Week 14’s game of the week was a loser-go-home affair. While Anthony’s loss and Will’s victory put them both in a three-way tie just one game behind their division leader, Anthony gets the short end of the stick.

The loss he’d need Brandon to take next week would simultaneously eliminate him because he’d lose the tiebreaker to Brandon’s opponent, so he’s officially been eliminated and will be playing for the Dick Butkus Trophy, which goes to the winner of the consolation ladder.

With the win, Will earned his seventh career Peyton Manning Award and his first since Week 8 of the 2020 season. He’d only appeared in two games of the week since that last PM Award. He improves to 7-8 all-time in these games while Anthony falls to 17-16 in his opportunities.

Anthony earned a share of this week’s Scott O’Brien kicker coach of the week award. Jake Elliott was his kicker this week and he tied with Sean’s kicker for the highest total at the position with 12.90 points. It’s the first time since Week 3 of 2019, and just the second time since we implemented fractional kicker scoring, that we’ve had more than one Scott O’Brien Award winner in a single week.

This was Ant’s 13th career kicker coach of the week award (and Sean’s), moving him past Evan into a tie with Danny Hatcher for the fourth most all-time.

It was also an unlucky loss for Anthony. He had the sixth highest score of the week, so he is now in the same boat as Stephen April with three wins below expected based on his performances against the league median.

For the 16th time in league history, and the third time this season, the Tom Brady Award winner and the David Carr Award winner were in the same game. Brandon had a particularly bad week, just 0.13 points better than the 10th lowest score our league has seen since 2016.

While Alex earned his seventh career Tom Brady Award, passing Stephen April and tying William Battle and Danny Hatcher, Brandon took home his 15th career David Carr Award, breaking a tie with Evan Ash and William Battle for the most all-time.

We’ll come back to how bad this week was for Brandon, but first let’s give Alex his due. His point total ranked 87th all-time in the AFL and was thanks in large part to Trevor Lawrence and Evan Engram, the QB-TE combo for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Lawrence led Alex in points this week with 35.91, which ranks 71st on the AFL’s all-time quarterback leaderboard. Evan Engram was right behind him with 33.80 points and now has the 7th highest single-game score for a tight end in league history.

Brandon failed to reach triple digits for the first time since Week 4, snapping a nine-game run that had been the league’s longest active streak of 100-point games.

It wouldn’t have made a difference, but Brandon failed on both of his coaching risks this week and cost his team a league-high 6.33 points, earning him his fourth career Hue Jackson Award. That’s tied for the second fewest among active managers. He cost himself 3 points by adding and starting Graham Gano at kicker and dropping Robbie Gould and another 3.33 points by starting James Cook instead of Darius Slayton.

Alex’s win keeps him alive in the playoff race. I’ll talk more about that in Thursday’s Week 15 preview.

After entering Week 14 one win above expectations based on performances against the league median, Sean is back even after taking an unlucky loss despite an 8-3 breakdown for the week.

There wasn’t much he could do. Evan had five players perform among the Top 5 at their positions, the most in the AFL this week, including two wide receivers. Sean was next with four such performers, but it wasn’t enough.

Even with Evan leaving the week’s WR5, Mike Williams, and his 21 points on his IR, he won this game relatively easily after being a 24.5-point underdog in our Week 14 preview.

As mentioned earlier (but I know a lot of our managers just skip to their section), this was the first time since early 2019, shortly after we implemented fractional scoring, that we have joint Scott O’Brien kicker coach of the week winners. Daniel Carlson got Sean 12.90 points, the same as Ant’s kicker, so they both won their 13th career kicker coach of the week awards, tying Danny Hatcher for the fourth most all time.

The good news for Sean is that this game didn’t mean much since he’d already clinched his division. Conversely, the bad news for Evan is also that this game didn’t mean much. Despite the win, he was eliminated from the playoffs on the strength of William Battle’s victory, which we’ll get to shortly.

Thanks to Brandon’s abysmal performance this week, Sean now hold the longest active streak of 100-point games in the AFL at five.

Continuing to roll through the competition, Cory is alone with the best record in the AFL for the first time all season. We’ll find out soon enough where this season stacks up in the AFL’s history books, but at the very least this has been Cory’s best team since his 2014 Missing Rings squad.

For the second week in a row, Cory left a Top 5 defense on his bench and for the second week in a row, that defense was the San Francisco 49ers. You would think he’d have learned his lesson in Week 13.

Stephen, meanwhile, left Kirk Cousins on his bench. Cousins was the QB4 for the week with 26.28 points.

It didn’t help his cause, but Stephen is this week’s Chuck Knox Award winner. He earned a league-high 19.95 points by succeeding on his only coaching risk. He wisely benched Tyler Boyd in favor of J.K. Dobbins this week, earning his ninth career coach of the week award, breaking a tie with Will Massimini and Danny for the fifth most in league history.

The only thing more significant this week outside of the AFL West than William Battle’s victory was Alex’s loss. A win would have kept him in contention for the wild card despite being a game behind William, but now the wild card is locked up and Alex’s hopes of becoming the third straight AFL manager to make the title game in his third season have been dashed.

Alex made a pretty big mistake this week, leaving the RB3 on his bench. Jerick McKinnon’s 29.78 points would not have quite made up the deficit, but it would’ve been much closer. Add in Van Jefferson for either of his two starting receivers and we’d be having a very different conversation about Alex’s playoff hopes this week.

Andrew’s team has been terrible all year, but he did manage to end his 100-point game drought this week. No other manager has ever had four separate four-game streaks without a 100-point game, but he did what he needed to do to avoid being the sixth manager to have a five-game drought.

Even with the point total being north of 100, Andrew got a lucky win this week after finishing just outside the Top 6. He is one of five managers in the AFL with a luck factor at or above 1 this season.

Even luckier than Andrew, William was two spots outside of the top half of the league in scoring, but it didn’t matter. Eric’s wreck of a team got handled easily and William is headed to the postseason for the first time since he won Sabol Bowl VI in 2018.

The New England Patriots provided nearly a quarter of his points this week as they scored 24.07, ranking 84th all-time in the AFL at the position and earning William his record-breaking 18th career Chuck Noll Defensive Coach of the Week Award, breaking a tie with Sean Kennedy for the most all time.

William barely hit the century mark this week. He could have hit it a little more comfortable had he started David Njoku this week. The Browns tight end was the TE3 with 15.33 points.