By the time we got to Thursday’s preview article, it seemed clear that this might not be an exciting game of the week. Somehow it wound up even less exciting than the 17.5-point line would have indicated.

Alex was a heavy favorite going in and was the easy victor. He didn’t have a lot of historically relevant performances on his team, but he did have consistency as one of three managers with four Top 5 positional performers.

Alex extended his winning streak to five games and his streak of 100-point games to six, the second longest active streak in the AFL. His strong week gave him his fourth career Peyton Manning Award. His last game in Week 5 of the 2022 season.

Now 4-8 all-time in game of the week appearances, Alex kept Sean at 9 wins in 20 appearances.

It certainly would not have made a difference in this matchup, but Sean did leave the QB4 on his bench as Gardner Minshew had a solid day with 24.26 points wasted.

Catch a few more notes about this game in the Game of the Week Recap just above this week’s power rankings.

For the eighth time in his career, Alex Kincaid is the Tom Brady Award winner. He last took home the award in Week 14 of the 2022 season and this week passed William Battle, Stephen April, and Danny Hatcher for the seventh most all-time.

Alex’s 63.87-point margin of victory makes this the biggest blowout of the season thus far. Like Alex Mayo, Alex Kincaid had four Top 5 positional performers this week, none more historically relevant than his kicker.

Ignoring FleaFlicker’s advice, Alex picked up Dustin Hopkins off waivers this week to start at kicker instead of Greg Joseph. It was a terrific decision.

Hopkins scored 24.00 points, a monster game for a kicker. In fact, it is the second highest single-game kicker score in AFL history, only trailing Tyler Bass’s 26.20-point outing in Week 11 last season.

Greg Joseph was the K6 in Week 7, and yet Hopkins outscored him by 12.60 points. While it was his only coaching risk of the week, those 12.60 coaching points he earned were a league high, giving Alex his fifth career Chuck Knox Award and his second of the season. Alex was the Hue Jackson Award winner last week, making this the 10th time in AFL history a manager has gone from the worst coach in one week to the best coach in the next.

Hopkins also earned Alex his ninth career Scott O’Brien Award as the kicker coach of the week. His ridiculous outing, which included four field goals, three of which were from beyond 50 yards, and three extra points helped elevate Alex to the #1 spot in the race for the Mark Moseley Award. He overtook Evan Ash this week and is up to 77.80 points from the position this year, meaning this Week 7 performance accounted for more than 30% of his kicker points this season!

It was a great week for Alex that came none too soon. He entered this week amid a three-game stretch without a 100-point game, just one shy of his career long.

Unfortunately, William didn’t have any noteworthy performers this week as Younghoe Koo was his only Top 5 positional player, not nearly enough to prevent his two-game winning streak from coming to an end.

This week’s lone unlucky loser, Cory has nobody to blame but himself. Sure, he finished among the top six in scoring and lost for the second time this season, but the adage “you make your own luck” certainly holds true as Brandon beat him in, by far, the closest matchup of the week.

It was going to be a difficult week for Cory to get a victory. Brandon had two top positional scorers this week. Lamar Jackson led all quarterbacks with 37.12 points, good for 53rd all-time at the position. Travis Kelce repeated as the top tight end of the week, this time scoring 30.75 points which puts him 17th all-time on the tight end leaderboard.

Even with those two sensational performances in the opposing lineup, Cory could have won this matchup. In fact, Cory’s 161.46 optimum points were the most in the league, five more than even the Tom Brady Award winner’s.

D’Onta Foreman and Jordan Addison were sitting on Cory’s bench this week alongside a strong performance from Joshua Palmer. Foreman and Addison were the RB1 and WR1 of the week, respectively, but their respective 34.53 and 28.45 points went to waste on Cory’s bench. Foreman’s score would have ranked 95th all-time on the AFL’s running back leaderboard.

Cory did have a handful of strong performance in his lineup to help him reach triple digits for the third week in a row. The best of them, at least from a positional standpoint, was the Seattle Seahawks defense which earned him a league-high 15.18 points even after a manual stat correction for a return fumble lost.

Seattle earned Cory his 14th career Chuck Noll Award as the defensive coach of the week, lifting him past Anthony Battle for the fourth most in AFL history.

Cory is now the unluckiest manager in the AFL this season by both breakdown (1.3 wins below expected) and vs league median (2 WBE).

In another blowout, Evan’s lineup featured multiple 20-point scorers while Eric had two starters combine for less than 2 points.

Evan didn’t even need the week’s TE5, Taysom Hill, or his 15.75 points to get this victory. It certainly helped his cause that Eric also left a top performer on his bench. Though Cory Puffett wound up with the Chuck Noll Award thanks to the Seahawks defense, the real top defense of the week was the Baltimore Ravens, but their 18.56 points were sat on Eric’s bench.

Though his outing wasn’t worthy of a spot on the AFL’s all-time running back leaderboard, Alvin Kamara’s 24.71 points in Evan’s lineup were the most among running backs in Week 7.

Thanks to his dreadful outing, which included leaving an injured and inactive DK Metcalf in his lineup, Eric came out of Week 7 with his 11th career David Carr Award, passing Anthony Battle and Will Massimini for the 6th most all-time. He continues to trail the rest of the league in kicker scoring with just 44.50 points from the position this year.

Luckily for Eric, that Metcalf start didn’t come back to haunt him from a coaching standpoint as FleaFlicker’s recommended sub, Rams running back Zach Evans, was on the field for only four snaps on Sunday, all on special teams.

Despite leaving the week’s WR3, Josh Downs, and his 21.70 points on his TAXI squad, Will bounced back from an underwhelming Week 6 to climb back above .500 as we approach the season’s midpoint.

Like Alvin Kamara for Evan Ash, A.J. Brown won’t turn any heads on a historical level with his Week 7 performance, but his 23.90 points were enough to give Will the top wide receiver for the week.

Anthony did have one superstar performer on his team this week. Patrick Mahomes was the one who helped Travis Kelce record the 17th highest single-game tight end score in AFL history, and for that effort he earned 37.01 points which is 56th on the league’s quarterback leaderboard.

Unfortunately for Anthony, Mahomes didn’t have enough support from the rest of his lineup and his squad ultimately lost by nearly 20 points.

Will could have had a much easier victory, though. He earned his seventh career Hue Jackson Award this week, tying Cory Puffett and William Battle for the fourth most all-time. He cost his team a league-high 21.34 points by failing on all three of his coaching risks.

By picking up Jason Myers off waivers to start at kicker instead of Greg Joseph, Will cost his team a miniscule 1.60 points, but he also cost his squad 9.44 points by dropping the Falcons defense who were projected to score more than the Steelers who he ended up starting, and another 10.30 points by adding and starting Michael Mayer at tight end instead of Gerald Everett.

A solid if unexceptional performance by the Saints defense against Jacksonville on Thursday night helped Anthony maintain his lead in the race for the Buddy Ryan Award. He is up to 113.85 points from his defenses this season, well ahead of Alex Kincaid’s 87.38 points in second.

For the first time this season, Stephen fell outside of the top six scorers for the week, but he still managed to get the victory, this lucky win offsetting one of the two unlucky losses he’s suffered in recent weeks.

Stephen joined both Alexes by having four Top 5 positional players. That might be surprising considering his modest team score, but keep in mind that he started the Detroit Lions defense, which got toasted by Lamar Jackson and cost Stephen 10.54 points, making this the fourth worst single-game performance ever by any AFL starter.

Here is the list of the five worst performances in AFL history, all by defenses:

1. Denver Broncos defense: -11.62 for Sean Kennedy in the 2022 wild card playoff

2. Oakland Raiders defense: -10.80 for Danny Hatcher in Week 9 of the 2013 season

3. Carolina Panthers defense: -10.60 for William Battle in Week 4 of the 2014 season

4. Detroit Lions defense: -10.54 for Stephen April in Week 7 of the 2023 season

5. Carolina Panthers defense: -9.20 for William Battle in Week 3 of the 2014 season

Thanks to the Lions, Stephen’s 100-point streak came down to Monday Night Football and Christian McCaffrey, who was questionable entering the weekend. McCaffrey did play and found the end zone twice to help Stephen extend his triple digit streak to six games, still the longest active run in the league.

Also thanks to the Lions, Stephen is now down to 27.03 points from the position this season, less than half the total of the next worst defensive coach in the AFL this year.