This was one of those matchups which could be considered one of the best regular season games in AFL history.

Before this week, the top two scoring teams for a given week had been pitted against one another 7 times. Before this week, the top scoring team for a given week had been featured in the game of the week 32 times. Never before, through more than 10 seasons of league play, had both happened in the same week.

Stephen wound up with the short end of the stick, but he still has a lot to be happy about after this game. Christian McCaffrey scored an astonishing 49.95 points, the sixth most among starting running backs in league history. He also made a good choice to start Cole Kmet this week as the Chicago Bears tight end scored 25.08 points, ranking 50th all-time on the positional leaderboard.

It is the third time this season that a manager has had two top positional performers in the same week, and the second time it’s involved two offensive players. In addition to having the Top RB and the Top TE this week, Stephen had the Top QB (Justin Herbert) and the Top WR (Tyreek Hill) back in Week 1.

Stephen’s 146.99 points ranked 96th among all single-week team scores in AFL history and is the highest losing score ever. The previous high was Anthony Battle’s 143.90 points in a 2019 wild card loss and the previous regular season high was Brandon’s 143.10 points in Week 4 of the 2018 season.

The last time the top two scorers were faced off came just three weeks ago when Stephen beat Cory 135.44-121.24. It is the second year in a row that we’ve had multiple occurrences of this scoring anomaly in the same season.

The 1.55-point margin of victory for Brandon is the smallest point differential out of the eight matchups between the two top scorers. Their 295.53 points is the 10th highest combined score in league history.

In some ways, Brandon is fortunate to have come away with this win. He didn’t have any players place among the Top 100 all-time scorers at their position to compete with the two Stephen had. He also left a couple of top performers on his bench. Anthony Richardson was the QB2 with 30.46 points sitting on his taxi squad (though Brandon won’t be too upset since Lamar Jackson was the true QB3 and ended up as the AFL’s QB2 for the week). He also left the week’s WR1 on his bench in the form of Nico Collins, who had 34.55 points go to waste.

Despite those missteps, Brandon won thanks in part to a big coaching error by Stephen. He took two coaching risks this week, and though he earned 5.73 points by starting Jahmyr Gibbs instead of Javonte Williams in his FLEX, he was one of the two managers who should have gone with the Seahawks off waivers. Instead he went with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and cost his team 19.03 point, ending up with a net loss of 13.30 coaching points, well more than that 1.55-point margin of defeat.

Fortunately for Stephen, he was only the second worst coach of the week, so we’ll be giving out the Hue Jackson Award for Week 4 a little later in the write-up.

Back to Brandon, he earned his 6th career Tom Brady Award, his most recent coming in Week 10 of the 2022 season. He’s now one behind Stephen, William Battle, Danny Hatcher, and Alex Kincaid for the seventh most all-time. His 148.54 points ranked 84th for a single game in league history.

Brandon also took home his 11th career Peyton Manning Award and his second of the season. He improves to 11-17 in his game of the week appearances while Stephen falls to 6-6 in his.

Though he didn’t have the top scorer at any position, Brandon did lead the league this week with five Top 5 positional performers, with one at every position except kicker. Thanks to that balance, he extended his league-leading active streak of 100-point games to five, one ahead of Stephen.

Unfortunately, I do not have an easy way to research all our data to find out how many times the #1 scorer beat the #2 scorer and the #3 scorer beat the #4 scorer in the same week, but that’s exactly what happened in the AFL in Week 4.

While William’s team has not been particularly strong this year, he’s also been easily the unluckiest manager as this is now his second unlucky loss of the season.

Things looked promising for William to earn his first victory of the season when David Montgomery, who was questionable entering Thursday night, was featured as a workhorse, carrying the ball more than 30 times and doing so quite efficiently. He ended the night with 36.71 points, the 52nd highest single-game running back total in league history and good enough to finish as the RB2 on the week.

Unfortunately for William, that hot start didn’t hold up as the Bills stack of Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs reared its head in favor of Alex on Sunday afternoon. Diggs caught three touchdowns and the duo combined for more than 70 points. Allen’s 38.64 points tie him for the 34th highest quarterback total in AFL history while the 33.95 points Diggs contributed place him 49th on the wide receiver list. They were the QB1 and WR1 on the week, respectively, giving Alex half of Stephen’s share for the third manager of the year to have two top positional performers in a week.

Alex once again decided to league De’Von Achane on his taxi squad as he looks ahead to next year. While he wasn’t the true RB1 this week, he was the true RB4 and has now scored 78.68 points out of Alex’s starting lineup over the past two weeks. We’ll see if he makes a change going forward.

William, meanwhile, left the TE5 on his bench as Dalton Schultz had a solid week with 11.90 points catching passes from the best rookie quarterback of the season so far.

In Schultz’s place in the lineup, William added and started Colts tight end Kylen Granson this week. The top projected tight end available on waivers was Zach Ertz, who went unclaimed and so was FleaFlicker’s recommended start. The decision to go with Granson cost William 3.70 coaching points and the win since he only lost by 3.05 points. Once again, though, we’ll have to wait to see who this week’s Hue Jackson Award goes to.

In a much less exciting game than the first two, Evan easily handled his business and extended his all-time series lead over Sean. Mark Andrews was a major contributor with 23.20 points, tying him for #71 on the all-time tight end leaderboard.

Sean’s best performer for the week was Brett Maher, whose 15.90 points place him 95th all-time among kickers.

It was rather fortunate for Evan that the game wasn’t closer. The Bengals contributed a rather pathetic 1.28 points to the winning effort which could have really hurt considering the week’s #3 defense, the Jacksonville Jaguars, saw on his bench with their 23.96 points.

Entering Week 4, this was the only head-to-head matchup among active league members, and the only one in league history with more than three meetings, in which one manager was undefeated against the other.

Will made short work of Alex this week to change that script. The game could have been much more lopsided, but Alex took advantage of the mistake made by Stephen and another manager to be named later and scooped up the Seahawks defense on Thursday.

Seattle contributed over 35% of his point total of the week. Their 31.33 points rank 12th all-time among starting AFL defenses and earned him the Chuck Noll Award for the week. It’s his sixth career defensive coach of the week award, tying former manager and three-time league champion Danny Hatcher.

While it does not account for his victory, Will did earn this week’s Chuck Knox Award. He made one coaching error by adding Donald Parham off waivers instead of Zach Ertz and then starting Chigoziem Okonkwo at tight end, who had a lower projection than Ertz. Despite losing 3.55 points on that decision, he earned 15.10 points by starting DJ Moore instead of Garrett Wilson, resulting in a net gain of a league-high 11.55 coaching points for the week.

More important for Will was A.J. Brown’s stellar performance against Washington defense. He finished less than half a point behind Stefon Diggs as the week’s WR2, scoring 33.65 points and placing himself 52nd on the AFL’s all-time wide receiver leaderboard.

Anthony’s team hasn’t been super impressive this year, but he’s certainly doing quite well with his non-offensive players.

Week 4 brought Anthony his 14th career Scott O’Brien Award as Eagles kicker Jake Elliott went off for 19.80 points, the most among kickers in the AFL this week. It was the 15th highest single-game score at the position in league history. Anthony ties Sean for the fourth most Scott O’Brien Awards.

Additionally, Anthony came just a few points short of another Chuck Noll Award as the Cowboys defense bounced back from a putrid Week 3 performance to score 28.56 points in Week 4. That point total ranks 31st in AFL history among team defenses and keeps Anthony in the lead for the most defensive points this season with 81.82 so far.

Eric, meanwhile, is having a rough stretch of games. This was the third week in a row he finished as the second lowest scorer in the AFL. If he fails to score 100 points in Week 5, he will tie the longest drought of his career set between Weeks 10 and 13 of the 2013 season when the threshold we had to exceed was just 88.90 points.

Part of Eric’s futility is injury and underperforming wide receivers, which he has made the focal point of his offensive. It doesn’t help, though, that the 19.70 points he’s earned from the kicker position is the fewest in the AFL and is only about 38% of the total earned by the best kicker coach in the league so far.

That brings us to the lowest scoring game of the week, featuring the lowest scoring winner of the week and the lowest scorer overall of the week.

It is the second time in three weeks Cory has laid claim to the David Carr Award after he had gone 49 regular season weeks in a row without earning the award. So far this season, Cory has finished either 2nd or 12th in scoring every week.

With this David Carr Award, the eighth Cory has earned in his career, he ties former league member Nolan Soter for the ninth most in league history.

Andrew got some help this week from Brandon McManus in the 9:30am London game. The Jaguars kicker got plenty of opportunities and finished with 15.70 points, which ties for the 96th highest single-game total among kickers in AFL history.

Andrew has gotten adequate production from his kickers this season, but the same cannot be said of his defensive units. He has earned just 24.90 points from his defenses, the fewest in the league and just barely more than 30% of the total Anthony has earned at the top of that column.

Cory leads the AFL in points from the kicker position as Tyler Bass has gotten him 52.20 points through four weeks. But after a strong opening week from his defense, he hasn’t gotten as much production from the position, and it really hit the fan this week.

Cory added and started the Indianapolis Colts this past week, hoping for a strong performance against the LA Rams. That didn’t happen and they scored just 0.12 points. FleaFlicker recommended he add the Seattle Seahawks defense instead. Because he ignored those projections, he cost his team 31.21 points, giving him the worst coaching score of the week and earning him his 7th career Hue Jackson Award, tying William Battle for the fourth most in league history.

That decision cost Cory the win as he lost by ‘only’ 29.94 points.