A Football Life, Week 9 Afterword

With Week 9 in the books in the AFL, every manager has played a game against each of their three division rivals. Brandon Saunders is a perfect 3-0 in his divisional matchups while our other 11 managers are all either 2-1 or 1-2 in theirs.

With Brandon’s three division rivals each sitting at 1-2, that two-game advantage Brandon has in division play is the difference in the AFL West, where he currently holds a two-game lead over Anthony Battle and a three-game lead on both Alex Kincaid and Will Massimini.
 
We now have just six games remaining in the 2022 regular season as we continue our run up to Sabol Bowl X. Cory Puffett has the best playoff odds according to PlayoffComputer.com, which gives his team a 92% chance of clinching a playoff birth. Sean Kennedy and Brandon are each in the 80-89 range while Alex Mayo has a 63.1% chance of making the tournament.
 
But six weeks is still plenty of time for things to change drastically. Just last year at this time, we had five managers all tied with the best record in the AFL at 6-3. Obviously one of them was going to miss the playoffs since we only take four, but somehow three of them managed to melt down and miss the postseason.
 
Eric Meyer was 6-3 and went 2-4 down the stretch to finish a game out of the division title and in third place in the AFL Central. Meanwhile Sean Kennedy and Alex Mayo, who were also 6-3 at this time last year, won their Week 10 matchups to go to 7-3 before losing their final five games to finish 7-8!
 
Meanwhile, Evan Ash was 5-4, as he is now, and made it to the postseason while Stephen April was 4-5, a game better than he currently is, and also made a playoff appearance.
 
And before you point to Eric’s #8 power ranking following Week 9 last season as an indication that we should have expected a meltdown or to Evan’s #5 ranking as an indication that he should have been a favorite to make a playoff push, consider also that Stephen April was ranked 9th before making his unlikely playoff push and Sean was ranked #1 before his tailspin.
 
All that to say, even at this juncture in the season, there is still plenty of time for the current standings to undergo a severe shakeup.
 
We saw a little bit of a dip in scoring this week from last week, which was to be expected without a record-breaking performance. Our 12 managers combined to scored 1,321.15 points, which ranked 57th among 134 regular season weeks in AFL history.
 
Across the league there were 13 coaching risks, and our managers were successful on nine of them and earned a net 21.22 points. Through nine weeks, the AFL has a .515 success rate and has earned 45.88 total points more than if we had followed FleaFlicker suggestions across the board.
 
Congratulations to Alex Mayo, the first manager to reach triple digits from defensive scoring. He leads the AFL with 103.10 points from that roster spot. Eric Meyer has the fewest points from the position with just 38.12 points. No other manager is under the 60-point threshold.
 
At the kicker position, Andrew still holds the lead despite a few huge outputs for Alex Kincaid in recent weeks. Andrew is very close to breaking the 100-point threshold with 95.60 points. Stephen April is at the bottom of the league with 60.50 points.
 
Compared to previous years, our kicker scoring range is pretty expected. Following Week 9 of the 2021 season, our spread was 99.40 points (Alex Mayo) to 50.10 points (Will Massimini). At this point in the 2020 season, our spread was 94.10 points (Anthony Battle & Stephen April) to 56.30 points (Alex Kincaid). And even going back to 2019, our spread was 97.20 (Anthony Battle) to 59.00 (Brandon Saunders).
 
Defensively, we’ve seen a significant shift thanks to the threshold penalties we implemented this season. This could be where we are seeing the biggest difference in our overall scoring this season, as a matter of fact. Following Week 9:

• In 2021, our range was 131.84 (Cory Puffett) to 67.68 (Andrew Perez)
• In 2020, our range was 127.58 (Alex Mayo) to 49.56 (Alex Kincaid)
• In 2019, our range was 174.54 (Anthony Battle) to 82.64 (Cory Puffett) 

With that, let’s get into our game-by-game breakdowns.
 
Alex Mayo (83.26) vs Sean Kennedy (120.78) [1-2 all-time H2H]
In back-to-back weeks, Alex lost to the only two managers who had failed to notch a victory against him in his first two seasons as an AFL manager.
 
Davante Adams was the biggest contributor to Sean’s victory. He bounced back from last week’s performance, in which he scored negative points, with a 31.90-point effort. That ties Adams for the 70th most points in a single game by a starting wide receiver in AFL history.
 
With the win, Sean secured his 9th career Peyton Manning Award. He’s one away from being the seventh AFL manager to reach double digits.
 
It’s been a big season for Sean on that front. This was his third game of the week appearance and his third game of the week victory of the season. In his career, Sean is now 9-9 when playing in the AFL’s game of the week while Alex falls to 3-7.
 
Alex has struggled a bit lately. After a red hot start to the season, he may need to get a little more active on the waiver wire. His only transaction since the draft was his Week 4 trade with Alex Kincaid in which they swapped Derek Carr and Matthew Stafford. Carr could be looking at his second start of the season for Alex depending on Josh Allen’s status with a potential UCL injury.
 
Sean earns honorable mention this week for coaching (keep reading below to find who Week 9’s coach of the week is).  He succeeded on both of his coaching risks and earned a league-high 17.74 points as a result. His smaller success was the 2.99 points he earned by adding and starting the Seattle Seahawks defense instead of the Kansas City Chiefs. In addition, he earned 14.75 points by starting Mecole Hardman in his FLEX spot instead of Drake London, who he left on his taxi squad.
 
Evan Ash (141.32) [7-3 all-time H2H] vs Andrew Perez (139.52)
This was Evan’s third consecutive win against Andrew, and it came in dramatic fashion. These were the two highest scorers of the week in the AFL, marking the sixth time in AFL history a team lost despite a 10-1 breakdown.
 
The 1.80-point differential is the smallest in those six games, and this marks the first time we’ve ever seen this scoring anomaly twice in a single season. Just two weeks ago, Andrew was on the winning side of this scenario.
 
By leading the league in scoring, Evan earned his 18th career Tom Brady Award and his first since the penultimate week of the 2021 season. He passed Eric for the second most Tom Brady Awards all-time, only trailing Anthony’s 19.
 
Andrew has to be one of the few fantasy football managers in the world to lose despite having one of the greatest fantasy days in NFL history from one of his players. Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon had five touchdowns on Sunday afternoon and scored 57.81 points in our league, the second most for a running back or any player in AFL history. Only Jonathan Taylor, with 58.84 points for Alex Kincaid in Week 11 of last season, has scored more.
 
Full disclosure, Mixon had a better game than Jonathan Taylor. If we convert Mixon’s stats from this week to last year’s scoring settings, he would have scored 59.44 points and had a new AFL record. If we go the opposite route and convert JT’s Week 11 performance from last year to this year’s settings, he would have had 56.71 points.
 
On the winning side, Dallas Goedert gave Evan a big lift with the highest point total by a tight end for the week. His 21.45 points rank 95th at the position in AFL history.
 
Andrew’s score ranks as the sixth highest losing score in league history. At 1.4 wins below expected, Andrew is now the league’s unluckiest manager by breakdown.
 
Evan earned his win on the strength of his coaching, making him this week’s coach of the week. He only succeeded on one of two coaching risks. He cost his team 8.30 points by adding and starting Mason Crosby instead of Riley Patterson at kicker, but he earned 10.37 points by starting Jeff Wilson instead of Robert Tonyan, who he dropped.
 
In all, Evan earned 2.57 points, more than his margin of victory. Continue reading below to see how his team stacked up against the Week 9 Free Agent All-Stars!
 
Cory Puffett (130.47) [4-6 all-time H2H] vs Eric Meyer (80.47)
In our 10-year history, this will be the first time Cory and Eric face off multiple times in one season. Their first matchup of 2022 went to Cory, who has now won three straight against Eric.
 
The victory came in spite of Cory leaving the #3 quarterback performance of the week on his bench. Tua Tagovailoa has been balling and had 25.50 points go to waste in Week 9. Those points might not be going to waste much longer, though, after a trade last night sent Tagovailoa to this week’s lowest scorer.
 
William Battle (120.69) [1-4 all-time H2H] vs Stephen April (100.11)
Stephen may not have cost himself the game with his coaching this week, but he didn’t do himself any favors. He cost himself a league-high 13.91 points by ignoring FleaFlicker projections and leaving Cordarrelle Patterson on his IR to instead start Deon Jackson at running back.
 
William, meanwhile, got a huge lift from the New England Patriots. Their 31.12 points rank 10th all-time by a starting AFL defense and marked the best defensive game of the season, giving William defensive coach of the week honors.
 
William handicapped himself a bit this week and left the door open for Stephen by leaving the top quarterback of the week on his bench. In what would have been the fourth biggest game by a starting quarterback in AFL history, Justin Fields scored 46.78 points that went to waste.
 
Alex Kincaid (108.04) vs Brandon Saunders (113.26) [2-2 all-time H2H]
Through four meetings, neither Alex nor Brandon have managed consecutive victories in this head-to-head series.
 
Despite barely finishing in the top half of the league in scoring, Brandon led the league with five Top 5 positional performers this week. He was one of four manages to have both a Top 5 kicker and a Top 5 defense in Week 9. The other three managers were Sean Kennedy, Andrew Perez, and Alex Kincaid.
 
Brandon extended his league-leading active streak of 100-point games to five, still one ahead of Stephen April and Cory Puffett.
 
Alex repeats as the AFL’s kicker coach of the week. New England Patriots kicker Nick Folk has been balling. He came very near a third 20-point game for the season this week with 18.50 points. As it was, this ranks 24th all-time among starting AFL kickers.
 
But it was not enough to overcome Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce. It’s become a common site for the two of them to bring Brandon back from deficits late in matchups this season.
 
This week, Mahomes scored 36.07 points, good for #68 all-time by a starting quarterback in the AFL.
 
Will Massimini (106.81) [4-9 all-time H2H] vs Anthony Battle (86.20)
This is the second time Will has won back-to-back games against Anthony. He’ll try for his first three-game win streak in their head-to-head series later this season.
 
As the #8 scorer this week, Will earned a lucky win, offsetting the unlucky loss he suffered two weeks ago.
 
Free Agent All-Stars vs Tom Brady Award Winner
Every week this season, we will compare the best possible lineup made of players who are unowned in the AFL 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 player is rostered as of Tuesday morning.

Final Score:
Free Agent All-Stars – 125.59
Evan Ash – 141.32
YTD Tom Brady Award Winner Record: 3-6
 
Here is our recap of Week 9 and this week’s power rankings:

Game of the Week: Alex Mayo at Sean Kennedy
In the second biggest blowout of the week, Sean took control of the AFL East thanks in large part to Davante Adams and the Seahawks defense. The outcome was never in doubt and was far less exciting than we thought it would be a few weeks ago when both managers were 5-0.

This is Cory’s 14th career top ranking, passing Evan for the third most in AFL history behind Eric (35) and Will (22).
 
Week 10 will be another important week with some intriguing matchups as the playoff picture begins to come into focus. Check back later this week for my preview of those six matchups!