While none of our games quite became the first of the year to be decided by 1 point or less, this was one of three games this week decided by less than five points.

Alex came away with a narrow win to claim his sixth career Peyton Manning Award. He is now 6-8 in his career when appearing in the game of the week and 3-0 this season. He’ll get a chance to make that 4-0 this week against Cory Puffett.

Brandon, meanwhile, is now 4-1 this season and 13-18 in his career when playing for the Peyton Manning Award.

Alex had three players finish among the Top 5 scorers at their positions this week, including the San Francisco 49ers who led all defenses with 18.64 points. They gave Alex his fifth career Chuck Noll Defensive Coach of the Week Award.

Brandon had a rough week. His highest scorer was outscored by two of Alex’s starters and he made a coaching error that cost him the game. FleaFlicker suggestions said Devin Singletary should have been in his starting lineup, and Brandon had him in his lineup initially before making a late switch to George Pickens. Singletary wounds up as the RB2 for the week and Brandon’s decision cost him 19.10 points, the second most in the league.

Fortunately for Brandon, he was spared this week’s Hue Jackson Award by another manager we’ll get to later.

Alex earned his second lucky win of the season, partially offset by one unlucky loss in Week 8 that separated a five-game winning streak from the two-game winning streak he’s on now. This was also the first time Alex failed to score 100 points since his 95.52-point outing in Week 1

Despite a solid outing from Bengals kicker Evan McPherson, who contributed 11.10 points to Brandon’s losing effort, Brandon remains dead last in kicker scoring this year, averaging just 6.41 points per game from the position through Week 10.

For the first time in league history, we have had three managers lose games with a 10-1 breakdown in a single season.

Entering 2022, only four managers had ever lost a game as the second highest scorer for the week. It has now happened five times in the past 25 regular season weeks.

Earlier this season, Stephen April beat Cory Puffett 135.44-121.24 in Week 1 and Brandon Saunders beat Stephen 148.54-146.99 in Week 4.

That Week 4 matchup, decided by 1.55 points, featured the narrowest margin of victory in such games. This week’s occurrence beat that record thanks to Anthony’s 1.52-point margin of victory.

Both managers benefited from outstanding performances, with each boasting four Top 5 positional performers in their starting lineups.

Thanks to the RB1 and RB2 of Week 10 both sitting on managers’ benches this week, Evan had the AFL’s RB1 in Brian Robinson, who had 25.39 points. He also had Jason Myers, the top kicker of the week, whose 22.90 points tie him for the 6th highest single-game score at the position in league history.

Anthony, meanwhile, benefited from another outstanding game by CeeDee Lamb. The Cowboys wide receiver has been the AFL’s WR1 each of the past three weeks! My data isn’t easy enough to search for me to verify this, but I’m pretty confident nobody has ever been the WR1 for three weeks in a row before now.

Lamb’s 34.33 points place him 48th on the AFL’s all-time wide receiver list and helped lift Anthony to the win and to his AFL-record 22nd career Tom Brady Award, four more than Evan who has the second most in league history and had been hoping to closer that gap.

Evan could have done just that if he had made one less coaching risk than he made. See, Evan made three coaching risks this week. One of them paid off big time, with his decision to pick up Joshua Dobbs to start at quarterback instead of sticking with Trevor Lawrence paying off to the tune of 25.99 points! Unfortunately, he finished the week with a net of only 0.82 coaching points because he cost his team 7.52 points by starting Taysom Hill instead of Romeo Doubs at FLEX and another 17.65 points by starting Odell Beckham instead of Brandin Cooks at wide receiver.

Cooks as the true WR3 of the week and was sat on Evan’s bench, and though his positive coaching score for the week saves him from being penalized with a coaching loss, that was a FleaFlicker suggestion Evan may look back at and wish he’d followed.

Evan’s unlucky loss brings him back to even as far as luck goes this year; he had a lucky win back in Week 1. Additionally, Myers’s point total helped him overtake Alex Kincaid in the race for the Mark Moseley Award. He has 115.40 points from kickers this season.

That performance also earned Evan his 13th career Scott O’Brien Kicker Coach of the Week Award, tying him with Danny Hatcher for the 6th most in league history.

Anthony, meanwhile, leads the race for the Buddy Ryan Award with 164.16 points from defenses this season after another solid performance in Week 10, this time from the Dallas Cowboys who have split time with the New Orleans Saints as Anthony’s starting defenses.

Where Evan can look to his coaching decisions as a potential cause of his loss, Anthony can solidly point to his coaching as the reason for his victory. He ignored platform suggestions to start Christian Watson at FLEX instead of Kareem Hunt and, as a result, earned 7.15 points, well more than his margin of victory.

This is Anthony’s 8th career Chuck Knox Coach of the Week Award and his third of the 2023 campaign.

One could understand if Eric was a little nervous entering Week 10. Back in Week 1, during the Cowboys first meeting with the Giants, Dallas absolutely dominated to the tune of a 40-0 thrashing and yet Eric’s starting quarterback, Dak Prescott, scored just 6.71 fantasy points.

Week 10 was a similar outcome in the football game, with Dallas claiming a 49-17 victory, but it couldn’t have come about in a more different way as Dak blew up with 40.54 points, good for the 25th highest single game quarterback score in AFL history.

That performance helped Eric make easy work of Alex and extend his 100-point streak to three games, tied with Anthony Battle for the second longest active streak in the AFL.

But what if I were to tell you that Alex’s optimum point total was the second highest in the league this week, only half a point behind Evan Ash’s optimum score? Well, it’s true. Alex only earned about 55% of his optimum total this week.

See, he left the real QB5 on his bench this week (Sam Howell, 24.61 points), along with the real TE1 (T.J. Hockenson, 24.95 points). The real TE4, Dalton Kincaid, was on his TAXI squad with 12.65 points. And he traded for Keenan Allen during the Sunday 1pm games but didn’t have any starting spots available to put him into, so the real WR1 was also on his bench with 36.65 points.

As Alex said on Sunday afternoon, “My team is going to be unstoppable when I’m not such an idiot.”

There’s not too much to talk about with this game, to be honest. Stephen extended his 100-point streak to a league-leading 10 games and is closing in on the longest streak of his career. He was one of four managers with four Top 5 positional performers this week.

Sean finished as the lowest scorer in the AFL this week, earning his 14th career David Carr Award. It is his third of the season and it ties him with William Battle for the 3rd most all-time.

Sean has now gone without a 100-point game for five consecutive weeks. It is the fourth time in his career he’s had a drought this long and he is one game away from tying the longest drought of his career.

Stephen left the real DEF3 on his bench in the form of the Cleveland Browns, who scored 14.01 points. That decision only cost him a little over two points, though, as the Vikings finished as the #5 defense in the AFL this week. Despite the solid performance, he remains last in the AFL in defensive scoring this season with 70.14 points.

And while it didn’t end up hurting him at all this week, Stephen also wasted the real RB1 on his bench this week, leaving Jahmyr Gibbs and his 26.52 points out of his lineup in David Montgomery’s return to action for the Lions.

Will enjoyed another solid performance from his squad, including three Top 5 positional performers, but there wasn’t much of historical significance to his week. It was just a very balanced effort featuring five double-digit performers and two more who finished just short of 10 points.

Andrew, meanwhile, had a week for the record books in the worst way possible.

Despite having the AFL’s highest scoring tight end for the week, George Kittle, contribute 19.85 points to his cause, he wound up with the second lowest score of the week thanks to a couple of terrible coaching decisions.

He executed a trade during the 1pm games, sending Keenan Allen to Alex Kincaid in exchange for Jerry Jeudy and a 4th round pick in 2024. The switch cost his team 31.45 points. Add to that his decision to pick up the Los Angeles Chargers instead of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers off waivers to start for him at defense, a choice that cost him another 27.02 points.

In all, Andrew cost his team 58.47 points from coaching this week and lost his matchup by 44.50 points. For the 17th time in his career, Andrew earned the Hue Jackson Award as the worst coach of the week, breaking a tie with Evan Ash for the most Hue Jackson Awards in league history.

In a truly ho-hum matchup, the only noteworthy thing about this game from a historical perspective is that it was William’s fifth consecutive game without scoring 100 points.

He came very near it and in fact briefly had 100 points near the end of the Monday Night Football game, but he fell under it to set a new longest drought of his career. He and Sean Kennedy are the 8th and 9th managers in AFL history to have a drought of at least five games.

Now, as with some of the other things in our 10-year history, I don’t have an easy way to go back and research what I’m about to say, but I am extremely confident that this was the first time in AFL history that two quarterbacks from the same team were both started in the same week in our league.

Andrew Perez started Taylor Heinicke, who started the Atlanta Falcons Week 10 matchup in Arizona. William Battle started Desmond Ridder, who was not starting for the Falcons and in fact did not appear in the game until Taylor Heinicke got injured early in the fourth quarter.

Ridder wound up scoring a rushing touchdown, which ultimately could be pointed to as the difference in this matchup. Cory has no words.