Free Agency Update

One more stage, and one more player signed. We were the top running team in the league last year, but we are pretty old at the ball carrier positions. So, naturally, we bring aboard just what we really need – an old running back.

RB Albert Lombardo is a pretty decent veteran RB, and his deal is pretty affordable, so we will bring him into the mix for a season or two, but the search continues for a longer term answer at RB. Lombardo might allow us to swing FB Bill Wunderlich out to play TE more this year – he has been pretty effective in that sort of role with us before. This might not be a great sign for young RB Sam Cook, who got a bit of playing time last season, but failed to impress or develop.

We have also re-signed K David Everhart. Solid five-year veteran for us, who put together a very good season last year with 32/39 FGs – and he’s at 78.5% for his career.


We missed out on our effort to land the standout DT – our offer was a short-term one at 2 years, $33 million. Crazy money, I know, but it essentially boiled down to a 1 year, $12m deal (and we’d presumably cut or deal him next year). Instead, he accepted a true 1yr offer at a total of $10m (mostly bonus). I have trouble with the logic of that decision – but I’ll live. I suppose had I done my homework, I would have realized I was vulnerable on that front.

We are in jeopardy of carrying close to $10 million in cap space this year – which in the end could be useful for renegotiating, but is bad news if we’re really trying to win for right now (and we are, incidentally, in case that was a mystery). So, we’ll try to figure out what’s up – sometimes teams make a late decision to “rebuild” and are looking to deal away a veteran or two, so that might yet for out for us.

Draft Day Trade-Up

In our usual wheelhouse, we are working the phone lines on draft day, and in round one, we move up a few slots to grab the guy we really wanted.


LB Rex Pint looks like a standout pass rusher, and we will certainly give him a chance to do that – I’m not certain yet, but I will most definitely explore switching him to play at defensive end.



At 258 pounds, he will be a borderline crossover player, but he ought to at least be eligible for the position switch. If we don’t move him immediately, we can think about it longer term – if we bulk him up a bit, he might switch even better. Long term, I think this is a defensive end – especially if that “pass rush technique” rating stays at the top end of its range.

Major need for this team is a true answer at defensive end. We have 16th year man Lazaro and 12th year LB Galvan in the starting DE slots right now, but the most promising guy behind them is probably last year’s 4th round pick Kerry Meadows. If Pint works out, he could be a long term answer for us at a key position, and help to wipe out our most pressing defensive need.

Draft and Free Agency Update

We resist the urge to deal up in the draft, and sit tight at pick 3(9), hoping for one of a few target players to fall to us. This was the zone where I got over-anxious last year, and paid for it.

Anyway – we land a fairly intriguing QB prospect with our pick in Walt Johnstone:



We are reaching pretty far down the QB list, and he is not well developed at all, but I like his combines in the two key areas I try to watch for a QB, intelligence and (arm) strength. We’ll see – the combine tells me he is possibly better than the scout impression above, but how much better?


Anyway – we have no more picks until round six and seven, so things will be quiet unless our effort to trade back in is successful. My second choice at 3(9) is still out there as we wind through round three of the draft, and the longer things go, the more value I think he is. We have a standing offer for a current pick to get our guy.


In free agency, it looks increasingly clear that we’re just not going to land an impact player. I have solid offers in to a few more players, and it would be nice to land one quality guy here or there, but my best guess is that we won’t end up with much of anything, and we will have pretty substantial unused cap heading into this season.

4.44 is just sick for a DE, btw (but you knew that).

And Johnstone looks like one of your typical "creepers".

Yes, yes. *grins*

Nice draft picks. I like Pint at DE or SLB more than WLB.

Johnstone should improve into the highish 50s and has a pretty good skill set sans the iffy avoid interceptions, which is unfortunately the first or second most important skill. Very solid pick at 3.9 in MP--can't believe he lasted this far really.

Roster Update

It appears that my efforts to sneak back into the draft will come up empty – the guys on my target list have been selected, and we’re deep into round four of the draft as I write. So, it’s time to take stock of where we are with the roster for this year.

I have a grid showing 51 players who are basically secure in holding their roster spots, including the top two rookies from this year’s draft. This 51 gives us a complete and full roster, so there’s fairly little to worry about. My general sense of my comfort with the position starters and depth:


QB Done - Sedor is great, and I think Gerhardt is ready to step into the #2 job.
RB Okay – Copley ought to be fine again this year, Wunderlich is fine behind him
FB Done – Very happy with Emerson and Wunderlich here
TE Okay – Not sure who starts, but Wunderlich and creepers Cooper and Leff are fine
WR Done – Deep here for this year, after not dealing away solid veteran reserves
OL Done – Return entire group from last year, including Tilton who gives great depth

DL SoSo – Lazaro and Lents good, Galvan out of position, shaky youth behind them
LB Thin – Two studs and a bunch of role players, but same as last year
DB Done – Return everyone from last year, strong and deep here


So, if we get a quick impact from rookie LB/DE Rex Pint, that might help shore up my biggest immediate need for this year – production from the DL. One of the biggest decisions for this year will be whether to shift him to DE right away – I am very anxious to see what the scout forecasts for the switch, and how he looks after training camp. A 95+ future rating in pass rush technique would be fantastic. A rating of something like 80 there would probably make him a relative disappointment.

We still have longer term needs at RB and LB. I had hoped to make a solid addition there in this draft, but things didn’t break that way for us. We ought to be fine in any event – this team is hardly in crisis – but there has to be a #1 issue no matter how far you have to dig to find it. Right now, this team has two areas of long-term concern:

-We are stocked with a lot of veterans, and it’s definitely possible that we see a big loss after this season, fueled by a new retirement routine in FOF 2007. if that happens, we could suddenly see a number of critical holes on the roster at places like RB, DL, and LB.

-We have a number of time-bomb contracts out there with players we really like, and if my impression is correct, these will be tough to negotiate away in FOF 2007 than in the current game. I think I can work away some before the end of this season, but we are probably going to have to make some painful cap-driven cuts down the road. A look at the team’s current contract structure (salary link) makes it clear that we’ll face a reckoning with several key players: LT Horace Kolodzik, G Gus Schmit, CB Herman Padgett, and S Jeff McCartney chief among them.


Assuming that we don’t make a splash in free agency in the remaining FA stages, we will be sorting out this level of detail down the road for this offseason, and basically returning most of last year’s roster for a run at defending the title.

Offseason Update

Well, we have managed to re-sign two of our veteran players and group leaders, as LB Stephen Watkins and C John Houtz have both accepted new contracts. I had assumed they would all along, but they kept us hanging a while. So, nothing new there, but we avoid an uncomfortable interruption in chemistry there.

Incidentally, I failed to send in a stage file last season and saw John Houtz get cut – so we have already suffered a cohesion loss from him, as the in-game perspective is that he was a new FA signing mid-season last year (that’s why he was even an eligible free agent this year to begin with).


In the draft, I get a slightly itchy trigger finger, and deal up for a decent-enough affinity linebacker at pick 6(2). I don’t have terribly high hopes for Lorenzo McDowell, but he had a decent combine, has an affinity with LB Watkins, and his skill set suggests that he at least has measurable skills in run defense and the pass coverage we focus on (bump). A maxed-out punishing hitter rating and some special teams skills seem to make him a solid roster-filler at a position group (LB) where our youngest other guy is probably going to be 8th year injury-washout Travis Kuykendall (among others). I’m just bracing for damage to come at this group, and if McDowell sticks, he can bridge a gap for us there, a bit.

Draft Ends, Roster Pivot

The point where the draft ends and late free agency begins is a major pivot point in the offseason, as three things happen:

-we learn a bit more about the rookies on your roster
-older veteran players lose some skill to “aging” at this stage
-some veteran players have significant mid-career booms or busts here

We have news on all fronts here.


First – with our rookie class, I have not yet actuated any position switches, so no major news to report there. That will come soon, though.

What we do see is that rookie QB Walt Johnstone is not creeping, but soaring. He has already made two meaningful ratings jumps just since we selected him in the draft:

In draft: 7/45
On roster: 7/52
After draft: 8/57

So, it looks like he will pan out for us pretty well. I have launched a trade block, to see if there’s anyone who might be interested in a blooming future star QB, but my guess is that the overlap between “interested enough to know the value of a guy like this” and “so uninterested as to have a team void at quarterback” will be pretty narrow. I’m guessing that he will sit on my team, and we’ll just have to work to get him development chances.

Anyway… Pint is holding steady, and it looks like our other rookie LB Lorenzo McDowell had probably get used to feeding the reels on the A/V equipment. Mister Irrelevant, QB Phil Edwards, is dutifully playing the role of a “nice guy” in the locker room, which is his main attraction for us.


On the veteran front – tough stage, predictably. This is a pretty veteran team in many areas, and we took our ratings hits, as expected. Guys like RB Craps Copley and MLB Doug McKenzie took hits, but we will certainly still be counting on them in key roles for the coming season. Some of our chemistry leaders also took hits, but that’s not surprising nor troubling, as guys like C Houtz and S Upshaw aren’t here to actually play, anyway.


Now, the big news. While I was doing a little idle fishing around for a possible mid-career breakout player… it happened far closer than I might have guessed.

Four years ago, I liked TE Robert Cooper as an after-draft pickup. He was an affinity guy, had a pretty solid combine, and as a bonus, went to Syracuse, my alma mater. No brainer low-risk signing.

Turns out he was a bit of a creeper, and earned a slot in our longer-term planning. We actually gave him a fair diet of starts in his four years with us – including the full-time starting role last year, where he put together a best-yet season of 518 yards receiving and 5 TDs. A nice-enough tight end, plus his ratings were still creeping up – I was pretty content to head into the season with the Cooper pictured below, a perfectly suitable 51/51 rated journeyman, as our starter at the TE position once again:



However, after the last file update – Cooper is a new man. He was high volatility to begin with, and he was creeping anyway – but now he is a fully-developed force for the all-around game:



So, he goes from passable creeper pressed into duty, to standout all-around star-caliber player. Very good fortune for us, and our expectations for production from that position rise for this year.

The twist is that he was in a contract year anyway, and I failed to work out a new deal with him before the ratings boom. Now that his situation has “clarified” so crisply, his demands have adjusted accordingly. So, the undrafted free agent rookie who scrappily made the team against all odds and halped us to a title – he just might be the first serious cap casualty from this team. Next year, unless we use the franchise tag on him, it doesn’t look likely that we can bring him back – his current contract demands are suddenly for some $6 million a year after this season, and we have enough trouble just carrying the high-paid guys we already have.

Nobody will be shedding a tear for the poor, poor Chili Dogs, exactly – but finding productive players at bargain cap prices is an awfully big part of this game. I knew we had one right here already – now the level of value might have jumped through the roof, as Cooper will play this season for a simple $680,000 cap value.

Free Agency/Roster Update

Well, the big news in this early stage of the late free agency period is that we went ahead and pulled the trigger on LB Rex Pint, submitting the position switch to RDE. Scout said it would go at 90%, so I’m mostly hoping that his ratings range for pass rush technique remains topped-out. After the new file comes through, here’s the new-look Rex:



So… I guess the saving grace is that he didn’t accept my initial contract offer. Now, my thinking is that we won’t even sign him. I don’t see how the Rex Pint we now see is actually worth the first-rounder contract that he seeks, so my best guess is that we just let him rot and throw him back. Dammit. That’s three top picks in the last two years seeking to land a long-term answer at pass rusher, and all three look like busto.


In other trivial news, we signed a couple of after-draft rookies who might have a longshot chance of making the team. Well, their chajnces probably increased now that there’s one more roster slot open. Wonderful.


We did work out a few contract renegotiations and extensions, most notably a nice four-year deal with free safety Jeff McCartney. He made the single biggest play in the franchise’s history, and he gets to stay on this team as long as I’m running the show. His new deal probably locks him up through 2016, which probably covers his remaining productive seasons – he’ll be a 10th year veteran by the time this deal runs out, and in FOF 2007, he’ll probably be a shell of his former self at that point.

Training Camp

We have wrapped up our free agency period, and finished training camp. As we prepare for the pretend fake football games, just a few quick notes – as the team is basically already in its final form.

Young Player Updates:

Rookie QB Walt Johnstone continues to creep… or rather he continues to leap… and while I have him on my trade block, I expect that I won’t get the draft pick I’m looking for, and will keep him around and hope that he continues the upward track. His potential rating is now 62… up from 45 during the draft. I don’t think I have ever seen such an upward trajectory.

Rookie DE Rex Pint is almost certainly going to be tossed back for next year’s draft – he just didn’t make it through the position switch well, and just looks too marginal to be worth the first-rounder contract. I have exhausted most of my cap now, and he just doesn’t fit into my plans – I’m not going to repeat last year’s mistake and offer a contract anyway to a player I already believe is only marginal.

It looks like we have two decent-looking young guards in Shane Csonka from last year’s draft and Drew Wickham from this year’s rookie class. While we are very comfortable with our starters at guard right now, it’s not a position I like to invest a lot of capital into, so cheap backups are good to have around.


Position Battles:

Well, we can avoid making any cuts at all if we get a couple of well-positioned preseason injuries, but under the preseason regime in place for this league – here’s what we will be watching:

RB Sam Cook vs. Albert Lombardo – If Cook looks like he can play, I’d rather have a young guy here, but Lombardo seems like better insurance for an injury to Craps Copley for the first-and-ten running back role. Lombardo could also play some WR in a pinch. Both probably make the team, even though Sam Cook is not creeping as I thought he once was.

CB Pete Ristic – He’s probably at the top of my cut list if we have to, so he will be trying to earn a roster slot. C.J. Daniels looks to be progressing nicely enough, so I don’t think we have any problem there – if we drop Ristic, we still have 7 DBs worth putting onto the field. He’s in trouble.


From here, the basically inconsqeuential preseason, and then we’ll be gearing up for the season and our title defense.

Preseason Underway

Without lucky injuries to motivate us, I guess we’ll have to settle for some game logs:


Nothing very impressive from the QB position here, I fear.


Not all that often you get to see a defensive tackle names game MVP – but good for you, Dwight Armagost! He’s battling for playing time this year, and is either #3 or #2 in our queue for time at DT.

Both young QBs seemed to perform fairly well, and at least those two got all the snaps. If results here matter, then Sam Cook helped his case in the RB battle.


Anyway… one more preseason sim, and we’ll be ready for the real fake football games.

Sorry for my absence a bit, but we have gotten the roster pared down, and we’re ready to get things started…


Week 1: South Carolina at Chesapeake

We open at home, against the former tankers from South Carolina, who now seem to be interested in winning games again, and have assembled a good deal more talent than they fielded the last couple of seasons. We’ll try to defer those hopes at least one week.


Well, we stretched things out a bit in the end, especially with a defensive touchdown, but this wasn’t quite the romp that the scoreboard might have suggested.

Clean bill of health, and we are off to a solid start, behind a solid division win.

Week 2: Norman (1-0) at Chesapeake (1-0)

We are favored at home over a solid team in Norman – LB McKenzie is dinged up but will start, but past that we are in good health. No gameplanning chicanery here, we’ll be pretty vanilla.


Well, I sort of had the feeling that this wee we might have to overcome real struggles and maybe a key injury to sneak away with a win… but on further reflection, not so much. A solid win, and oddly we see the rookie QB Walt Johnstone trotted out for some token mop-up duty, where he hits on 3 for 3 passing and a long TD strike (he audibled it, I promise you, I didn’t call a bomb when ahead 38-6).

We come out with several fairly minor injuries, but we’ll head to play Hell Creek next week with a few shuffles made to the lineup here and there – most notably at WR where we will be without Burt Pearson.

Week 3: Hell Creek (1-1) at Chesapeake (2-0)

Big game early in the season – Hell Creek is certainly among the teams we need to be watching for conference supremacy. In our thirs straight home game, we have juggled the lineup a bit to account for injuries, but are basically in decent shape (thought without WR Burt Pearson).


This is a game we certainly could have won, but I can’t exactly say we should have won it. Our running game was not very effective, and my stab at “beating” the excellent HLC secondary didn’t yield quite what I was hoping for. Two fumbles didn’t help things, but we should have played well enough to overcome that problem. 10 points is not what we’re looking for from this offense.

Next week, back at home to host 0-3 Norwich, and hopefully come out of this absurd scheduling quirk with a 3-1 record and a shot to keep pace with resurgent, new-look Portland in our increasingly shaky-looking division.

Week 4: Norwich (0-3) at Chesapeake (2-1)

This is our last of four straight home games to open the season, and coming out with a loss is disappointing enough. A loss here would be just terrible. We have WR Pearson back, and will be looking to run a pretty standard CHE gameplan and just handle things with superior firepower.


Wow, 10 points two weeks in a row. Fortunately, the 10 was good enough this week – but just barely. This was a very even game.

Hats off to the defense this week, and we’re definitely heading under the hood to see what we might be able to do with the offense. We head on the road to face 4-0 Portland this week, so it would be a good time to get things humming again.

Week 5: Chesapeake (3-1) at Portland (3-0)

Okay, this is easy to set up – Portland is already a game ahead in the loss column, and a win here for them puts us in a tough spot just to win our division, much less worry about playoff seeding and the like. We didn’t want to be in a spot like this so early, but we really would like a big showing here in our road debut.


Well, another very shaky day from the offense and Sedor, but the defense bails us out, and we get enough in the fourth quarter to come away with a win. We can only go on so long saying “we’ll take the win,” at some point we need to get our act together a bit better.

We do look a bit healthier for next week, and we will once again try to get things back on track. This does not, right now, look anything at all like a championship team.

I'm sort of surprised that you think his ratings dropped so drastically. It looks like a pretty good transition. From 23/56 to 22/54 and still pretty decent ratings (so it seems).

Are you still letting him rot? I kind of wish you'd give the kid a shot.

I am guessing quik is seeing clues here that Pint (who had 100+ potential at PRT as a LB) probably won't sniff higher than 50-60 in PRT as a DE...

And I wouldn't want anybody to pass on trade secrets, but it's decisions like this that make me realize that there is much that I am not seeing/reading.

If Pint were a 3rd round pick, and the contract he was seeking had something like $600K in bonus... sure, those are "pretty decent" ratings, and I wouldn't mind adding him to the roster as a reservem and hopefully see if he gets a shade better.

But he's a 1st round pick. And he wants a bonus of something nrth of $3 million. There;'s nothing to suggest that he is going to "boom" and be any better than he appears so far... so I'd be guaranteeing $3 million (of a $10m contract) to a player who, if he reaches his apparent potential, is probably good enough to be a backup defensive end. The math just doesn't work.

I don't think this is a tough decision, really. It's kinda unfortunate that I feel pretty confident I can plot out his potential career already, before even seeing one trainijng camp -- but that's a vestige of FOF 2004, and we're in our last season in that game. But for now, I have to do what's best - no use throwing good money after a bad draft pick, and this one just didn't work out.


I also don't think there's anything terribly secret about this at all. It may not be realistic to do this, but it's pretty clearly the right thing to do. If I want a guy to come play DE who has a 40 or 50 rating in pass rush technique, I can just go out and sign a mediocre free agent - no need to overinvest in someone who hopes to someday be such a guy with a top draft pick and a fat bonus.

You know, I think the biggest thing I didn't see correctly that you pointed out is the finances (and it's relationship to your game). In SP, an expensive 4-season test can be worth it, whereas every decision we make in MP can have ripple effects for years in real-time.

I just read all of your posts, took about a week of reading! I just bought the game and I'm very unfamiliar with it. I'm a longtime OOTP (baseball) manager, but this is my 1st football text game. I've learned quite a bit off your thread! Better then any OOTP dynasty I've read!

Glad you have enjoyed it, dj. Welcome to the boards!

Week 6: Chesapeake (4-1) at Ayr (1-4)

If we have our act together here, we ought to be back on track, even on the road. We’re hoping to see a bit more from the passing game this week basically.


(Please forgive the formatting – the in-game files are just messed up at FOFL, so this was pulled from the website)

Good, solid win for the C-Dogs, and a nice showing from Burt Pearson with three scores on the day. We might be back to our preferred situation, clicking on both sides of the ball.

Week 7: Calverton (5-1) at Chesapeake (5-1)

This is one of a couple pretty big games for the conference standings this week, as the winner will remain among those in the driver’s seat for the conference top slots. Since we already have a loss to one of the teams who figures to be in the mix, I’d rather not cede head-top-head to yet another potential tiebreaker foe down the line.

We expect the Caledonians to toss the ball around a bit, incidentally.


So, we hang 50 and win comfortably, even without really dominating the stats all day long. But a very efficient day for Sedor, as the offense seems to have shaken off its lull from a few weeks ago.

In a game without a ton of turnovers (that might tend to skew things a lot), looking at that “starting field position” figure is very revealing. This game was mostly played on their side of the field, which certainly helps us stay in control. Good win.


We have lost “Mr. Clutch, “ safety Jeff McCartney, for several weeks to a nasty muscle problem. He ought to be fine for the postseason, which is what matters, but I’m not exactly sure who ought to get the work at FS for the weeks ahead. It might turn out to be the fairly untested C.J. Daniels, who might do okay in that slot for a bit, and would benefit from the playing time.


As for the conference standings, here’s the big picture there:


So, we now have to include Washington in our thinking about playoff seeding – their whole plan was to follow one step behind Chesapeake in their rebuilding of sorts, and it looks like their team is coming together right on schedule. Mercury looks like it might be able to sail to a strong record with a weak division (and five games against said rivals still ahead), so they are in the mix, too. Add in Hell Creek (HTH on us already) and Portland who get another chance against us later, and the pack really hasn’t thinned as much as we might have liked. In a few weeks, maybe we’ll have a clearer sense.

Glad to finally be in the mix. We followed the CHE blueprint with our QB (traded value to move up to 1.1 to take him four seasons ago) and have tried to install a balanced offense a la CHE. We don't have the same type of defense, but I think with the offense we have, we can at least hang with any team.

Plus we beat Hell Creek this week (who beat CHE earlier). We ended an 18 game losing streak to them (no exaggeration).

Wow, congrats on snapping the 18 game skid!

Wait, Subby has a MP team that lost 18 games in a row??

We have to wait to answer that question? Really?


(emphasis added for clarity)

Yeah, yeah. I got it now.

Week 9: Chesapeake (6-1) at South Carolina (4-3)

Our division is definitely pretty tough, and SC’s decision to start trying to win games isn’t helping things. We still outgun them overall, but they are good enough to watch out for when we’re at their place. Nothing loopy in the gameplan this week.


So, we get a solid win, a pretty good showing from the offense all around. I’m not wild that our defense gave up 24 points here, but we’ll take the win.

And, overall, we are now back in the driver’s seat in the division and conference – Portland is tied with us with a 7-1 record, but we have them head to head for now, and we would be the division winner and #1 seed if things ended right now. Portland would be the hard luck #5 seed on the road.

More work to be done, but we’re on track for another solid season, it appears. I’ll try to do some season-so-far look a bit later, or this weekend.

Halfway Point Check-up

After 8 games in the tank, we’re at a solid 7-1, with one loss on the road at a very solid Hell Creek team. We’re in line for a playoff berth, and a bye week slot is ours to lose as we stand. So, let’s look a bit under the hood and see what’s working, and what isn’t…


So, in the yards-per-play metrics, which I tend to watch pretty carefully, we are in the top ten in three of the four areas, with our passing defense the one weak spot. Our running game is again being buoyed by numbers from QB Sedor, but Copley’s 4.59 YPC is perfectly fine. Our two starting guards, Gus Schmit and Marvin Brandon are both north of 50% in key run blocks this season, and nobody on the line is below 30% - so that helps to explain the running success. When Sedor does throw, we’re clicking for 9 yards an attempt, best in the league.

On defense, I have to think that our lack of a serious pass rush is the underlying problem. We have tallied only 8 sacks in 8 games, near the bottom of the league in that regard, and our 7.7 yards per attempt conceded has set up some high scoring affairs. In any event, we aren’t yielding a crazy point total, suggesting that some of what we’re giving up in the passing game doesn’t amount to that much, after all. I like our personnel in the secondary, and when S Jeff McCartney gets back into the lineup for our stretch run, we’ll be all the better.

A high octane offense that puts pressure on most every team we play covers for a lot of relative weaknesses, but statistically speaking, there’s nothing here to fret over. In the overall, we are #1 in scoring, and #3 in scoring defense. That’s a good omen for the balance of the season.

do you pretty much use the same gameplan every week or do you mix it up?

Week 10: Chesapeake (7-1) at Seal Beach (4-4)

I ratcheted up the passing percentages a bit this week, thinking we might have a good shot to open things up on the Seal Beach defense. We don’t run a crazy lopsided offense, but we do take our shots.

Anyway… on the field, here’s the outcome:


So, we end up running the ball an awful lot, despite my intentions. Sedor gets 14 carries, though – so I suppose many of those eventual runs were called as pass plays. Hard to know, but this wasn’t the sort of box score I thought I’d see for this week.

The defense played a really solid contain game, though, holding them to 3 points without even garnering a single turnover. That is a great effort, and basically made any production from our offense enough to claim control of the game. A fairly sputtering offensive showing of 14 points by halftime turned out to be put us comfortably in control. Great game for the D.

Well, with this team right now, I pretty much have the luxury of having a team that does most everything pretty well. We are a solid inside running team (mostly due to having three quality blockers in our interior line) and we have an excellent passing offense centered by a monster QB and complemented with a deep and strong receiving corps. So, this team can basically just rely on the general principle of "we have better players than you do" and win most of the time.

When this team was developing (read: not nearly as good as it is now) I did a lot more week-to-week gameplanning, trying to go after my opponent's relative weaknesses. I do less of that now, but I do make changes sometimes.

Defensively, I will tweak things in the event of a profound style of an opponent (like all-pass Calverton a few weeks ago, or the old Dodge City all-run teams), but I'm usually comfiortable playing our base defense, with pretty good players, and just daring teams to beat us straight up.

Cool thanks for the response

Week 11: Dodge City (4-4) at Chesapeake (8-1)

Pretty big game – Dodge City was a near-nemesis last year for us, as they played us very close in all three matchups, including the conference championship game. This year they have suffered a few tough breaks, but are still a serious rival. They used to be a team we could safely gameplan expecting a lot of running – not so much any longer.


Yet another tough game – we enter the fourth quarter knotted up at 24-24 (after we had to rally to get to that point) and then we win the late FG battle 2-1 to take a 3-point win. Pretty standard, actually – they always play us very tough.

With the win, we get to 9-1, but can’t pull away from Portland, who is right even with us (though by supplying their only loss, we hold the head-to-head advantage on them). The season finale is against them at our place, and it’s looking increasingly likely that that game will determine who gets a bye week and who hits the road for the wild card route.

Right now, our offense is clicking pretty well. We are #2 in the league in yards per carry, #1 in the league in yards per pass attempt, and have scored more points than anyone. And it is looking just like last year, where we will be counting on our offense to carry a decent, but not statistically strong defense in many weeks.

Week 13: Keene (8-2) at Chesapeake (9-1)

This week, there are three separate games featuring cross-conference matchups of each side’s best records. If nothing else, we have a chance to settle things down a bit in the playoff seeding races, as they are shaping up. We play host to 8-2 Keene, while our division/conference rivals from Portland are on the road to play at Keene’s division/conference rival, the 8-2 French Ticklers.


Well, Keene seemed to have a run-it-right-at-them gameplan, and our defense held up pretty well. The 4.5 yards per carry isn’t great, but this is a solid team that has been running the ball well this year (4.75 YPC on the year) so I’m not too frustrated there – plus, holding them to under 100 yards passing, despite leading the whole way, is great. Hats off to the whole team here – we clicked really nicely on pretty much every front this week.

In addition, Portland lost to French, giving us a full game edge in the standings. Here’s the conference snapshot:


So, as things are starting to come together, we are pretty firmly in the driver’s seat for a bye week – we’d have to really stumble to see two teams get ahead of us in the conference standings. If Portland beats us in the finale, it would go to some cryptic tiebreaker, but another team would need to make up another game on top of that, at least. So, if the principal goal of the regular season is to earn a week off – we seem to be in good shape.


We now head out for four straight road games, so most anything could happen. And a game at French is on the schedule, so it’s certainly possible that we could close out this season with two losses and see our seeding fall apart. But right now, things look pretty good.

Week 13: Chesapeake (10-1) at Davis (3-8)

Road game this week, looks like a trap setup. I have a pretty high-pass offense in place, and we ought to be okay, but this has a certain donutty look about it to me.


You have to survive a few weak efforts to put together a strong record, and this was certainly one of them. Six sacks is a real worry, and the blame gets shared all over the place. We often win our close games due to the OL play – this one was probably made close by weak OL play on our side. And giving up not one but two safeties in the 3rd quarter – has there ever been an NFL team to post exactly 4 points for a quarter of a game? Weird little trivia there. (I have no idea how often it may really happen, or have happened back in the day)

So, we’ll slink out of town with a win, and get ready for a trip to Fall River, a team many projected for a playoff slot, but who is 2-10 on the season and thinking long term by now.

Standings Update

So, with 4 games left to play, the conference setup is looking pretty clear. This is largely due to a big win by Mercury at home over our division rivals from Portland. The standings are as follows:


So, we are in really good shape now – we’d need to really fall apart to lose the bye week – probably a 1-3 finish would be required. So, we seem to be in excellent position to earn the seed that we want.

It’s looking as though the likely seedings will be:

1 Chesapeake
2 Hell Creek/Mercury
3 Mercury/Hell Creek
4 North winner
5 Portland
6 Washington/Madison

So, the big battles right now are for the #2/#3 split (a big one) and the #6/out bubble battle, as usual.

We’re not ready to release the dragster parachute or anything quite yet, but it’s at least conceivable that we rotate in a few younger players into more prominent roles down the stretch.

So, any verdict on a young DE?

After two offseasons trying to get a young player to step into the mix as a pass rusher, here’s where we are:

2012 2nd rounder Edwin Gregson – released
2012 3rd rounder Skip Clayton – buried on our bench
2012 4th rounder Kerry Meadows – in our DE rotation now
2013 1st rounder Rex Pint – unsigned and heading back to next year’s draft

So, with basically one club left in this expensive bag – what do we have with Meadows, anyway?


So, we have a guy who has gotten in for nearly 500 pass plays, and whose pass rush production is pretty subpar. Is his snapshot as a player all that impressive? Well, no, that’s why he was a 4th round pick…



So, he has some supposed potential in PR Technique, but this doesn’t look like a star player in the making.

He is, however, a creeper. And I do love my creepers. By my scout, he’s seven points better in overall potential than he was when we initially saw him in the draft pool. So, I’m hopeful that he may have some continued development there – and that has me still investing in him.

I’m not looking for input here, really – I’m going to keep using him as a rotation DE anyway, but I thought this might be a point worth mentioning. Even on a team full of veterans and solid starters, we need to have quality guys in reserve, whether it’s for rotation duty now, to cover for injury, or to play bigger roles down the road. Right now, Meadows is the one survivor of the recent acquisitions who is getting a real shot to play and develop into a guy we can depend on.

Week 15: Chesapeake (10-1) at Fall River (2-9)

I don’t have any real idea what happened to Fall River this year – they came in as a team I expected to see in the playoff hunt, but instead they are in the hunt for the top draft pick. Odd. Anyway, we have even more players dinged up and out of the lineup this week, but are a heavy favorite on the road this week.

I publicly stated my fears as the game loomed – this looks like a classic trap game to me.


Weird game, with last-minute heroics and big plays, and we end up on the short side of it. Sedor has two costly picks, and our running game really didn’t do much at all. Tough loss.

So, we slide a game in the standings – Oortland catches up to within one game again, and that’s the main concern. We’re back to where a win in the finale at Chesapeake would pull POR into a tiebreaker situation with us – and that’s too close for comfort.

For week 16, we are again on the road to face Dodge City, who is still in the hunt for the postseason, but needs this win. These are always tough games, too. Ugh.

Week 15: Chesapeake (11-2) at Dodge City (8-5)

This is always a tough game. Period. If you aren’t taking the Vigs and the points here, you’re a fool. We have been winning these games, but we **never** win them big, and there’s no reason to expect anything new here.


Well, we needed the win, and can’t really be surprised that it came by a narrow margin.

I am not too happy about the current performance, though – especially our defense. Here, DT Bryan Lents got hurt (unusual for him) and our run defense suffered – but even with him we haven’t been that tough against the run. We’ll see Armagost and White manning the middle for the new couple of weeks, and hopefully we will get Lents back for the postseason.


With two games left to play, we are assured of a playoff berth, but Portland remains only one game behind, with the finale at our place. We probably won’t be able to seal the bye week until the final week, and we may indeed need to win that game to get the week off.

Week 16: Chesapeake (12-2) at French (11-3)

Nominally a big game, as both teams appear to be heading for a bye week. But this late in the season, we never know whether teams will be bringing their A game. French may be coasting here. We need the win, with a division rival right on our heels.


So, we come away with an overpowering win here. But Portland also wins, so we still have not sealed up our bye week, as they are only one game back. If they win at our place next week, we may end up on the road in the playoffs as a wild card. So, no letting off the gas pedal here.

One bit of very bad news, though – it looks like RG Marvin Brandon may have suffered a career-ending injury, as he is listed as having as a 40-week ACL. That sucks. We’re in decent shape for this year, but for the long term, that stinks – Brandon was an excellent player, and a serious part of our ability to regularly grind out big yardage up the middle.

All Wrapped Up?

Despite the records and the chance for a multi-level tie between Portland and Chesapeake, there’s some reason to believe we have the top seed sealed up. I’ll quote from Portland GM PineTar’s analysis of the situation here:


So, if that’s all correct, CHE is already locked in to the #1 seed. I don’t know that I have enough faith in all the ifs there to go out and bench everyone or anything, but that might be a nice assurance to have in hand.

Week 17: Portland (12-3) at Chesapeake (13-2)

Well, it’s not 100% clear that we are still playing for the division, but we are definitely a candidate to lose our #1 seed with a loss here, even if we would edge out Portland. Hell Creek has us head-to-head, so we cannot afford to botch this game and let them get the home field advantage. We have starters in place, and will have our serious game plan ready to go. Not trying to lose any steam heading into the playoffs.


Not a dominating effort by our offense, but the defense played a solid contain game, and ultimately we get out of here with a season-ending win, and a two-game edge on the rest of the conference. We have our top seed, and that’s really all you can do in the regular season. We are in pretty good health overall – minus one stud OL in Brandon, but generally in good shape. DT Bryan Lents looks like he will be playable by our playoff opener, and we ought to be ready to roll in two weeks.

More to come with season-end stats and such, but for now… 14-2 on the year, highest scoring team in the league, lowest points allowed in the league, and heading into the playoffs as the favorite to win it all. Right where we want to be.

Season Stat Summary


So, a few noteworthy things form these stats. I like to look at the yards per play stats and rankings as a sort of “core” indicator of team success. And this year, that reveals that this team was very clearly driven by the offense -- #3 (pretty close to the top) in yards per carry, and #1 (by a rather wide margin) in yards per pass attempt. Brent Sedor, of course, gets the thanks for this – it’s his running skill that makes our rushing stats look good, and his arm that does the rest.

Defensively, we shake out as pretty average. That’s disappointing to me – I’m not thrilled about allowing almost 4.2 yards per carry on the ground, as I think we have the talent to do better than that (and have, in past years, with much the same cast). We were a little better than average in yards per attempt, and that’s fine. This year, the defense was not the turnover engine that we had grown used to, but they did okay, and we remained in the plus there.

Actualy, to have as dominating a season as we did statistically, without even posting above-average defensive stats in really any way – it’s quite a testament to our offense. We controlled nearly all the games we played on that side of the ball.


So… nothing new here. The loss to Hell Creek was not a shock, they remain a top-drawer team and a main conference rival. Fall River was a weird team all year, and they claimed to have played a peculiar gameplan against us, which seemed to click pretty well. It happens.


Sedor posts his best season to date – a passer rating of 106.1 is among the very highest this league has seen. His 8.79 yards per attempt is easily a career high – compared to last year, his main gain was in completion percentage, which was up dramatically from 56.6% last year to 62.6% this year. We are not an all-pass offense by any means, but with almost 9 yards a pass play (nearly a full yard better than anyone else in the league), we racked up over 4500 yards passing, regardless. No other team with over 4,000 yards passing had fewer then 550 attempts – the four teams ahead of us had 599 and up.

The pure running game wasn’t bad, but we’re starting to see some miles on Craps Copley. Averaging 4.5 yards per carry is solid, and we are not complaining by any means, but he isn’t really a star caliber player, he’s just a nice cog in a pretty effective system right now. The real engine behind our being a top rushing offense is getting 600+ yards on the ground again from our mobile quarterback.

Our fleet of receivers remains deep, and getting better. Once again, we have zero 1,000 yard receivers – but this year, that was only true because Burt Pearson missed a few games. He has definitely emerged as our #1 guy, but he only got 8 starts this season, and 96 passes thrown his way. His target % is up to 31%, and that tells me he is the top dog in the kennel. TE Robert Cooper put together an outstanding season for us, and is going to make a contract renewal seem awfully important. An 800+ yard target to go along with our young wideouts is awfully nice to have around. I am extremely pleased with our receiving corps.


Well, it’s once again time to tip our collective caps to the offensive line. The five starters (including T Tilton, who played variously at RG and RT) were all very solid on the year – C Winston Turnbull once again proved that he is a centerpiece kind of run blocker, and his 30 key run blocks make a good case for an all-pro award. Marvin Brandon’s 46% on KRBs is among the league’s top marks there, as well. Nobody was a real liability in the passing game, and we had a very nice effort all around. This unit plays together very well.


The defense was solid all year, really. We got into a few shootouts, but they also controlled a number of games on their own, especially during a stretch fairly early in the season when the offense was sputtering a bit. LB Daryl Ewart had a very strong all-around year for us, with 88+39 tackles and 17 passes defensed – not a lot more you can ask from a LB, especially on a team that doesn’t do a lot of blitzing. We did not muster a top-level pass rush (not even close) but our passing defense was still pretty good. CB Herman Padgett probably had his best year to date for us, despite not snagging any picks – he, along with Lewis Kuehler, made a solid hard-hitting pair of corners for us. And we got pretty decent play out of second year utility DB C.J. Daniels, who had 7 passes defensed to only 11 catches allowed, a very strong coverage ratio for a guy who isn’t really a great fit in our secondary’s system.


All told – with a season like the one we had, it’s hard to really get too upset about much of anything. I would have liked to have seen one of our backup RBs put together some better numbers, and I’d prefer a defense that racks up maybe 30 turnovers instead of 20… but it’s pretty hard to complain about much of anything.

Wild Card Weekend

In the first playoff games, Portland predictably wins their road game, and Washington (who earned their playoff berth with a season-ending win over Hell Creek) got bumped off by Morgado’s Mercury team. So, we get to play host to the lowest remaining seed – our division rivals from Portland.

Here’s a snapshot of Portland’s season summary:


This is a pretty solid team – Portland made a pretty shrewd offseason move at thee QB position, getting a nice trade package for their veteran QB Benjamin Fuller and showing preliminary signals for “rebuilding” mode. But they then turned around and acquired veteran QB Randall Sosa from Mars (a two-time champion himself) and got him in a trade for less than they got for Fuller. Sosa is a 13th year player, while Fuller is a 7th – so while the long term might look like a sacrifice, they got a guy who put them right back into the hunt for this year, at least. Sosa has been excellent for them this year. (Admittedly, Fuller was very solid for State College this year, but couldn’t get them into the playoffs)

So, they are a team that runs the ball very well (a more honest straight-ahead rushing team than we are, you could argue) and have a pretty well-balanced offense, though they actually throw more than we do. On defense, they have pretty good talent, but I don’t see any specific area where we need to completely avoid. We’ll tinker a bit, but I don’t feel like this is a team that requires a pretzel gameplan.

In our two head-to-head matchups this season, we won by 3 at their place, and held a 7 point lead at our place until a late-game defensive TD put it away. Two close games – this is pretty reminiscent of last year’s situation with Dodge City. And against them, they gave us our toughest challenge of all in the playoffs in round three. We expect a tough one here.

Curiosity Note

Interestingly, with the season finale this week, CHE got its win, but Hell Creek (piloted by veteran QB Skip Peterson) lost. As a result, there’s now a new name atop the “Quarterback Comparison” for the league:



So, not that career winning percentage is the gold ring for a QB or anything, but now Sedor claims that title as well. First two seasons netted only a 17-15 mark, but since then, the team has basically been lights-out, posting 14, 15, and 14 regular season wins, and (so far) going 4-1 in the playoffs. And Sedor has been in the saddle for every game so far.