Written by Cory Puffett
Published December 18, 2025
All-time H2H: Evan leads series 9-8
This matchup was over almost before it began. Will may not have had Kyle Pitts, but he had the next best thing on Thursday night as Bijan Robinson led the way, with Baker Mayfield and Bucky Irving in support, to a commanding 56.01-9.40 lead to kick off Week 15.
As it turned out, those three players contributed barely more than a third of Team Massimini’s total for the week but well more than half of what the team needed to beat Evan Ash and secure their spot in the Butkus bracket of the consolation ladder.
Fortunately for Evan, tiebreakers worked out to keep him out of the Snyder bracket, too. That would have been a dangerous place for him to be seeing as he’s finished as a bottom three scorer in three straight weeks and four of the last five to close out the regular season.
All-time H2H: Alex leads series 9-1
All-time H2H: Anthony leads series 6-4
All-time H2H: Cory leads series 10-7
All-time H2H: Brandon leads series 4-0
All-time H2H: Eric leads series 7-6
Free Agent All-Stars vs Tom Brady Award Winner
Every week, we take the best possible lineup made of players who were available on waivers in the AFL at the end of the week and compare it to the top scoring team of the week in our league. Included percentages for the Free Agent All-Star players represent the percentage of FleaFlicker leagues in which each the player was rostered as of data gathering (usually Tuesday morning).
Final Score:
Free Agent All-Stars – 159.48
Alex Mayo – 156.97
YTD Tom Brady Award Winner Record: 5-10
*Blake Corum was the FA All-Stars running back in Week 14
IR Report
In our league, any player can be placed on IR regardless of injury designation. Once on IR, the player cannot be moved, dropped, or traded for a minimum of three weeks.
After Week 1, IR placements are retroactive to the prior week as long as the player was already on the team's roster but was not in the starting lineup during that prior week. This means those players will be eligible to come off IR after just a two-week stay.
Competitive Lineup Penalty Report
This year, we instituted a new rule requiring managers to start a full lineup of active players. A strike system penalizes managers who leave inactive players, or players on bye, in their starting lineup.
Strike 1: No penalty
Strike 2: Fine of $100 FAAB + move to back of all postseason tiebreakers
Strike 3: Repeat Strike 2 penalty + move to back of every round of next year's draft
Strike 4: Dismissal from AFL
Strikes clear in reverse order, two seasons (currently 30 regular season weeks) after the first earned strike.
$4 - Tom Brady Award (Highest Scorer) Alex Mayo #7 in his career
156.97 points Ranks #59 all-time
$1 - Norm Van Brocklin Award (Top QB) Sean Kennedy #24 in his career (most all-time)
Bo Nix, 31.50 2nd career QB1 week
$1 - Adrian Peterson Award (Top RB) Will Massimini #23 in his career (2nd most all-time)
Travis Etienne, 32.01 2nd career RB1 week
$1 - Flipper Anderson Award (Top WR) Alex Mayo #5 in his career
Amon-Ra St. Brown, 35.95 5th career WR1 week
$1 - Shannon Sharpe Award (Top TE) Brandon Saunders #20 in his career (most all-time)
Trey McBride, 32.20 3rd career TE1 week
$1 - Scott O'Brien Award (Top K) Anthony Battle* #22 in his career (2nd most all-time)
Jason Myers, 26.30 6th career K1 week
$1 - Chuck Noll Award (Top DEF) Will Massimini #21 in his career (2nd most all-time)
Chicago Bears, 21.58 8th DEF1 week all-time
David Carr Award (Lowest Scorer) Stephen April #10 in his career
#1 Power Ranking Eric Meyer #42 in his career (most all-time)
#12 Power Ranking Evan Ash #6 in his career
*Repeat from last two weeks
Chuck Knox Award (Best Coach) Cory Puffett #13 in his career (t-5th most all-time)
With one coaching risk, starting Mike Evans in his first game back from a broken collarbone instead of Stefon Diggs, Cory earned a league-high 13.95 points and a win.
Hue Jackson Award (Worst Coach) Jeffery McDonald #3 in his career
For the third week in a row, Jeffery was the AFL's worst coach, this time costing his team 13.99 points and a win by failing on two of three coaching risks. He earned 4.35 points by starting Josh Downs instead of Jaylen Waddle at receiver, but he lost 5.24 points by starting C.J. Stroud at quarterback instead of Brock Purdy and another 13.10 points by leaving Matt Gay in his lineup after the kicker was cut by the 49ers instead of picking up FleaFlicker's recommendation, Harrison Mevis.
Honorable Mention: Alex Kincaid cost his team a league-high 22.96 points by starting Jacory Croskey-Merritt at FLEX instead of Kyle Pitts.
Managers took a combined 15 coaching risks this week and were successful on 8. The league's net point differential was +4.58
For the 2025 season, the AFL finishes with a .426 success rate on 209 total coaching risks with a -328.77 point differential.
Lucky Wins
Eric Meyer 1-10 breakdown (#11 scorer for the week)
Brandon Saunders 4-7 breakdown (#8 scorer for the week)
Unlucky Losses
William Battle 8-3 breakdown (#4 scorer for the week)
Sean Kennedy 6-5 breakdown (#6 scorer for the week)
Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR Alex Mayo 35.95 Points (#37 all-time)
Trey McBride, TE Brandon Saunders 32.20 Points (#14 all-time)
Dallas Goedert, TE William Battle 22.95 Points (#96 all-time)
Jason Myers, K Anthony Battle 26.30 Points (#2 all-time)
Ka'imi Fairbairn, K William Battle 18.80 Points (t-#51 all-time)
Brandon Saunders left the #1 QB performance of the week on his bench
Trevor Lawrence, 46.35 Points
Lawrence would have ranked #5 on the all-time single game QB performance list
Jeffery McDonald left the #3 QB performance of the week on his bench
Brock Purdy, 29.95 Points
Alex Kincaid left the #1 TE performance of the week on his bench
Kyle Pitts, 40.20 Points
Pitts would have ranked #1 on the all-time single game TE performance list
Anthony Battle left the #3 K performance of the week on his bench
Brandon Aubrey, 17.83 Points
Anthony started Jason Myers, the K1 for Week 15 with 8.5 more points than Aubrey. This is the third straight week Anthony had a Top-5 kicker on his bench with a better kicker in his lineup.
Brandon Saunders left the #1 DEF performance of the week on his bench
Washington Commanders, 22.40 Points
Will Massimini left the #3 DEF performance of the week on his bench
Baltimore Ravens, 20.82 Points
Will started the Chicago Bears, the DEF2 for Week 15 with one more point than the Ravens.
Alex Mayo 156.97 Points (#59 all-time)
The AFL scored 1,414.19 points in Week 15
This ranked #27 in league history out of 185 regular season weeks
For the 20th time in AFL history, the two bottom scoring teams faced off. Their point differential of 0.57 points ranks is the smallest among those games.
This is the fourth season in league history, and the second in a row, we've had three such games.
For the sixth time in AFL history, two games were decided by one point or fewer in the same week.
Cory Puffett beat Sean Kennedy by 0.30 points and Eric Meyer beat Stephen April by 0.57 points, marking the 34th and 35th games in league history decided by one point or fewer.
Eric Meyer's league-leading active streak of 100-point games ended at 15. His run of 14 straight to begin the season ties his 2018 mark for the second best of all-time behind Sean Kennedy, who scored 100+ in all 16 of his regular season and postseason matchups in 2019.
Anthony Battle takes over as the active leader with his 7th straight 100-point outing.
Will Massimini's league-leading active drought of 100-point games ended at 3, one game shy of his career long.
Stephen April and Evan Ash take over as the active leaders with their respective 3rd straight sub-100-point outing.
AFL Playoff Preview
Let’s take a preliminary look at our two first round playoff matchups as we draw ever closer to Sabol Bowl XIII.
All-time H2H: Eric leads series 11-8
Welcome back, Eric Meyer! Once a perenial title contender who enjoyed three 12-2 seasons in a four-year span, Eric makes his return to the AFL postseason for the first time since 2019. In five career playoff appearances, he's gone one-and-done three times, including in his last two bids for a Sabol Bowl title.
He's limping into this year's postseason a bit, coming off his third Bottom 4 scoring week of the season, but he escaped with a win and a new AFL record. Never before has a team finished a regular season with fewer than two losses on their ledger. He nearly set a new record for scoring on a per-game basis, less than a quarter of a point per game off his record 2016 season. Eric is the first manager to eclipse 1,900 points in a single season and has the three highest scoring regular season's in league history.
History hasn't been on his side, though. Each of his last two playoff appearances where he went one-and-done, he was the top seed entering the playoffs. He'll be hoping his fate will follow recent trends. Since those back-to-back playoff losses, the #1 seed is 4-1 in the first round of the AFL playoffs.
Brandon Saunders will happily point out that the one opening round loss a regular season champion has suffered in the past five years was Cory Puffett's at his own hands in 2022. Cory had the second highest point total of the round but a buzzsaw consisting of CeeDee Lamb, D'Onta Foreman, and Patrick Mahomes carried him through to his first Sabol Bowl appearance since 2013.
This year it's a completely new team from that one, but there is a lot of carryover from his 2023 Sabol Bowl champion team. Lamar Jackson, Puka Nacua, and Trey McBride are looking for another title to add to their AFL Hall of Fame resumes. Nacua and Jackson were pivitol pieces in both of Brandon's 2023 playoff wins. McBride underwhelmed in the semifinal and sat out the Sabol Bowl on the bench. Jackson has been disappointing this year, but Nacua and McBride are each Top 2 performers at their positions.
Lucky for Eric, he's got his own set of chess pieces to play with, including the one receiver better than Nacua this season: Jaxon Smith-Njigba. To pair with him Eric has the RB2 and RB3 on the season, Christian McCaffrey and Jahmyr Gibbs, whom he aquired in a mid-season trade with Stephen April, and additional Top 5 positional performers Brock Bowers, Cameron Dicker, and the New England Patriots defense.
All-time H2H: Anthony leads series 7-3
The last time Alex Mayo made the postseason, which was also his first career playoff appearance, he lost to Brandon Saunders in Sabol Bowl XI. Thus far in AFL history, we've seen four manager make it back to the Sabol Bowl after losing their first appearance. All but one came out victorious, something Alex Mayo hopes will remain the case.
As a matter of fact, Anthony Battle would say the same. Like Alex, Anthony has made just one Sabol Bowl appearance, losing to his brother back in 2018 when William took home the crown after falling short in his first bid three years earlier. Ant has now reached the playoffs five times in seven years since then. In his previous four playoff appearances, though, he lost in the first round.
In the other semifinal, Brandon and Eric appear to be at full strength heading into this week. All of their injuries are to players they've been managing without for weeks. That may not be the case for Anthony this week. The Los Angeles Rams have a quick turnaround from Week 15 to a Thursday night bout with a tough Seattle Seahawks defense and Davante Adams may not be ready in time. He currently does not have a projection on FleaFlicker. It would be a huge loss and a tough starting spot to fill, especially if Marvin Harrison Jr. returns this week and eats into Michael Wilson's target share.
Alex will be ready to pounce if Ant is at anything less than full strength. He's been a Top 3 scorer in five of the last seven weeks of the regular season and has the second most Tom Brady Awards this season behind only Eric.