Sean snapped a three-game losing streak against Evan in the AFL’s Week 3 game of the week, earning his second straight Peyton Manning Award and the eighth of his career, breaking a tie with Brandon Saunders for the seventh most in AFL history.

This also marked the 29th time in league history the Peyton Manning Award and the Tom Brady Award go to the same manager. Sean led the league in scoring for the 11th time in his career and the first time since Week 7 of last season, tying Will Massimini for the fourth most Tom Brady Awards ever.

There were several good performances on both teams in this game, and Evan finished the week as the AFL’s third highest scorer, but Lamar Jackson was the difference maker for Sean. He turned in his second straight 40-point game, this one just a little bit of a downgrade from Week 2.

Jackson’s 41.98 points rank 15th on the AFL’s all-time single-game quarterbacks list.

Sean could have had an even more impressive week, but he left the week’s top running back on his bench. To be fair, it took an injury to David Montgomery to give Khalil Herbert as big a day as he had, but the Bears backup running back totaled 32.30 points riding pine for Sean.

Sean is now one of only three managers who have scored at least 100 points in every game this season. His three-game streak is tied for the second longest active run in the AFL.

This was a particularly unlucky loss for Evan. In addition to being the AFL’s third highest scorer for the week, he earned defensive coach of the week honors for the 22.83 points he earned from the Cincinnati Bengals unit, and honorable mention for our weekly Top Coach award.

He earned 14.01 points, the second most in the league this week, by ignoring FleaFlicker projections and picking up Geno Smith to start over Carson Wentz. Smith wound up being a Top 5 starting quarterback in our league this week, but it wasn’t enough for Evan.

Cory’s team has been incredibly consistent this season and he extended his league-leading streak of 100-point games to seven. He’s the only manager to continue a streak of triple digit performances from last season through the first three weeks of 2022.

He was also one of three managers, the others being Sean Kennedy and Alex Kincaid, to have two offensive Top 5 players plus both a Top 5 kicker and a Top 5 defense this week. Nobody had more than the three of them.

William could have closed the gap significantly this week, but he left the week #2 tight end performer on his bench as David Njoku’s 20 points on Thursday night went to waste. He does get kicker coach of the week recognition, though, thanks to the 12.50 points he earned from Younghoe Koo.

The Atlanta Falcons kicker should not have been a Top 5 kicker this week, but none of the kickers who finished ahead of him are rostered in the AFL, nor are the four kickers who finished immediately behind him. There are a lot of points being left in the ether at the position this season.

Like Evan, William also suffered an unlucky loss. In a week with scoring as low as this, his 101 points were enough to make him the sixth highest scorer of the week in the AFL.

That’s right, Eric won by just a tenth of a point. The first three weeks of this season have been brutal for Stephen. He is 0-3 despite being a Top 6 scorer every week so far, one of three managers who can claim that achievement. The other two are a combined 5-1 so far.

This one was particularly heartbreaking for Stephen as it comes on a stat correction due to a fumble by a New Orleans Saints returner. While the Saints special teams unit recovered the fumble, it still results in a net loss of half a point, which was just enough to erase the 0.40-point lead Stephen appeared to hold at the end of Monday Night Football. He’ll be praying for an additional stat correction from the Elias Sports Bureau Thursday morning to reverse the first one.

Stephen could have avoided this situation entirely with some better roster management. Normally, we wouldn’t blame him for leaving Trevor Lawrence on the bench, but considering we already knew Russell Wilson wasn’t cooking anything worth serving this season, maybe he should have pivoted to the second-year signal caller who wound up finishing the week #3 at his position with 27.43 points.

To be fair, Eric had his own stud benchwarmer this week as Jamaal Williams scored 24.55 points out of his lineup, which was the week’s #2 running back score. It’s unusual for the top two scorers at an offensive position to both be riding pine in our league, but it happened at the running back position for us this week.

The Lawrence decision aside, Stephen took three coaching risks this week and they didn’t work out for him. While he did earn his team 3.83 points by starting Curtis Samuel instead of J.K. Dobbins, he cost his team just north of that by picking up and starting the Saints defense instead of the Bears and then an additional 7.30 points by dropping Jason Myers and picking up Dustin Hopkins as his starting kicker.

Eric, meanwhile, earns top coaching honors. He put himself in position to at least have a chance of holding on to this win thanks to a league-high 17.27 points earned from succeeding on one of his two coaching risks this week. He cost his team just over half a point by starting AJ Dillon instead of Michael Carter, but he earned 17.84 points by starting CeeDee Lamb instead of DJ Moore. They had identical projections early in the day Sunday, but Moore had moved ahead by kickoff.

Through three weeks, Eric leads the AFL in kicker scoring with 35.9 points while Stephen is dead last with 11.9 points. Still, Stephen joins Sean and Cory as the only managers with 100 points in every game this season.

One thing Stephen can hang his hat on this week if he doesn’t get a beneficial stat correction is the performance of Mark Andrews, who scored 25.80 points to join the all-time single-game tight ends leaderboard at the #38 spot.

Whichever manager ultimately loses this game when stat corrections are applied and the score is final will suffer an unlucky loss since they will finish fifth and sixth in the league in scoring for the week. This isn’t an anomaly I’ve tracked in the past, so I’d have to go back through all 128 regular season weeks to see how many times this has happened, but I can only remember one other instance for sure where we had three lucky winner and three unlucky losers, the max, in a week.

They’ve had four meetings in four seasons and Will just can’t seem to break through against Alex. They’ll face off again in Week 13, but Alex has Will’s number so far in his young AFL career.

Alex joined Cory and Sean in a tie for the most Top 5 positional players this week in a game he really needed to win to keep his season alive. His team looked dead in the water after Week 2. It still doesn’t look good, but at least his team is floating on its back now so there’s a chance that it’s breathing.

Alex made a big splash last week by trading Jonathan Taylor and Cordarrelle Patterson to Stephen April for Breece Hall and Tyreek Hill. He also moved up one round in the draft, swapping his sixth-round pick for Stephen April’s fifth rounder.

This was a trade FleaFlicker would have advised against, at least in the short term, and so Alex earned honorable mention for this week’s Hue Jackson Award. He cost his team a league-high 17.28 points by failing on two risks. He lost out on 7.48 points by having Tyreek Hill in his lineup instead of Jonathan Taylor and an additional 9.80 points by starting Jahan Dotson instead of mid-week pickup Marvin Jones.

In one of two games in which neither manager reached triple digits, Brandon joined Alex Kincaid and Alex Mayo in getting lucky wins this week.

Anthony left the week’s #2 scoring defense on his bench, opting to start the Dallas Cowboys instead of the Philadelphia Eagles, who scored 19.91 points against the Commanders.

That wouldn’t have been enough anyway. Anthony had four players reach double digits while Brandon had five, and without a single 20-point scorer between the two teams, Brandon was able to ride that moderately stronger roster to the victory.

Alex finished just ninth in the AFL in scoring this week, but it didn’t matter. He got the win to remain undefeated thanks in large part to poor roster management by Andrew in Week 3.

Andrew left the #3 wide receiver performance on his bench in Marquise Brown and his 20.65 points. He also joins Stephen April as the co-Hue Jackson Award winner. He cost his team 5.37 points, which was more than his narrow margin of defeat, by adding and starting the Seattle Seahawks defense instead of the Houston Texans, who had the highest projected score among free agent units when he made the waiver claim.

This was Andrew’s fourth straight game without reaching 100 points. It’s the longest active drought in the AFL, ties him for the 8th longest drought in AFL history, and puts him one game shy of a tie for the fourth longest stretch without hitting triple digits.