Take Two - and this time, let's try it wothout any draft picks
One And Done, Misfit Toy Style
Not enough torture, I guess. I’m going to give this thing a second go, but without any draft picks at all. I plan/hope to take my time in building the team, pay attention to things in small detail, but I thought I’d do that the first time through and failed to, really. No detail here on the multitude of position switches and convoluted nonsense we go through to build our training camp roster of 85 players (yes, 85) – but here we go into training camp, hoping for some good news here and there. |
Quick note of confession - I ran my draft through once and sifted through the players left over, with an eye on who would become my affinity group leaders. That made it tons easier to try to plan for eventual chemistry. More "time saver" than cheat, but I will post here that I made this effort.
I also invested some time into preparing for training camp, and running it -- only to find that one of my major target players (LB Zack Swift, a no brainer) was somehow left behind. Faced with the prospect of playing the whole career without him, I decided instead to start over. I didn't do a new set of interviews, carried essentially the same group into and through camp, but probably benefited at least here or there from some knowledge gleaned from the first trial. |
Here’s our training camp…
Golden Hill Player Report (OND2 2008a - OND2 2008b)
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Okay, we have a crop of quarterbacks who look to have a little promise, and we have a mishmash of players who will either contribute via their modest skills (here and there) or through their chemistry (profile on that coming soon). A +6 training camp is pretty good for Wesley Montgomery, and we will slot him as our #1 option and hope to see him eventually get that overall rating up north of 40 or so. His best skills (not saying much) right now are in third down passing and timing, so he might do well in a run-first offense, which I definitely expect we will be committing to.
And yes – I invested a lot into chemistry for this team – we’re going to have to have something on our side, it surely won’t be talent. So here’s the snapshot of my team’s affinity structure, as we are down to 54 players and ready for the preseason games: Code:
My guiding principle was basically that a player had to show me enough in training camp that he would be a major contributor, or else he would get cut without having an affinity. I selected my position leaders pretty carefully, finding two guys on offense named Devin and Darryl Rivera, both of whom are strong leadership types, and who have been “split up” to play WR and FB for this team, being leaders at both position groups. I love that – plus, they are themselves in the same affinity group, making it fairly easy for them to mesh with my three QBs who link up with them via chemistry. My thinking is probably to use a couple of our running backs (namely Leland Bush and converted CB Daniel McDonald as “slot back” types – and to try to use their versatility in both RB and WR positions. We are not deep at true WR, I realize, so we will need everyone we can get in the mix. I am thinking that Jose Greene, with his +2 camp and creeper ratings profile, will start out with the #1 RB job, but I have Jack Fling in the mix as a solid fallback as well. On defense, I am going with a 3-4 front – which has really never served me very well. I just don’t have a ton of talent along the DL on this team, and think if there ever was a team that suited a 3-4, it might be this one. We will pin LB Lorenzo Campbell into a full-time pass rushing job, and will try to use a nickel package frequently to get a slightly more talented lineup out there fairly often. My gameplan will be to send out 5 DBs fairly often, but not to play the aggressive pass formations (3-deep and 4-deep zones very much). Hopefully, we have just enough skill on defense to make this…umm…passable. |
Okay – I don’t expect much from this whole career in terms of wins, much less season one. We’ll try to get through without killing anyone.
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Front Office Football 2007 Stat lines for really bad teams are always a little screwy – since they are always trailing, the plays getting called on both sides get skewed. Regardless, we scratch together one mighty win on a wacky 25-0 fourth quarter (4 TDs from Montgomery!) and get out of here without suffering the indignity of the imperfect season. Yes – I am seeing quite a number of guys who were stalwarts for us in my first time through the one and done. No shock there – we used something like 40 URFAs in that career as well. Zack Swift is a solid inside LB – in our system with a high nickel usage, he will be our only inside LB, so I expect him to put up tackles nearly as good as what I saw from him in the first career – he definitely will be our annual tackle leader, health permitting. We’ll see some good seasons from LB Lorenzo Campbell – he played DE for me in my first OND career, but as the pass-rushing LB in our 3-4 he ought to be seeing plenty of pass rush stats. S Travis Gomez looks like a decent creeper player, and actually played fairly well in coverage, too. We’re hoping to see him develop those modest ratings, and turn into a solid starter for us at SS. His counterpart FS Terrance Nichols looks like a potential ballhawk for us – 3 picks this year is solid, and 7 passes defensed gives us some room for optimism that he can help shut down the top receivers we face with double teams. As for QB Montgomery – I knew this would be a building year. The 9/14 ratio isn’t awful, but our overall pass attack really was. I didn’t get the ball to RB Leland Bush as often as I had hoped/planned – only 17 targets. We will endeavor to get him out there a little more frequently, both in the RB and WR positions. |
Gomez was one of the few defensive guys that made all league for us - he had a very high pass d % over his ten year career...
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2009
Again, expectations are very low here – development of QB Montgomery is probably our biggest focus right now. LB Lorenzo Campbell, clearly a product of our 3-4 system, earned DROY and First Team All Pro honors for his rookie campaign. Over time, I don’t expect us to really feature too many award winners – Campbell and LB Swift might be the two guys who have the best shot to get a few honors, especially while the team is really, really bad and there are plenty of tackles to go around. (That condition may indeed last though the entire career, I fully understand) I decide to change staff, and bring aboard all new coach and coordinators – HC Desmond Shanabrough is great at gameplanning, but only “average” with avoiding injuries. We’ll hope for the best. One downside of having multiple slight-creeper QBs is that I already have an “angry” guy in Lamont Baker. I will probably need to rotate guys at QB to keep them happy, which won’t be good for continuity, nor development of my #1 guy Montgomery. Not sure how long I will post these camp report, but here’s year two: Golden Hill Player Report (OND2 2009a - OND2 2009b)
Disappointing drop from CB Gottschalk, a guy I had really hoped would develop into a serious starter for us. Now I don’t know what to think of him. No continued move from Montgomery, either. Hmmmm. Maybe the QB rotation won’t be so bad after all. So, we are ready for season two. Baby steps. Two wins, maybe? |
Well, we get our first win in week 7, kicked off by a Zack Swift fumble recovery for TD, and managed by a 17-of-19 day for QB Montgomery.
After a 1-7 start, I knuckle under to Baker’s demands, and give him a start – he responds by leading us to a 34-31 win and a game-winning drive. But now Herman Mirer is “livid” about playing time, and I think I have painted myself into a real mess here. I go to Mirer next, to try and salvage his attitude. He actually gives us a 300-yard day passing, though in a loss. But the bigger news is LB Zack Swift out for the year – but it doesn’t look like a career threatening deal, at least. The QB carousel looks like it’s just going to be how it goes with this team. We get another decent-enough win with Mirer at the helm, but I’m not exactly convinced he is the future of the franchise. I fear that our future is getting 3 or 4 starts for each guy to keep them happy enough to re-sign. Anyway – we get win #4 down the stretch, and so far are looking like a team that has at least a sliver of promise. Offensively we really spread things around at every single position – so the stat sheet is something of a blur. Code:
Front Office Football 2007 One guy who surprised me here is WR Turnbull – he was slotted as the #2 split end all season, but ended up with slightly more pass plays and way more targets than my nominal starter, Stevenson. Turnbull certainly did a lot with his opportunities, I have to confess, so I’m not complaining -- 8 yards a target on this offense is off the charts good. We also got good production out of WR Darryl Rivera – a guy who basically has two worthwhile ratings, getting downfield and big play receiving. He stepped into the active roster after Lawrence Ramsey got hurt, and earned himself a longer term look in the rotation. LB Lorenzo Campbell didn’t have the huge year he did last year, but overall our pass rush moved from… hmmm… abysmal to only limp-wristed? As guys get more positional experience, this might move up a little more, we hope. Hopefully Zack Swift is back at full capacity for us next season, and we are ready to try and build off this nice step forward. I can’t help but note that so far, my all-undrafted team is outperforming the team that actually had an overstocked class of rookie players, including four picks in the top half of round one. **shurg** |
2010
Okay, now I have a feel for the team. The three-headed QB monster. The no-name offense. And the swiss cheese defense, hoping to step up and earn a better nickname than that. LB Zack Swift looks fine – so good news there. We have a ton of new contracts to sign (oh, woe is me!) but ought to float smoothly into season three. My best guess is that the 4 wins last year overstated our actual ability, and that we will only be roughly the same team this year – I do not see us leaping up to the near-.500 range right away. I guess we could get there, but I think 4 wins again is probably optimistic. As we head to camp – not a single player with a rating over 50! Woo hoo! Heck, two of my three guys rated over 38 are my P and K, and they both stink! Code:
Top Ten Most Likely Busts: Okay, well – Jack Fling wasn’t the guy I thought I’d see atop the creepers list here. And candidly, Trevor Gomez isn’t who I expected to see take a bit hit. That sucks. Anyhow – we are sitting on our roster rating of 1, of course, with 14 as the second-lowest in the league. I am planning one defensive personnel change for this year – basically swapping my two outside linebackers. SLB Emmit O’Neal has a tremendous pass rusher rating, and even though I think he is also superior in coverage, I want to give him a look at the WLB slot, so we will use him there at least part of the time. We will still play Lorenzo Campbell, but probably more in a rotation along with another guy or two at both WLB and SLB. On offense – I don’t know quite what we’ll do. Who might be the first Hoplite in this career to post a 1,000 yard season? WR Turnbull came close last year with 887… and I reckon he will get the starting SE job this season, so maybe him. If RB Greene can stay healthy and keep up his YPC over 4… then he’d have a shot, too. My guess is – this year, we won’t find out. Just not part of our plan to totally focus on any one guy, so we’ll end up with three or four guys at 600 or more, but zero topping a thousand in anything. This is not going to be a risk-taking offense, so we will look for controlled passing and a variety of running styles. |
So, for this year – we will hope for a slightly better pass rush, some incremental improvement in pass defense, and maybe a calmer front at QB.
So… our opening day QB is… Herman Mirer. I think he probably has the best skills for right now, and he is upset about playing time (still), so we’ll give him the first look. I have Montgomery set to #2 and playing time set low, so he may see the field as well. This is not picking among superior-level options, understand – but Mirer has no complete voids in his skill set other than the two-minute offense, while Montgomery has the dreaded zero in sense rush, which I think might be a killer beyond the passing stats. Through three losses, the offense doesn’t look that bad – but the D is just getting torched. When it get to 0-6, it’s just more of the same – we have a team-wide passer rating of 86, but our opponents have one of 109. That’s just terrible. At the halfway point, we are a hapless 0-8. I tried to temper expectations from the dizzying heights of a massive 4-win campaign last year, but I didn’t really expect this. Herman Mirer remains disgruntled, and now Lamont Baker is unhappy – so I decide to throw him in there, how bad can it be? Baker manages 17 points in his two starts (losses) – and is about as unexciting at QB as can be imagined. It takes until week 12, but we get out first win – 26 first downs, solid offense, and…well…sure, pretty solid defense too. Herman Mirer has a good day at the helm, and pushes his season passer rating to a pretty respectable 82. We get another win a couple weeks later, with C Randy Wolfe (and 5/13 KRBs) earning game MVP honors. But that’s all, folks. Two wins in year three… and hopes are dashed that this ragtag team might have some sort of improbable rise to sudden respectability. Code:
Front Office Football 2007 Well – what can I say about this? By the numbers, we are an average rushing team, but that may well be partially because we run fairly infrequently, and since we trail a lot, we face a lot of pass defenses. Statistically, in everything else, we are awful. Simple. Good seasons? Well, I guess Herman Mirer did what he could with this offense. AN even 18/18 is a pretty decent step forward… we’re closing in “the pack” in terms of yards per attempt (n longer 32nd at least). And Jose Greene posts another nominally solid 4.4 yards per carry season, and is our team’s yardage leader for the year. CB Lorenzo Newhart, by the way, put together a pretty solid year for us – 6 picks, 9 defenses, and an 84.7 PD% on a team this bad is pretty serious stuff. 41 tackles probably is too few to get him into the fold for league honors, but he earned team MVP honors in my eyes. Zack Swift was his usual, steady self, as well. On defense – I have no idea what I’m doing here. I suspect that this silly defense is hurting my team, but I don’t really know what else to do. Rex? Perhaps that would be better, maybe I will do a 3-4 Rex D next season, as I suspect this nickel package nonsense is hurting us. |
Just a note -- OJ Winters earned "the triple" this season -- MVP, OPOY, and first team RB. 1,722 yards rushing on 4.77 ypc, and another 534 receiving yards, plus 14 total TDs. Solid season for a draft pick at 2(8).
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I'm not sure when I will be able to start season four... but here's an interesting snapshot as we start to build the roster for the year.
Mirer put together a pretty decent season for us last year... but I actually kinda of like what I see in Montgomery here, and am tempted to play him this season, at least for the bulk of the year. (I'm going to have to manage happiness, but I think I can still have a main guy) I'd welcome thoughts here. All are creeping, but Montgomery was the guy who showed the most in rookie camp and I presume has the highest implicit ceiling, to the extent that is meaningful here. |
Oh, and just out of curiosity, I asked my staff to set the initial roster. Their judgment on the QBs?
Baker #1 Montgomery #2 Mirer #3 Go figure. Pretty much the opposite of what I would have expected. |
2011
Okay…now pretty much everyone has finished his development, more or less. We’ll take some hits among players who have not been on the field much, but by and large we are who we are. Here’s the camp snapshot: Golden Hill Player Report (OND2 2011a - OND2 2011b)
No huge news here. Pretty much what we planned for. |
So, ready for the season. My hope here is that we can inch back toward 4 or 5 wins, and just become a more competitive team overall. We have everyone pretty much developed, we are getting better in cohesion (top third in every area), and the next several years are our best chance to get some wins, before injuries start to ravage us too seriously.
So, with my QBs past the “developing” stage, I want to open things up a bit more. I just don’t think the west-coast style we have been playing, more or less, offers the best real chance to win games. I think with this team we need to run the ball a good deal, but I want to open up the passing game a bit more – we really don’t have any “playmakers” who can turn lots of 4 yard dinks into big plays, so to get yardage in “chunks” we need to be tossing it down the field more than we have been. We’ll see how this works. I also have calmed down my tendency to drop into the nickel package. Not wiped it out, but we are probably going to be in it around 50-60% of the time, rather than around 70-80% previously. Just an attempt to get a little less predictable, I suppose. So – the preseason sheds zero light on who should take the reins at QB, of course. Lamont Baker is tagged as “unhappy” but is signed for two seasons, so his situation is not urgent, I don’t think. I have it down to Montgomery and Mirer, and decide that Mirer has earned this shot, with the more opened-up offense, after a passable season last year. He gets the call. The offense is pretty respectable in our first two losses – I’m not that upset, and Mirer is playing pretty well. But a 3-interception showing and 35-0 shutout changes my mind, and I decide to give Montgomery a try again. Montgomery opens his game with a 2-for-15 day, and gets benched for Baker, who looks okay on 6-of-12 passing for 61 yards and a TD in a loss. Week six is a chance for a win, at 1-4 Yates. And we get it, with a strong 28-13 showing, behind a 16-of-19 day from Lamont Baker, in for the injured Montgomery. Does he earn the starting job here? He’s pissed off, and playing well, so why the hell not? Baker is golden again with another strong game and win at home, and we are suddenly on a “winning streak.” Another win over 0-7 Ransomville and we are actually HOT. Maybe the AI was seeing something in Baker that I wasn’t? He looks awfully good out there for us right now – posting a very respectable passer rating of 100.7 – that’s good for a real player, not to mention an unwanted scrub playing with a team of the same. The streak ends as we lose to 5-2 Roosevelt Beach (and only by 4 points, on the road), but that was nice to go through. Maybe it’s Baker, or maybe the team is really coming together – or maybe it’s just a trick of the dice, and we’ll finish 3-13. **shurg** I confess that though 10 games, and a 4-6 record, I have focused almost exclusively on the offense, watching as the QB derby has yielded some strange results. It bears mention that LB Emmit O’Neal seems to be making peace with his role as the blitzbacker – to the tune of 10 sacks in 10 games, and a 7.7 PR%. Very solid season for him, and our team pass rush is substantially improved up to 24.0 – 3rd best, according to the in-game summary. Wow. We still cannot stop the run, it seems, but by the numbers our pass defense is middle of the pack – that’s a huge step forward. Two straight losses shed us of any wandering thoughts about capitalizing on that near-.500 record and making something of this season. From 4-8, we’re clearly an up-the-track finisher. Need to get some playing time for my upset players, and get this season in the books – but it was nice to put together that little “hot streak.” Code:
Front Office Football 2007 Okay, we’ll settle for 4-12. It’s not exciting to finish there, but things certainly could be worse. Offensively – I think opening up the passing game worked fairly well, and we still managed to be a decent rushing team. It would be nice to feel we could rush even when the D knew it was coming – but baby steps. As usual, none of our skill players even got very close to 1,000 yards – part of this is undoubtedly the FOF oddity that endurance is just distributed more or less like any other skill (which makes no sense to me). Thus – with all these marginally talented guys as it is as my main handicap, we also have to suffer through the fact that they are also wheezing little pantywaists as well, and can’t stay on the field for very long. So, another decent year from Jose Greene with a solid 800+ yards (though YPC were down, I basically blame the gameplan and our competitiveness) but I don’t think he has a 1,200 yard season in him, no matter what we do. He probably can’t handle the workload. Defensively, the pass rush came together well, led by LB O’Neal (who missed our last four games, regrettably) and DEs Malcolmson and Wilkins. Being “middle of the pack” in a number of stats is a great step forward for us. Injury-wise, I think TE Lorenzo Snee is our only worry – he is tagged as returning in “late 2012” so that might be bad. He has been a sort of 1A guy for us there, but we can back in with FBs if need be, for now. RB O.J. Winters takes the superfecta of awards, adding Superbowl MVP to his honors for this season to his trio of defenses from last season. What a player, and unfortunately he plays in our division and has Shadigee as a major league power. |
2012
Okay – no retirements (didn’t expect any, but you never know). We’re locked in with 53 and basically ready to go. TE Lorenzo Snee is still listed as out for 5 weeks, but past that we are in okay shape. I missed my pre-camp snapshot this year – not like I can do anything about it anyhow. I’ll live. Code:
So, no major surprises here. I look at QB Lamont Baker, and I now have a guess as to what I think is going on. For him to have a 31 overall rating (better than the other two guys) must mean he is sitting on a decent “avoid interceptions” rating, better than that of the other two guys. And if that’s true – that’s pretty important for a shaky team. No other major announcements for this team – I don’t have any real changes in approach planned. We will try to run this increasingly vanilla offense and defense, and just see if we are getting anywhere. Last year we got tantalized by winning a few games in a bit of a run --- but we shouldn’t lose sight that we were only 4-12 at the end of the season, and that isn’t exactly anything to shout about. Okay – I am thinking about one change. WR William Okobi has been our starter at flanker for a while, and he tends to get a fair number of passes thrown his way (74 route running). But I wonder if he isn’t actually holding us back a bit – he doesn’t do a lot with the ball when he gets it (0 getting downfield, 3 big play receiving). His career yards per target is 5.45, while that of Darryl Rivera (RR of 0, but 45 GetDown, and 53 BPR) has a 6.72 there – that’s a material difference. My guess is that if we swap those two guys, we won’t see Rivera get a ton of targets, but maybe we will see more going to Preston Turnbull (6.56 y/t career). |
So, we start the season with three decent games, all losses, and then get crushed. We’re 0-4, our supposed “don’t lose the game” QB has a ratio of 0/4, and we are –9 in turnovers. This might not exactly be our breakthrough season after all.
But then we pull the big upset – our lowly 0-5 Hoplites beat the mighty 5-0 Shadigee Specters, 34-28 on a big comeback led by Herman Mirer. Nice big game, it might have to serve as the main highlight for the year, I fear. But then another win, and then a one-point loss… so things aren’t quite that bad after all, I guess. We’re a lousy 2-6 at the halfway point, but with Mirer back in, it feels like we are at least above water. Go figure. After two dreadful losses with a totally impotent offense, I decide to pull the trigger again and go back to Montgomery. Season is down the tubes, we might as well keep him happy and see if he gives us a spark of some sort. In two losses (admittedly against two good teams) he is in turn dreadful and passable. **shurg** At this point, the most interesting thing to watch is whether anyone might touch 1,000 yards – RB Jose Greene has a shot with 4 games to go and 735 yards on the ground. LB Emmitt O’Neal is sitting on 13.5 sacks, and that’s pretty cool, too, I reckon. Code:
Front Office Football 2007 Well, a pretty disappointing season, and I suspect this is just where we are. I had been hoping that this team might pull together and start making stuff happen a little bit – maybe eke out 6-7 wins in some seasons, just due to cohesion and chemistry. But now, I don’t really expect that, I guess. We’ll get some lucky dice rolls from time to time, but this isn’t a team that belongs in this league – as you’d expect given the setup. Well, Jose Greene made a decent run at 1,000 yards, but no dice – and that might well turn out to be his best shot. WR Daryl Rivera – no joke a guy who is on my team for the sole reason of being the team chemistry leader – looks like he may actually be the most productive WR on our roster (that may be a tribute to the value of the GD and BPR ratings) and has the next WR season stats of anyone to date, as well. I really should go look at all those drops, and see if they are real drops, or perhaps partially being conjured up by bad gameplanning. (Oh, and WR Turnbull got a late season injury, and it might be a career-killer…nice) Emmitt O’Neal is just very effective as a pass rusher. Our defense, on the whole, just seems incapable of doing much of anything well. CB Newhart seems pretty stable, and Zack Swift and Travis Gomes make a lot of tackles, but we can’t actually stop anyone of even cause any turnovers. Alas. Oh, and I think the Montgomery plan at QB is over. I guess we’ll go back to Mirer next season, but it doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot. |
LB Emmitt O'Neal, with 14.5 sacks and an impressive 8.0 PR%, makes first team all-pro. That's it, that's the list.
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