A week ago, Alex was worried his Week 8 loss to Andrew was going to spark a long losing streak that would undo the 5-game winning streak he was coming off.

Though there is still certainly time for his season to unravel, he was able to get right back on the winning train with a huge victory in the Game of the Week to pull back into a tie for the best record in the league.

With the win, Alex secured his fifth career Peyton Manning Award and his second of the season following his Week 7 Game of the Week victory. Alex is now 5-8 in his career when playing for the Peyton Manning Award while Will falls to 8-11 in his attempts to secure the award.

Alex’s victory came despite some questionable decisions. Nobody will blame him for leaving the RB4 on his IR. Who saw Keaton Mitchell’s 21.37-point outing as a possibility this week?

But entering Sunday morning, Alex decided not to chance starting Miami’s defense with their negative projection. FleaFlicker suggested adding the Falcons defense but he decided to pick up the Chargers, so when he then decided to immediately drop them upon seeing he would have to make some other roster moves to pull them off the IR and into his lineup, he was charged a dual coaching risk. Both teams scored far more than the 49ers defense did considering they were on BYE, but the Chargers finished Monday night with 30.87 points, which would have made them the #1 defense of the week.

Not only did that mean Alex cost his team a league-high 30.87 points, earning him the Hue Jackson Award, it also meant he cost himself the opportunity to earn 18.61 coaching points since the Chargers outscored the Falcons by that much.

Instead, Alex claims the sixth Hue Jackson Award of his career and his third of the season. He is now tied with Stephen April and Anthony Battle for the 8th most Hue Jackson Awards in league history.

If it hadn’t been for that roster management by Alex, the Hue Jackson Award would have gone to his opponent. Nervous about his matchup with Houston, Will benched Rachaad White, who ended up as the RB1 of the week with 28.50 points. With Zack Moss scoring just 3.11 points as his replacement, Will cost his team 25.39 points.

While I don’t have our data organized in a way that would be easy to search for this, their 56.26 combined coaching points lost may well be an AFL record.

The good news for Alex is that he didn’t cost himself enough points to lose or to fall under triple digits. He’s scored at least 100 points in every week since Week 2 and his eight-game streak is the second longest in the AFL.

As far as luck goes, Alex has 1.1 more win than expected based on his season-long breakdown. When looking only at Top 6 performances, though, Alex is not considered lucky as his one lucky win is offset by an unlucky loss he suffered in Week 8.

Will, meanwhile, is one of our four unluckiest managers of the season. By breakdown he is 0.9 wins below expected, the second worst luck in the AFL, and by Top 6 performances he is 1 win below expected, the fourth worst luck in the league.

Despite losing two points on a manual stat correction thanks to Isaiah McKenzie’s punt return fumble lost for the Colts defense, Alex held on in a close battle against a team looking to steal his Tom Brady Award from him.

Instead, Alex earned his second Tom Brady Award of the season and passed Stephen for the seventh most all time with the ninth Tom Brady Award of his career.

Even after losing those two points for the punt return fumble, the Colts defense scored 27.84 points, which ranked 39th all-time among defenses and earned Alex his seventh career Chuck Noll Award as the defensive coach of the week.

Things got a little dicey for Alex through the Monday night game, but it could have been a more comfortable victory had he started Cade Otton at tight end. The second-year Buccaneer scored 20.40 points which would have made him the TE3 on the week.

In any case, Alex did earn one other award because his narrow victory came thanks to a successful coaching risk. He picked up Mac Jones for a spot start this past week, but FleaFlicker suggested Daniel Jones was the best waiver wire option. The young Patriots signal-caller outscored Danny Pennies by 10.46 points, roughly double Alex’s margin of victory.

Thanks to that coaching risk, Alex earned his sixth career Chuck Knox Award. It’s the third time this season he’s been crowned coach of the week.

One final note on Alex before we move on, after another solid performance by Cleveland Browns kicker Dustin Hopkins, he overtook Andrew Perez as the league’s leader in kicker scoring with 96.10 points from the position through nine weeks.

This will be a tough loss to swallow for Stephen because there was a lot to like about this game for him.

The Cleveland Browns defense scored 24.10 points, good for 96th on the all-time defensive leaderboard. It was a much-needed strong defensive game for Stephen, who even after that performance remains dead last in defensive scoring in the AFL with 58.25 points, more than 90 points behind the league’s leader.

Stephen was one of two managers with five Top 5 positional performers this week, one more than Alex had. He also extended his streak of 100-point games to nine, maintaining the longest active streak in the AFL.

While he does have one lucky win this season to help offset them a bit, all three of Stephen’s losses have come in weeks when he was a Top 6 scorer, making him one of three managers who are 2 wins below expected based on this metric. When looking at breakdown, though, he’s only 0.7 wins below expected; unlucky, but not egregiously so.

Anthony was in dire need of a win, not only to keep his playoff hopes alive but to even keep his hopes of avoiding the Snyder bracket alive. He’d been struggling quite a bit lately and even this week missed out on some opportunities to win even bigger.

Two top five positional players went unused on Anthony’s bench in Week 9. Jake Ferguson was the TE5 with 19.25 points and Nick Folk was the K5 with 13.00 points.

Though there weren’t a lot of performances that will show up in the AFL’s historical records this week for Ant, he did boast two top positional scorers this week. Josh Jacobs was the highest scoring starting running back in the AFL with 23.58 points and, for the second straight week, CeeDee Lamb led all starting AFL wide receivers with 23.15 points.

Anthony maintained his lead in the race for the most defensive points of the season; he is now up to 151.15 points in nine weeks.

Sean, meanwhile, dropped Joshua Dobbs early in the week after repeatedly trying to drop him the previous two weeks only to be reminded he still had more time to serve on his IR. Dobbs wound up as the QB4 of the week despite not even being the starter in his game, finishing with 26.25 points and a come-from-behind win for the Vikings over Atlanta.

Sean does earn honorable mention for the Chuck Knox Award this week. Though his risks didn’t earn him a win as Alex Kincaid’s did, Sean earned a league-high 22.86 points from coaching in Week 9 on the strength of three successful coaching risks.

Sean added Will Levis off waivers this week instead of Daniel Jones and then started Gardner Minshew at quarterback. Minshew outperformed Jones by 9.08 points. Sean’s other 13.78 points came from a trade he made with Stephen just ahead of Thursday Night Football. Sean acquired Derrick Henry and Jaylen Waddle in exchange for Tony Pollard and Ja’Marr Chase, who had a higher combined projection than the two players he received. Henry outscored Pollard by 11.80 points and Waddle outscored Chase by 1.98 points.

Unfortunately for Sean, those coaching points were not enough to help him reach the century mark as his 100-point drought reached its fourth game, tied for the longest active streak in the AFL. It is the fourth time in Sean’s career he’s had a four-game streak without 100 points, the most in the AFL, but he is still two games shy of his career long.

Eric is the third manager to earn 10 wins against a single opponent in AFL history. Evan Ash has 11 wins against Anthony Battle and William Battle has 14 wins against Brandon.

After trading for 2024 draft capital, Eric’s team has picked up the pace significantly of late. This week’s strong performance came despite the QB1 of the week sitting on his TAXI squad. C.J. Stroud had a monster 42.42-point game go to waste.

Eric won’t sweat it too much. The real QB2 of the week, Dak Prescott, scored 28.43 points in his lineup, but that sort of gap certainly could have come into play. Fortunately for Eric it didn’t as he won his matchup by almost 55 points thanks to five Top 5 positional performers, tied with Stephen April for the most in the AFL this week.

Brandon’s poor week earned him his 16th career David Carr Award. He broke a tie with Evan for the most weeks as the AFL’s lowest scorer all-time. He was the only manager this week without a Top 5 positional player. He also fell below Eric for the fewest kicker points of the 2023 season with just 53.00 so far.

Cory took the lead in his all-time series with his Sportsballers co-host after winning their Week 9 matchup by a comfortable margin. He showed off some of his team’s depth this week as the #5 defense of the week, the Green Bay Packers, sat on his bench with 17.83 points but the #4 defense, the Las Vegas Raiders, contributed 23.32 points to his cause.

The only other noteworthy stat from this game comes from Evan’s bench, where Taysom Hill scored 19.67 points. The real TE4 of the week, it is the fourth time this season and the third week in a row that Evan has left a Top 5 tight end performance by Hill on his bench.

In a low-scoring affair, William Battle could have cost his team a win by leaving Tank Dell’s 28.16 points on his bench. Dell joined C.J. Stroud for Eric Meyer, Rachaad White for Will Massimini, and the LA Chargers for Alex Mayo as a #1 positional performer who was either dropped or left on his team’s bench in Week 9.

Fortunately for William, while most of his lineup underperformed, he did have two other top positional performers for the week to help lift him to the victory against Andrew. Dalton Schultz had 22.85 points as the TE1 and Younghoe Koo had 19.90 points as the K1.

Schultz’s performance ties him for 82nd on the AFL’s all-time tight end leaderboard while Koo lands at #17 on the corresponding kicker list. Koo also earned William his eighth career Scott O’Brien Award as the kicker coach of the week.