 83.2% chance of making the playoffs, according to PlayoffComputer.com’s Monte Carlo simulation.