A Football Life, Week 1

I took 2015 off of recapping the AFL, then last year I got through the first six weeks and then stopped for reasons I honestly don’t remember. Once again, I’m dusting off the old blog as we get started on a fifth fantastic fantasy season with my buddies in A Football Life.

Nolan has opted out of his contract with the league and Viroj Suteerawongsa has taken over his team. Nolan finished last in his division all four years he was a part of the league and was noticeably wide receiver focused every year. Hopefully Viroj will have better fortunes in our competitive league.

Eric took home the AFL Trophy last year. He had Aaron Rodgers, David Johnson, Jordan Howard, Mike Evans, and Travis Kelce on his team so it would have been an upset of epic proportions had Andrew been able to know him off in that title game. They faced off this week in the season-opening Game of the Week.

Andrew got off to a fantastic start as Alex Smith carved up the Patriots defense in the season opener on Thursday. Smith’s 33.5 points topped all starting quarterbacks in our league this week and was the 2nd highest point total for any starting position player in the league. It was also good for the 36th highest single-game point total by a starting quarterback in our league’s history, Smith’s only top-40 performance.

Unfortunately, Sunday brought very little for Andrew to get excited about as his five Sunday players totaled just 29.5 points. That allowed Eric to take a narrow lead heading into Monday Night Football’s doubleheader. Andrew had Stefon Diggs in the “early” game while Eric followed with the LA duo of Melvin Gordon and Keenan Allen.

Diggs scored twice for Minnesota and put up 24.3 points for Andrew, forcing Eric to sweat out the late game and hope Gordon and Allen could pick up some points against the Denver defense. They did plenty for him as they totaled 30.2 points, giving Eric the 111.8-100.6 victory and the season’s first Peyton Manning Award.

The first Tom Brady Award of the season went to Will Massimini. He topped all teams with 124.5 points. The Eagles defense led his team with 25 points, McCoy led the position players with 20.6 and he earned an easy win against Anthony, who has struggled to find the same level of success he enjoyed in our league’s predecessor.

Last season was our first with nine starting players – we had a 1 RB, 2 WR, 1 FLEX format before adding the 2nd running back heading into 2016. Last year’s opening week saw the league’s single-week record for points as the 12 teams combined for 1454.7 points. Brandon’s 166.6 points was the 2nd highest single-week total for one team and only dropped to 3rd when Eric broke that record in last year’s title game.

While we all probably expect to see weekly totals from the league’s first three seasons continue to slide down and out of the leader boards, this week certainly won’t aid in that mission. Week 1 saw just the 18th highest single-week point total in league history and our leading scorer, Will Massimini, did not crack the top 80 single-week team performances.

The highest scoring player this week was rookie running back Kareem Hunt, as you’ll see in the review below. His 44.8-point performance on Thursday is the #4 single-game performance by a running back in our league’s history (remember, we only count performances by players in a starting lineup) and was the 6th highest single-game total by a player at any position.

Week 1’s unluckiest team was Adam. He posted a 6-5 breakdown with a point total in the top half of the league but lost to Evan, who had the third highest point total for the week.

On the reverse, our luckiest team was Danny, who had just the 7th highest point total for the week breakdown but was matched up against Sean’s team, which produced the 9th highest total.

Coaching was rough this week. Using ESPN’s pre-game player projections, four of our owners went chalk in Week 1. Of the eight who took one or more risks, only four got any of them right and only three earned points from their decisions.

Our top coach of the week was Will Massimini, who gained 6 points by starting James White over Chris Hogan.

Our worst coach of the week was Sean, though he’ll have you believe his rabbit is acting as his general manager and is in charge of all personnel decisions. Mike Gillislee had a higher projection than Darren McFadden, but Sean chose to roll with DMC despite the news that Ezekiel Elliott would play. Gillislee scored 24 points and McFadden scored nothing. Not only did Sean lose 24 points because of that decision, he became the first coach this season to cost his team a win due to a coaching risk.

Our biggest upset of Week 1 was, in fact, Eric’s Game of the Week victory over Andrew, who was a 19-point favorite based on ESPN projections. Only one favorite won this week. Danny was a 5-point favorite over Sean, so had Sean started Gillislee, underdogs would have enjoyed a 6-0 week in A Football Life.

Will Massimini and Cory led all teams with three players each finishing among the top five at their respective positions this week. Five owners put two players each in those groups, but only Andrew had two top scorers, with Alex Smith pacing all quarterbacks and Stefon Diggs leading all receivers.

Check out the review of Week 1 below:

Standings:

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

Schedule:

Away	Score	Home	Score
Adam Perez (AP2)	106.0	Evan Ash (EA)	120.2
Anthony Battle (AB)	97.0	William Massimini (WM)	124.5
William Battle (WB)	74.4	Cory Puffett (CP)	114.1
Brandon Saunders (BS)	121.4	Viroj Suteerawongsa (VS)	87.2
Andrew Perez (AP1)	100.6	Eric Meyer (EM)	111.8
Sean Kennedy (SK)	97.8	Danny Hatcher (DH)	103.1

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

QB	Pts	RB	Pts
1. Alex Smith, AP1	33.5	1. Kareem Hunt, BS	44.8
2. Matthew Stafford, BS	28.9	2. Leonard Fournette, AP2	22.5
T3. Derek Carr, DH	20.0	3. LeSean McCoy, WM	20.6
T3. Marcus Mariota, EM	20.0	4. Todd Gurley, WB	20.0
5. Matt Ryan, CP	19.4	5. Ty Montgomery, CP	19.2
WR	Pts	TE	Pts
1. Stefon Diggs, AP1	24.3	1. Austin Hooper, EA	19.8
2. Antonio Brown, CP	23.7	2. Jason Witten, SK	15.4
3. Tyreek Hill, EM	23.5	3. Coby Fleener, AP2	13.9
4. Jordy Nelson, EA	17.4	4. Zach Ertz, WM	13.3
5. Golden Tate, WM	16.6	5. Delanie Walker, AB	11.1

Game of the Week: Andrew Perez at Eric Meyer

Alex Smith offered Andrew a huge boost in the season’s opening game, but a poor Sunday let Eric back into the game. When Stefon Diggs went off for 24 points, it looked like Andrew might get some modicum of revenge on the 2016 AFL champ, but Melvin Gordon and Keenan Allen had other things in mind in the second game of Monday night’s double header.