A Football Life, Week 6

We are fast approaching the halfway point of the 2017 campaign and while we certainly are seeing teams separate themselves record-wise, some of the best teams are buried in the standings due to unlucky matchups. Brandon already has two losses when finishing in the top six in the league in scoring.

Will failed to score 100 points this week, so Andrew is now the only owner with at least that many in every week this season. Will and Evan have each scored at least 90 in every game and William has accomplished that in every week except week 1.

With 1259.1 points, this was the #21 highest-scoring week in league history – there are now 60 regular season weeks in the books – but just the fourth highest of the season.

Evan led all owners this week with 136.6 points, good for #40 on the all-time single week team scoring list. Eric trailed close behind with 135.4 points, #46 on the list. They posted the second and third highest single-week totals so far in the 2017 campaign.

Evan also won the Peyton Manning Award with his victory over Andrew in the game of the week. This marks the 12th time in league history that an owner won both the Tom Brady Award and Peyton Manning Award in the same week. Evan is the 6th owner in the league to do this. Eric leads all owners, having accomplished this feat five times. Danny has done it twice (Week 12 in both 2013 and 2014) and Will has done it twice (Week 2 in both 2016 and 2017).

These were Evan’s 9th Tom Brady Award and 5th Peyton Manning Award since the league’s inception in 2013. He won the league’s first ever Tom Brady Award in week 1 of that season – Peyton Manning’s 7-touchdown game against Baltimore.

Looking at individual players, only 12 starting positions players topped 20 points this week and only two cracked the top 40 all-time single week scores at their positions.

Melvin Gordon led all running backs with 34.0 points on Eric’s roster, good for #30 among running backs in AFL history.

Rob Gronkowski gave Andrew 23.3 points, good for #36 on the single-week tight end list in league history. Gronk is just the fifth starting right end to score 20 points this season and is the first to crack the all-time list of 40.

Deshaun Watson failed to make the all-time quarterback list but led all starting quarterbacks for the third week in a row. He has four straight weeks of at least 20 fantasy points, the longest active streak for any quarterback (starters, bench, free agents all included). Kirk Cousins is the only other quarterback in the NFL to score at least 20 points in every game between week 3 and week 6, but he had a bye in week 5. Incidentally, Watson and Cousins are both on Evan’s roster.

For the first time in league history, brothers Anthony and William will face each other twice in a season. In this year’s first Battle of the Battle Bros, Anthony came away with a narrow, 95.6-95.4, victory. It is the 15th game in league history decided by one point or less. Before this week, William had been 4-0-1 in such contests while Anthony was 1-1.

This week saw two unlucky coaches, Andrew and Brandon. Andrew had an 8-3 breakdown but lost to this week’s scoring leader, Evan. Brandon had a 7-4 breakdown but lost to Danny, who posted the third best point total of the week.

As such, we have two lucky coaches on our hands. Cory had a 5-6 breakdown but beat Sean, who had the second lowest point total of the week. Anthony had a 4-7 breakdown and beat William and his 3-8 breakdown.

Our top coach of the week was Evan, who gained 17.0 points with his decision to start the Ravens D/ST over the Jaguars.

The worst coach of the week was Anthony, who made his game much closer than it needed to be as he cost his team 24.8 points with his decision to ignore ESPN’s projections and start Elijah McGuire over recently acquired Adrian Peterson. Anthony spent $75 of his FAAB to pick up Peterson off waivers last week, or 37.5% of his total allotted budget for the season.

Andrew had three players in the top five at their positions this week. Seven other owners had two such players each. Brandon was the only league member without any such players, this despite him posting the fifth highest point total of the week.

Check out the review of Week 6 below:

Standings:

AFL East	Record	GB	AFL West	Record	GB
Eric Meyer	4-2	--	Cory Puffett	5-1	--
Will Massimini	4-2	--	Evan Ash	4-2	1
Viroj Suteerawongsa	3-3	1	Andrew Perez	3-3	2
Adam Perez	1-5	3	Sean Kennedy	0-6	5
AFL Central	Record	GB
Danny Hatcher	5-1	--
Anthony Battle	3-3	2
Brandon Saunders	2-4	3
William Battle	2-4	3

Schedule:

Away	Score	Home	Score
Cory Puffett (CP)	102.4	Sean Kennedy (SK)	79.0
Will Massimini (WM)	90.7	Eric Meyer (EM)	135.4
Adam Perez (AP2)	71.5	Viroj Suteerawongsa (VS)	106.6
Anthony Battle (AB)	95.6	William Battle (WB)	95.4
Danny Hatcher (DH)	121.0	Brandon Saunders (BS)	107.2
Evan Ash (EA)	136.6	Andrew Perez (AP1)	117.7

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

QB	Pts	RB	Pts
1. Deshaun Watson, EA	24.4	1. Melvin Gordon, EM	34.0
2. Carson Palmer, DH	22.7	2. Mark Ingram, DH	30.0
3. Cam Newton, VS	22.0	3. Le’Veon Bell, AP1	29.8
4. Tom Brady, AB	16.4	4. Carlos Hyde, CP	23.3
5. Alex Smith, AP1	15.9	5. Leonard Fournette, AP2	22.9
WR	Pts	TE	Pts
1. Antonio Brown, CP	25.5	1. Rob Gronkowski, AP1	23.3
2. Larry Fitzgerald, SK	22.8	2. Zach Ertz, WM	14.8
3. Golden Tate, WM	19.1	3. Austin Seferian-Jenkins, EA	12.6
4. Marvin Jones Jr., AB	18.6	4. Ed Dickson, VS	11.5
5. Mike Evans, WB	17.0	5. Zach Miller, SK	9.5

Game of the Week: Evan Ash at Andrew Perez

Evan’s special teams totaled 35 points, 22 more than Andrew’s. His 18.9-point victory can certainly be attributed to that success. The margin of victory made Andrew’s decision to start an inactive Stefon Diggs moot, though that impact will certainly be felt in Andrew’s breakdown.