Written by Cory Puffett
Published January 1, 2024

As we prepared to ring in the new year, the 2023 Fantasy Football season came to an end with the exception of this week's Pro Bowl.

We crowned a new champion, and so we begin with a hearty congratulations to Brandon Saunders, the winner of the 2012 Just Do It! championship and now, after 11 years, a champion in the AFL.

Brandon will have his trophy soon and we will also arrange getting the title belt to him from its current owner, Sabol Bowl X champion William Battle.

We also have a loser belt on its way, complete with Dan Snyder's stupid face prominently on the front, thanks to Sean Kennedy. Andrew Perez will own that belt for the next year and will have to complete a punishment for the league, selected by this year's Pro Bowl winner.

If Cory Puffett wins, he has decided that the Snyder Game loser, Andrew, will have to display an image of his Snyder Game opponent, Will Massimini, in his bedroom from the day of the 2024 AFL Draft until the conclusion of next year's Snyder Game with weekly verifications.

If Stephen April wins, he has selected as the Snyder punishment the One Chip Challenge, the consumption of one chip seasoned with the two hottest peppers in the world, to be completed by the start of the 2024 AFL Draft.

Failure to complete the punishment will result in forfeiture of $50 from Andrew's 2024 Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB) and the winner of the Pro Bowl will get to name his fantasy team for the 2024 season.

As we prepare to enter the offseason, there will be a longer writeup following the completion of the 2023 Pro Bowl that will recap the 2023 fantasy season as a whole and reveal all awards earned by players and managers in the AFL this season. Today, though, we'll focus on the three playoff games as we look at some of the memorable performances we saw over the past two weeks.

AFL Playoffs

Entering 2023, William Battle had three playoff appearances to his name, each coming off consecutive seasons of missing the postseason. In all three playoff appearances, he had advanced to the Sabol Bowl, first losing in Sabol Bowl III to Cory Puffett and then defeating Anthony Battle and Brandon Saunders, respectively, in Sabol Bowls VI and X.

In Week 16 of the NFL season, William made his first appearance in a second consecutive postseason and suffered his first loss in the AFL's wild card round when he failed to reach triple digits and fell to the man with the AFL's best record in the regular season, Alex Mayo.

Alex rode a pair of very strong performances to victory. Mike Evans found the end zone twice against Jacksonville and his 25.30 points rank 7th in AFL wild card history. Meanwhile, Justin Tucker was heavily featured in an exciting Christmas night Ravens victory over the 49ers, making seven kicks in total including four field goals. His 16.10 points rank 2nd in AFL wild card history, behind only Robbie Gould's 19.00-point game in the 2017 wild card round for Will Massimini.

Josh Allen also had a solid day, throwing for one touchdown and rushing for two more as he made his fourth AFL wild card start, tied for the fourth most in league history. With now 121.96 points in those four games, he is the only player with more than 100 points in the AFL wild card round. Tucker, also making his fourth wild card start, earned his first career playoff win.

Meanwhile, in the other side of the playoff bracket, Stephen April had suffered some bad luck in the runup to the postseason, but survived a Week 15 division title game against Alex Kincaid. Now that he was in the playoffs, he hoped all of the trade activity he's participated in, dating back to the middle of the 2022 season, was going to pay off. Instead, Brandon Saunders earned his fourth career wild card playoff victory, setting a new AFL record by clinching his fourth career Sabol Bowl appearance.

Like Alex, Brandon had a pair of historically significant performances on his roster. Rookie Rams receiver Puka Nacua scored 30.56 points after turning 9 catches into 164 yards and a touchdown in the Week 16 Thursday night game against the Saints, the 3rd highest score for a wide receiver in AFL wild card history.

A few days later, Breece Hall outshone that performance with 95 rushing yards, 96 receiving yards, and a pair of touchdowns against the Commanders. His 38.65 points are good for 2nd at the running back position in wild card history behind David Johnson's 45.40 points for Cory Puffett in the 2015 wild card round.

Though he didn't factor in to the victory, scoring only 5.95 points, Travis Kelce extended his record for the most appearances and, in fact, the most wins in AFL wild card history as he made his eighth wild card start and won for the sixth time.

In the same game, Tyreek Hill took over second place for the most appearances as he made his sixth wild card start. Despite nearly tripling Kelce's score and being the most electric receiver in fantasy for the 2023 season, he's had some bad luck that rivals that of Will Massimini as he's unbelievably lost all six of his wild card appearances and has yet to play in a Sabol Bowl despite clearly being very good at helping his teams make it into the AFL's Final Four on a regular basis.

Christian McCaffrey, joining Josh Allen and Justin Tucker on Alex's team in making his fourth career wild card appearance joins Tucker with a 1-3 career record in those games. But, thanks to a strong performance, he now has 93.72 career points in those four games, just barely behind Travis Kelce's career total of 93.75 points across his eight wild card playoff appearances.

Sabol Bowl XI

Turning our attention to Week 17 and the 11th edition of the AFL Championship game, Alex hoped to join Danny Hatcher and Stephen April by turning his first career playoff appearance into a Sabol Bowl victory. Brandon was hoping to finally break through and avoid being the Minnesota Vikings of the AFL with an 0-4 record in Sabol Bowl appearances.

Ultimately, despite a strong efford by Alex's team, Brandon came out victorious, passing Danny Hatcher's 2017 championship team for the 2nd most points scored in an AFL title game behind Eric Meyer's 185.00 points in Sabol Bowl IV.

Isiah Pacheco was Alex's top scorer as the Chiefs second-year running back returned from a Week 16 concussion with a vengeance, averaging over 7 yards per carry on the ground and adding a receiving touchdown for good measure. His 26.44 points rank 8th at the running back position in Sabol Bowl history.

But Kyren Williams simply would not be outdone. After a strong wild card performance that saw him total 104 rushing yards and a touchdown against the Saints, he totalled 101 scrimmage yards and 3 rushing touchdowns against the Giants in Week 17. He finished with 30.90 points, good for 5th in Sabol Bowl history at the position.

Williams's 48.86-point total across the two playoff games was fantastic for Brandon. Breece Hall's 61.19 points? Sensational. Just as sensational for him was the two-game performance, and most importantly the Sabol Bowl performance, of this year's Joe Montana Sabol Bowl MVP.

Pro Bowl Preview

As we head into the offseason, there is one final game to play. Last week, Stephen April and Cory Puffett participated in the second annual Pro Bowl draft, selecting from a pool of players who made at least nine starts in the AFL during our regular season. Those interested can follow the action right here on this website at this link (you may have to refresh the page during the game for updates; as this is the first time I'm trying this I'm not sure if the embedded webpage will update without refreshing): 2023 AFL Pro Bowl Live Updates

They drafted a full 16-man roster so they can make adjustments should some players sit out for Week 18. The Ravens and 49ers have each locked up the #1 seed, and with it home field advantage and a first round bye, so they may elect not to use players like Lamar Jackson and Christian McCaffrey.

The AFL's Pro Bowl, started in 2022, pits the league's top scorer against the manager with the league's best breakdown from the regular season. In many cases, such as this year, the top scorer also has the best breakdown so we go to the next best breakdown for our second manager.

Anybody competing for the Sabol Bowl is excluded from the Pro Bowl, but for the second year in a row that did not have an impact on our Pro Bowl matchups. In 2022, those two managers would have been Cory Puffett and Sean Kennedy and both lost in the first round of the playoffs. This year, the two managers would have been Stephen April and Cory Puffett; Stephen lost in the wild card round and Cory missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker.