The Week 12 Game of the Week featured the top two teams in the league, both by record and by power rankings. Cory pulled back into a tie with Sean for the best record in the AFL with his 15th career Peyton Manning Award, the third he’s earned this season.

Cory is now 15-11 all-time in Game of the Week appearances, dropping Sean to 9-10 and handing him his third GOTW loss of 2022. Cory is alone with the fourth most Peyton Manning Awards of all time after passing William Battle and pulling to within one of Evan Ash’s third-place mark.

Coaching was the name of the game in this matchup as both the Chuck Knox and Hue Jackson awards go to these managers.

Cory is the Chuck Knox Coach of the Week for his decision to start Foster Moreau over Tyler Higbee at tight end. Higbee took a goose egg, so Cory earned 11.05 coaching points, more than his margin of victory. It’s his 10th career Chuck Knox Award, the fourth most since we began tracking coaching in 2016.

This week’s Hue Jackson Award goes to Sean, who cost his team 11.48 points and the win by leaving Ja’Marr Chase in his lineup instead of replacing the inactive wide receiver with Gus Edwards in his FLEX. He now has the third most Hue Jackson Awards since 2016 with eight of them.

Cory got decent production out of his starting defense this week, but it could have been even better for him. He left the week’s #4 defense on his bench as the Minnesota Vikings scored 13.07 points on Thanksgiving in the late game against New England.

Cory entered Week 12 as the only manager without a single double-digit kicker performance in 2022. He finally made that right with Jason Sanders and his 14.00 points in Miami’s victory against Houston. It wasn’t enough for Cory to jump back out of last place in kicker scoring on the season.

He fell to the cellar last week and remains there with the 81.70 points he’s scored. That’s just 6.81 points per game from the kicker position, almost four points per game behind the season leader.

What a week for Anthony! He entered the 2021 season with two Top 5 scoring weeks in AFL history. Both have since been bumped out of the Top 5, but this will get him back into that group and gives him a league-high three Top 10 single-week scores in AFL history!

His point total ranks #5 all-time and earned him his 20th career Tom Brady Award, making him the first AFL manager to reach that mark. It was his first time leading the league in scoring since the final week of the 2021 regular season.

Helping him were the five players who finished among the Top 5 scorers at their positions this week, including three running backs! The best of the bunch was Josh Jacobs, who led all players in Week 12 with 48.29 fantasy points. That score ranks 8th in AFL history among running backs.

Anthony also got a nice boost from his defensive pickup as the Miami Dolphins scored 24.25 points despite giving up a lot of garbage time yards and points to the Houston Texans. That total ranks 79th all-time among defenses and earned Anthony his 11th career Chuck Noll Defensive Coach of the Week Award.

A couple of weeks ago, Alex found himself on the losing end of the 7th highest scoring game in AFL history when he lost to Brandon Saunders. This week he finds himself on the losing end of the 8th highest scoring game ever as he and Anthony combined for 298.37 points. That’s some rotten luck for the third-year manager who was hoping to follow in Stephen April and Alex Kincaid’s footsteps, but now finds himself as the first man out of the playoff picture.

It was Alex’s third unlucky loss of the season. While he does have a pair of lucky wins, that still puts him at 1 win below expected (WBE) on the season, making him the third most unlucky manager of the year so far.

Alex didn’t help himself by leaving the week’s #4 tight end on his bench as Hunter Henry scored 14 points, but the game wasn’t particularly close.

Last week, Alex was passed for the lead in defensive scoring on the season. This week he took that lead back from William Battle as he’s now scored 140.73 points (11.73ppg) on the season.

It’s been a rough season for Andrew. The ninth-year manager finds himself alone in last place in the league, likely destined for the sacko bracket of the consolation ladder, and just won his 11th career David Carr Award as the week’s lowest scorer. It’s his second of the season and he’s passed Eric and tied Sean for the fourth most all-time.

Stephen, meanwhile, got an important win to keep his wild card hopes alive. He’s eliminated from division contention, but his playoff aspirations aren’t dead just yet.

Though it wasn’t a particularly tall task, Stephen did have to overcome a nice coaching week for Andrew as he earned honorable mention for the Chuck Knox Award. He earned a league-high 17.68 points by succeeding on both of his coaching risks. One was essentially a wash as he earned 0.01 points by starting Deebo Samuel over JuJu Smith-Schuster. The other 17.67 points came from his decision to start Ezekiel Elliott on Thanksgiving.

Considering Elliott was his only active running back in Week 12, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that this would’ve been a coaching risk, but it was. Joe Mixon had a might higher projection than Elliott on Thursday, with a bigger gap in Mixon’s favor than the gap over Robinson in Elliott’s favor. The move FleaFlicker would’ve suggested was the forgo Elliott, plan on Mixon and then use Robinson as the alternative if Mixon was inactive.

As it turned out, Mixon was not able to play but Robinson was a healthy scratch in the Jets game, so Andrew would have been completely without a running back if he had gone that route.

After a solid week from Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker, Andrew retook the lead for kicker points on the season with 127.30 points, passing back Alex Mayo who overtook him last week. Tucker’s 15.50 points tie him for 96th on the AFL’s all-time single game kicker list.

While Stephen remains just a game behind the active leader in consecutive 100-point games, Andrew is now one game away from tying the longest 100-point drought of his career, a mark of four straight games that he has hit twice so far in his career.

Will remains firmly in the playoff hunt after an important victory and some help from Eric Meyer over the weekend. Despite being two games below .500, three straight wins and a little help could give him his first playoff berth since 2017.

He won his game against Evan easily, but the margin of victory could have been much higher. Will failed on both of his coaching risks, costing his team a league-high 20.48 points and making him one of this week’s Hue Jackson Award finalists. He missed out on 4.40 points by adding and starting Chase McLaughlin instead of Jake Elliott at kicker and another 16.08 points by playing Brandon Aiyuk and benching Week 12’s WR2, Garrett Wilson.

Fortunately for Will, Evan’s team has been riddled with injuries and on top of that he left the week’s WR5, Zay Jones, on his bench.

Will’s 100-point game came just in time for him. He was just one game away from tying the longest drought in his career. Now he’ll look for some consistently strong performances the next few weeks.

Only one game this week was closer than this one, and it had huge ramifications for both managers.

William’s victory gives him control over the wild card playoff spot and keeps the door open for him to win his first division title since 2018.

Meanwhile, Alex cost himself bigtime with a coaching decision that leaves only a sliver of hope alive for him to make the playoffs. He’ll have to be perfect in the final three weeks of the season and get some help in order to win the AFL West; the wild card spot is closed off to him, now.

The only thing that kept Alex from taking this week’s Hue Jackson Award was the one coaching risk he succeeded on, earning 16.01 points by picking up and starting Samaje Perine over Dameon Pierce. But he cost his team 13.65 points by adding Demarcus Robinson to start over Adam Thielen and another 12.30 points by picking up the Carolina Panthers defense to start instead of the Miami Dolphins, who remained on waivers until Anthony picked them up a day after Alex grabbed the Panthers.

In net, Alex cost his team 9.94 points, fewer than Sean Kennedy but still more than his margin of defeat. Additionally, while it wasn’t a coaching error, Alex left Week 12’s RB4 on his bench as Brian Robinson had a great day in Washington’s win against Atlanta, scoring 22.09 fantasy points.

Nick Folk was one bright spot for Alex, as his 16 points tie him for the 75th most all-time by a starting kicker in the AFL. It went to waste, despite William leaving the week’s K3 on his bench in Harrison Butker and his 14.20 points. But Alex did earn his 6th career Scott O’Brien Kicker Coach of the Week Award.

Like Will, Eric came very close to tying the longest drought of his career, needing Michael Pittman’s touchdown catch on Monday night just to get over the 100-point threshold.

It’s been a rough season for Eric. He remains the league’s worst defensive coach this season, averaging just north of 4.5 points per game from the position and more than 2 points per game worse than the manager who ranks 11th.

This week, though, he benefited from a lucky win as the #8 scorer for the week. He is one of six managers who is at least one win above expected by performances against the weekly league median.

Brandon will have to settle for extending his league-leading 100-point game streak to eight games. If he can continue that streak through the end of this regular season and pick it up in Week 1 of 2023, he’ll tie his career long of 12 consecutive games.