Thanks for the feedback. I keep wondering who the hell is making the 10-15 hits this thread seems to get pretty much every time I update it.

It's nice to see the team heading in the right direction. I kinda wish we were coming together even without a stud at QB -- but having one like Sedor does make things smooth out a bit better, all told.

Sorry, I read more than I post, so I add to that hit total.
In all the posts I've read and most that died, it seems like the QB is the cornerstone of a team. Without a big time QB, the team can still do well, but not excel.

It's certainly true that a star-caliber QB is the single biggest piece in putting together a standout team in FOF. In multi-player leagues, I have seen teams that are pretty good without a star QB, but none who have become dominant.

It's sort of a shame -- I rather like the defense-driven style of play, where the QB's main job is to avoid making big mistakes and just be efficient, but not spectacular. But I think the game is just so stacked toward the passing game that it's tough to overcome smart opponents who thriw it around a lot. Even this CHE team, while one of the more run-oriented in the FOFL, certainly benefits from having a QB who can go to the air effectively if we have to in any given game. Down the road, I think we'd be sily not to shift more and more to the pass, all things equal.

Re-posted from FOFL forums:

- - - - -

Most Combined Regular Season Wins by FOFL Playoff Opponents

29 - 2008 FOFL Championship, Mars (15-1) vs. Hell Creek (14-2)
28 - 2011 Conference Championship, Chesapeake (14-2) at Hell Creek (14-2)
27 - 2003 Conference Championship, Duluth (13-3) at Seal Beach (14-2)
27 - 2006 Conference Championship, Shreveport (13-3) at Mars (14-2)
27 - 2007 Conference Championship, Wheeling (12-4) at Hell Creek (15-1)
27 - 2007 FOFL Championship, Mars (12-4) vs. Hell Creek (15-1)
27 - 2008 Conference Championship, Jupiter (12-4) at Mars (15-1)
26 - 2004 Conference Championship, Las Vegas (13-3) at Jupiter (13-3)
26 - 2006 Divisional Playoffs, Jupiter (12-4) at Austin (14-2)
26 - 2006 Divisional Playoffs, Jupiter (12-4) at Mars (14-2)
26 – 2006 Conference Championship, Calverton (12-4) at Hell Creek (14-2)

Conference Championship – Chesapeake at Hell Creek

Hell Creek are the T Rex of this league right now, pun intended. They are just super-imposing – here’s their season snapshot, to show what we’re up against:


In any event – gameplanning is basically out the door, they are good at everything. So we will use our basic plan, will be dropping back for the pass a bit, and we’ll hope to get lucky. Obviously, a big day from the offensive line and Craps Copley is probably our ticket – stopping the run is their primary weakness, it seems. But we need to be in the game to be able to run a lot.

We’re 2 point dogs, but I think that’s unfair to their team, who have had a great season and get to plat at home here.


We can’t be too upset here – we played them tough, despite seeing our defense looking a good deal less stout than it had for most of the season. We got no meaningful pass pressure, made no real big plays, and that may have been the difference in this game. Skip Peterson was like a surgeon picking apart our secondary, and with time to do it. Great game for the Tyrannosaurs, and they are off to the title game for an unbelievable fifth time in six seasons! It will be a rematch against Hudson valley, who dispatched Mars 16-10 in the other conference title game.

A wonderful season for our guys – a division title, a playoff win, and a strong showing against the best team in the league. We’ll root for Hell Creek in the finals, and will b gearing up to knock them off their lofty perch next season.

Congratulations on a great run, Quik. I look forward to seeing what Sedor can do with another year of experience under his belt (as long as he doesn't do it against Jersey, please).

A post-season look at two developing stars…

Well, with our season all wrapped up, I’ll kill a bit of time by doing a little profile of a couple of our players who figure to be central to our team’s efforts down the road.

DT Bryan Lents has just signed a contract extension, locking him up for three more seasons. He was a guy we targeted in last year’s draft, and dealt all around in hopes of ultimately landing him, which we did. My goal, with a player like him, was to get a solid, long term solution as a run-stopping defensive tackle. With his skill profile at the time, that seemed pretty reasonable:



So, we got him a mentor, slotted him in as our starter at RDT, and have let him develop on the field. His projections as a run stopper were not quite topped-out, but he looked like he would develop pretty well into a solid starter, even if the 1st round pick was a lot to give up for a solid starter.

Fast forward through this season. Lents has now gotten two full seasons under his belt, and his profile as a player has changes pretty considerably:



He is not a maxed-out run stopper, and it looks like he never will be. But the development in pass rush technique has been heartening, and Lents is now looking like a pretty strong full-service defensive lineman. This season he started all 16 games and posted solid numbers across the board – 34 tackles + 11 assists, for 6.1% of tackles; but also 8 ½ sacks and a respectable 3.6 PR% rating. These are not star numbers – but it looks like the potential is there. With the kind of run stoppers we have on this squad, no DT is going to post monster numbers (the 80+ tackles that you can see sometimes when the DT is the best run defender on the team) but I think that Lents is certainly capable of posting numbers like 50 tackles and 10 sacks for us down the road – and that’s a season worth using a top draft pick to bring aboard.


The other guy to mention is a fella named Sedor. Maybe I’ve mentioned him, at some point?

On draft day, we knew that he had great scouted upside, and great combine ratings. Now, after three seasons as a starter, here’s what the fully developed model looks like, to our scout:



Having a guy who is apparently topped out at eight or so ratings has its advantages. Assuming we continue to develop the weapons around him in the passing game, we ought to have a lot of options with this offense.

Sedor, too, has just worked out a new contract extension – I wanted to get it done before this season’s stats became his production baseline. Here’s the contract detail for the future:

(Year: Salary + Bonus allocation)
2011: 2,000,000 + 4,910,000 = $6.9m
2012: 2,000,000 + 4,910,000 = $6.9m
2013: 2,000,000 + 4,910,000 = $6.9m
2014: 5,000,000 + 1,500,000 = $6.5m
2015: 7,000,000 + 1,500,000 = $8.5m
2016: 9,000,000 + 1,500,000 = $10.5m

This is going to be a $10m+ player, this we already know. Unless he gets cruelly felled by injuries, he ought to be one of the top players in the league for years to come. Locking him up under market for the next five seasons is a great opportunity, and doing it without a huge new guarantee is fantastic. He’s the centerpiece of what we’re doing here, of course, and so far so good. The ratings are there, the stats started to come this year, and the projection is just off the charts.

Looking Ahead

As we will have some time before we really get into the this of next season, I’m going to do some speculating about retirement worries and open jobs.

Retirements?

While this is in part a rebuilding team, we do have a sizable number of older players, who may be near the point of retirement. The degree of pain we’d feel varies…

DB Mark Carr has been with us since the start, and is possibly the defensive captain of the all-time C-Dog team (hey, there’s an idea). He’s offically a safety, but has probably lined up more at CB than in his natural position over the years, and has been solid all along – a career PD% of 20.3 is well above replacement value, and he had five straight seasons of double-digit passes defensed (a stat I love, for some reason). He has become a role player in the last few seasons, but he’s been a good one – this year he had the top PD% rating (21.3) of any DB regular, playing mostly as our nickel back. He’s a 13th year guy – I’d love to bring him back – longtime leader, mentor, and still a very good player, and he’s cheap next year too, at under $1.2m.

WR Justin Berkey is the other end of the spectrum – also a 13th year player, but he is no longer really contributing. He andDanny Napiecek never saw the field this past season, as we worked hard to basically overhaul our WR group. Berkey also gets a featured role on the all-time C-Dogs team with over 6,600 career receiving yards and three 1,000-yards seasons, and he would have been okay if needed last year. But seeing him walk away would probably be okay with us at this point, as we’d rather not make the unkindest cut in the preseason.

We have a couple of stalwart defenders, both in their 13th year as well, in DT Eugene Bradham and LB Steven Watkins, who have been solid contributors for a long time – actually, Bradham was at one point possibly the best defensive tackle in the league. Both have slid to role-player status, and while they are assets to the team for more than simple depth (they both are playable guys, and each got some rotation time this past season) we would be able to fill their on-field shoes if they departed.

While he’s only a 10th year player, I’m obliged to note that Craps Copley is a guy we’re watching, also. After a decent career as a journeyman reserve running back, Copley broke through this year with 1,500 total yards and 17 total touchdowns, both dramatic career highs. He actually became, more or less, a feature back for us – and guys who drafted him in round eight of their fantasy FOFL leagues were rewarded quite handsomely for the confidence. He’s signed for two more years very cheaply (though a holdout would make a ton of sense for him) and losing him would be a major wound for us, as we don’t have even a semi-capable natural RB behind him on the depth chart.

We will be watching to see if we retain a couple of our position leaders, like C John Houtz, DT James Reach, and WR Charles Renaud, as well. Neither guy contributes too much on the field, but they anchor our fairly well-constructed affinity systems, and we’d hate to have to go back to the drawing board there.


Holes to Fill

Well, a 14-2 team can’t be overrun with gaping roster holes, so I don’t think that’s our main concern. Candidly, we are looking to do more nibbling around the edges than anything else – investing in guys who can give us some depth, but we’re not looking to add a lot of starters to this team. Position by position, here’s my major thinking:

QB: Sedor is locked up, Alex Gerhardt is developing into a backup, and Harry Ross can take snaps if need be – NO NEEDS

RB: Copley has established himself as a productive feature back, but Alex Sherman behind him is just a special teamer – TARGET AREA

FB: Bill Wunderlich needs to be re-signed as our backup RB, and Charles Emerson is an ideal pure FB – NO NEEDS (unless we lose Wunderlich)

TE: Robert Cooper is our future starter, Stacey Jan may return for another stopgap starting quality season, might be worth dabbling – LOOK FOR YOUTH

OL: We already have guards Schmit and Brandon signed long term, and want to keep as much of the current group together as possible, including Kolodzik, who will be expensive – NO NEEDS

DL: Alvin Hall is still a star, but is probably fading, we have no other natural DE who is worth much, at DT Lents is locked in, and Toby Tubbs is signed to give us another run stopper – TARGET AREA

LB: Doug McKenzie and Daryl Ewart might be the best pair of linebackers in the league, and we have solid support with them using Preston Gibbons and others liberally, but nobody young and promising here – LOOK FOR YOUTH

DB: This group, like the OL, is gelling nicely – CB Padgett and S McCartney are signed long term, and both S Schwantz and CB Keuhler return as starters for at least one more year, big question is return of CB Dixon Webb from injury – NO NEEDS


Looking at our cap situation, we are likely to head into next year’s offeason well over the salary cap, but with some phantom salaries there that will disappear quickly with a renegotiation. My guess is that when the dust settles, we will have a little room to move, but probably not enough room to make a big splash free agent signing. If it turns out we have more room than expected, then bringing aboard a top-flight defensive end to play alongside Alvin Hall would be the obvious move to make – the RDE slot is the one serious starting job that should be open to a major investment on this team right now (again, barring a big twist from retirements). In the past, this league has paid star-caliber DEs pretty handsomely, and I don’t think we can afford to make a huge long-term commitment to a player, but I don’t think that John Galvan (SLB playing out of position at DE most of last year) is really our answer at the position. Either a free agent or trade acquisition at DE would be a great move for us, and then we forage around a bit looking for promising young players at places like RB and LB.

Season Wrap-Up

We’ll be rooting hard for Hell Creek to win their first title, and then we’ll be watching the league update as we move into the 2012 season, and learn about retirements and the progress on injured players.

Incidentally, in the weeks leading up to the title game, we worked out new contracts with FB Bill Wunderlich and LT Horace Kolodzik – both of whom will be, in my view, overpaid next year, but who still figure fairly prominently into my plans, and we wanted to avoid having a major disruption. We will probably not be using our franchise tag next year – Kolodzik was the likely target, but I was afraid that he might zero out totally in loyalty and become completely unwilling to re-sign. We avoided that by inking a three year extension instead.


But now, the big game…


Well, Hell Creek had a hell of a season, but once again came up short. Five title game appearances in six years is unreal. Losing them all is downright Buffalonian. Great run for them – but maybe it’s time to have some new blood in the big game from our conference, eh guys? (Seriously, tough luck today, but it certainly doesn’t diminish the excellent dynasty their team has had within the conference)


In years past, we haven’t had much to talk about wit the annual seas awarsd list – but we have two honorees this season, so why not?


Offensive linemen get honored for run blocks, plain and simple. We ran inside a lot, our center got a lot of opportunities, cashed in a high share, and gets his first award-winning season. Hooray for the undrafted rookie free agent Winston Turnbull!

Brent Sedor surprises me and lands his first honors here – he didn’t post the super-gaudy passing stats, but the game does like the rushing yardage, and posting 600+ yards on the ground apparently gave him the edge on a number of potentially more qualified pure passers. Nice to see, in any event.


I’ll leave news of retirments and the like until the official start of the new season. For now, congratulations to VPI97 and his Hudson Valley Horsemen, repeat FOFL champions!

Great Season again. Looking forward to next season already!

Chesapeake Chili Dogs, 2012

It’s a new year, but it won’t be a new team. Our expectations will be to make fewer changes to this team than we have in any of the recent offseasons, as we are generally pretty comfortable with the roster we have in hand. We have developing key players at QB and WR, we have units on the offensive line and defensive secondary that seem to be coming together wonderfully, and we have solid talent nearly everywhere on our starting lineup. This is no longer about revolution, but rather just evolution.


The new season starts with announcements – and like all teams, we have some…


On the player retirement front:

DB Mark Carr . . . stays
RB Craps Copley . . . stays

Those were the two biggest names I was really worried about. We do have some retirements – mostly from guys who were position leaders for us like WR Charles Renaud, DT James Reach, and veteran DT Eugene Bradham, who gave us one more year than we had a right to really expect.

But then there’s one more name on the list of retirements for us…

DE Alvin Hall

Oh, no. Our previous thinking at DE for this year was basically this: we’ve got one stud in Alvin Hall and nobody else around him, so this is a crisis position. Now, we have to amend that a bit.

HELP!

I’m sure we will recover somehow – but this seems like a crushing blow to us and our hopes for an improved pass rush this season. We’ll eat a lot of cap from his remaining bonus money, but that’s not the real worry – it’s losing the player that really hurts.

Free Agency Awaits

We have gotten through the staff hiring stuff (CHE is standing pat) and are on the brink of the big splash – the first step into free agency. This is always a pretty exciting step, as our cap situation comes into shape, and we will be trying to make an addition or two in target areas. Chesapeake will not be able to afford a major FA commitment this year, but we will do our best to bring aboard a few role players where we can.


Incidentally, we have worked out a new deal with LT Horace Kolodzik, which should keep him in Chesapeake for the next several seasons. He got paid pretty handsomely in the extension he signed at the tail end of last season, but now he’ll take up a fair amount less – he still gets over $3m in bonus this year and next, but his base salary will be manageable for a few years, and then we’ll go from there.

My expectation is that we will work out a similarly affordable new contract with FB Bill Wunderlich, and lock him up probably for the balance of his career.


Nothing too much to report right now – but next week, we’ll see a few things happen.

Free Agency Begins

We’re finally underway in the wide-open free agent market, and Chesapeake already had two happenings.

The first is bad news, as my offer to DE Cornelius Kleinsasser is inexplicably outdone by one from Annawan, and the charter Chili Dog heads off for a few more dollars over there. Kleinsasser has mostly been a backup, but hid spend some time in a starting job for a couple of years, and he looked to be back in there this season coming up, if we failed to bring in an impact player. Instead, he’ll head off to Annawan, for a trifle more money than we had put up. Oh, well – that’s one fewer guy left to try to earn a second ring around here.


Our other news is a signing – we have welcomed back young QB Ernest Biddle. Longtime C-Dogs fans might recall that Biddle was an undrafted rookie free agent, whom we plucked from obscurity in 2008, and who ended up starting for us down the stretch of that “lost season.” He signed with Capital City after that, and in a reserve role there saw limited action. Now, our scout rates Biddle as a 26/50 prospect – ich is a few ticks above where he was when he originally came aboard with us. My best guess is that he is a “creeper” – a young player whose ratings continue to bump upwards a little bit, but one who has not had the benefit of a QB mentor. We’ll see if he continues to improve – I hadn’t planned to keep a 4th QB, but he might create an exception.

Not the most critical of signings for us, but an intriguing guy to have around- and in his 5th season, still worth watching, I think.


Now, we’ll see if we can get another guy or two to shake loose.

Free Agency Update

Well, there’s not too much to report yet. We have yet to land any more free agents, so we have zero new additions. The biggest news is the guy we couldn’t get – DE Wesley Danielson was a pretty good-looking 7th year DE, who was left unprotected this season. He’s primarily a run stopper, but had enough pass rushing skills to be pretty interesting, and we made a pretty strong effort to land him. However, with only about $5m in cap space for this year, we couldn’t give him all that much in year one, and he ended up taking a contract elsewhere, no great surprise.

Honestly, in retrospect, I’m a bit surprised that the Toronto offer got accepted ahead of ours – they didn’t have any more money than we did in year one, and we had more money guaranteed. Regardless, he’s out of the picture now, and we are left to focus on what we can do elsewhere, now losing our own players Alvin Hall and Cornelius Kleinsasser, and missing out on the top FA prize there.

We may have to explore out options at defensive end for this year, and perhaps beyond. Right now, I think our best defensive setup is probably to continue to use run-stopping DE Toby Tubbs in the LDT slot of a 4-3 front, alongside young RDT Bryan Lents. Then, we’ll play LB John Galvan from one DE slot, and probably use DT Gabe Shah (a longtime reserve for us, a ratings creeper with a PR Technique rating of 80) on the other side at DE. I don’t think that’s awful.

Another option might be to shift to a 3-4 front, continue to use Galvan as a DE, and really only employ two true defensive linemen. That presumably would move Bryan Lents to a DE slot, and we’d probably use DT Shah as the pass-rushing side of a NT platoon with Tubbs. Also possible – that probably puts Stephen Watkins back into our starting lineup at LB, which is fine also. So, we have options. Ideally, we’ll have one or two more players to consider in this mix before the season starts – we will certainly be looking for pass rushers in the draft.

I think we will be okay in any event, but this has clearly rocketed to the top of my immediate team concerns.

WR Leadership Settled

As free agency drags on, and the draft sits in limbo as yet another team hasn’t stopped by to make its pick (things are way better, overall, making these incidents even more exasperating)… we at least have one good signing in free agency.

Mediocre veteran WR Oscar Abdul-Malik has accepted a modest three year contract with us, and assumes the role of WR mentor and position affinity leader. He’s a perfect fit to replace the departed Charles Renaud – he brings us affinities with both tight ends Jan and Cooper, plus receivers Berkey, Torpey, and Napiecek. He also shows an instant connection with QB Brent Sedor, which is another mark in the asset column. Since Torpey has developed mentorship himself, Abdul-Malik may not even stay on the active roster – but if he does, he might see some time as a kick returner and 5th option at wideout.

Nothing monumental here, but it settles one of our chemistry situations. The front seven, on the other hand, looks to be completely hopeless, and I’m at a total loss what to do there. We will almost certainly go into this season with at least one conflict there – something we have scrupulously avoided for the last few seasons, but seems nearly impossible to get away from now, without a gutting of positions we simply can’t afford to un-do.

Draft Pick Trade

Well, I had been watching a few players in the draft, hoping to see someone shocking fall to us at pick 1.30. Alas, no dice – and I’m starting to look at our roster (as a disappointing free agent season starts to slow down) and I see quite a number of roster spots genuinely up for grabs. So – I think we’re in a position to go for some quantity in this draft. We put pick 1.30 on the trade board, and land a pretty good value deal:

- - - - -

Chesapeake sends:

1(30)

South Carolina sends:

2(15)
3(15)
4(1)

- - - - -

So, we move down 17 spots into the middle of round two, and we will now be focusing on the players we expect to be available there. We’ll probably be a class lower in terms of talent, but getting three young players here –- in a year where we might well have room to keep six or seven rookies – makes some sense to me. Given my usual track record, if we get three decent hits out of our five picks in rounds 2-4 this year, that ought to work out okay.

I do have a specific player in mind for the pick in round two, and while taking him at 1.30 was an option, I like getting value here and hoping to see him fall a bit farther. If we get two players we really like at 2.15 and 2.19, this will be an unabashed success (regardless of how the players actually work out).

C-Dogs Draft Update

Round two of the rookie draft, after moving down. We’re in a pretty dire spot, in real need of a pass-rushing defensive end. The two guys I am watching as the picks roll are:


Clayton is listed as an outside linebacker, but at 268 pounds, I expect him to make a pretty effective switch to play DE, which is the real need for us and a far, far better fit for his skills (he is awful in all the coverage systems – he’s potentially decent as a run stopper and good as a pass rusher). I would be surprised if Gregson falls to us, and my move down in round two was basically predicated on seeing LB Clayton still there when we’re up. Clayton graded out pretty well in the combine, save for a terrible test score (reinforcing his weakness in play diagnosis) but if we slide him up to be a pin-back-the-ears pass rusher, he ought to be okay, I think. Clayton is the target pick – if Gregson is available, he’ll make it very interesting (and we possibly could end up taking both guys in round two).


Well… I ultimately decide that the position switch is enough risk that we’ll take the natural DE Gregson if we get the chance, as I remain sufficiently intrigued by his topped-out range for pass rush technique, the rating I place #1 in importance for a pure DE. I even make a half-hearted effort to trade up to get him, but it turns out to be unnecessary, as Gregson is indeed available for us at pick 2(15).

I’m not wild about that current rating of 17, but if he does eventually turn out to have a pass rush technique rating in the 80+ range, he ought to be an asset to the team. And, since basically all his skills are distributed in areas that don’t come all that well developed to begin with (as opposed to, say, pass rushing strength, which I believe is always fully developed) there’s fairly little chance that he will be completely unequipped for immediate duty. My best guess is that on opening day, we’ll have a natural DE who has a rating of something like 25/85 in pass rush technique, which probably makes him suitable for at least part time duty immediately. So, we are pleased with the trade down, and I still expect to land another target player with our following selection at 2(19).


Our second pick in round two, I decide not to backup Gregson with Clayton as another DE, an instead take a combine-based pick in WR Kent Fields:


Fields looks solid to me – not a great rating in route running (which seems to translate to “ability to play wide receiver” in this game) but still he has solid upside with a strong combine. My hope is that we end up with a near-copy of third year man George Ellis, who seems to have wrested the starting split end job for us – though Fields lacks the return skills that Ellis has, he ought to be a standout on special teams (possible gunner) right away, and hopefully develop into a real contributor in the passing game.


As we await round three, I see a couple of target players fall off the board, and I (predictably) get rather antsy. So, we swing a deal, and move up to pick 3(1) to land the pass rushing linebacker detailed above, Skip Clayton. My hopes now are that between Clayton and Gregson, we will have a couple guys who can patch over our DE position for right now, and maybe even develop into quality starters.

I’m very pleased with the draft at this point – but then again, I’m **always** pleased with the draft at this point, only to (usually) be disappointed once the goggles come off. For now, though, I’m in love!

Draft goggles ;)

I have obvious missed this. How do you calculate the “Combine overall score”?

It's just the number that the gstelmack utility spits out -- some aggregate of the four ratings, put into one nifty number (I don't even know the formula he uses). A substantially positive number represents a better-than-average combine result. Players with truly standout ratings might get a 20 or more there... this late in the draft there are a fair number in the 5-10 range, with different mixes of individual performances.

A Big Free Agent Signing, Finally

After weeks of fishing around, we finally have brought aboard a starting-caliber defensive end, as DE Jamel Lazaro joins up on a ridiculous three year deal. We are admittedly overpaying him, but he’s really an ideal fit – strong ratings, very good against the run, and a mentor at the DE position where we have just added two new rookies. So, at what probably amounts to an $11m deal for two years of service, we’ll take it, I guess.


We have also gotten our first look at the initial trio of rookies – early scouting adjustments are favorable for WR Kent Fields, and not so much for the two pass rushers. Makes Lazaro’s presence on the team even more critical, as we may not have much behind him this year after all.

Rookie Draft Continues…

After landing our top three picks yesterday, we are looking to do some filling-in with later picks. We make a deal down from pick 3(15) as I have about seven players I like still available – and I then watch three of the players from my list get grabbed in the next ten picks or so, making the trade-down look pretty foolish.

Anyway – we make yet another deal (yet again with South Carolina) and send away QB Ernest Biddle for a draft pick swap – netting us the selection at 4.1 in the draft. With this pick, I have a few guys in mind, and I hope I get two of them with picks 4.1 and 4.17.

At 4.1, after watching the draft goggles fade off a bit with our two pass rushers selected so far, we land a pretty decent looking defensive lineman in Kerry Meadows. Here’s his profile:


In the combine, he ran the 40 in 4.88 seconds, and that is often an indicator of a good pass rusher, which would be great. I am thinking that over time, we might see Meadows assume a rule like that which Gabe Shah has played for us – filling the pass-rushing side of a DT platoon. I’m looking at him and Dwight Armagost as two guys who might turn out to be nicely complementary players at the DT position alongside full-time starter Bryan Lents.

I think at 306 lbs, Meadows will be too heavy to move to DE, but it’s possible that he sees some time there, if he comes through training camp okay. If he shows us a little bit of boom in the ratings, this could be a nice value pick.


At 4.22, after a slight trade-down (picking up a future 7th), I am pleased to get the guy who was #2 on my list at 4.1, an intriguing running back to serve as something of a 3rd down specialist behind the team’s workhorse back Copley.


It’s always intriguing to see players this highly developed toward their apparent potential – even though in his case much of it might be attributable to that high rating in “getting to the outside,” Cook is the highest-rated running back left on the board, in current terms. Regardless, he looks like he might be a nice fit for our team’s immediate needs – pretty good receiving skills, and he had the best 40 time of any running back left in the draft, which is worth something, I guess.

Long run, it’s pretty unlikely that he steps in for starting duty when Craps Copley is done, but for now, our roster mostly needs a guy who can either contribute on third down or special teams – I think we’re getting the former (but not the latter) here, which probably spells bad news for restricted free agent Alex Sherman, who had been penciled in for the #2 RB role, despite having precious little in the “actual skill” department to offer.

Draft Update

We make one more trade (this time it isn’t with South Carolina, though) and acquire the last pick in round four. The lack of anyone saying “damn” as I make the pick tells me that it might have been a reach at this point, but I am still hopeful about this affinity cornerback:


So, I like the combine score – he was the fastest and the strongest cornerback left in the draft, and he is an affinity addition for us, too. We have four corners on the team, but Dixon Webb is coming off a year-plus injury, so he’s a big question mark. And Leland Tellez, despite his recent contract extension, is proving to be nothing more than a reserve quality player. So, grabbing a CB who at least gives us an affinity is worth the move, I think.

The downside is that if his current “blue bars” are an accurate depiction of his skills, then I have little idea what we’ll do with Daniels. He looks to be a zone specialist, and we play zero zone, except when the internal game plan gremlins force it upon us against our will. He looks like a special teamer, so my best guess is that if he makes the active roster at some point, he’ll see most of his immediate time there. To make much more of a roster impact, he’ll need to start creeping up – which I think is at least a possibility. With the goggles on, I like the pick. We’ll report back later on that front.


One other note – I’m pleased with our refined look at DL Kerry Meadows, and I am very pleased to see that he can indeed move over from DT to DE, despite him being over 300 pounds. (I have a note pasted from somewhere else saying the upper bound was 299 lbs, but that seems to be incorrect – at 306, he even projects at a 95% switch)

So, we will probably move Meadows over to play the pure pass-rushing DE position he seems best suited for.


At the moment, my list of “guys I like” remaining in the draft is waning, and I don’t have a pick until round seven. I may not be able to contain myself, though, as I have clearly caught the draft-day trade bug… and I see at least one player out there who seems worth a pick from next year’s fifth round to get on board now.

One More Time?

In past years, I have often basically excused myself from the latter stages of the draft – mostly because I know I am prone to getting worked up over a bunch of stiff players, and investing far too much time talking myself into believing they will actually be worthwhile.

This year, I chose not to do so. The results are not yet in, but the symptoms are all there…

We deal next year’s 5th round pick to move into round five this year, and pick up one more guy at a minor need position, offensive guard:


I have been scouring the offensive linemen, looking for possible breakouts. I have gotten enamored with guys who have good combine scores in both speed and agility, which correlate to run and pass blocking. Csonka has the speed to back up his pretty solid-looking run blocking skills, and if he simply holds on to that projection (maybe a future 70-rated blocker?) he’s worth this late pick. But he also has a pretty solid agility combine result, suggesting that his apparently low rating in pass blocking might be phony. So, that overall combine doesn’t look too impressive, but he did pretty well in the right places (he did terribly on the solecismic test, but I have yet to find much benefit from the very smart offensive linemen, of which there seem to be many, so I’m just focusing on his solid 40 and agility times). At this stage of the draft, he seems to be worth a stab… especially with these nice rose-colored goggles.

Now, the real test will be to stand pat until my last remaining pick in round seven. Be strong.

Into Late Free Agency

So, we manage to head on into the late free agency period, after a minor shuffle of feet in the league administration, which has apparently been resolved. We got out last draft pick – an affinity CB with a decent skill match for our bump secondary, who probably needs a good camp to make the roster.

We also get word that RB Craps Copley has decided to hold out for a new contract. Fortunately, his demands aren’t sky-high, but this will be a bit of a wrinkle, as we don’t really have a viable backfield without him. We’ll try to wait him out, but we’ll knuckle under if need be.


Anyway, we work out deals with most of our rookies, except for DE Edwin Gregson. I am on the fence about signing him, as it looks like the arrow is down already. I’m going down to the wire with him, but expect to ink him just prior to camp (once we clear the cap space).


It looks like we are headed toward camp with just about 58 players on the roster – meaning that we will have less paring-down to do than usual.

Training Camp Update

Well, we had a few young players come through with good camps this year – not as many as I might have hoped, but we got good results from rookie draftees CB C.J. Daniels and DE Kerry Meadows. Both of these mid-round picks now look like potential contributors. It also looks like URFA TE Harvey Leff will make the team – I hadn’t planned on keeping three tight ends, but he bumped in camp and looks pretty solid for a reserve.

Not many veteran bumps this year, but RT Jerry Burns had another creep of two points, and DT Dwight Armagost did as well. Both expect to see real playing time this year after being draft day afterthoughts.

DE Edwin Gregson had a –5 drop in training camp, and is looking like a very certain slow bust. We did sign him, regrettably, but it won’t be that painful to let him go if that’s what it comes to. My guess is that if DE playing time opens up for our rookie group, the pecking order is Meadows, Clayton, and Gregson – basically the reverse order from their selection in the draft.

Preseason Begins

So, we finally launch the first pretend games. Well, the pretend games that don’t count. You know what I mean.


RB Sam Cook looks solid in his debut, and we get some nice work in from QB Alex Gerhardt, who also looks good. Fall River runs all over our defense, but that’s no surprise as our DL here is as green as grass. DT Dwight Armagost looks solid in the middle for us, but he was surrounded by guys just struggling to make the team.


Regrettably, Harry Ross takes every snap at QB here – I still have yet to figure out how to get what I want from the QB position in preseason. I had been told that the best way to get one guy to get nearly all the work was to put him #2 behind a starter with a low PT rating. I did that here, and saw Ross (the starter) get all the snaps, precisely what I didn’t want. Oh, well.

George Ellis has another big game leading the receiving corps, and Sam Cook looks pretty good again as our main-duty RB. The defense played pretty well, holding them to 16 points despite Ross’s awful 4 picks.


We don’t learn much from all this, of course, but it’s something to print.

Preseason Continues

Our last two games – we’re hoping to get young QB Alex Gerhardt the bulk of the work, but this is clearly an element of the game that continues to elude me.

I’d like to see Sam Cook continue to play well as our featured preseason running back, it would make me feel better about using a decent pick on him, if absolutely nothing else.


So, a good effort by the defense, I guess – and we managed to get Gerhardt half the work at QB. Not too bad, I suppose. WR George Ellis has another pretty big game, and is clearly the offensive star of the preseason for us. I don’t know what, if anything at all, that might portend for the regular season, but it’s nice to see I guess.


So, we stumble to a 2-2 preseason record… gee, where was preseason success on my list of “to do” for this year again? Oh yeah, that’s right, a zero on a scale of 1 to 10.

We have a couple of cuts to make, but they will not be too painful. We’ll be ready for the season, and looking to put together another solid effort behind a squad that returns most of its leadership from the starting positions. We’re getting better at the skill positions, and if the losses along our defensive front don’t kill us, we ought to be very solid this year.

On with the show Monday.

Final Roster Cuts, and Opening Day Hype

In our last round of personnel decisions, we had to make “the unkindest cut” to longtime Chili Dog receiver Justin Berkey. We were a bit surprised that he held on to play again this season, after not seeing any action last year for us. Berkey was trying to make the team again, but as probably our 6th best wideout, it was unlikely he’d see the field this season, either, and eventually was a casualty of a numbers game. He leaves us as the all-time franchise leader in all the receiving categories, with 6,616 yards receiving on 473 catches, and 46 receiving touchdowns.

We made a last-ditch effort to deal away WR Tyrone Hastings, which would have freed up a roster spot for Berkey, but the offers we received didn’t merit the dropoff in production I’d expect from losing a starting-caliber receiver in a league where he’s still very solid. We’ll probably rotate Hastings and rookie Kent Fields in the slot position this year, and the job is basically wide open for Fields to claim for the long run. Hastings probably is a guy who will help us this year, renegotiate down after this season, and then either serve as a solid reserve or good trade bait by this time next year.


In our opener, we are home to Portland – so we’ll establish the “inside track” for the division right away. We swept them (and the whole division) last year, and we will hope to retain that edge this year – losing at home would be a rough start for a team with high aspirations.

Week 1: Portland at Chesapeake

A big opening game, against one of the best teams in the league. We have a fairly straightforward game plan in effect, as we can’t count on Portland to play lopsided – we will try to run the ball, and win our way.


Any win, any way, is a good win against Portland. However, I am frustrated a bit – they ran like mad against our defense (not what I expected) and outgained us overall on the day. I can mostly attribute the surprisingly comfortable win to a couple of turnovers, and some good results at key moments. LB/DE John Galvan might have been the difference-maker for us, with 2 sacks and three QB hurries, as he steps into a prominent role in our pass rush effort.

Next week, we will take on Shreveport, who have a very good stock of talent, it seems to me, but they are a little inconsistent. We ought to be favorites, but it won’t be an easy game.

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

This is most definitely a game that could go either way. It’s certainly possible that Sedor plays brilliantly, we have another very good game running the ball, and that only a fluky big play by the Shreveport defense makes the final tally even appear closer than it really is. It’s also possible that we come out flat, Sedor looks lost like a deer in the headlights, and that only a fluky long run by the QB prevents it from being a total blowout. Oh, and Portland might get beat this week… or then again, they might not.

Let’s see which way things go…


Well, it looks like we settle for outcome B after all, as Portland and Dodge City **both** manage to win to pull even with us in the division race. Of course, South Carolina is at 2-0, but we’ll set aside our commentary there for the moment.

An unusually tough loss to take, a really bad week, but I guess the silver lining is that we didn’t have any career-ending injuries. ::weak fake grin::

Week 3: Chesapeake (101) at Myrtle Beach (0-2)

Myrtle Beach are 0-2, but lost their two opening games by a total of four points – so they haven’t been hapless. We match up pretty well, and would like to see the Chili Dogs that we thought we’d bee seeing this season return, if that’s possible.


So, things seem a bit back to normal – we regroup after the weirdness of week two, and look like ourselves again. Sedor was back to being very sharp, the running game was solid behind our line who was clicking again, and on offense all seems well. On defense, I’m a bit worried – but we’ll hope to tie things down a bit better going forward there. If we can hang 5 TDs a week, we have some latitude.


Next week, Hell Creek. Wish we were unbeaten to make this look more like a battle for the “inside track” but that’s how we have to play it anyway.

Hey QS, what do you look for in a DE and DT. Do you primarily look for a pass rushing type player for DE and a run-stopper for DT?
I know you play a few players out of position does that affect their play much?

Definitely pass rushing at DE and run stopping at DT. Playing out of position is a vast unknown, but I generally am fine doing so when the skills make it obvious... like Tubbs, a star run stuffer slotted at DE, but he's naturally a DT for us, and does just fine by me.

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

Early in the season, this already shapes up as a huge game. We lose here, and we’re two games behind the defending conference champions, and on the wrong side of a tiebreaker. We win, and we have the inside track, at least compared to Hell Creek. If this team really is a title contender, then this game is potentially one of our biggest regular season games of the year, perhaps the biggest.


A huge, huge week for the boys in the pinto-and-mustard, as we put together a very solid road win to claim the “inside track” to the top seed. There are now four teams sitting at 3-1 atop the conference, but we’ve beaten Hell Creek head-to-head, and we still get to play Dodge City twice down the road, including at our place in the regular season finale. We don’t play Ayr, but at this point, we definitely control our own destiny for a bye week.

Just in case the stats suggest that Brent Sedor had a shaky day, with below 50% completions, a closer look tells the story:


While he avoided the turnover bug, he was harassed and pressured all day long by the Hell Creek defense, and that was the real story – not bad throws, not dropped passes, but just very good defensive effort by the Tyrannosaurs.


One thing is becoming clear this season – even if we do blossom into a pretty effective passing team (last year’s 3650 yards from Sedor are fine, but we know it’s possible to jack things up well past that in this league) it doesn’t look like we are destined to have standout receiving numbers. Right now, in this offense, Sedor spreads the ball around a lot – here are our current receiving leaders through four games:


I really don’t expect too much to change from there – Pearson is probably the most talented guy, but George Ellis seems to be an overachiever. We have three decent guys behind them, so we will likely continue a rotation of players in the WR slots, and will expect to see everyone getting some attention. Don’t expect a 1,000 yard receiver on this team until at least next year.


Next week, we’re off to face 1-3 State College, in a non-divisional game. We’ll try to put together a more efficient offensive effort on the road.

Week 5: Chesapeake (3-1) at State College (1-3)

We expect to see the team put together a strong and solid effort on the road this week – we’re favored to win, and hope to do so comfortably. That’s what top teams are supposed to do, right?

One roster note -- I have put rookie WR Kent Fields into the slot receiver role, where I currently envision his long term role to be, behind Pearson, and we will hope to see him be productive there. We don’t use multi-receiver slots a lot in this offense, but Sedor distributes the ball to everyone, as noted earlier.


We get what we wanted – a dominating performance all around, basically. Our running game was in top form, with the line (including FB Emerson) giving us 13 key run blocks for Copley as we ground out the yardage that way primarily. We didn’t dominate the time of possession, but all told, we had this game in hand early.

Sedor continues his torrid pace of rushing yardage – he just seems prone to tuck it under several times a game, and in 5 games he has posted 311 yards rushing – basically a 1,000-yard pace for the season. His last two seasons, at 639 and 603 yards respectively, are the top two rushing totals by a QB in league history – so he’s already atop the list in that respect. Is a 1,000-yard season possible? Probably not (recall he peeled off a 55-yard rush earlier this season, probably on a fluke play) but he could easily eclipse the 750-yard mark by just continuing at the form he has showed in prior years… 40 yards rushing a game from here.

Sedor’s average of 9 yards a clip makes a meaningful, if quiet, contribution to our offense’s overall effectiveness. Without his carries, we’d be maybe fifth or so in yards per carry, rather than #1 in the league by a crazy four tenths of a yard (at 5.4 ypc).


We look good on the injury front right now, as well, which is good to see. With so many young players on the roster this year, we don’t have the depth we did last season at most positions, so we might be a bit more vulnerable to injuries if/when they come.

Week 6: South Carolina (2-3) at Chesapeake (4-1)

We are looking for a strong win this week, at home against an opponent still in mid-tank. They have a few impressive young players, but have publicly bemoaned that many of their draft picks (from the roster-dump harvest of the last two seasons) have fizzled. They start former CHE QB Ernest Biddle (well, they start him sometimes) whom we traded to them in pre-season, after not finding room for him on our own roster.

We’ll take the cork out of the bottle a bit for Sedor this week.



Well, a dominating win, as we had hoped for. Sedor was on fire, and again spread it around a lot – 389 yards passing and not a single receiver even anywhere near 100? Wow.


We did ring up a few injuries this week, and will have to do a little shuffling to cover for them. FB Emerson will miss some time, but we have some depth to cover there, as we’ll probably rotate rookie RB Sam Cook in to get some action in the new couple of games.

Excellent Dynasty, QuikSand, I read every update--I feel inspired to try out an MP league. It's interesting how much the game changes when you play against expert opponents.

Glad you have enjoyed it, Jeff. In addition to the competition factor, the pacing of a MP league gives you the chance to reflect more on things that you might gloss over when playing solo.

Franchise Update

To the extent there is a “bigger picture” in this game than simply winning games – I thought I’d offer a glimpse at the Franchise Value screen for the FOFL. Loyal Chesapeake partisans will likely be pleased with what they see here:


So, the C-Dogs rate a comfortable first overall in franchise value, buoyed by an excellent fan base, and an outstanding stadium. The fact that the current team is tops in its overall roster rating and is winning lots of games probably helps there as well, admittedly.

It seems we can’t quite match the vigorous rust belt economy of Duluth and Annawan (?!?!?!?) but still, this is good news for all you Members of the General Partner out there.

Week 7: Chesapeake (5-1) at Portland (3-2)

We have our Portland rematch pretty early this season, and we’ll hope to get a road win this week to likely put them out of the division race. Portland remains a talented team, their top QB is healthy (not a given for them), and they are a very solid club. If we win at their place, we go up two games in the loss column, plus we will hold the tiebreaker – we’d need to collapse to let them back into the division race. If they hold serve here, then we’re basically even, along with Dodge City. So, bluster aside – a pretty big game.

I think we ought to be able to move the ball on them – we did rack up 34 points in the opener against these guys – but with our somewhat shaky defensive stats this season, we can’t take them for granted. Hopefully we will click enough on offense to render any defensive struggles moot.


Well, that’s pretty much what we would have ordered up, honestly – nothing too special from the offense, but we ran the ball well, and served up two long scoring drives on our first two possessions to force them to play uphill the whole game. The line, once again, is outstanding – 17 key run blocks makes for a nice day for whomever is toting the rock.

I am not pleased with our defense, and now we will be without DE Lazaro for a while. He hasn’t been posting much in terms of numbers, not he’ll be replaced with a scattershot of rookies, and I don’t expect too much there. We’ll see how things go up front for now.

That's been the S.O.P. for Lazaro for the past few seasons. I should have warned you about that before you tried to sign him.

The Lazaro signing was motivated by desperation, rather than optimism, I assure you. We have a cavalcade of clowns auditioning for a long term role there now, so that might be interesting.

Week 8: Madison (2-4) at Chesapeake (6-1)

We ought to be a solid favorite here at home, and while we are in pretty good health we will hope to see a good effort here. I remain a bit worried about the defense, but our offense is currently papering over those worries week after week.


So, we get a solid win, but we are outgained at home here. Hard to be upset about the offense’s effort – Sedor is very efficient, especially in the red zone, and the running game was fine. But one again, we are easy pickings for the opposing running backs, yielding more than 6 yards a carry. It may be time to do some gameplan tinkering there.


As we tinker with the defense, we will be without CB Herman Padgett a few weeks – he’s among our best run stoppers in the secondary, incidentally, but will be out with an elbow injury.

Next week we play host to Washington, where Subby’s Piledrivers are following a rebuilding model pretty similar to ours. They may be a step or two behind us, but we are frequently pursuing the same positions and even the same players. They even signed our career receiving leader WR Justin Berkey, and we expect to see him on the field for them this week.

Week 9: Washington (3-4 ) at Chesapeake (7-1)

As I indicated earlier, Washington is a team being piloted along a similar path to our own. They started a rebuilding, of sorts, basically a year later than we did, and did so with a 1(1) pick at QB. They were looking for WR the same year we were, and at picks 1(4) and 1(5) we took the top two prospects there with consecutive picks. We also, it turns out, have pretty similar defensive philosophies. They come to town this week, but right now it looks like Chesapeake has more pieces already in place than Washington.




Not a wildly efficient game, but a solid win nonetheless. This takes us to 8-1 on the year, and sets up an emerging picture in the conference standings:


So, right now, we are in the driver’s seat, and with a win over Hell Creek in hand, it’s even firmer than it appears. Portland seems to be finding a rocky road this season, so it’s our usual division foes Dodge City who pose the biggest obstacle. We head to play there this coming week, and it looms as a pretty big game – we win at their place, and we put ourselves in a very, very strong position for the conference #1 seed. If we lose, then Dodge City takes the inside track with a tiebreaker over us and even records.

Game Day Notes

Last week, in the Washington game, we had an unfortunate subplot, as we suffered a tough injury. LB Preston Gibbons blew out a knee, and is gone for the season. He has been a great starter for us at the weak-side backer slot – he’s an excellent run stopper, and a good affinity guy for our defense. Now, we will probably be using veteran LBs Steven Watkins and Travis Kuykendall more to cover for his loss. Our defensive front was already our weakest position on the whole team – now we are even thinner, after placing Gibbons onto IR.

We’ll probably do some digging in free agency after this week’s game, but I doubt we will find anyone who ought to be very productive.


This week against Dodge City, we will be looking for the run – that’s still their bread and butter, despite more noise about a balanced attack on offense. Our run defense has been a little shaky this year – but we usually do a pretty good job against uber-FB Robert Roger and the Vigilante running game. These tend to be low-scoring and mistake-riddled affairs… but coming out on top, no matter the circumstance, would be a huge gain for the C-Dogs this week.

Week 10: Chesapeake (8-1) at Dodge City (7-2)

We’ve already laid out how big this game is… let’s get to it.


So, we manage to build up a solid lead, we try to fritter the game away with a late fourth quarter collapse, but we sneakily allow Dodge City to score its second late touchdown too quickly, and thereby clinch certain victory with 90 seconds left on the clock, and Sedor drives us for the winning kick.

Huge game for Craps Copley and the offensive line, as we ran like crazy on the Vigs. Posting 12 key run blocks always helps things.

So, on the season, we are seeing pretty great things from our whole run-blocking unit:


That makes our team overall at 38% in converting key run blocks – I don’t know where that fits exactly, but I’m comfortable in saying it’s an upper tier result. We have yielded only 12 sacks, which is among the lowest in the league also. While glamour boy behind center gets the pub, the guys up front are making a really big difference in our offensive production, and making decent role players like Craps Copley post numbers like all-stars.

Interestingly enough, it’s the right side of the line who is playing especially well this year – RG Marvin Brandon and RT Jerry Burns have basically been out best performers, both playing in position all season. C Winston Turnbull remains a solid road grader inside, but he’s been our relative weak spot for yielding sacks so far, though five on the year (two this week) isn’t exactly cause for alarm. Turnbull’s reign as the league first team all-pro center will probably be in some doubt, though.


Onward to next week, our bye. We’ll rest up (though we don’t have any serious injuries that are going to benefit much from one week off) and get ready for the home stretch. We’re right in position, just need to keep at it.

Wow, now that's a game that lived up to its billing. Luckily Conley and the OL made up for the -2 Turnover deficit.

Player Spotlight: CB Lewis Kuehler

As we are rounding the bend in the 2012 season, I wanted to take a moment and note one of the highlights of our otherwise disappointing defensive effort this far this year. CB Lewis Kuehler is having an impact season in his second year with our team, as he has finally realized his lofty potential for us.



As you can see, thought the eyes of my slightly-less-repulsive new C-Dogs color scheme, Kuehler is a highly talented cornerback, who has been productive, but not exceptional so far in the league. He is signed to a modest deal for this year, and that’s it – so it’s soon going to be decision time, whether to extend with him, tag him, or let him float into free agency.

The season he is putting together for us this year is certainly helping make the case for an extension – a 21.9 PDPct is very, very strong, and he is doing what I really like to see from a cover man – breaking up pass plays. Interceptions will come and go, but a CB who can post 20 or more PDs a season can be an impact player in a subtle but very effective way. Kuehler’s numbers this season are in keeping with our hopes for him. Incidentally, he’s also been more effective as our primary kick returner this year -= up to a 29+ yard average, improving on his career average to date there as well.

He’s demanding a $7 million signing bonus to extend his current deal, so it will be a real commitment if we do it. But he’s a nearly complete player, with many good years left, at a tough-to-fill position. It would be awfully hard to replace him, whether via free agency or the draft. We will almost definitely be sending him an offer or two before the season wraps up (and while he’s still fixating on last year’s unimpressive stats) in an attempt to work down that demand and see if we can’t find a middle ground to lock him up at a price that we like.

Do you worry about him suffering an injury returning kicks--especially with his injury history? I have an excellent kick returner with 100 avoid fumbles, but he is my starting WR and if he gets knocked out I'll have to sub in a far inferior player.


Your hand is forced--you can't let a monster like this go at one of the most important positions in FOF. Maybe you can franchise him if that will yield a significant discount, though.