What a week to be Alex Mayo. There’s a lot of praises with which to shower Alex this week, so we’ll start with the few comments to make about Stephen.

The good: Stephen extended his 100-point streak to 12 games, maintaining the longest active streak in the league. This is the 8th streak of 12 or more games in AFL history and he could tie his career long next week.

The bad: This was the second time this season he failed to record a Top 6 score and he remains last in defensive scoring among our 12 managers with 86.09 points. He’s averaging 9.61 points per game fewer than the positional leader in our league.

Enough of that, let’s jump over to Alex who had a truly historic week. He had three, yes three, positional #1 players.

Josh Allen led all quarterbacks in scoring with 41.08 points, which ranks 21st in AFL history at the position and passed Dak Prescott’s 40.54-point Week 10 performance for the top quarterback score of the season.

Joining Allen were Mike Evans as the week’s top receiver with 22.40 points and the Miami Dolphins as the week’s top defensive with 27.30 points. The Dolphins rank 42nd on the AFL’s all-time defensive scoring list.

Alex had five Top 5 positional performers this week, the most in the league. The only position at which he did not have a Top 5 performer was tight end, and it was his own fault. Certainly nobody will fault him for starting Evan Engram, but the true TE2 was sat on his bench this week in the form of Tyler Higbee and his 17.00 points.

Put all those performances together and Alex’s squad totaled 161.79 points, the 28th highest single-game team score in AFL history.

Thanks to all these memorable performances, Alex earned several awards this week. He earned his 4th Tom Brady Award of his career and the second of his season, his last coming back in Week 5. He also earned his 8th Peyton Manning Award, improving to 8-8 in his career game of the week appearances.

This was the first time in AFL history a manager appeared in four straight games of the week, and Alex won all four of them, improving to 5-0 on the season. This is also the 35th time in AFL history that both the Tom Brady and Peyton Manning awards go to the same manager. Stephen, for his part, fell to 6-7 in his career game of the week attempts and 1-2 this season.

The Dolphins also earned Alex his sixth career Chuck Noll Award as the defensive coach of the week, carrying him past Viroj Suteerawongsa, who earned a remarkable five of these awards in his only season managing in the AFL back in 2017.

Alex remains the luckiest manager in the AFL this season at 2.2 wins above expected by breakdown and 2 WAE by Top 6 performances, but he’s certainly had a strong season and the most critical anybody can rightfully be of his team would be to say he shouldn’t have already earned a playoff spot. His team is certainly deserving of an opportunity to play for the Sabol Bowl and now he’ll get to do just that for the first time in his AFL career.

The last game took up a full page and then some in my Word document. I think these other five will all be significantly shorter.

Eric has been hot lately. I’ll have a couple more opportunities to expand on that below, but one thing stands out about this week for Eric. He foolishly left the QB4 on his taxi squad as C.J. Stroud had another great week with 31.54 points. In his place he started… oh, look who it is. Dak Prescott, the QB3 with 34.26 points.

It’s an embarrassment of riches at the quarterback position and Eric will get Stroud in the 16th round in 2024, the 12th in 2025, and the 9th in 2026 before he moves into the front half of the draft. Even then, he might still be worth a keeper for another year or two if he keeps going like this.

With the top two tight ends of the week both sat on managers’ benches, Eric gets credit for having the AFL’s TE1 in Sam LaPorta, who scored 14.80 points in the early Thanksgiving game. Eric extended his 100-point streak to five games, maintaining the second longest streak in the AFL behind Stephen’s.

The only decision Eric could rightly be faulted for was not trusting his primary starting defense. He picked up the Patriots for a spot start, and they did fine with 10.15 points. But he had the real #5 defense and what would have been the AFL’s #4 defense in the Baltimore Ravens whose 18.80 points went to waste.

Will was not the unluckiest manager of the week, but he did suffer an unlucky loss as the AFL’s #6 scorer in Week 12. It’s a shame as he saw a very strong performance by Jalen Hurts go to waste. Hurts was the QB2 this week but his 37.00 points were good for 59th on the AFL’s all-time quarterback list.

Will has been the AFL’s unluckiest manager over the course of his career and those fortunes have not flipped in 2023 as he is one of our three unluckiest managers of the season.

While Andrew probably would have preferred a week like this to come against a stronger opponent, when you’ve been playing as poorly as his team has been, you’ll take it wherever you can.

This was a really nice week for Andrew. He was one of three managers with four Top 5 positional performers, including Brandon McManus, who led all starting kickers with 15.10 points this week. The outing earning Andrew his 12th career Scott O’Brien Award, allowing him to pass his brother Adam for the 8th most in AFL history.

Andrew also earned the Chuck Knox Award this week as the best coach in the AFL. He earned a league-high 13.15 points by succeeding on one of his two coaching risks. Though he cost his team 1.65 points by starting Michael Mayer over Chigoziem Okonkwo at tight end, he earned 14.80 points by continuing to ride the Gabe Davis roller coaster instead of plugging in Jordan Addison this week.

Seriously, if Eric and Evan ever rode the Gabe Coaster, they’d probably rank it over Fury 325.

In any case, this is Andrew’s third career Coach of the Week Award, passing Alex Mayo and tying his brother’s career mark.

On the flip side, Sean had another rough outing and has now gone seven straight games without scoring 100 points, breaking his own AFL record. He earned his 10th Hue Jackson Award this week, making him the third manager who has had to watch the film with Hue at least 10 times in his AFL career.

Sean cost his team a league-high 12.18 points by failing on his lone coaching risk, starting the Philadelphia Eagles defense instead of the Tennessee Titans. The Eagles barely avoided negative points, scoring 0.06 points on Sunday afternoon against the Bills offense.

Welcome back Kyren Williams! Brandon was certainly happy to get him back this week. Williams was the AFL’s RB1 and had 38.08 points in his return to the Rams offense, good for 45th on our league’s all-time running back list.

On average this season, entering Week 12, Brandon’s running backs were averaging about 11.1 points per game. With an average running back performance in that starting spot this week, Brandon would have lost by about 13 points. With Devin Singletary in that spot, a spot he held a week ago, Brandon would have lost by 15 points. Even if he had started Nico Collins there, he would have lost by 5 points.

Brandon has been the second luckiest manager in the AFL this season. Some might consider this timing for Williams’s return to be a form of luck. All the matters in the end is Brandon got another win and is one week closer to securing a return trip to the AFL playoffs where the one-time winner of our predecessor league will try to finally break through and win his first Sabol Bowl.

As the league’s #5 scorer for the week, Anthony was the unluckiest manager of the week. He remains the leader for the AFL’s defensive coach of the year award as he passed the 200-point threshold this week.

Brandon, meanwhile, has been going back and forth with Cory over the past few weeks at the bottom of the league’s kicker scoring. He fell back to last place this week with 83.50 points from the position.

Cory is no stranger to a win slipping through his fingers on a late-game touchdown catch by a tight end. At least this time it wasn’t a trash player like Larry Donnell.

Things would have been much different if the TE1 wasn’t sitting on Cory’s bench Sunday afternoon. Pat Freiermuth had a terrific game with 17.10 points and it would have been more than enough to give him the win considering George Kittle didn’t even top four points on Thanksgiving night. Instead, Cory will have to win out just to avoid his second career losing season.

Alex Kincaid had his first luck game a week ago when he suffered an unlucky loss. This week he balanced that out with a lucky win as he was the #7 scorer in the AFL.

With only three managers failing to reach triple digits this week, William secured his fourth lucky win of the season. He’s had two unlucky losses to balance out half of that good fortune but he is our third luckiest manager so far this season.

This was a really bad week for Evan, who has had a few of those lately. He’s 1-3 in his last four games, including two weeks now as a bottom two scorer and an unlucky Week 10 loss as the AFL’s second highest scorer. Coaster Evan might be a more apt fantasy football team name right now than Dark Avengers.

Evan earned his second David Carr Award of the season and the 16th of his career, tying Brandon for the most in league history. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but he did leave the real #3 defense of the week on his bench as the Chicago Bears forced several turnovers and scored 19.13 points against the Vikings on Monday night.

The good news for Evan is he remains atop the kicker scoring for the AFL with 140.40 points through 12 weeks.

For the first time since Week 8, Alex Mayo will not be featured in the game of the week. The tightest division in the AFL is the AFL West and these two managers currently hold the top two spots.

Evan is currently #2 in the division on a tiebreaker, though he’s coming off a week to forget as he became the third manager to score fewer than 70 points in a week this season.

Brandon, meanwhile, has bounced back from a mid-season lull to turn in back-to-back 133-point weeks. Brandon beat Evan back in Week 3, but if there was a week for Evan to have an opening to flip that script, it would be this week with Lamar Jackson on bye.

After starting the season 0-2, Alex needed to get on track when he last faced Ant in Week 3, and he did just that. Though it was the third straight week he failed to secure a Top 6 score in the league, he got the win and backed it up with six straight weeks as a Top 6 scorer, almost as a way to make up for that lucky win.

Now Alex is the only team who has secured a playoff spot and he can take another step closer to locking up the AFL’s #1 seed with a win this week, and it would certainly be a statement to do so without his starting quarterback-wide receiver stack of Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs.

Anthony is out of playoff contention, but he can still fight his way out of the Snyder Bracket. Last year he came dangerously close to having to perform the league’s first punishment, beating Will Massimini in the Snyder Bowl. Will he have to battle (no pun intended) to avoid that fate again this year?

Cory has fought back in this rivalry, winning the last five contests to tie the series up, including a 60-point trouncing back in Week 3.

Things have shifted dramatically though, and Cory is now in a precarious situation. He needs some help just to keep his wild card hopes alive, but if he loses this game he will be eliminated from playoff contention and will lock up just the second losing season of his AFL career.

Eric, meanwhile, was once 2-5 and is on a five-game winning streak. He’s been a top four scorer in each of the last four weeks while the last time Cory was amongst the four highest scorers was back in Week 8.

For the sixth year in a row, Andrew will have to settle for playing in one of the AFL’s two consolation brackets as he’s been eliminated from playoff contention.

While Stephen has suffered three unlucky losses this season, his lone lucky win came back in Week 7 when the two faced off for the first time. It was the second week in a row Stephen had a brush with a sub 100-point week and it remains his second lowest score of the season, but his 106.97 points were enough for a comfortable 31-point victory against Andrew.

I said Cory is in a precarious spot, but Alex is in a dangerous spot because, unlike Cory and, as you’ll see in a moment, Will Massimini, he has even less control over his fate this week. A loss would eliminate him from playoff contention, but there is another scenario that would lead to his elimination this week even with a victory.

Alex will be rooting very hard for Cory, Andrew, and Evan, because if all three of them lose against Eric, Stephen, and Brandon, respectively, Alex will be eliminated regardless of the outcome of this game.

William has been coming on strong recently. While he’d needed a bit of luck to do it, he’s on a four-game winning streak that has increased his playoff chances from 1.2% to 19.3%. The reigning AFL champion still has a lot of work to do if he wants to become the first repeat champion since 2014, but he’s certainly battling (I promise, no pun intended).

The last meeting came in Week 7, two weeks before William’s current winning streak began, and William lost that matchup in blowout fashion.

Like Cory, Will has to win out just to keep his playoff chances alive, and they’re even slimmer than Cory’s. A loss this week will do him in, though he at least has a more favorable matchup to stay in the hunt.

Back in Week 3, when these two first met, Sean’s team looked strong. Sure, he was coming off a lucky Week 2 win, but he put up 154 points in Week 3 to overcome a strong 135-point outing by Will. How times have changed.

Sean hasn’t won a game since Week 5, when he finished third in scoring and secured a 4-1 record, tied for the best record in the league. Since then, he’s failed to finish higher than 8th in scoring and has been the lowest scorer four times during his seven-game losing streak. I’ve mentioned a couple of times that he’s failed to score 100 points even once during that stretch. Let’s be more specific; he’s failed to score 90 points even once during that stretch. Yikes.