A Football Life, Week 10

There are just four weeks left in this campaign’s regular season – hard to believe, I know. Next week will be our last of non-divisional play. As we have done since we moved to a three-division league, teams will play all three of their division opponents in a round-robin format in the final three weeks of the season as we fight for division titles and the coveted wild card spot.

It was another low-scoring week for our league, though not quite as much as last week. Our 12 teams totaled 1276.5 points which ranks #21 in league history. Our six winning teams averaged about 119 points, which is actually one of the best marks we’ve seen this year. It certainly helped that all six winning teams were among the top seven in scoring.

Unlike last week, when no individual players made it onto their all-time positional leaderboards, we had three players do so this week. Cam Newton’s 36.7-point effort ties him for #15 among single-week scores at the quarterback position in league history. Mark Ingram scored 33.2 points for Danny and is tied for 38th on the running back list. Meanwhile, Adam got 33.1 points from Robert Woods, which was good for sole possession of #22 on the wide receiver list.

Evan was the leading scorer this week, taking home his second Tom Brady Award of the season and 10th since the league’s inception. His total of 135.4 points is good for 50th on the league’s single-week team scoring list. Brandon also made the list at #73 with his 130.6-point outing.

In addition to the Tom Brady Award, Evan takes home the Peyton Manning Award this week as the winner of the game of the week. It is his 6th career Peyton Manning Award. This marks the 14th time in league history an owner has won both trophies in the same week and the fourth time it has happened this season. Two of those occurrences this season have been Evan.

This is barely newsworthy, but it’s a fun fact I noticed as I was doing my record keeping on Tuesday. If Cory has scored one more point, or if Adam had scored one points fewer, this would have marked just the fourth time in league history that the top six scoring teams in a week all won their games. It hasn’t happened since late in the 2014 season.

We had just one unlucky, and consequently one lucky, owner this week, and barely. Adam posted a 6-5 breakdown by narrowly outscoring Cory but lost to Danny who had a 7-4 breakdown. Cory had the league’s 5-6 breakdown but was matched up against Anthony, who was the lowest scorer this week.

Our top coach of the week was Danny. He gained 5.6 points and, more importantly, a victory with his decision to forgo ESPN’s projections by starting Cooper Kupp instead of Tyler Lockett.

Our honorable mention coach of the week is Cory, who gained a league-best 15.5 points this week. He took three coaching risks, hitting on two and narrowly missing the third. He was correct in starting Jared Goff and DeVante Parker instead of Matt Ryan and Thomas Rawls and was off by less than half a point with his decision to start Duke Johnson Jr. over Ameer Abdullah.

Our worst coach this week was Adam. He cost his team 11.9 points and the win against Danny by starting Ted Ginn Jr. instead of Jonathan Stewart.

Our honorable mention worst coach of the week is Eric, who cost his team a league-worst 17.2 points by failing on two coaching risks, starting Tyler Kroft instead of Vernon Davis and Keenan Allen over Latavius Murray.

Brandon had an impressive week with five of his starters making appearances on the top five lists at their positions, one at each plus a second running back. Evan was right behind him with four such players, one running back, two wide receivers, and one tight end. Three other owners had two players each while Eric and Sean both failed to put a player in the top five at any of the offensive positions.

Check out the review of Week 10 below:

Standings:

AFL East	Rec	GB	AFL West	Rec	GB
Will Massimini	7-3	--	Cory Puffett	7-3	--
Viroj Suteerawongsa	5-5	2	Andrew Perez	6-4	1
Eric Meyer	5-5	2	Evan Ash	5-5	2
Adam Perez	1-9	6	Sean Kennedy	1-9	6
AFL Central	Rec	GB
Danny Hatcher	9-1	--
Anthony Battle	5-5	4
Brandon Saunders	5-5	4
William Battle	4-6	5

Schedule:

Away	Score	Home	Score
Evan Ash (EA)	135.4	William Battle (WB)	95.3
Sean Kennedy (SK)	110.1	Viroj Suteerawongsa (VS)	115.1
Cory Puffett (CP)	110.3	Anthony Battle (AB)	65.2
Will Massimini (WM)	89.5	Andrew Perez (AP1)	114.2
Danny Hatcher (DH)	112.4	Adam Perez (AP2)	111.2
Brandon Saunders (BS)	130.6	Eric Meyer (EM)	87.2

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

QB	Pts	RB	Pts
1. Cam Newton, VS	36.7	1. Mark Ingram, DH	33.2
2. Jared Goff, CP	28.2	2. DeMarco Murray, BS	28.6
3. Case Keenum, AP1	25.5	3. Alvin Kamara, BS	23.5
4. Tom Brady, AB	24.3	4. Christian McCaffrey, EA	19.0
5. Matthew Stafford, BS	22.7	5. Todd Gurley II, WB	17.7
WR	Pts	TE	Pts
1. Robert Woods, AP2	33.1	1. Jimmy Graham, WB	17.7
2. Adam Thielen, EA	26.6	2. Austin Hooper, AP2	13.9
3. A.J. Green, BS	20.0	3. Evan Engram, VS	12.1
4. Sterling Shepard, EA	19.7	4. Ed Dickson, BS	10.8
5. Golden Tate, TM	18.7	5. Austin Seferian-Jenkins, EA	9.7

Game of the Week: Evan Ash at William Battle

In a potential season-saving victory, Evan’s team showed up in a big way. Of his offensive starters, only his tight end failed to reach double digits, and then only by a small margin. Adam Thielen led the way with 26.6 points and three others scored at least 18. Evan was the leading scorer for the week.