I wasn’t going to do a write-up this week. I figured with only three games remaining that get recorded for historical purposes, I’d wait until next week to discuss all of them.
Next week I’ll also be handing out awards for best and worst coached of the year and discussing some of the historically significant results from this season, which means I don’t want to ramble too much about the playoff games themselves.
Then we had two of the best playoff matchups in AFL history and they deserve more than a brief aside in a blog post focused on the season as a whole.
So I decided to go ahead to do a quick article recapping the games from Week 16 and previewing our AFL championship game.
Let’s jump right into it.
Stephen April vs Alex Kincaid (2-4 all-time H2H)
Stephen got the best of Alex twice in the regular season, but Alex won the game that mattered most, and he did it in unique fashion.
Trailing by 61.56 points entering Sunday Night Football, Alex had Dak Prescott, Dalton Schultz, and the Cowboys defense going up against the Washington Football Team.
When they played two weeks ago, those three combined for 36.62 points, 29.5 of them coming from the defense. Prescott hadn’t had a game with more than 12.5 points since Week 12. Schultz, who had 15.5 points last week against the Giants, hadn’t had consecutive games with 10+ since weeks 5 and 6.
The three wound up combining not for 61.56 points but for 82.62 points!
Alex started D’Andre Swift, who was ruled out with a shoulder injury ahead of the Lions game, and Harrison Butker, who tested positive for COVID on Monday and was following protocols for unvaccinated players, which meant he wouldn’t be eligible to be removed from the list in time for Sunday.
Those two goose eggs didn’t matter as the third-year manager who finished #2 in our league’s power rankings, and sat atop those rankings four times this season, punched his ticket for his first career AFL title game appearance.
Dak Prescott’s 34 points are tied for the 100th highest scoring quarterback game in AFL history.
Mark Andrews scored 22.8 points, good for 69th on the tight end leaderboard. It’s the third week in a row Mark Andrews recorded a Top 100 starting TE games in AFL history.
Alex’s 147.32 points rank 82nd among single-game scores in AFL history.
Evan Ash (10-3 all-time H2H) vs Anthony Battle
Evan also got revenge for his Week 8 loss to Anthony. That one was a low-scoring affair. Neither manager topped 90 points and Anthony won by four and a half points.
This time around, Evan won by just over five points in a track meet, with both managers topping 140!
The big contributors for Evan were Davante Adams, who caught two of Aaron Rodgers’ three touchdown passes, Aaron Rodgers himself, and the Tampa Bay defense which recorded seven sacks, eight tackles for a loss, eight passes defended, and had two fourth down stops, to boot, against Carolina.
Josh Allen went off for 36 points for Anthony and, with Travis Kelce sidelined with a positive COVID test, a clutch spot start by Gerald Everett gave Ant a fighting chance with Jaylen Waddle playing on Monday night.
Waddle did everything he could. It was going to take a career-best 24-point outing. 10 catches for 92 yards and a touchdown later, Waddle had 19.2 points. A valiant effort, but it wasn’t enough to launch Anthony into his second career AFL championship game appearance.
Josh Allen’s 36.1 points rank 62nd all-time among AFL starting quarterbacks.
Evan’s 148.52 points rank #76 all-time. The 291.76 points he and Anthony combined for make this the 9th highest scoring game in AFL history.
Evan Ash vs Alex Kincaid (Alex leads all-time series 3-1)
Instead, Evan became the second manager in AFL history to make consecutive title game appearances and Alex became the second straight manager to appear in our title game in his third season in the league.
Danny Hatcher was the last manager to make back-to-back appearances. He won our first two league titles back in 2013 and 2014, the first two of his three career titles before his retirement ahead of the 2020 season. Evan would prefer not to see a repeat outcome of last year’s title game appearance, when he lost to Stephen April.
Speaking of Stephen, his title last year came in his third year in the AFL, certainly something Alex would like to have (and something Alex Mayo will hope to replicate in 2022, which will be his third year in the league).
The last meeting between Alex and Evan came in Week 4 when Alex won by a comfortable 25-point margin.
More than half of his points in that game came from Patrick Mahomes, David Montgomery, and Adam Thielen, all of whom he has since traded away.
Alex also swept Evan last season when they shared a division, though it wasn’t enough to get him into the playoffs or to keep Evan out of them.
Looking ahead to this matchup, Evan is hoping the Raiders are right that Darren Waller will return to the practice field on Wednesday. The star tight end has missed the last four games and, while Cole Kmet has had his best set of back-to-back games all year, Waller would be a welcome upgrade.
He’s also hopeful that Dalvin Cook, who has been following protocols for unvaccinated players all season, will test negative and clear COVID protocols in time for Sunday night’s game against Green Bay.
Unless Alex decides to start Kirk Cousins over Dak Prescott this week, his team will be all done before SNF kicks off, but Evan will just be getting started.
Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, Justin Jefferson, and either Dalvin Cook or Alexander Mattison will be tasked with overcoming whatever lead Alex has and carrying Evan to his first AFL championship.
The question is whether Evan will be close enough for that foursome to bring him back. Alex finished less than two points behind Evan in scoring this week and that was with two goose eggs in his lineup. He survived leaving both D’Andre Swift (out with a shoulder injury) and Harrison Butker (out with COVID/unvaccinated protocols) in his lineup on Sunday.
Other AFL News
Outside of this game, we do still have meaningful consolation games in play.
Cory Puffett and Eric Meyer both won their matchups in the top bracket of the consolation ladder. The winner of their game will get to choose their draft position for 2022 and the loser will get second pick.
With Derrick Henry ineligible to be kept next year (he was a first-round keeper in 2021), the winner will most likely end up taking that first overall spot. Eric has had Henry for the last three seasons and would like to have his rights locked up for up to two more.
Stephen and Anthony, after losing in the first round of the playoffs, will face off with the 8th and 9th picks in our annual draft pick draft on the line. Though the winner of the AFL championship game gets the 11th pick and the runner up gets the 10th, in every other game during the playoffs the winner is the one who gets the prize in this regard.
The big loser will be whoever takes home the Snyder, our name for The League’s Sacko. This year it comes down to Brandon Saunders and Andrew Perez.
Brandon has never “won” a Snyder in his AFL career and would like to keep it that way. Andrew has become all too familiar with it; this would be his third career Snyder if he can’t get the win. Brandon has only three wins this season, but two of them came against Andrew.
The winner of this game will get the seventh pick in our draft pick draft. The loser goes all the way back behind our playoff teams to 12th, meaning they get whatever draft pick none of our other 11 managers want.
Good luck to everyone in Week 17!
-Cory Puffett