ahh I watched it but guess I'm not sure what the maf should be doing in that format. seemed to follow the TPS ish. but if a new maf fixed it. cool.
so these Gen 4 ecm's use a timing table based off rpm and grams/sec maf instead of older rpm vs map. there's some more fuzzy math where they can blend the 2 for fast response time since a maf is slow but yeah, a maf signal out of wack can put you in a completely different part of the timing map then you're normally in.
my own I cleaned the maf sensor and it lowered the maf signal a just a bit and it put me in a higher timing by a few degrees, I didn't expect that at the time and had to go research on the hpt board. so yeah definitely could make it a dog, or make the knock retard go max too if it was so off it was running more than needed.