For the second straight year, Evan played in the AFL’s opening game of the week. Last year he tried and failed to topple the man who defeated him for the 2020 AFL title. This time he was defending his trophy and belt against a man seeking revenge for last December’s defeat.

Last year, Stephen April got a lucky Week 1 victory as the league’s #7 scorer of the week. This year, Evan one-upped him by getting the win despite finishing tenth in scoring. The victory gives Evan his 16th career Peyton Manning Award, moving him past Anthony Battle for sole possession of the second most in league history. Evan is now 16-11, while Alex falls to 2-6, in game of the week appearances.

Evan’s point total is the sixth lowest winning team score since our league added a ninth starting roster spot in 2016. Coming out of the 2021 regular season, Evan had the league’s longest active streak of 100-point games at five games; that streak is now over.

Alex might have gone a little too running back heavy for his own good in the 2022 AFL Draft. He took running backs with five of his first seven picks; in fact, he has five of the first 30 RBs our league drafted last week. That embarrassment of riches could also be an Achilles heel as he tries to determine which to start every week. This Sunday, Cordarrelle Patterson went off for 24.41 points, the #4 running back performance of the week, while riding Alex’s bench.

On the other end of the spectrum, Cory had no chance this week as even his optimum point total of 131.56 would have fallen well short of Brandon’s point total.

Brandon suffered through the worst season the AFL has ever seen when adjusted for league-wide scoring. A metric we use called Comparison Factor (CF) gave his 2021 campaign a score of -21.4. For context, the next three worst seasons we’ve seen range from -13.1 to -13.4 and the best season we’ve ever seen, Eric’s 2016 campaign, scores a 17.7 using this metric.

Needless to say, Brandon has been waiting all offseason to redeem himself after 2021 marked the first time he’d ever fallen more than one game below .500 in his AFL career. He certainly made a statement this week by securing his fourth career Tom Brady Award, the first he’s taken home since Week 7 of the 2020 season.

Again, this was a low-scoring week in the AFL. Our league-wide total is right in the middle of our 126 weeks, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that Brandon’s point total ranks #50 on our Top 100 list of single-week team scores. He got a huge boost from his Kansas City Chiefs combo of Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.

Mahomes led all AFL starting quarterbacks in Week 1 with 37.29 points, good for #44 on the all-time quarterbacks list, while Kelce led the tight end position with 23.55 points, the #58 game on his positional leaderboard.

Cory took the unlucky loss as the AFL’s fifth highest opening week scorer, but he’ll take consolation in the fact that, with Evan’s failure to reach triple digits, he now owns the longest active 100-point game streak at five games dating back to last season.

Brandon, meanwhile, had closed the 2021 season with six straight games without 100 points, not only the longest drought in his career but tied for the longest in AFL history with the equally embarrassing droughts suffered by Sean Kennedy (Weeks 6 through 11) and Stephen April (Weeks 7 through 12) in 2019. He snapped that streak decisively in Week 1.

Speaking of Stephen April, the 2020 AFL Champ also took an unlucky loss in Week 1 as the league’s sixth highest scorer. Alex Mayo is trying to follow in both his and Alex Kincaid’s footsteps. Both April and Kincaid reached the AFL title game in their third seasons as AFL managers and Mayo would like to do the same this year.

Justin Jefferson went off this week, scoring 35.05 points and reaching the #34 spot on our all-time wide receiver leaderboard, but it wasn’t enough for Stephen. Josh Allen matched that point total, yes with exactly 35.05 points, in Alex’s lineup. While it was only good for #79 on the quarterbacks list, it essentially neutralized one of the early favorites for our league’s LaDainian Tomlinson MVP Award. Of course, Josh Allen’s name is also in that mix.

Though it certainly wasn’t the worst coaching week in league history, Stephen did take home the first Hue Jackson Award of the season as the only manager to lose points due to coaching. He failed on both coaching risks he took, losing 4.65 points by starting Chris Godwin over Mecole Hardman in the FLEX and another 0.30 points by adding and starting Jason Myers instead of Dustin Hopkins after he elected not to take a kicker in the draft.

Poor Eric seemed to have lost his game within the first five minutes of action on Sunday. His quarterback, Joe Burrow, was facing Will’s Pittsburgh Steelers defense, and the first throw of the season for the young Cincinnati quarterback was picked off and taken to the house.

Even without Burrow’s subsequent four turnovers, Eric may not have been able to close the gap, but his team put up quite an effort just to reach triple digits. Eric still had a chance entering Sunday night’s game, but an abysmal performance by CeeDee Lamb and a good but not great outing by Leonard Fournette left Will holding a small lead even before Jerry Jeudy started on Monday Night Football.

The only reason Eric was even in the game early Sunday evening was because of his coaching. It’s been a point of frustration for him in the past, but Eric earned a league-high 16.65 points this week thanks to his decision to ignore Fleaflicker’s projections and start AJ Dillon at FLEX instead of Robert Woods.

The 30.92 points Will got from the Steelers defense ranks #14 in AFL history at the position and Will came very near doubling as the defensive and kicker Coach of the Week, with only Eric’s kicker, Ryan Succop, preventing him from pulling it off. Succop’s 15.50 points tie him for #86 on the all-time single game kicker list.

Both the defense and kicker leaderboards were built this offseason through a very time-intensive process of rebuilding every starting lineup from our history, most of which were lost when ESPN deleted their league history interface and we left for FleaFlicker.

With his fourth straight 100-point performance, Will is just a game behind Cory for the longest active streak of triple digit regular season games.

With a strong opening performance, Sean is now just one victory away from clinching his 50th career win. Of course, he has more than 60 career losses and he’s hoping for just his third season above .500 in his career.

He got off to an excellent start thanks in large part to Saquon Barkley who led all running backs with 30.24 points in Week 1. It wasn’t enough to enter the AFL’s Top 100 at the position, but that performance in tandem with two Top 5 receivers in Davante Adams and Ja’Marr Chase, gave him an easy win.

Sean had closed out the 2021 season on a five-game streak without 100 points, one shy of his career worst drought and tied for the fourth longest streak in AFL history. He brought that to an end comfortably this week.

It wasn’t as lucky as Evan’s, but William also got a lucky win this week as the finished just outside the Top 6 in scoring. Nonetheless, he finds himself alone in first place in the AFL Central following losses by all three of his 2022 division rivals.

William joined Will Massimini as the only other manager with both a Top 5 starting defense and a Top 5 starting kicker this week, granted five of the six best kicker performance of the week were un-rostered in the AFL.

Andrew will have to figure out what to do with some of his players. Aaron Rodgers is his only quarterback and the four-time NFL MVP scored only 3 points this week. Cole Kmet had no catches on just one target and the Green Bay Packers defense wound up in the red with -0.32 points against the Vikings. It may not be time to blow it all up, but it was certainly a disheartening first game of the season.