A Football Life, Week 9

With just five weeks to go in the regular season, we have just two teams solidly outside the playoff picture with barely a prayer of getting in. In fact, seven of our 12 teams sit either half a game over .500 or half a game under that mark.

Until this week, Andrew has scored at least 100 points in every game this season. That streak ended in week 9, but he still tied his own record, set last year along with Anthony, of eight straight games to start a season with at least 11.1 points per player (100 points per game, or 88.9 prior to 2016).

It was a fairly low scoring week in the AFL. The 12 teams totaled 1236.1 points, just the 29th highest total in the league’s 63 regular season weeks. Anthony was the only owner that seemed unaffected. He led the league with 136.5 points, exactly one point fewer than his league-leading total in week 8. He won his 10th career Tom Brady Award and is the third owner this season to do so in back-to-back weeks.

Anthony made it onto the all-time leader board for single-week team scores at #42. His total last week is the 38th highest single-game score.

Due to the low-scoring nature of the week, not a single individual player appeared on the top 40 all-time single-game scoring lists at their positions.

Our luckiest winner of the week was Brandon, who posted the third worst breakdown in the league but was matched up against our lowest scorer of the week, Sean. William also got a lucky victory with a 5-6 breakdown against Andrew, who posted the second lowest point total of the week.

Two other owners got gypped. Adam had a 6-5 breakdown but lost to Anthony while Cory, despite a 7-4 breakdown, fifth best in the league, lost to our third highest scorer, Will, in the game of the week.

Will won his fourth career Peyton Manning Award with his win and continues to establish himself as one of the favorites to take home the league trophy in seven weeks.

Our top coach of the week was Adam, who picked up a league-high 16.4 points with his decision to go against ESPN projections by starting Robert Woods instead of LeGarrette Blount.

We had two very poor coaches. William cost his team a league-high 18.8 points by starting Frank Gore and Jermaine Kearse instead of Marshawn Lynch and Jeremy Maclin. Worse, though, was Cory. Though he only lost 9.5 points with decisions to start Kenny Stills and Ty Montgomery over DeVante Parker and Mohamed Sanu, it was enough to cost him his seventh win of the season.

Anthony put four starters among the top five scorers of the week at their positions, one at each of the four offensive positions. Five other owners had two such players each and every owner had at least one.

Check out the review of Week 9 below:

Standings:

AFL East	Rec	GB	AFL West	Rec	GB
Will Massimini	7-2	--	Cory Puffett	6-3	--
Eric Meyer	5-4	2	Andrew Perez	5-4	1
Viroj Suteerawongsa	4-5	3	Evan Ash	4-5	2
Adam Perez	1-8	6	Sean Kennedy	1-8	5
AFL Central	Rec	GB
Danny Hatcher	8-1	--
Anthony Battle	5-4	3
Brandon Saunders	4-5	4
William Battle	4-5	4

Schedule:

Away	Score	Home	Score
Danny Hatcher (DH)	116.5	Viroj Suteerawongsa (VS)	96.8
Brandon Saunders (BS)	90.1	Sean Kennedy (SK)	85.3
Evan Ash (EA)	98.1	Eric Meyer (EM)	107.2
Cory Puffett (CP)	103.3	Will Massimini (WM)	112.4
Anthony Battle (AB)	136.5	Adam Perez (AP2)	101.9
William Battle (WB)	98.2	Andrew Perez (AP1)	89.8

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

QB	Pts	RB	Pts
1. Tyrod Taylor, AB	29.3	1. Alvin Kamara, BS	29.2
2. Jared Goff, CP	29.0	T2. Matt Forte, AP1	25.0
3. Dak Prescott, SK	27.7	T2. Todd Gurley II, WB	25.0
4. Russell Wilson, WB	24.8	T4. Christian McCaffrey, EA	19.4
5. Matthew Stafford, BS	24.4	T4. Adrian Peterson, AB	19.4
WR	Pts	TE	Pts
1. Marvin Jones Jr., AB	26.2	1. Travis Kelce, DH	16.8
2. Alshon Jeffery, WM	23.4	2. Jared Cook, AP2	16.6
3. Robert Woods, AP2	21.0	3. Evan Engram, VS	15.0
4. Doug Baldwin, EM	20.3	4. Trey Burton, WM	11.1
5. DeAndre Hopkins, DH	17.6	5. Jack Doyle, AB	10.3

Game of the Week: Cory Puffett at Will Massimini

Cory finally got a 20-point performance from a quarterback, but he failed on two coaching risks and cost himself a win. Will’s lineup was strong top to bottom with only LeSean McCoy failing to even come close to his projected point total.