A week ago, Alex Mayo became the first manager to win four straight games of the week and, in doing so, claimed his fifth Peyton Manning Award of the 2023 campaign.

This week, Brandon joins Alex in the latter accomplishment. He is 5-1 in games of the week this year and improved to 14-18 in his career while Evan fell to .500 with a 16-16 career record and an 0-2 record in 2023.

Brandon did leave 17.25 points on his bench from the week’s TE4, Trey McBride, but he didn’t need those points as a balanced approach from his players helped him take the all-time series lead.

Evan maintains his lead in the race for the Mark Moseley Award with 144.60 points from his kickers this year while Brandon is on the polar opposite end of that competition with just 88.90 points from the position. He is one of three managers who has not yet eclipsed the 100-point mark with his kickers.

On a more positive note for Brandon, he earned this week’s Chuck Knox Award as he ties Danny Hatcher and Anthony Battle with his eighth career coach of the week recognition. He ignored FleaFlicker by starting Michael Pittman in place of Breece Hall and earned a league-high 15.61 points with the decision.

Evan finished the week sixth in scoring, making him one of two unlucky losers this week. He is one of three managers with less than half a game of positive or negative luck by breakdown this season.

The last time Cory lost a game against Eric, the first positive case of Covid-19 hadn’t even been detected yet.

That was back in 2019 and despite the lopsided head-to-head record at the time (6-1 in Eric’s favor), there had been several excellent matchups in the series history.

In 2014, Eric enjoyed a late touchdown by Larry Donnell on Monday Night Football to earn a 118.80-118.00 win. A year later, Eric held a 6.4-point lead entering Monday night with Tyler Eifert left to play and Andy Dalton on Cory’s side. Dalton only scored 9.9 points and Eifert did just enough for Eric to take a narrower 97.90-97.60 victory.

The Covid season opener gave Cory just his second win in the series, a 124.64-123.78 victory on the strength of three missed field goals and a missed extra point by Stephen Gostkowski in the late Monday night game. The kicker’s 1.3-point outing led to Eric cutting him as soon as players unlocked that Tuesday.

This week we were treated to yet another bit of Monday Night Mayhem as Cory entered Monday trailing by 29 points with Travis Etienne and Joe Mixon left to play.

Etienne was coming off three straight weeks at least six points shy of his season average and Mixon  was coming off his worst game of the season in the Bengals first full game without Joe Burrow.

Eric had Calvin Ridley, coming off back-to-back 20-point outings, so it felt like a tall task for Cory to close the gap.

Instead, Cory saw his deficit shrink from 29 points to 22 after Etienne’s touchdown, to 11 after Mixon’s first touchdown, to less than a point after Mixon’s second touchdown. As Ridley gathered targets but very few catches, Cory was able to take control and ultimately walk away with a comfortable win.

Cory earned his 14th career Tom Brady Award and his second of the season, passing Will Massimini for the fourth most all-time. This was the 10th time in league history, and a record fourth time this season alone, that the league’s top two scorers were matched up against each other. Cory’s 13.55-point margin of victory is the third highest point differential in all ten of these games.

With four Top 5 positional performers this week, Cory tied for the most in the league. These included Joe Mixon as the RB1 with 28.32 points and Deebo Samuel as the WR1 with 34.94 points. Samuel joins the AFL’s all-time wide receiver leaderboard at the #47 position.

Cory’s 155.08 points rank 57th in league history.

Eric’s 141.53 points give him the fifth highest losing score in league history. One of his biggest contributors was Sam LaPorta, who scored 24.05 points to join the AFL’s all-time tight end leaderboard at #60. It was LaPorta’s second week in a row finishing as the AFL’s TE1.

Eric did leave the second highest scoring kicker, Matt Gay, and his 14.60 points on his bench, but by the end of Monday night that would not have made the difference.

If there’s anything for Eric to hang his hat on after this week, he remains alive in the race for the AFL West division title and he extended his 100-point streak to six games, which remains the second longest active streak in the league. He also is the only manager in the AFL with no luck factor this year since this unlucky loss balanced out a lucky Week 8 victory.

After losing the first three head-to-head meetings in their series, Alex has battled back to claim three of their last four meetings, including this one in which he only had two players on his bench who were not on bye, neither of whom could be subbed in for Rashid Shaheed who was ruled out with a thigh injury.

While it’s hard to suggest he should have done anything different, especially given he was facing the Cowboys defense, a unit Anthony himself was starting, Ant might be kicking himself a bit over his decision to start Patrick Mahomes over Geno Smith.

The Seahawks quarterback had a huge day and was the AFL’s true QB1 while sitting on his bench. His 31.68 points, if entered in place of the 13.75 points Mahomes scored, would have been enough for Anthony to finish with 122.88 points. It would have made this the sixth time in league history that two games were decided by less than a point in the same week.

Despite a poor Thursday night performance by the Cowboys defense, which had negative points for a good stretch of the evening, Anthony is a virtual lock for the Buddy Ryan Defensive Coach of the Year. He is the only manager over 200 points and leads the competition by about 50 points with just two weeks remaining.

In a bit of serendipity, by breakdown this was a matchup between the luckiest and unluckiest managers of the season, and they line up perfectly with Alex at 2.5 wins above expected and Anthony at 2.5 wins below expected. It’s not such a happy coincidence for Anthony who was already eliminated from the playoffs and fell one step closer to a repeat appearance in the Snyder Bracket, but I had to point it out anyway.

Though Alex did not end up with the Hue Jackson Award this week, and in fact did not lose any coaching points for this decision, I wanted to point out that he had an opportunity this week that he chose not to take advantage of (or didn’t know he had).

With Shaheed ruled out on Sunday, Alex could have moved Keaton Mitchell to his TAXI squad to pick up a player to start in his place. Elijah Moore was the highest project receiver on FleaFlicker Sunday morning and scored 10.75 points, more than enough that it would have taken care of any possibility that Geno Smith could have flipped the result in Anthony’s favor.

While Mitchell would not be eligible as a TAXI keeper next year because he was not placed on the TAXI squad before Week 8, this does not preclude a manager from placing a rookie on the TAXI squad, even a rookie who has appeared in a starting lineup, at any time.

Who would ever have expected the manager who has been #1 in our power rankings every week this season to be two games behind the league’s top team and now in third place in the league with his division still up for grabs?

A win for Stephen would have clinched him the AFL East title with the way other games went in Week 13, but instead he’ll need to wait at least another week to punch his playoff ticket.

One point of frustration for Stephen this week will be the decision to leave DK Metcalf on his bench on Thursday night. How could he have known the Seattle receiver would double his touchdown total for the season against the Cowboys secondary? But if he had been in Stephen’s lineup over either of his flex players, Austin Ekeler and Jahmyr Gibbs, he would have won this game.

Instead, Andrew got an important win in his quest to avoid making his sixth consecutive appearance in the consolation’s Snyder Bracket.

A big lift for Andrew in this matchup was the Indianapolis Colts defense, which scored a league-high 19.11 points to earn him his seventh career Chuck Noll Defensive Coach of the Week Award. He passed Alex Mayo and Danny Hatcher while tying Alex Kincaid.

Stephen, meanwhile, came as close as he has all season to seeing his 100-point streak snapped. It was just the third time this year he scored less than 110 points, but he did extend that streak to 13 games, tying his career long and claiming the sixth streak in AFL history of at least this length.

The defensive position continues to be a sore subject for Stephen. With the Cleveland Browns costing him 5.84 points on Sunday afternoon, he now has just 80.25 points from the position. He is the only manager who does not have at least 100 points from defensive units this year.

There will be no manual stat corrections for this one, but Sean and Will, I’m sure, will be anxiously waiting for Thursday morning with official stat corrections are published.

For the 29th time in league history, we had a game decided by 1.00 points or less. At just 0.11 points, this will be the fourth narrowest margin of victory for any game in league history if no adjustments are made.

Sean becomes the fifth manager to earn 10+ wins against one opponent. Will became the fourth three weeks ago when he faced Andrew Perez.

One decision that could have Will kicking himself is his decision to leave James Conner and his 25.55 points on his bench. Conner was the RB4 on the week and would have been Will’s highest scorer regardless of position.

Like Anthony with Geno Smith, it’s hard to argue Will should have expected Conner to outperform the players he started in his place, but it’s a decision that similarly brings him a step closer to the Snyder Bracket. And remember, Will and Anthony faced off in the last place game a season ago, with Will losing and suffering the league’s first ever punishment when he had to wear a Ravens shirt during the 2023 AFL Draft.

While it was a very disappointing week for Will overall, he did have one strong performer in his lineup. Cowboys rookie kicker Brandon Aubrey led the AFL with 16.10 points, tying him for 88th on the league’s all-time kicker leaderboard and earning Will his record 20th career Scott O’Brien Award, three more than Cory Puffett in second.

Unfortunately, that performance came up just short as Sean was given a huge lift by Brock Purdy, whose 31.04 points made him the AFL’s top scoring starting QB in Week 13.

Assuming his score stands, Sean has finally snapped his 100-point drought, ending it at an AFL-record seven games. Fingers crossed no stat corrections come to drop him by 0.31 points or more.

Whether stat corrections drop or not, the winner of this game will end up as one of this week’s two lucky victors.

I have never bothered to track the lowest combined scores in our league’s history. Thankfully, League Legacy has done that for me because there’s no way I could have gone back through all 918 regular season matchups in our league’s history at this point.

With 134.09 combined points, this was the eighth lowest combined score in league history.

Alex became the 14th manager to ever win a game as the AFL’s second lowest scorer in a week. In fact, his point total is the ninth lowest winning score since starting rosters expanded in 2016.

William’s 51.62 points, meanwhile, not only rank as the lowest team score since that season but rank as the eighth lowest team score ever in the AFL.

This is the second time this year that a team with a 1-10 breakdown won their matchup, which is noteworthy because even though we’ve averaged just over one occurrence per year through our league’s history, prior to this season it hadn’t happened since Week 12 of the 2020 season.

Alex’s 30.85-point victory is the largest margin of victory in any of these 14 games across AFL history. The previous record was Cory Puffett’s 85.60-61.20, 24.40-point win against Evan Ash in Week 5 of the 2016 campaign.

William can chalk this week up to three players scoring 0 or fewer points, including Tank Dell who suffered a season-ending injury very early in the Texans game, Terry McLaurin who had no catches on three targets, and the Seahawks defense which bled points while facing the Cowboys on Thursday night.

After Sean Kennedy snapped his 100-point drought this week, William is left with the longest active drought at two games.

William also will have to claim this week’s Hue Jackson Award, the eighth of his career which ties him with Cory for the fourth most in league history. He cost his team 28.96 points, just shy of Alex’s margin of victory, by failing on both of his coaching risks.

The smaller mistake for William was his decision to start Jayden Reed at wide receiver instead of Cooper Kupp. The Rams veteran scored a touchdown but only wound up outscoring Reed by 9.80 points. The biggest decision was to forego adding the Rams defense, which Eric Meyer picked up later in the week, and instead add and start the Seahawks defense, resulting in a loss of 19.16 coaching points.

Both of these managers desperately need wins as they seek to avoid the Snyder Bracket and the possibility of a league punishment. Alex is still alive, albeit barely, in the AFL East division title hunt. Paths to elimination will be included below.

Things could be interesting for him this week, though. He has exactly two quarterbacks currently on his roster, Sam Howell and Kyler Murray. The final bye week of the NFL season has exactly two teams on bye, the Washington Commanders and the Arizona Cardinals.

Alex has two bench spots open and the expectation is he’ll pick up either Jake Browning or Desmond Ridder, but maybe he’ll target somebody else. Or maybe someone will drop a startable quarterback again this week like Eric Meyer did with Russell Wilson a week ago.

In addition to his quest to avoid a sixth straight appearance in the consolation ladder’s lower bracket, Andrew will be looking for revenge this week after Alex claimed a 20-point victory in their last meeting back in Week 3.

Stephen is playing for his playoff life at this point, a statement that seems ludicrous considering he has been #1 in our power ranking every week this season and selected five players to his team in the first three rounds of the 2023 AFL Draft.

The good news is he can lock up his playoff spot this week and gets to face a manager who is coming off the worst week any manager has had in the AFL since 2016. A win or a tie clinches the AFL East for Stephen.

If there is any cause for concern for the division leader this week, it would be the back-to-back losses he is coming off and the fact that back in Week 3 William only lost their matchup by four points, the narrowest margin of victory Stephen has had this year.

William remains in the hunt for a return trip to the playoffs but is in danger of falling out. Paths to elimination will be included below.

After clinching his division last week and securing a win with no depth available this week, Alex can clinch the #1 seed with a victory in Week 14.

Sean will have to make some roster moves just to compete as he joins so many others in trying to claw his way out of Snyder contention. He has a tight end and a kicker on bye with no replacements for either currently on his roster.

Alex will be hoping for a repeat of their Week 7 meeting when he won by exactly 41 points.

Back in Week 7, Will earned a comfortable 20-point win against Anthony to avoid taking his 10th loss, an outcome that would have him join Brandon Saunders as the only two managers in the AFL with 10 or more losses against multiple opponents now that Will suffered his 10th career loss to Sean Kennedy this past week.

As mentioned earlier, these two managers faced off in last year’s Snyder Cup, with Will losing and being required to serve a punishment by wearing Ravens gear during this season’s draft. Both are in danger of falling into that bottom consolation bracket again this season.

A win for Will would go a long way toward helping him avoid that fate. Anthony, though, currently owns sole possession of the AFL’s worst record. I haven’t run the numbers officially, but he very well may be locked into the Snyder Bracket already. Even if he climbs past Will, Sean Kennedy, and Andrew Perez, he lost all three matchups against Alex Kincaid, William Battle, and Cory Puffett, the AFL’s three 6-7 managers.

Both managers remain alive in the playoff hunt but dead in the hunt for a division title. For Cory, this is a must-win. Unlike Alex Kincaid and William Battle, who can be eliminated via several avenues, Cory can only be eliminated from the playoffs this week if he loses or ties this matchup.

Evan, meanwhile, can’t be eliminated this week but a loss would certainly make things more dicey for his wild card hopes considering Cory would pull to a tie with him and, best case scenario, Eric remains tied with him, not to mention both Alex Kincaid and William Battle could pull into ties with him if they win.

Cory won the first meeting by about 45 points, and Evan is just 1-4 over his last five games. Cory is 2-3 in that stretch and has been consistently mediocre before his huge game this past week. Meanwhile, Evan has been wildly inconsistent during that stretch, but if this is an up week for him, it could spell good things.

Five weeks ago, Eric earned a 55-point blowout victory against Brandon in the second game of a five-game winning streak that was snapped this week despite being the league’s second highest scorer. He hasn’t finished lower than fourth in scoring in any game dating back to that matchup.

This week, Eric can become the third manager with 11 or more wins against one opponent, which would result in Brandon becoming the first manager with 11 or more losses against multiple opponents.

Brandon is hoping to avoid that. While that last game against Eric came in the middle of the three-game stretch in which he finished 11th, 12th, and 9th in scoring, he’s bounced back with three straight weeks of his own amongst the top four scorers, one of many reasons this was an easy selection as the Week 14 game of the week!

In addition, Brandon is playing to clinch the AFL West division title with a win or tie.