Written by Cory Puffett
Published January 26, 2023

A Football Life has reached its aluminum anniversary as we wrapped up our 10th season just a few weeks ago.

I know I’m more than a little bit late getting this recap out, but I like to focus on record-keeping in the days (or weeks, if it takes me that long) immediately following the end of the season so that I can include as much relevant and interesting information as possible in this final write-up of the year.

The first thing to get to is, of course, our latest Sabol Bowl Champion, William Battle!

William flew under the radar for much of the season. He put together a solid 9-6 campaign but finished in a tie with Evan Ash for the third best record in the AFL. Neither won their respective divisions, so the wild card spot came down to their Week 11 meeting, which William won handily by a score of 160.19-91.86.

In addition to the good fortune needed to earn the wild card spot, William got a lot of luck throughout the year. He was involved in seven “luck games,” as FleaFlicker refers to them. These are games in which William was either a lucky winner (he won his game but was not one of the Top 6 AFL managers in scoring) or an unlucky loser (he lost hie game despite being among the Top 6 scorers in the AFL).

While William suffered two unlucky losses over the course of 2022, he had five lucky wins to offset those losses and then some. That +3 win differential compared to Top 6 performances earned him the Dennis Dixon Award for luckiest manager. As it happened, William’s brother, Anthony Battle, was the unluckiest manager by this metric and took home this year’s Takeo Spikes Award.

AFL Playoffs

Lucky or not, nothing that happens in the regular season matters once you make it to the tournament, and William continues to be dominant in the postseason. He has only made the playoff field three times in his AFL career, and he’s been in the league since its inception, but in those three trips he has never failed to advance to the Sabol Bowl.

This year he had the good fortune of facing Sean Kennedy in the first round of the playoffs. He would have lost had he been matched up with either Brandon Saunders or Cory Puffett. That other pairing featured the top two scorers in the AFL in Week 16, consolation teams included, and Brandon ultimately won that contest to advance to the Sabol Bowl for the third time in his career.

Here are the lineups for the AFL’s two playoff matchups:

It was the sixth time in AFL history that the top two Wild Card playoff scorers were matched up against each other, sending one home with nothing and the other to the AFL title game. Entering 2022, in those other five instances, the team in Brandon’s position went 4-1 in Sabol Bowls, with the lone exception being Will Massimini’s loss in Sabol Bowl V.

Sean’s was a particularly brutal loss. His victory looked like it would be secure by Sunday night. With the Broncos facing a terrible Rams team with Baker Mayfield playing just two days after arriving in LA, 10 points felt like a conservative projection for the Denver defense. That would have given Sean more than 26 points of cushion on Monday night, just more than Austin Ekeler’s point total. Instead, the Broncos set the record for the worst score by a defense, or indeed any player, in AFL history, breaking the Raiders record of -10.80 points set in 2013!

Sabol Bowl X

Brandon has had less luck than William in his title opportunities. He entered Sabol Bowl X 0-2 in his previous appearances, first in our inaugural 2013 season when he lost against eventual three-time champion Danny Hatcher, and again in 2019 when he fell to Sean Kennedy.

By dropping Brandon to 0-3 in Sabol Bowl appearances, William becomes just the second manager in AFL history with multiple league titles to his name.

Here are the lineups from the 2022 AFL Championship contest:

In a championship week where many leagues had to navigate an unprecedented situation in modern football, where the Monday night game started but did not finish and ultimately was declared a no-contest following the mid-game cardiac arrest of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, Sabol Bowl X fortunately was not impacted as the outcome was decided before Sunday Night Football.

While Brandon received solid production from Patrick Mahomes and CeeDee Lamb, nobody else in his lineup managed double digits and that put him in a deep hole. His 88.22 points are the fewest in an AFL title game and mark just the second championship score under triple digits.

Amari Cooper made his first Sabol Bowl appearance since 2015, which was also with William, and did much better than his 1.80-point performance in that losing effort.

Dalvin Cook became the fifth player in AFL history with at least three Sabol Bowl appearances while Travis Kelce made his record fifth appearance. Kelce suffered his first title game defeat while Cook fell to 2-1 in title games; he is averaging only about eight points per game in these championship contests, about 10 points per game fewer than his career average in AFL starting lineups.

Speaking of underwhelming performances in title games, DK Metcalf was the lowest scorer of the game with just half a point. His teammates picked up the slack though, led by Sabol Bowl X MVP Austin Ekeler and his 31.80 points. Ekeler now has two Sabol Bowl wins in his career, the first coming back in Sabol Bowl VII.

2022 Pro Bowl

For the first time in league history, we held a Pro Bowl in Week 18. The Pro Bowl serves two purposes in our league. One purpose is to recognize the best players from the past season and offer them an additional accolade that may boost their Hall of Fame resume when their career ends. The other purpose is to determine which of our managers gets to select the punishment for our Snyder Award winner.

This year, Will Massimini “won” the Snyder Award by losing both games as a participant in the Snyder bracket of the consolation ladder. He first lost to Eric Meyer, who was tied for the worst record in the AFL this regular season, and then lost to Anthony Battle.

The Pro Bowl featured our top two managers from the regular season, both of whom lost their Wild Card matchups in the AFL playoffs. Cory Puffett got the best of Sean Kennedy by a score of 119.66 to 99.76. Here’s a look at their lineups:

After one of the most emotional weeks in NFL history, at least in a the past couple of decades, it couldn’t have been scripted better than for the Buffalo Bills to return the opening kickoff of their 1 o’clock game against the Patriots for a touchdown and go on to win the MVP award for the first ever AFL Pro Bowl.

Sean had a 50-point head start entering Sunday, but he’d already burned through five of his players, so he started the final day of the NFL regular season with less than a 50-percent win probability, and it only went down from there.

Cory may not have won the Sabol Bowl in one of his best seasons in our decade-long history, but he followed up a strong 2022 AFL Draft with a strong Pro Bowl Draft. Not only did his point total beat Sean’s optimum point total of 119.10, he got the win while leaving nearly 30 points on his bench.

With the win, Cory secures the right to select the punishment for the 2022 Snyder Award winner. His selection: The Snyder Award winner must purchase an item he can wear that features his favorite team’s biggest rival and wear it during our 2023 draft while providing visual evidence of his completion of this punishment.

This means Will Massimini must purchase an item with the Baltimore Ravens brand (he’s a die-hard Steelers fan) and wear it during our 2023 AFL Draft.

Congratulations once again to William Battle, the Sabol Bowl X champion.

Here’s a look at new records set this season:

Tyler Bass, single-game record for kicker points

The Buffalo Bills kicker, playing for Alex Mayo’s squad, has an incredible Week 11 performance in which he connected on six field goals, five of them from outside of 30 yards, and a PAT to boot. In all, he scored 26.20 points, a new AFL record.

Incredibly, that same week Brett Maher of the Dallas Cowboys, kicking for Stephen April, scored 23.30 points, which also would have broken the previous record held by Younghoe Koo, who scored 23.10 points in a 2020 contest for Will Massimini.

Travis Kelce, single-season record for tight end points

Never in the AFL’s history have we seen such a large discrepancy between the top two scorers at any position as we did this year between Travis Kelce and T.J. Hockenson. Kelce averaged nearly five points per game better than the next best tight end in the AFL and broke his previous record of 240.96 points with 262.86 in his 2022 campaign.

Now, to be fair, he did average more points per game in 2020 (17.2 to his 16.4 this season), but this was still his second-best season ever by that metric and he now owns the three best tight end seasons in AFL history and six of the Top 8!

Cory Puffett, single-game record for team points

Week 8 was a really special week for Cory. On Saturday, the DeMatha cross country team won the WCAC Championship for the first time since 2006. He was a freshman and a key contributor on that ’06 squad and he was the head coach this year (hat tip to fellow AFL league-mate Anthony Battle who is on his coaching staff and to Evan Ash who was a member of the 2006 team!).

The next day, while at the reception leading up to his induction into DeMatha’s prestigious Hall of Fame, he was able to sneak occasional glances at his fantasy score and watched as it drew closer and closer to the all-time scoring record, eventually eclipsing Sean Kennedy’s mark of 188.26 points, set in Week 5 of the 2021 season.

Jalen Hurts scored 29.02 points, aided by four touchdown passes; Travis Etienne added 26.82 points thanks to a 156-yard rushing day; A.J. Brown caught three of those four Hurts touchdowns and scored 35.50 points; Jaylen Waddle added two touchdowns and more than a hundred receiving yards to contribute 28.05 points; Christian McCaffrey was Cory’s leading scorer with three touchdowns and nearly 150 scrimmage yards for 37.82 points; and DeAndre Hopkins added 29.25 points on the strength of 159 receiving yards and a score. Even Mike Gesicki got in on the action with a touchdown.

In all, Cory scored 205.21 points, the first and only time to date a team has eclipsed 200 points in a single AFL game.

Will Massimini, single-game record for fewest team points*

The asterisk here denotes that this is a record for the 2016 season and later. While there have been more than a dozen lower-scoring games in the AFL’s history than Will’s 59.75-point Week 2 outing this season, all of those came prior to 2016 when starting lineups in the AFL had only eight spots instead of the nine we now have.

While Justin Herbert tried to help Will avoid this outcome, tossing three touchdowns, he also threw a pick-6 in that contest that dropped his total to 20.91 points. Will could have had nearly 66 points; still not a good outing, but he wouldn’t have even been among the 10 lowest scorers since 2016 with that mark. It certainly didn’t help that Herbert was Will’s only double-digit scorer in the contest.

Let’s move on to this year’s awards.

Weekly Awards

Season Awards

Finally, before I wrap this up, I’d like to formally announce the candidates for the AFL’s 2023 Hall of Fame class.

Up to five of the following offensive players will be inducted into the next class:

Quarterbacks

Joe Flacco (2nd year of eligibility) [Danny Hatcher or Anthony Battle]

Eli Manning (2nd year of eligibility) [Anthony Battle]

Jameis Winston [Eric Meyer]

Running Backs

Tevin Coleman [Evan Ash]

Carlos Hyde [Cory Puffett]

Dion Lewis (2nd year of eligibility) [Danny Hatcher]

Marshawn Lynch (2nd year of eligibility) [Nolan Soter]

LeSean McCoy [Will Massimini or Evan Ash]

James White [Will Massimini]

Damien Williams [Anthony Battle]

Wide Receivers

Larry Fitzgerald [Sean Kennedy]

Josh Gordon [Mike Washington]

Alshon Jeffery [Danny Hatcher]

Golden Tate [Cory Puffett]

Demaryius Thomas [Eric Meyer]

Dede Westbrook [Sean Kennedy]

Tight Ends

Martellus Bennett (3rd & final year of eligibility) [Brandon Saunders or Danny Hatcher]

Tyler Eifert [Eric Meyer]

Greg Olsen [William Battle or Danny Hatcher]

Kyle Rudolph [Cory Puffett or William Battle]

Delanie Walker [William Battle]

Additionally, up to two of the following kickers, defenses, or historic teams will be inducted:

Kickers

Matt Bryant [Sean Kennedy]

Stephen Hauschka (3rd & final year of eligibility) [Brandon Saunders or Eric Meyer]

Adam Vinatieri [Andrew Perez]

Defenses

2018 Houston Texans (2nd year of eligibility) [Sean Kennedy]

2019 Buffalo Bills [Evan Ash]

2019 Minnesota Vikings [Sean Kennedy]

2019 New England Patriots [Anthony Battle]

2019 Pittsburgh Steelers [Will Massimini]

2019 San Francisco 49ers [Andrew Perez]

Historic Teams

2019 Buns of Steel [Sean Kennedy]

2019 Raging Pussies [Eric Meyer]

Congratulations to all of our 2023 Hall of Fame semi-finalists. As we progress through the offseason, our commissioners will begin considering these players and their AFL resumes. While some may seem like they can be dismissed out of hand, all have been a part of at least one important moment in league history that has earned them a place on this list.

Below is a list of players who became eligible this year who the commissioners immediately dismissed from this and future discussions (pending future AFL appearances that could change their resume):

Quarterbacks

Kyle Allen, Jacoby Brissett, Dam Darnold, Gardiner Minshew, and Matt Moore

Running Backs

Jay Ajayi, Peyton Barber, Matt Breida, Tarik Cohen, Royce Freeman, Derrius Guice, Duke Johnson, Kerryon Johnson, Elijhaa Penny, Bilal Powell, Jaylen Samuels, Darwin Thompson, Mark Walton, and Jonathan Williams

Wide Receivers

Geronimo Allison, Danny Amendola, Phillip Dorsett, Alex Erickson, Taylor Gabriel, Paul Richardson, John Ross, Mohamed Sanu, Kenny Stills, Auden Tate, James Washington, and Tyrell Williams

Tight Ends

Will Dissly, Jack Doyle, Darren Fells, Ryan Griffin, Jacob Hollister, Vance McDonald, James O’Shaughnessy, and Benjamin Watson

Kickers

Aldrick Rosas, Ka’imi Fairbairn, Sam Ficken, Josh Lambo, Mike Nugent, and Austin Seibert

If any other members of the league would like to contribute to offseason discussions about our Hall of Fame semi-finalists, we’ll be happy to have those comments. We will determine a date by which we will announce our Hall of Fame finalists for the 2023 Hall of Fame class, the final product of which will be unveiled on Sunday, August 27, one week before our 2023 AFL Draft.

Stay tuned for information about voting on offseason rules changes, which opened on January 23 and concluded on January 26.