Usually I start with our game of the week. Occasionally I begin with our top scorer. This week I think I’ll begin with both.

Alex Kincaid led the league in Week 9 with 141.46 points to win the game of the week. His score does not enter our Top 100 leaderboard for all-time team performances, making this the second week in 2021 we haven’t seen a Top 100 team score.

Still, his score was more than enough to earn Alex his fourth career Tom Brady Award. And since it was the game of the week, he also finally takes home his first career Peyton Manning Award on his sixth try. Prior to this week, he’d been the only manager to every play in the AFL who had never won a game of the week.

Alex Mayo falls to 2-3 in his game of the week appearances. This is the 25th time in league history that a manager has won both the Tom Brady and Peyton Manning awards in the same week.

Alex Kincaid was aided by one of four Top 100 offensive player performances from Week 9. Jonathan Taylor contributed a cool 34.58 points to his effort, which ranks #71 all-time among starting AFL running backs.

Though he did lose, Alex Mayo extended his career-long and league-leading 100-point game streak to nine games. He wound up with the third highest score in the league this week, making him the unluckiest manager of the week.

The biggest contributor to his score was Justin Herbert, who shook out of his recent funk to put up 36.68 fantasy points, which puts him right at 50th all-time among starting AFL quarterbacks.

The highest scoring player this week was James Conner, who reached the end zone three times in Arizona’s win against San Francisco. His 39.22 points are the 25th most all-time by a starting running back in the AFL and helped lift William to a much-needed win.

William pulls to within a game of .500 and remains in the playoff hunt despite the worst scheduling luck in the league. He is a full two wins below expected vs the weekly league median and by breakdown he is 1.2 wins below expected.

Brandon reached 100 points for a second straight week, the first time he’s done that all season. He wound up taking an unlucky loss, just sneaking into the top half of the league in scoring.

The result would have flipped if William had followed FleaFlicker suggestions this week. Instead, he earns coach of the week honors after earning a league-high 43.02 points and the victory thanks to three successful coaching risks.

William earned 4.8 points by starting Tee Higgins at wide receiver instead of Cole Beasley and another 7.2 points by picking up Evan Engram for the tight end spot start instead of FleaFlicker’s top option, Albert Okwuegbunam.

The biggest coaching move, though, was William’s decision to keep Brandin Cooks on the bench and instead put James Conner in at FLEX. That’s right, the week’s top scorer wasn’t supposed to even be in William’s starting lineup according to FleaFlicker, but that move earned William 31.02 points, just a little bit less on its own than William’s margin of victory over Brandon.

William was one of four managers who left a Top 5 offensive positional performance on his bench with the week’s #3 quarterback, Matt Ryan, and his 31.74 points out of his lineup. Clearly that didn’t factor in to his result in the win/loss column. It barely factors into his point total for the week since his starter, Carson Wentz, was the week’s #4 quarterback.

Evan pulled to a .500 career mark against Will with the second narrowest margin of victory of the week in the AFL.

It wasn’t a particularly great week for either manager, but this was the only other matchup featuring two 100-point scorers.

Coaching-wise, we had two very different levels of success represented in this one. Evan didn’t earn nearly as many points as William did, but he does earn honorable mention this week for earning 13.06 points and the victory thanks to his decision to drop Daniel Jones and pick up Teddy Bridgewater to start at quarterback for the week.

On the flip side, Will is this week’s Hue Jackson Award winner. His coaching risk was the decision to pick up and start the Green Bay Packers defense instead of the Cleveland Browns, a choice that cost him 18.26 points and the victory.

Will is now 1-for-8 on coaching risks this season and has cost his team three wins and a league-high 58.6 points vs FleaFlicker’s suggested starters.

Though not a coaching risk, another decision Will could have made that would have flipped the outcome was the one at tight end. Last week I pointed out Pat Freiermuth as the week’s #2 scoring tight end, wasting away on Will’s bench. This week, Freiermuth stepped his game up and was the #1 scorer at the position, but was once again riding the bench. He outscored Dallas Goedert by 12.2 points, well more than Will’s margin of defeat.

Last week Will closed the gap on the #11 manager in points from the kicker position. He’s still right there, but remains in 12th with 50.1 points from the position so far this year. Alex Mayo remains in the lead with almost double his total at 99.4 points so far.

The one 100-point scorer we haven’t gotten to yet, we get to now. Sean was the week’s #5 scorer, thanks in part to Lamar Jackson’s 36.18-point outing, good for the 58th highest quarterback score in league history.

The one thing Cory can keep his head up about is the success he’s had streaming defenses this season. He’s now won back-to-back defensive coach of the week honors. Last week it was his decision to start the Denver Broncos. This week it was the New England Patriots and their 23.94 points.

Cory has now overtaken Stephen April as the league’s top point earner from the defensive position with 131.84 defensive points or just north of 14.6 per week.

As it turned out, only two of the Top 8 scoring defenses this week were even rostered, and both were on Cory’s roster. And no, the other one was not the Denver Broncos but rather the Miami Dolphins.

Sean put forward a perfect lineup this week and joins Alex Mayo with two of them so far this year. No other manager has even one perfect lineup so far in 2021.

One of two matchups won by managers with less than 100 points this week, Eric could have reached the century mark but he left the week’s top scorer at wide receiver on his bench. Elijah Moore only scored 23.6 points but in a terrible week across the board for pass catchers, that was the best any NFL wide receiver could muster.

Eric is now the luckiest manager in the AFL. This was his third win as a bottom six scorer and he sits at 2 wins above expected vs league median and 1.5 wins above expected based on breakdown. Anthony has been the second luckiest at 1.0 wins above expected by breakdown, but he enjoyed no such luck this week.

Anthony failed to reach 100 points for the second straight week. If he fails to hit triple digits again this week, he will tie the longest drought in his career.

In the lowest-scoring game of the week, we had two very poor coaching performances.

Andrew’s 85.74 points rank as the 11th lowest winning score since we added a ninth starting position in 2016. That wasn’t helped by the week’s #4 scoring wide receiver sitting on his bench.

Darnell Mooney scored 19.42 points and Andrew’s decision to keep him on the bench would have been considered a coaching risk if Mooney’s status hasn’t been up in the air until after Sunday Night Football. I can’t fault Andrew for making sure he had a full lineup, so he doesn’t lose any coaching points for that choice.

Even so, Andrew still cost his team a league-high 21.8 points thanks to the two coaching risks he did attempt. He started Bryan Edwards at FLEX instead of Chase Claypool, costing his team 6.14 points, and he decided to pick up the Minnesota Vikings defense instead of the Cleveland Brown and missed out on 15.66 points.

Those decisions very nearly cost him his second win of the season. But, thankfully for Andrew, Stephen also failed on two coaching risks and those were enough to cost him the victory.

Stephen only cost himself 3.1 points by starting Jerry Jeudy at wide receiver instead of Hunter Renfrow and another 8.04 points by starting Boston Scott at FLEX instead of Christian Kirk, but reversing either one of those choices would have given him the victory against Andrew.

Stephen did earn kicker coach of the week recognition thanks to LA Rams kicker Matt Gay leading all AFL starting kickers with 12.8 points.

Andrew continues to trail in last place in defensive scoring. Where Cory has averaged more than 14.5 points per week from his starting defenses this year, Andrew is averaging just 7.5 points from his.