This week’s game of the week was either going to give Cory the AFL Central title or put him and William in a tie atop the division with two weeks left to play. Cory won it going away, beating William by nearly 50 points. Thanks to Cory’s 20-point victory over William in Week 3, he has the head-to-head tiebreaker.

William still has control of the league’s wild card but finds his road a bit rockier after finishing last in the league in scoring. It’s his 14th career David Carr Award, tied with Evan Ash and Brandon Saunders for the most all-time.

Cory’s 16th career Peyton Manning Award ties Evan Ash for the third most all-time. It’s the second time in his career he’s won consecutive games of the week and improves his career record in these games to 16-11. William falls to 14-8. His last loss was in Week 9 of the 2020 season and he had won two Peyton Manning Awards since then.

Cory had several key performers this week as he led the league with five Top 5 positional performers, including the top quarterback, the top running back, and both a kicker and a defense in their Top 5.

The big hitter this week was Jalen Hurts, who recorded the 77th highest quarterback total in AFL history with 35.50 points. 

Both managers left big performances on their bench this week. For William, it was D’Andre Swift who scored 21.12 points and was the RB5 for the week. Cory left the WR5, Christian Watson, and his 23.98 points on his bench along with the #3 defense, the San Francisco 49ers who scored 21.26 points.

The Tom Brady Award for Week 13 goes to Anthony, who has led the league in scoring in back-to-back weeks for the fourth time in his career.

Like Cory, Brandon had a chance to clinch his division this week, especially due to the outcome of the next game we’ll cover, but he squandered that chance thanks to an exceptional week by Anthony.

Ant was led by Amon-Ra St. Brown, who had been solid when healthy through the season but seems poised to repeat his late-season heroics from 2021. This week he scored 30.78 points as the WR2 for the week and the WR97 of all-time in the AFL.

Brandon’s top performer on the all-time leaderboards was Robbie Gould, who scored 20.40 points to record the 10th highest kicker total of all-time. Amazingly, that performance did not give Brandon the Scott O’Brien Award this week.

Like Cory and William, both these managers also left strong performances out of their starting lineups. Anthony wasn’t hurt too much by Taysom Hill’s 12.55 points being on his bench. While Hill was the TE2 for the week, Ant’s starter was Gerald Everett, who was only two spots behind him and scored 11.20 points.

Brandon left the TE3 on his bench as Greg Dulcich put together a solid performance with 11.90 points.

As a Top 6 scorer, Brandon was unlucky to lose this week, but it does offset his +1 luck rating entering Week 13 so he now has as many wins as Top 6 performances this season. He also kept his 100-point streak alive.

Brandon has now reached triple digits in nine straight games, five games ahead of the next longest streak.

The Cleveland Browns defense wound up being the pick-up of the week! Alex Kincaid spent $4 of FAAB and they were a big part of his win, scoring more than his margin of victory. Their 37.53 points rank as the second most points by a defensive unit in AFL history behind only the 41.50 points the New England Patriots scored for William Battle in Week 2 of the 2019 season.

The two defensive touchdowns and the special teams touchdown Cleveland recorded against Houston gave Alex the Week 13 Chuck Noll Award. It’s the fifth time in his career Alex has been the defensive coach of the week, passing Alex Mayo and Saswat Misra on the all-time list.

The loss makes things pretty dicey for Will. PlayoffComputer is already writing him off as eliminated from playoff contention, though we did work out a scenario in which he could make the playoffs if he outscores Brandon Saunders by roughly 200 points over the final two weeks of the season. It’s highly unlikely, but not entirely impossible.

Despite likely ending his playoff eligibility, Will did earn the 8th Chuck Knox Award of his career as the coach of the week, tying Stephen April and Danny Hatcher for the fifth most since we began tracking coaching in 2016.

Will earned a league-high 7.53 points by succeeding on one of his two coaching risks. He cost his team 5.77 points by starting Jaylen Warren instead of Jerry Jeudy, but he earned 13.30 points by ignoring FleaFlicker’s recommendation to add Jake Elliott and instead going with Matthew Wright, who scored 18.30 points to record the #30 kicker performance in AFL history.

For a bit of additional context regarding Will’s coaching risks, FleaFlicker’s true recommendation to start over Jaylen Warren was Buccaneers rookie Rachaad White. Will has him on his TAXI squad and is hoping he’ll be worth keeping in the 16th round as a second keeper next fall.

That would have resulted in a bigger coaching penalty for the week, but because it would not have made a difference in the outcome of the game, it should be viewed as a smart coaching move to leave that option open and instead the risk moves to leaving Jerry Jeudy, who also had a higher projection than Warren, on his bench.

This week’s highest offensive scorer was Davante Adams with 35.70 points, tied for the 28th highest single-game performance by a wide receiver in AFL history. He was a big part of why Sean was able to pull out a victory this week after losing Lamar Jackson late in the first quarter Sunday with just one carry and four pass attempts on his ledger.

Sean will take solace in Lamar Jackson being deemed week-to-week. He could be back in time for the AFL playoffs and with the win against Andrew clinching him the division title, he doesn’t have to stress about wins and losses for these final two weeks.

Following Stephen April’s failure to reach triple digits this week, Sean now has the second longest active 100-point streak behind Brandon Saunders at four games.

For Andrew, he’s now finished each of the last four weeks 8th or worse in the league in scoring. He’s now locked into the Snyder bracket of the consolation ladder, with the current fifth worst team three wins ahead of him.

Additionally, Andrew has failed to reach triple digits in each of those four games. It’s the fourth time in his career he’s had a 4-game drought. In fact, three of the four most recent 4-game droughts in the AFL have been recorded by Andrew.

A poor coaching week netted Evan his 15th career Hue Jackson Award, the second most all-time and just one behind Andrew. He cost his team a league-high 8.45 points by starting Zay Jones at wide receiver instead of Allen Lazard.

To be fair, Evan is also tied for the most Chuck Knox Coach of the Week awards, so he just takes a lot of coaching risks in general. And ultimately, it didn’t matter this week. He got the win and kept his playoff hopes alive. He’s now tied with Alex for the second best record in his division and is just one game behind William Battle in the wild card race.

And while he may have been the worst overall coach this week, Evan did earn the Scott O’Brien Kicker Coach of the Week Award for starting New York Jets kicker Greg Zuerlein, who led AFL kickers in Week 13 with 21.40 points, the 8th highest kicker total in league history.

It’s Evan’s 12th career kicker coach of the week award, passing Adam Perez and tying Anthony Battle for the fifth most all-time.

The most notable item to mention on Alex’s side is that if he had set a perfect lineup with the players on his roster, he would have beaten Evan by 0.03 points pending Thursday’s stat corrections. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Here’s something we thought we would never say this year: Stephen got a lucky win!

Stephen shot off the starting line with the worst luck possible early in a season. He lost in each of the first three weeks of the season despite posting Top 6 scores in each of those weeks. Granted he didn’t finish higher than 5th in scoring in any of those three games, but against league median he still was 3-0 despite an 0-3 record.

He added a fourth unlucky loss in Week 10 but now he finally has completely rectified 25% of the bad luck he suffered earlier in the season and is no longer in line to be tied for the worst luck in a single season in AFL history, at least for now.

Not that he could have seen it coming, but Eric will be kicking himself just a bit for leaving AJ Dillon on his bench this week. The Packers backup running back scored 21.64 points and was the RB4 on the week.

Eric would need to outscore some people by a lot of points over the last two weeks to avoid the Snyder bracket. He’s not mathematically eliminated from the upper bracket of the consolation ladder, but he’s as much a longshot to make it as Will Massimini is to win the AFL West.