A Football Life, Week 3

Week 2 brought us two incredible matchups where the victors won by less than a point. In fact, there were two teams that scored 127.5 and 127.3 points and four teams that scored between 114.1 and 114.9 points. There was no such drama in week 3 as the narrowest margin of victory was 12 points.

Stat corrections are made every week in the NFL, but most of them affect only defensive players, which is one of the primary reasons our league has never seriously considered moving to an IDP format. Last week there was one stat correction, a reception taken away from Darren Sproles, that affected Drew in an insignificantly significant way.

Drew had won the Tom Brady Award as the league’s leading scorer in week 2. He also had beaten the league’s lowest scorer, marking the seventh time in league history where the week’s leading scorer and low scorer played head-to-head. Drew lost half a point on the stat correction and Will became the league’s highest scorer for the week. While this ultimately does not hurt Drew (he did not lose his game because of it and the impact on his season point total for tiebreaking purposes is negligible), it took away Drew’s fifth Tom Brady Award and his 10th league trophy.

Moving on to week 3, the matchups kicked of with Thursday night’s high-scoring affair between the LA Rams and San Francisco 49ers. Rather, two of the matchups kicked off on Thursday night as the only players on either team to start in the AFL were Todd Gurley for William and Carlos Hyde for Cory. Both delivered terrific starts for their teams. Gurley wound up leading all starting running backs in the league this week with 38.2 points.

Cory and Evan faced off in the game of the week, both teams entering the week with 2-0 records and facing off for the early-season AFL West division advantage. Cory won the matchup by 16 points for his sixth career Peyton Manning Award and his first since the end of the 2015 season en route to his AFL championship.

At times, Anthony was projected to score more than 150 points. His team didn’t quite live up as early-game fireworks settled down throughout the afternoon, but he did finish as the top scorer for the week. This is Anthony’s eighth career Tom Brady Award, his last coming in week 12 of last season.

Anthony’s 128.8 points is good for 69th on the league’s all-time single week team scoring list. His opponent, Danny, was this week’s lowest scorer, making this the seventh time in league history where the top scorer and low scorer faced each other. Their point differential of 68.0 points is the third highest of those seven games.

A total of 1226.8 points was scored in the AFL this week, the 26th highest scoring week in league history and the lowest of this season so far. Notably, the average score for winning teams this week was 119.4, the highest average for the winning teams this season.

Tom Brady posted the 12th highest single game score for a quarterback in AFL history, knocking out his performance from last week from the top 40.

Russell Wilson posted the 24th highest score for a quarterback, Todd Gurley the 10th highest score for a running back, and Stefon Diggs the 19th highest score for a wide receiver in AFL history. Diggs is the only wide receiver on this list who was on Drew’s roster at the time of his listed game.

Our luckiest owner this week was Eric, who had a 4-7 breakdown (8th in the league) but beat Adam. Our unluckiest was William, whose 6-5 breakdown (6th in the league) was not enough to beat Brandon and his 10-1 breakdown.

The top coach this week was Cory, who gained 9.1 points by starting DeVante Parker and the Broncos D/ST instead of Ameer Abdullah and the Titans D/ST, both of which went against ESPN’s projections and both of which resulted in positive points.

Our worst coach this week was William, who cost his team a victory with his decisions to start Jeremy Maclin, Jesse James, and the Panthers D/ST over Terrelle Pryor Sr., Jimmy Graham, and the Patriots D/ST, all three of which were unsuccessful coaching risks.

There were actually five owners in the league who cost their teams more than the 14.4 points that William cost his team, but no other owner cost himself a win. The worst of the rest were Danny, who cost his team 26.2 points with two failed risks and Adam who cost his team 22.5 points with one failed risk.

So far this season, Danny has lost 44.8 points by going against ESPN projections, the worst coaching differential in the league so far. He lost a total of 45.9 points going against FantasyPros projections last year, which was also the worst mark in the AFL, so he is on a very bad track and needs to get things turned around quickly. He is 2-1 so a quick coaching turnaround will be more than enough to keep him in the playoff race.

Cory and Will were the only coaches who gained points by going against projections this week, and they are the top two coaches so far this season in terms of points gained/lost. Only Cory and Eric have not had an unsuccessful coaching risk through three weeks. Cory is 3-for-3 with 13.1 points gained over projections and Eric is 1-for-1 with 3.4 points gained.

Our free agent auction report reveals Evan as our biggest over-spender this week, but a large margin. He wasted $36 this week, or 18 percent of his total budget for the year. He spent $26 to acquire Wendell Smallwood and $20 to pick up Deshaun Watson. The next highest bid on Smallwood was just $10 by Viroj and nobody else bid on Watson.

Anthony and Brandon both had four players appear on the top five lists at their positions for the week. William had three such players and three other teams had two such players. Andrew had the top scoring wide receiver and the top scoring tight end this week.

Check out the review of Week 3 below:

Standings:

AFL East	Record	GB	AFL West	Record	GB
Will Massimini	3-0	--	Cory Puffett	3-0	--
Eric Meyer	2-1	1	Andrew Perez	2-1	1
Adam Perez	0-3	3	Evan Ash	2-1	1
Viroj Suteerawongsa	0-3	3	Sean Kennedy	0-3	3
AFL Central	Record	GB
Brandon Saunders	2-1	--
Danny Hatcher	2-1	--
Anthony Battle	1-2	1
William Battle	1-2	1

Schedule:

Away	Score	Home	Score
Danny Hatcher (DH)	60.8	Anthony Battle (AB)	128.8
Brandon Saunders (BS)	125.0	William Battle (WB)	113.0
Evan Ash (EA)	106.0	Cory Puffett (CP)	122.2
Sean Kennedy (SK)	89.3	Andrew Perez (AP1)	124.7
Eric Meyer (EM)	102.0	Adam Perez (AP2)	79.2
Viroj Suteerawongsa (VS)	62.1	Will Massimini (WM)	113.7

Scoring Leaders (Must be starting on a team to qualify):

QB	Pts	RB	Pts
1. Tom Brady, AB	37.2	1. Todd Gurley, WB	38.2
2. Russell Wilson, WB	35.0	2. Jordan Howard, AB	31.2
3. Kirk Cousins, EA	28.9	3. Dalvin Cook, AB	28.1
4. Aaron Rodgers, AP2	26.5	4. Kareem Hunt, BS	26.5
5. Drew Brees, WM	22.3	5. Carlos Hyde, CP	25.4
WR	Pts	TE	Pts
1. Stefon Diggs, AP1	33.3	1. Rob Gronkowski, AP1	18.9
2. Larry Fitzgerald, SK	27.4	2. Zach Ertz, WM	13.5
3. Odell Beckham Jr., BS	24.4	3. Delanie Walker, AB	5.1
4. A.J. Green, BS	22.1	4. Jesse James, WB	2.9
5. Antonio Brown, CP	22.0	5. Martellus Bennett, BS	2.7

Game of the Week: Evan Ash at Cory Puffett

Carlos Hyde set the tone for Cory on Thursday, one of only two TNF players to start in the AFL this week, and Cory is one of only two owners with a top six breakdown in every week so far this season. Evan’s team suffered primarily from duds by Jay Ajayi and Jack Doyle, but should be grateful that defenses can’t score negative points anymore or the Ravens defense certainly would have done so.

A Football Life, Week 2

The second week is in the books and Week 3 begins tonight as the Rams face off with the 49ers in San Francisco.

Four teams in the AFL remain undefeated, and two of them will face off in the game of the week as Cory and Evan face off in the first week of divisional play with an opportunity to take sole possession of first place in the AFL West.

Will [Massimini] won the Peyton Manning Award with his game of the week victory over Brandon in a battle between the two highest scoring teams from Week 1. Will came within half a point of a second straight Tom Brady Award.

Instead, this week’s Tom Brady Award goes to Drew, who led the league with 127.8 points, which ranks #80 on the league’s all-time single week team scoring list. His win against Viroj marked the seventh time in AFL history that the league’s leading scorer faced the league’s lowest scorer in a week. Drew’s 48.3-point win is the lowest margin of victory in such games.

Meanwhile, two teams won their games by less than a point this week. Evan beat Anthony by 0.3 points and William [Battle] beat Sean by 0.7 points. They are the 13th and 14th teams in league history to win a game by one point or less and this was the third time two teams have accomplished this feat in the same week.

All-time, Evan is 1-1 in games decided by one point or less and William is 5-0 in such games.

The leading scorer in a starting lineup this week was Tom Brady. His 33.0 points was good for #40 on the all-time single week list at the quarterback position, though it wasn’t enough to give Anthony a victory in his narrow defeat.

This was the 13th highest scoring week in AFL history as the 12 teams combined for 1301.8 total points. It was also the 8th time in league history that the losing teams averaged 100 points or more. For reference, this was the 56th regular season week in AFL history.

Our luckiest performer this week was Evan, who had a 2-9 breakdown (10th in the league), but got the win over Anthony. Our unluckiest team was Sean, whose 7-4 breakdown was good for fifth in the league but was not good enough to defeat William.

Our top coach of the week, by virtue of points gained by going against projections, was Evan. He gained 12.1 points by starting Trevor Siemian and Adam Thielen over Kirk Cousins and Sterling Shepard. He and William both earned wins with their coaching decisions this week.

Our worst coach of the week was Danny, who lost 5.7 points by starting Isaiah Crowell over Mark Ingram, who was projected by ESPN to score more points than his counterpart. This decision, however, did not cost Danny a win and, in fact, no owners cost their teams games by going against projections this week.

Evan gets one more shout out this week. Our biggest, and only, upset this week was his win over Anthony. Evan’s narrow victory countered his +4.3 line in the matchup.

Taking a quick glance at our free agent auction from this week, our worst over-spender was Viroj, who bid $20 on Rashard Higgins, the wide receiver for Cleveland. Not one other owner offered a bid, so this was a waste of 10 percent of Viroj’s budget for the season. This was not nearly as bad, however, as Brandon wasting 20 percent of his budget by bidding $45 on Kerwynn Williams last week, when the next highest bid was just $5.

Will and Adam led all teams with three players each finishing among the top five starters at their respective positions this week. Five other owners put two players each in those groups, and Sean had two top scorers, with Michael Crabtree leading all wide receivers and Jason Witten pacing the tight ends. This is a bit of a parallel to last week as we then also had two owners with three players, five with two, and an owner with two positional leaders. This is the second week in a row that three of Will’s players have accomplished this feat.

Check out the review of Week 2 below:

Standings:

AFL East	Record	GB	AFL West	Record	GB
William Massimini	2-0	--	Cory Puffett	2-0	--
Eric Meyer	1-1	1	Evan Ash	2-0	--
Adam Perez	0-2	2	Andrew Perez	1-1	1
Viroj Suteerawongsa	0-2	2	Sean Kennedy	0-2	2
AFL Central	Record	GB
Danny Hatcher	2-0	--
Brandon Saunders	1-1	1
William Battle	1-1	1
Anthony Battle	0-2	2

Schedule:

Away	Score	Home	Score
William Massimini (WM)	127.5	Brandon Saunders (BS)	114.0
Andrew Perez (AP1)	127.8	Viroj Suteerawongsa (VS)	79.5
Evan Ash (EA)	92.6	Anthony Battle (AB)	92.3
Sean Kennedy (SK)	114.2	William Battle (WB)	114.9
Cory Puffett (CP)	124.3	Adam Perez (AP2)	104.2
Eric Meyer (EM)	96.4	Danny Hatcher (DH)	114.1

Scoring Leaders (Must be starting on a team to qualify):

QB	Pts	RB	Pts
1. Tom Brady, AB	33.0	1. C.J. Anderson, BS	31.4
2. Trevor Siemian, DA	24.3	2. Ty Montgomery, CP	27.0
3. Drew Brees, WM	23.1	3. Todd Gurley, WB	26.7
4. Derek Carr, DH	23.0	4. Kareem Hunt, BS	25.7
5. Aaron Rodgers, AP2	20.2	5. Devonta Freeman, WM	24.9
WR	Pts	TE	Pts
1. Michael Crabtree, SK	29.0	1. Jason Witten, SK	20.7
2. Emmanuel Sanders, AP2	21.2	2. Rob Gronkowski, AP1	20.6
3. J.J. Nelson, AP2	20.5	3. Travis Kelce, DH	20.3
4. Davante Adams, AP1	19.9	4. Delanie Walker, AB	14.3
5. Mike Evans, WB	18.8	5. Zach Ertz, WM	12.2

Game of the Week: William Massimini at Brandon Saunders

Brandon had two players score more than anybody on Will’s roster, bench included. In fact, C.J. Anderson was the second highest scoring starter in the league. The effort fell short, however, as even the Monday night tandem of Matthew Stafford and Odell Beckham Jr. could not overcome Will’s team, which came within half a point of leading the league in scoring two weeks in a row to start the season.