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.