We have to begin with Eric Meyer, who went 14-1 in the regular season. After a five-year hiatus from playoff status, the manager who once went 12-2 three times in four seasons finally found himself back on top of the AFL entering the postseason.

The last two times Eric had finished with the AFL's top seed, he lost in the wild card round. First it was Anthony Battle getting the better of him in 2018 before falling to his brother William in Sabol Bowl VI; then it was Brandon Saunders beating him in 2019 before falling to Sean Kennedy in Sabol Bowl VII.

Those two losses came with their own frustrations. After finishing first in wins, first in points, and either first or second in breakdown each seasons, Eric's squads laid eggs in those wild card games.

Unlike those two losses, this weekend's was heartbreaking. It marked the ninth time in 13 seasons, and the fourth year in a row, the team with the second most points in the wild card had the bad luck of being matched up against the highest scoring team of the round. Eric's score ranks third among losing postseason scored in AFL history behind two of Anthony's wild card losses from 2019 and 2021.

The matchup started off on a bad foot for Eric on Thursday night. Jaxon Smith-Njigba put up a respectable 19.95 points, aided significantly by the overtime period. The problem was, overtime benefitted Puka Nacua in Brandon's lineup even more, as Nacua finished the game north of 40 points!

From there the matchup only went downhill for Eric as he watched DeVonta Smith catch a touchdown for Brandon on Saturday, then Tee Higgins and George Pickens caught touchdowns on Sunday afternoon, and then Ashton Jeanty went off for two scores in the late afternoon slate on Sunday.

With a shot to come back with a big game from CMC on Monday night, Brandon's specialists shut the door as Eddy Pineiro and San Francisco's defense outscored the running back by more than a point.

As disappointing a result as it was for Eric, Brandon's squad came to play in this round, as they have for him a lot lately. We'll get into his AFL history in the preview of Sabol Bowl XIII below, but let's just say he is no stranger to the title game. He will extend his own AFL record with a fifth career Sabol Bowl apperance.

Entering this season, Alex Mayo was one of four managers in AFL history to never lose a wild card matchup out of 14 managers who have made at least one playoff appearance.

This past week, he'd hoped to join Danny Hatcher and William Battle as the only managers in AFL history to win in each of their first two wild card appearances.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Five position players failed to score double digits, including both Detroit Lions wide receivers in his lineup. Neither was a beneficiary of Jared Goff's third best fantasy game of the season.

Though Alex had the upper hand at tight end and at both specialty positions, the rest of Anthony's lineup more than made up for it, especially his second and third running backs, who joined Dak Prescott in Ant's lineup as the three highest scoring players of the matchup.

Kenneth Gainwell put up 22.07 points on 128 all-purpose yards and a score, while Chase Brown had three touchdowns in a single quarter to top 30 points!

Butkus Bracket

Will Massimini and Evan Ash advanced with nearly identical team scores to open the consolation ladder. Evan's team outscored Will's by 0.01 points and he'll hope to at least repeat that result this week as they battle for the first pick in next year's draft pick draft.

The managers they beat, Sean Kennedy and Stephen April, respectively, will duke it out for the third and fourth draft pick selections.

Snyder Bracket

We are guaranteed to have a punishment this year! Jeffery McDonald is no longer in the AFL after committing four competitive lineup infractions in the first season of the policy. Even so, his abandoned squad, set by highest projected totals but without a kicker since his roster is locked and no additions can be made, managed to beat Alex Kincaid to send the 2021 AFL runner-up to the Snyder Bowl.

There he'll face Cory Puffett after William Battle kept himself clear of punishment with a strong performance. In fact, looking across all 12 playoff and consolation teams, William's point total trailed only Brandon Saunders in Week 16!

William will face Jeffery's team with the fifth and sixth picks in the draft pick draft on the line. Jeffery's team will be run by William Kellogg, a DeMatha and Glenarden alum with connections to most of the members of our league, in 2026.

Meanwhile, Eric Meyer and Alex Mayo will announce their intended punishments before Thursday's games begin this week. They'll face off in the 2025 Pro Bowl in Week 18. Cory and Alex will face off this week to avoid punishment, and next week the loser will sweat over which punishment he'll receive.

Anthony Battle is finally playing for a title again! He's made the playoffs four times in the last six seasons, losing in the first round every time.

There's a certain duality to Anthony's career in the AFL. On one hand, he's led a blessed life in the regular season. In 13 years, he's now made the playoffs and AFL-leading eight times! Six times, though, he's been knocked out in the first round.

He'll count his lucky stars that wasn't the case this year, because with any other combination of wild card matchups, he would've been sitting on the couch watching the Sabol Bowl once again. Instead, he'll make his first title game appearance since losing Sabol Bowl VI to his brother in 2018.

Brandon Saunders, meanwhile, punches his ticket to the Sabol Bowl for the third time in the past four years. He has not missed the playoffs since his historically bad 2021 season when he set an AFL record by scoring 21.4% fewer points than the league average, a stat nobody else has come close to equallying.

In 2022 his team put together a very strong wild card performance to beat Cory Puffett, who was that year's #1 seed. Though he was the third highest scoring wild card team that week, his 132.47 points were a more-than-respectable total and rank 17th out of 52 wild card scores in league history.

Unfortunately, it fell apart a week later when he failed to score even 90 points and lost Sabol Bowl X to his biggest rival, William Battle. A year later, though, he was right back in the playoffs, beating Stephen April in the wild card and finally lifting the Sabol Bowl trophy after his fourth appearance in the title game.

Now we have a real treat this week. Anthony Battle won the 2011 title in Just Do It!, the AFL's predecessor league. Brandon Saunders won the title a year later before that 16-team league folded and was restructured into the 12-team league we've had for the past 13 years.

This is also the second biggest rivalry in AFL history in terms of games played, and Brandon is part of the top three of those. He and William Battle have faced each other 22 times over the years. He just beat Eric in the 20th meeting of their rivalry. Now he'll face Anthony Battle for the 21st time.

This will be the first postseason meeting for them since 2013 when Brandon won the NFC Championship against Anthony by just 1.50 points to earn a berth in Sabol Bowl I, where he ultimately lost to Danny Hatcher in a failed bid to back up his final Just Do It! title with the first in A Football Life.

Without further ado, good luck to this year's Sabol Bowl competitors as championship week kicks off with three Christmas Day games!