It wasn’t quite Cory’s Week 8 performance, but we’ve never seen two games of 180+ points in a single season until now.

Finishing just shy of Sean Kennedy’s Week 5 performance from 2021, Brandon recorded the third highest team score in AFL history this week. He had a lot of terrific performances, including five Top 5 offensive performers.

The biggest boost for him, though, came from CeeDee Lamb, who he acquired in a trade with Eric Meyer last week. Lamb contributed 33.60 points to Brandon’s score, ranking him 49th all-time among starting wide receivers in AFL history.

This was the fifth time in Brandon’s career he led the league in scoring. His most recent Tom Brady Award had come in Week 1 of this season. As this was also the game of the week, Brandon took home his 8th career Peyton Manning Award, his first since Week 13 of the 2020 season.

Brandon’s had some awful luck when he’s been tapped to play in the game of the week. This win improves his record in those games to 8-17 while Alex drops to 3-8. It’s his third time losing in the AFL’s game of the week in the last five weeks.

With Brandon taking home both pieces of hardware this week, this marks the 31st time in AFL history and the third time in 2022 that both awards have gone to the same manager.

This was Brandon’s league-leading 6th straight game with at least 100 points. Thanks to a solid effort by Alex, their combined point total of 299.05 points made this the 7th highest scoring game in AFL history.

Brandon did leave the AFL’s #5 defensive performance of the week on his bench. The Washington Commanders’ 14.01 points went to waste. It was not a coaching risk, but they would have given him the 2nd highest single-game score in AFL history and would have put the combined total for this game over the 300-point mark.

Alex was the league’s 5th highest scorer of the week, making this an unlucky loss for him. He now has two of them this season to go along with two lucky wins. He doubled as the defensive coach of the week and the kicker coach of the week, thanks to the Buffalo Bills defense, which led starting units in the AFL with 17.19 points, and their kicker Tyler Bass who led AFL starters at the position with 13.90 points.

This was a really tough break for Anthony. He had a really bad Week 9 performance, but it came off the heels of back-to-back Top 3 weeks and it didn’t seem out of the question that he could make a playoff push.

He was the league’s #3 scorer this week and, while he’s not out of it yet, that bad luck is going to make it much more challenging for him to make that run. He’s now two wins below expected vs the league median and 1.4 wins below expected by breakdown, making him the second unluckiest manager in the AFL this season.

Anthony earns honorable mention coach of the week recognition after he earned a league-high 11.26 points by succeeding on all three of his coaching risks, which came out of a trade he made with Cory Puffett last week. He sent away Tom Brady, Alvin Kamara, and Zach Ertz, whose combined projection was higher than the three players he received in started in their place. But Tua Tagovailoa, Miles Sanders, and Gerald Everett each outscored their counterparts in that trade.

Unfortunately for Anthony, Evan had just a little more going for him this week. He took just one coaching risk, adding and starting the Tennessee Titans defense instead of the New Orleans Saints, which earned him 11.21 points and the win, making him the coach of the week.

Additionally, Evan benefited from his own trade. He acquired Justin Jefferson from Stephen April. So much for ignoring our commissioner’s advice that he should’ve kept him on his team. Jefferson’s 31.70 points tie him for the 78th highest single-game performance by an AFL starting wide receiver.

Sometimes managers just can’t catch a break.

Stephen has now lost four games this season with a Top 6 scoring performance and he has no lucky wins to offset them. If this holds through the end of the season, he’ll join Cory Puffett’s 2020 squad as the only ones in AFL history to finish the season with a -4 luck factor.

By breakdown, Stephen is only 1.6 wins below expected, barely unluckier than Anthony, but luck vs league median is our gold standard of determining how lucky or unlucky a season has been for a manager.

This time, though, Stephen has no right to complain and nobody to blame but himself. He is one of two managers to earn honorable mention for the Week 10 Hue Jackson Award.

Stephen decided last week to sell the farm and stock up on picks for next season. If he had kept Justin Jefferson and picked up Jimmy Garoppolo to start at QB like FleaFlicker suggested, instead of trading Jefferson away, acquiring Dak Prescott, and starting Curtis Samuel, Stephen would have had 23.12 more points and would have won his game.

Despite finishing seventh in scoring this week, William pulled out the win. He is now tied with Brandon as the luckiest managers in the AFL this year. He’s had four lucky wins now this season, though he’s also had two unlucky losses to halfway balance things out.

He can certainly hang his hat on one big performance this week, though. After missing out on a historic performance in Week 9, he plugged Justin Fields into his lineup for Week 10 and the second-year Chicago quarterback rewarded him with 36.23 points, the 64th highest quarterback score in league history. It wasn’t the 46.78 points he scored in Week 9 that would have ranked 4th all-time, but it was still another terrific day for the budding star.

For his part, Will joins Stephen in earning honorable mention for the Hue Jackson Award this week. He took one coaching risk this week, starting Brandon Aiyuk instead of James Conner, and he cost himself 14.28 points. Flipping that would have given him the win by less than half a point.

Games like this are why we have to play them. Cory had by far the highest projected team total entering Week 10 and wound up failing to record 100 points for just the second time this season. Only Sean Kennedy has failed to reach that mark fewer times than him.

While it was not a coaching risk, and in fact Cory earned points from his coaching this week, he left the week’s #4 defensive performance on his bench in the Minnesota Vikings and their 16.71 points. Plugging them in for the New Orleans Saints would have flipped this game.

Instead, Alex earns a lucky win despite finishing 8th in scoring this week. It’s his second such win of the season, only partially balanced out by the unlucky loss he took in Week 5.

Oh Eric.

Andrew was the luckiest manager of the week, taking the win despite finishing 10th in scoring. This was his second lucky win of the season, balancing out the two unlucky losses he’s suffered, so his 3-7 record is exactly where it should be.

The most notable thing about this game is the Hue Jackson Award Eric gets to take home. He traded away Dalvin Cook last week and so started AJ Dillon in his place. That move cost him 16.58 points, by itself enough to flip the outcome of this game and help Eric avoid a trip to the Snyder bracket.

But then he also traded away CeeDee Lamb, received Diontae Johnson in the trade and plugged him into his starting lineup. That risk cost him another 25.40 points in coaching. In all, Eric cost his team a season-high 41.98 points and the win with those two coaching risks, almost singlehandedly wiping away the net positive coaching score the league had built over the course of the season.