FOF8: Shelter In Place
 

No hook. Fewer puns than usual? I'm just going to try to play some seasons and mess around with a few things. I'm really, really hoping to not get bogged down with screenshots, but there's something helpful about posting season summary info and rosters in one place.

I don't know what exactly this will be, but I'm gonna play a little and we'll see how it grows. Ideally, we roll this thing like a stratonascar thread and I actually work my way through a couple decades of random results.

We're picking up in 2034 after a 15 year auto-history. I'm playing in the IHOF universe as the Hanalei Dragons, a franchise near and dear to my heart that I've still failed to really drag over the line to success in MP play over the years. The version of the franchise in this 15 year universe has never made the playoffs, so we've got some laid back island expectations already firmly established.

I haven't played much SP in a good while, but I generally try to approximate the challenge/discipline of house rules by dropping a pretty substantial cap hit onto things. I don't think I've tried 50% before, but we'll give it a go here. If it doesn't work, we'll adjust. I'll sign a longsnapper in FA1-2 for a contract worth half the cap to make things logistically easy and play from there.

We're already over our $127.5m limit with 33 players as we roll into FA1. A good portion of that is the 81/81 QB we just put the franchise tag on. He's an obvious stud and the second highest scout rating QB in the game at the moment. Setting aside whether it would be interesting or fun to allocate a bunch of resources toward a stud QB with our limitations... we're not going to do it with him. I'm going to see if we can add a few picks or something else interesting by trading him off and we'll start working toward a roster we have some attachment to.

We've got some young DE and LB talent as well, with three 70+ guys who will be looking to make big money very shortly. I'll probably sit tight with those guys for now, but we might need to trade one of them to help kick things off as well.

Overall, we stunk last year even with these guys. We've got the 4th pick in the draft and we're definitely going to stink again when we trade this 81/81 QB.

FA1

We're able to trade QB Martinez to Tucker for their 2+3+4+5 picks, which feels pretty shameful for the 2nd best QB in the game in his 6th year. But hey, good for the challenge I guess. Also good for the challenge... this 50% cap reduction foolishness we've set ourselves onto. We did what we had to but this feels like it's going to be difficult. We'll see as it goes, but we really can't afford to do much of anything. Some of the trimming we're doing now is going to hurt us this year and next with lost cap room as well. I guess it will get marginally easier when we've got some of that space in the future.

We bring in QB Caiden Logan (31/39) in this period to compete with holdover backup QB Talley. Neither look like solutions but they sign cheap.

Draft

We probably should just trade down or out for cap reasons (awesome), but we're dumb and really like a CB that's staring at us at 1.4. We ultimately take a weird trade for a 2+3+4+1st next year from Augusta. I'm sure we left some meat on the bone for some kind of all out trade against the AI's bad pick value logic, but we're just DOING THINGS. And the cap reduction has me shook.

2.3 LB Devan Henry
2.5 DT Jace Wolcott
2.7 FS Ted Matthews

Our first pick of this career is a DE-weight LB with big potential. We're gonna be thin at LB this year, and everywhere soon enough, so I like this one. DT Wolcott should be able to help immediately, and FS Matthews is a 211 lb guy who can hopefully shed some weight for a CB move.

We fill out with a bunch of other picks, including a hopefully complete stud punter (who will get plenty of work). We'll see how they hit the roster and what our team looks like when he get through to camp. Probably a bit more detail when we look at position groups then.

FA2

DE Arnie Blackledge (78/78) is one of our holdover defensive studs. He's going into his last year at a criminally underpaid $1.6m. So he's holding out.

We do have $33m to spend and 34 guys under contract. We could possibly extend him. I value DEs quite a bit, but they're also a spot we seem to be able to spin decent options for pretty cheaply. I think we're likely going to be able to replace those spots with 3-5th round LB types with specialized skillsets in our 4-3 defense. It'll be a nice annoyance to keep this guy around as a nod to our general competitiveness this year and then have him hold out for the duration though. :thumbsup:

We fill out with a bunch of UDFAs. And we still have about $20m in space with a legal roster at the end of it. There really isn't a difference-making upgrade piece out there in the last stages of FA2. I think this is likely where we'll be signing any veteran FAs in future years. Just don't really see that piece this year.

We go ahead and do something likely a little stupid... sign DE Blackledge to a 5yr/$75m flat extension. It's a $15m/yr deal. That's a very large portion of our cap, but we've got the surplus this year and hopefully we'll be able to work our way around it in the future.

We already did this one, but my guess is we're likely playing him out through the year in a non-holdout scenario and then franchising him. That could be something that pops up in this career in the future.

TC/Camp

We have a weird situation where our 3rd year stud LB Aidan Benson (78/78) has almost no chance of resigning with us in two years. He also weighs 275 lbs and can only bulk up. We're looking at a move to bulk him up with an eye toward... playing him at DT for the next two years. He was a 1.6 pick a few years ago, and he's already asking for insane money on any kind of extension ($25-30m/yr). That might be good insight again into what does and doesn't make sense for us from a drafting perspective. We might never be able to extend one of those top pick types. The bulk up and DT move is probably just a bizarre curiosity. But I'm curious.

Ultimately, not curious enough. Glad I typed my way through that. We'll leave him at LB and probably a lot of MLB. He's one of the best linebackers in this universe. I probably shouldn't cut his legs off or something just for sport. Maybe next year...

Here's our squad after the pre-season.


We have quite a bit of talent, but the QB spot is a killer. We're going to try to run the ball a lot. Too much youth and an offense that's probably going to murder us. We'll look to optimize or mess more with gameplanning in future years. Ready to sim through and get on with this one though.

I think that's what we should have expected. The QB play looks a little more solid than it was, with a crazy number of sacks taken hiding in there. And we threw less than anyone.

RB Rufus Curtis, a 4th rounder who really doesn't have much all that interesting about him at this point, won OROY through sheer virtue of workload and being a rookie.

DE Blackledge rewarded our extension with a 1st Team DE season.

We had stretches of interesting play. The defense might have actually been very good if there was an offense on the other side keeping things interesting.

I think something like this will be part of the formula though. We'll likely run the ball quite a bit, cycling through RBs every few years. We need something better resembling an offense and probably a QB too. Maybe we look to see what $7-10m does for us there this offseason.

We head into this offseason with the 3rd and 13th picks in the coming draft. And then a usual cohort after that. I'm not really looking to make a million picks a draft in this thing, just for my own sanity really. We've got talent on the roster. We lost our best CB from last year, who doesn't even show on the roster screen here because I franchised him, shopped him, and got no interest for some kind of lame late pick trade. So we released him before printing the roster screen. It's a spot of some concern.

SS Ted Matthews couldn't trim weight last summer from his drafted 211 lbs, so we just played him at SS. He's got everything but a zone bar and I think he played well. It's a tough spot to judge, but I think we could just leave him there and let him do his thing. I also think he's got a lot of good looking CB attributes, I'm just not quite comfortable he can play there at that weight.

We were able to sneak an extension onto DE Salvador Boone at the end of TC last year as well. He was going into his 2nd season and we basically got an extra year of control by agreeing to pay him $7m/yr during his rookie deal instead of $3m/yr. I think that was smart. He's a 77/77 guy and we've got high quality DEs at both spots with some solid depth behind them.

We've got LBs. We're in the last year of WLB/MLB Benson though, so maybe we do our DT thing just to be weird. I do feel better about the crew we'd roll out now that they're not all rookies. And I'll almost definitely chase down a few more LBs in the draft. (Note to self: just run a 3-4 one time and stop fighting it.)

Aside from some kind of real QB, we need OL help too. I'm worried it could be a real problem for us in this career because it's a tough spot to churn. Some really talented OLinemen are really undeveloped in the draft, and they take forever to fill out. We aren't going to have that luxury I don't think. We'll either have to eliminate those guys from our sights or patch things together differently. It seems reasonably clear that the positional focus of your coaches works something like mentoring. Our OC Budda Baker has a QB focus, and even our rookies who didn't play last year have taken steps forward. Maybe we try to work some wacky angle and load up on OL coaches?

However we do it, we need better OL play. We might even need dominant OL play to run this career with gimp QBs and the bullshit offenses they can execute. Stud O-Linemen are potential targets if we decide to use our two 1st rounders. I'm even open to trading them for developed players if that's what makes sense. It's reasonably clear to me that 50% cap is going to be challenge. I'll play all out in other ways until it's obvious I shouldn't.

We have some decent WR talent, with two more years of Neumeyer (66/66) and Ackerman (49/49). I'm tempted to dust off some tzach shit and just chuck it around, but I think we'll just go from inept to interceptions.

I don't really want to just draft a QB. We'll see what's there though.

FA1

Working through the FA options for our QB issues and old friend Craig Martinez is there at 77/77. He only wants $40m/yr. There's an obvious stud in the draft class and we could trade from 1.3 to 1.1 to take him. There are some other draft options that look intriguing...

We settle on going cheap. And we're going to push hard to bring in a 36/39 guy in his 7th year. I know... didn't we just do that? Yes. Are we doing it again? Yes. Is that incredibly stupid? Not so fast.

QB Buddy Weber has a 96 Sense Rush bar and a big scramble bar. (And, um, a big screen passing bar?) He's a former 5th round pick who has never been given the chance to start. Why is he still here? It's destiny. (He's asking for $1.5m/yr.)

We'll probably try to draft someone as well, but I'm hoping we get Weber who is also a mentor. I don't know exactly how we wouldn't get him, but we'll see what happens. And we'll likely release last year's starter, Caiden Logan, to "make room."

I honestly don't think we're in a place where we can pursue anything else. We're at 43 players, which is nice, but we can't sign all our draft picks and stay under our cap at the end of this. I think we're looking at signing Weber, trying to trim some roster pieces, and heading to the draft. We can look at some lower level fillers in FA2 if we have some wiggle room.

Heh, maybe I'll get into political simulations during the shut-in period...

note to self: malcpow is experimenting with running the ball...

Draft

There are two top QBs who go off the board immediately. There's maybe the best safety prospect I've ever seen staring us in the face with the third pick. There's a tremendous looking guard there as well. I'm skeptical that we can actually make a top 5 pick work, or that we're not simply better served getting a good player later and still having a little space to do other things with. We decide to trade back, and we get a haul to move the 3rd pick. 2.9+2 future 1sts+another future 2nd from Chicago. We're really hoping the all-world guard gets to us at 1.13 and we can still add a major talent.

He doesn't get to us. G Anthony Fattel goes off the board at #8 to Chesapeake. We dabble with grabbing a good RB but talk ourselves into another trade. This time we just trade out completely. A 1st+2nd next year for 1.13 from North Plainfield. This feels like a slightly weaker draft and I'm not sure it makes sense to just add late round picks now that we've got a base of bodies. Eventually I think we'll have a better sense for who we are with a workable foundation of a good team. Then we can drop some of these first round talents on top and hopefully take off. These high picks are cap gobblers. Maybe it'll never be the best move for us.

So, what do we get...


We go LB and DE with our two 2nds. We don't address the OL at all. I think this was a bad draft to be chasing an LT, and we kind of went where the board took us. There's some good talent here. And I can talk myself into LB Thomas at the top knowing we're losing Benson at the end of the season. We didn't really solve, or start down a path toward solving, the offense though. Next year might be the year where we just have to spend big draft capital on a couple of OL guys and make some progress.

All that said, I like a few of our gets here. The CB Young and S Sexton are likely immediate starters and we got them in the 5th and 6th rounds respectively. RB Glen Scott runs outside the tackles well and should complement our current starter Curtis well. DE Isaiah Jacobs is a run stopping DT waiting to bulk up. I liked the pick at the time but we need to do a better job of accepting we can fill certain roles almost as easily a little later and not burn a high 2nd.

Gotta stay sharp..

It's not going well!

FA2/Camp

I'm even more frustrated/terrified with our OL situation as we get into FA2 and I'm actually looking at this team. I don't think we're that bad generally, but we're bad enough on the line to just completely sink us.

There's nothing in FA2 out there to really help us, especially at the tackle spot where we're woeful (?)... horrendous (?)... abysmal. We're really bad there. I might sign some mid 40s guards and just play them there.

I'm looking at some potential trades. We do have a million of these picks now. We end up making a bad one, two 1sts and two 2nds in this coming draft. It's most of the bounty we got for our draft day moves this year, with a future 1st from Chicago still lurking around. We end up with a 3rd year RT from Colorado who our scout sees as a 67/74 on the roster. He's a former first rounder so he's got two years left at very low $1-2m salaries when we get him. He's willing to turn those two years into a $30m/4yr deal that we have the wiggle room to execute this year.

I did some funny math eyeballing of the bonuses at the top of the draft before pulling the trigger on this one. I don't think we're ever going to sign a top 5-10 pick, especially that top 5 range. Apples to apples on four year deals, those guys are all making a good chunk more than this 4yr deal we just signed this dude to from a cap hit standpoint.

I'm talking myself into this though. We just traded an absolute haul to not be a dumpster fire on the line this coming year. The cheap extension is a nice trick to think about for the future. Especially since we are suddenly shying away from.. making draft picks. *checks temperature*

T Sean Flowers will be a key part of this thing. I don't need to keep taking 2nd round linebackers. We'll see what happens with this guy. We sprinkle in two veteran stiffs (who are better than our young stiffs) in FA2 as well. We got to camp with 55 and a little cap space. I'll do a roster look at the end of the preseason before we roll forward.

President Infinity and it's congressional counterpart are good and enduring like FOF.

:eek:

I'm intrigued by what we'll be. The big thing we can't change is LB Benson is leaving at the end of the year. And he's really good. We'll probably look to franchise and trade him or something. The QB we signed took a little bit of a camp hit but we're rolling with him. The defense is young, but we've got some big talent there. I feel at least like our offense has a chance with some of the OL help.

Overall gut... still too many new faces and cohesion dings to be good. But we should be too talented to be as awful as we were at times last year, despite the record. That could very well lead to a more competent looking 5-11 year or something. (Woohoo!)

So talent plays. I spent a lot of time on playbook/gameplan stuff. We really wanted to maintain some kind of core principle of limiting turnovers and giving ourselves a chance. We did that pretty darn well, all things considered. And we were able to do it without doing what we did last year by just running the ball constantly. Somehow our really talented defense couldn't force any turnovers. :shurg:

We were 9-2 at one point and completely rolling people. QB Weber sort of came back down to earth and we started losing the turnover battle a few times down the stretch. We're also pretty clearly in need of a gameplan look on the defensive side of the ball. Those are the famous last words of basically anyone in FOF, and I'm probably better served going on an Easter hunt for the fountain of youth. But we'll look to tweak whatever we're doing or find an angle there for next year I think.

11-5 is a good for a bye. (Wut.) This feels like too much too fast, no matter what we luck into in the playoffs. But there's a lot for us to clean up. We'll sim the next round and see what happens.

We lose 37-24 to Frederick in the divisional round at home. We turn it over 3 times and we get the version of QB Weber (24-42, 2 TDs, 2 Ints) we saw over the last four weeks of the season. No biggie. It would have been weird if we got some good bounces and a shortened run with the bye to some kind of miracle Bowl win. I'll take all the positive steps/seeming developments and go from here.

You know it's FOF 8.3 when you see a careful QB with a 6.6 yards per attempt, and say "yeah, that's the stuff right there" lol

All League 2nd Team bro :D

WR Ackerman and DE Blackledge take home 1st Team honors.

QB Weber and WR Neumeyer are 2nd Team guys.

We went from a terrible offense to arguably the league's best offense. I think that's a collection of factors. The QB change was important. Weber was an absolute stud for awhile there, and we shaved basically a sack per game from our total last year. There were some fumbling issues that stacked on top of the sacks last year too.

The trade for OT Sean Flowers was clearly a genius move... (just go with it)

Probably most importantly, we ran a completely different sort of offense, throwing the ball a ton to our two most competent and tenured offensive skill guys. Both WRs are due to depart after next season, which we're not going to be able to handle. We'll see which guy stays depending on demands when we roll things over. I guess it's a happy problem, but we may have screwed ourselves by being really good this year. When your QB/WR/WR all end up on the awards lists, I'm worried it will get pretty tough to avoid holdouts, monster contract asks, and other crap.

We're at 35 under contract with Benson franchised. We've got 7 draft picks coming. We've got minimal wiggle (~$4m) after the picks, but enough to get to a legal roster I think. Benson wants $27m/yr to extend, but we've got him for $17m under the tag this year. There's a path here where we just keep him and maybe slide out or back with the picks to give us just enough space to bring a few RFAs back with other filler.

WR Neumeyer wants basically $17m/yr. WR Ackerman wants closer to $12m/yr. Both basically require us to move on from Benson right now to have the space to do an extension this year. We can also ride it out and tag one of these guys next offseason.

We're picking 1.27, so that's a pretty enormous change. The picks we traded ended up being 1.20, 1.25, 2.20, and 2.25. I'd say that's as good as we could have hoped really.

We definitely have the depth at that LB spot to move on from Benson. I've been playing LBs Henry and Thomas in some situational DE pass rushing roles as well, but I don't think we're too exposed by losing Benson. I think I'm hesitating here only because it hurts to move on from the BIG BARS sexiness of having this guy on the field for us 1000 times a season.

Keeping him screws us from holding onto some pretty good guys we snagged who are RFAs now as well. So it's all around stupid. (I'll keep mulling it over.) I am very tempted to middle finger those receivers and find some way down a path of burning more high picks on defensive players. Linebacker U baby.

FA1/Draft

We can't really afford to do anything in FA. We spend some time sizing up the draft class and I'm generally glad we don't have a lot riding on getting value from this group. There are always players, but there isn't some depth of standout fits that make me wish we had three 1sts and three 2nds. (I'll stop talking about that trade in a few seasons.)

I'm still waffling on Benson. There's some temptation to more or less run this group back. I wish there was a QB in waiting we could take in this class. There's no one that makes sense. Our RFA QB Marlon Pyatt is probably the most sensible candidate of a weak pool, and I just think he'd likely leave us back in the sack-taking place we were a year ago. He has been progressing though.

I'm a little pissed at some of our RFAs too. WR Cooper Blanchard got 16 starts as our slot receiver last year and he thinks he's something special as a 36/36 guy. He caught 10 TDs and we like him, but $3m+ per year would make him our 7th highest paid player. Show some respect man. I guess we'll try to sign him in FA2 if the numbers come down.

The Benson trade market ends up being a late 2nd. So frustrating. The AI does drive a decent bargain on player for pick trades. Picks for picks are another story. But it's a lot tougher to do anything silly on something player focused.

We move him to Colorado for 2.25 (which is one of the picks we.. nevermind..). Ultimately there are some opportunities to extend guys like MLB Ferguson, DT Wolcott, and SS Matthews right now with two years left on their rookie deals. We can keep those guys in that $5-7m range, which seems viable. They're sneaky pretty darn good too. I don't have it all tested out or anything, but it just doesn't seem like we'll have that chance if we let them go into their walk years after this season. LB Devan Henry is as good as gone too. He's basically tracking on the Benson trajectory and asking for pretty darn big money with two years left on his rookie deal.

We're still in a pissy mood and don't really love anything at 1.27. We trade out completely for a 2nd+3rd in next year's draft. I feel like I'm trying to carve a path where I can extend those defensive guys and one of the WRs. We have two 2nd round picks, and I gave myself some "big" "important" speech about taking some offensive players because we're still really thin when it comes down to it. I seem to remember versions of this game where you could spin 2nd round picks into WR gold but those days seem to be gone. Now I can't spin shit except the best damn LB in the game for 2.25. :banghead:


We go LB out of the gate. Then we take a perfectly nice WR who looks like he'll settle into something like Ackerman/Neumeyer. A workhorse load carrier who can handle big volume productively, but he's not going to bring real separators. (That's how I talk about 1st/2nd Team All Pro guys apparently.) The Safety Kurogi looks like a good, clean convert to CB. We like the other guys. Good group in the end.

FA2/Camp

WR Ackerman and DE Boone are holding out.

I was probably leaning slightly toward Ackerman as the one of the two guys we might be able to bring back. Boone has two years left. We snuck one of these extensions with two years left on his rookie deal onto him. Now he wants $100m/4yrs. I am noodling on that a little before we run this same extension trick on three more guys during this FA2 phase. Boone at $6m/yr is a steal for our world. We don't really have alternatives for a 76/76 DE at that price, even if he's a better run defender than pass rusher. And even if we've been eyeing him as the one guy who makes any money on this team who we could probably replace with something comparable through the draft or depth.

Bottom line, we're not doing anything new with Boone. He's a great deal on his current contract, but not a perfect fit as a player. For what he's asking, he'd need to play QB for us too.

We're able to bring WR Cooper Blanchard back for about half what he was asking as an RFA during the FA1 period. We also extend, DT Wolcott and MLB Ferguson. We go off script a little bit and extend LB Devan Henry in the same way. He wanted to jump into that $15-$17m world, but we didn't have to quite get there and we were able to cut him a little in year 1 to sneak under for this year. He's a stud and has the versatility to play DE for us if that's where the need takes us.

We're setting up to franchise one of the WRs after this year. Our late 2nd round draftee, WR Donnie Farmer, is sitting on the roster at 42/58 right now in FA2. I don't know exactly how he'll make it through the preseason, but that current number makes me more comfortable we'll have something competent in place next offseason if we had to lose both of our holdover starters.

We're not giving anything to the holdout guys. I hope they come play for us.

Boone is still holding out as we get through to the end of the preseason. We're still generally fine. We have good depth there when we dip into the LBs playing more DE. It's annoying though. The draft class ended up looking like a deep crop of contributors. Very helpful.

We didn't end up really spending as much time as I would have liked on some kind of defensive changes. We scrapped the plan from last year and we'll see if some of the small tweaks help us get lucky.

Hard to be upset. We miss out on a bye, but we're 12-4. We got dominated a few times, and we had a few wins with some pick-6 TDs and special teams shenanigans. It felt like we couldn't stop the pass at all at times. And we made weird defensive tweaks throughout the season trying to find something.

QB Weber kind of did it again, but it felt a lot shakier this year. We almost made a change when we were sitting at 2-3 early in the season. This was fine. It wasn't exactly a "we'll be fine when we lose our receivers this offseason" kind of performance though. There won't be any awards talk this year. He'll probably hold out next summer. We need to find another option here.

We tried to spread our targets a bit more as the season went on. Neumeyer ended up with even more than last year somehow, but I swear we tried to ease that load a tick. He's very likely to get an award. 22 drops for a guy with a 90 avoid drops rating. Kind of tells me we were pushing into familiars or weird game nerfing territory on his workload. We're likely going to need to work some more TE targets into this plan.

We host Brooklyn in the Wild Card round. Going to run that shortly.

Ok, it is what it is.

We beat Brooklyn 20-13 in our place despite getting outgained.

We go play a Chicago team that beat us up early in the year and dominate possession and yardage. 447-205 on the net yards count, and we win 26-14 in their place.

We play the conference game in Chesapeake. Shootout with 800 combined yards between the teams. We do just enough and hold on to win 31-30 after getting a big 4th down stop just outside field goal range in the final minute.

We play the Bowl in the rain, and we dominate Atlanta, winning 29-7 and holding their passing game to 18-38 for 171 yards and 2 picks.


It's a pretty nifty four game run for a team I hadn't really thought that highly of. I think our underwhelming start made our strong finish feel pretty suspect. This run, admittedly, also feels pretty suspect. I'm curious to see if a couple of the tweaks we made defensively toward the end of the season carry over into good performances next year. Or we'll see if I'm chasing more smoke on that side of the ball.

I'm not completely shocked here. We've got some legit talent on this roster. A sober look probably would have said this was likely to be our best team for a few years as well, so there's nothing really weird about us winning "at this stage" or anything. We inherited some very good players. Two good WRs. Two stud DEs. Two good OL pieces I never really talk about in C Wuagneux and G Shepard. We burned through an all-world LB in Benson. Some of the nice picks we've made have been just cheap enough to line up with those guys.

It's still surprising though. Definitely feels like one of those teams that was good enough to have things go their way. Going to be a fun challenge to keep us from being bad enough that a few tough bounces cause us to embarrass ourselves next year.

WR Neumeyer, C Wuagneux, DE Blackledge, and DT Wolcott are all 2nd Team All Pros. We didn't talk much about RB Donnell Fleming when we took him or this pre-season, but we shoved almost all the workload his way early in the year. He was really good and he probably would have been OROY in a lot of seasons.

We're losing a number of guys this offseason. We're pretty committed salary-wise. But we do have some extra high round pick assets to potentially do something with.

We've got 41 under contract. We should franchise one of the WRs and see if we can get a little value there. C Adrian Wuagneux (68/68) is going to walk away. We might need to look at trading DE Boone (75/75) just for a little cap space, and because he's probably replaceable, and because he sat out the first few games of the season last year being a dick.

CB Shane Owens and SS Ted Matthews are near and dear to our hearts. Those two being in their last year right now is the ripple effect of locking up LB Henry last offseason.

DE Boone and G Shepard are the two guys making money that probably can be replaced. I'm going to have to look at that. And I'm thinking WR Neumeyer will get the tag. I don't think there's a way to keep any of them, so it's just looking at the 64/64 guy as probably having a tick more value. (3rd round pick here we come?)

So, forgive my bluntness. You want to try some things...

Are the key things you're fiddling with sort of invisible to us? Like, maybe, using players with certain skill sets, or whatnot? Or gameplan things?

Or, is this really just "play FOF and write it up a bit to while away the time" mode? Which is, of course, fine.

Just curious. Trying to set my expectations fairly.

Good questions. All of the above really. I wanted to sort of get into the career a tick. And I'm trying to thread some needle between capturing some of the quick picture data and not slowing down so much that I'm not even getting through seasons.

We tried really hard to do some kind of heavy running gameplan for one season. I'm not sure I learned anything other than I probably need more talent, and running-focused talent, to push that in the right direction. I see guys with the monster passing attacks pretty clearly managing their target workloads and mixing a lot of different guys through formations. Sometimes their best couple of WRs aren't even getting starts. I think we're a little light on the depth to really bite down there, but I'm watching it closely. I'm probably more dialed into the kind of target distribution I expect from exact spots in the depth chart than I've ever been because of it. Tying that to some kind of route running and endurance combo to optimize workload seems to be where that goes.

Some other things I kind of want to see play out a little. We're playing guys out of position a little on defense. We're running a couple reverses each game with an RB in a WR slot. I'm not sure these are value add yet. I think I'm probably in some kind of "play the game and try to make interesting observations" mode. I'm hoping that having a little runway of these roster snapshots and my rantings will make any trends or responses to tweaks easier to see.

FA1/Draft

We get a future 4th+5th for WR Neumeyer. Sick. We also look at extending backup/young QB Pyatt and he's pissed about playing time. That kind of boxes us in. He's got one year left. If we make a change and play him this year, he's gone. So we flip him out for a guy Outer Banks took in the 5th round last year, QB Xavier Frady. He's not really anything at 9/42 right now. Kind of a nothing burger trade but at least this guy will be around for a few years.

We don't have the space to do anything in FA1, unless we liked a QB. I spent a little too much time trying to find a decent fit. A name for the future, QB Sedrick Alvarez. He was a 1.2 pick a few years back and may have taken a vol hit. The AI won't trade him but he should hit FA in a couple years with the right mix of good bars and not all around studliness that makes him useful and in our price range.

There are a few others but nothing that seems worth the contortions at the moment. It's coming though. Now probably is the time. I'm just not sure we line up.

We sim through to the draft without having really done much.


We've got an extra first in this draft from one of those past deals. It's at 1.27 and we really like two safeties. They're both 6'4" and we might lose Ted Matthews so I just talk myself into going safety-safety with our two 1sts. They also both look like monster zone bar guys. I'm not sure it's one of the things we've been messing with or not, but our safeties in this career have been crap zone bar guys. Matthews in particular has a big overall rating and a lot of big bars, but we've tried to put him in a buzz role because of a low zone bar. My guess is safeties and their zone bars are really one of those WR and route running things. It's likely just some basic FOF math, take your vitamins stuff that there's no need to get cute with.

Then we go LB-C-G-LB to completely play to our skill-chasing non-tendencies. We'll get use out of all of these guys. If the C can take weight, we might play him at G. We may end up doing that with a couple guys. Just play some highly rated C types at G spots and try to save a little cash there. I'm definitely coming around to believing that OL play is extremely important. I'm hopeful we can luck our way to an LT at some point.

FA2/Camp

QB Buddy Weber is holding out. CB Shane Owens too. We'll be at 53 guys when we sign our longsnapper, with about $1m to spare. We need to do something to address the fact that LB Devan Henry is apparently pissing off half the defense as a leader.

DE Boone has gone from holding out a year ago to willing to take a paycut this year. I guess a full year of missing starts will do that. We kept him out of the main early down depth spots when he came back last year. Mostly out of spite, but there's a helpful side effect now apparently. It's a legitimate question whether we want to save $3m and pay him $4m-ish/yr or save his full $7/8m-ish going forward. We also tweaked him back into the starting lineup during our playoff run last year, so maybe he's the secret sauce.

QB Weber is making $1.6m in the last year of his deal. He wants to be making $13m/yr basically. I don't think that's an unreasonable place for us to eventually get to with our QB if we want to sustain anything. I just don't really see it being with him. I think we have to cross our fingers that he ends the holdout before Week 1. We're in trouble otherwise.

We could make this work by moving on from DE Boone (75/75) and G Doug Shepard (60/60) right now. They're both moving in the wrong direction in some underlying indicators like endurance. Shepard is in his 10th season and should be willing to take a little paycut but isn't. We already lost our good C this offseason. This would thin us out quite a bit, even if it's almost an inevitable move a year from now. I think I'd do it if this felt like a "Buddy Weber" career, but it doesn't. We'll chase glory with some other mediocre QB soon enough.

I'm not even talking about CB Owens. A former 6th rounder who's been a multi-year starter and great kick returner. We might do some weird stuff to keep him after the season. He's got a little more affection-factor in his favor.

We end up extending Boone to save enough money to bring in a veteran defensive front leader. We're left with just enough to extend LB Thomas on a 4 yr deal in the $6m/yr range, who's probably going to play a big pass rushing role for us going forward.

QB Weber and CB Owens are both still holding out as we get to Week 1. Strap in.

Holding out is slightly less worse than suspended, which is what the text below says. :eek:

We go on the road to beat Colorado in Week 17 to sneak into the playoffs as a wild card team. It's our only divisional win, which is pretty strange for a playoff team. Colorado (12-4) hosts us again in the WC Round.

We're a turnover factory, losing 13 of 18 fumbles and throwing 17 picks total. The defense is actually good. The points per game is skewed by the turnovers I think. We were really good on yardage and the box scores were much more consistently sub-300 yards allowed with a few inevitable shootouts thrown in. We were really rarely holding anyone under 300 the last few years.

The pass rush was really good. "LB" Seth Thomas was basically our RDE and racked up 18.5 sacks. LDE Blackledge put up 14.5, which is starting to border on bizarre Khris Davis consistency. His last six totals... 14.5, 12.5, 14.5, 14.5, 14.5, 14.5. Four straight years and five of the last six.

We were just a lot better defensively. Definite slight experiment with playing guys in fewer formations, especially the linemen. Can't really say there's anything massively different in the total plays, but it definitely moved some starts to different guys. I made sure we had our best team in there on 3rd downs, and we were good on 3rd downs. Score one for the Captain Obvious logs.

We were playing two rookie OL. We ended up starting C Fariman and G Eliopolous because it looked like they were ready enough and we might as well get their development/cohesion moving.

We definitely tried to spread the targets around offensively. I think that was good. I'm focused on the turnovers, but it was really the fumbles that got us. And maybe that's just some bad rolls? We could probably spread the targets more. Farmer clocked 161, but he's so far and away our best guy that I'm not sure it makes sense to get away from that. He's probably getting doubled a ton but that 52.2% completion rate on our most targeted dude stands out.

We're definitely different. Will see if we can beat Colorado on the road in back to back weeks here shortly.

We dominate Colorado 33-7.

We get outgained but return a fumble for a TD in the 4th to beat Kansas 20-17.

We get and Int and Fumble TD. Give up an Int and Punt Return TD. Win 37-27 at Moontown.

We get an Int TD in a low scoring, low gaining Bowl. SS Teddy Mathews, who has been playing a passable LCB all year, goes out a hero in his likely last game with 2 picks and the Bowl MVP. We win 20-3.


Woot.

Our playoff performances don't make a ton of sense to me the last two years. Our HC has a high motivation bar. Something weird like that? We'll turn the year over here shortly.

The pass rushers, Thomas and Blackledge, were 1st Team All Pros.

We franchised SS Matthews. Not sure I'll be able to pull the trigger on that trade. We are definitely hoping QB Weber doesn't sign in FA1 and we have a chance to get him in FA2. He is a 33/33 guy. Magical playoff powers but still, there's a chance he can't get a job asking for $15m/yr.

Same thing with CB Owens. WE like him. He's done fun things for us. But he's a 46/46 CB.

DE Blackledge is going into his walk year. We'll have to look at that.

Heh, good catch. Something tells me the in game print outputs haven't been looked at in awhile. Getting the job done well enough for us so far at least.

FA1/Draft

Should we move on from DE Blackledge? G Doug Shepard is still showing as a 60/60 guy. He's been our Offensive Captain for the last 4 seasons despite not being our Offensive Line Leader. He's heading into year 11 and the last year of a contract that makes him our third highest paid player. DE Blackledge has been our Defensive Captain for the last 4 years as well. And he's never been a leader. It's a different mechanism I know. We almost definitely should move on from Shepard.

We need a QB. There's not much out there. There are 3 starter quality guys in the draft class. They're the top 3 rated guys so fat chance one of them slides to 1.32. Might be time to trade up into the teens or something though if Weber signs.

There's really not much to do in FA1. SS Matthews is not asking for the sun and moon on a contract. I think we'll hold him through the draft and see how things play out. We can cut/trade if we feel good about our depth. We can keep if we end up moving other pieces to clear the way for something real. Maybe we can extend too.

Buddy Weber is not one of the six QBs that make the Grey Sheet. Disrespect. Old friend Marlon Pyatt is though. He's thrown 49 career passes and wants to sign in stage 6.

...

Weber doesn't sign.. :popcorn:

The three draft QBs go off the board in the first six picks. So much for that.


We lost our LT Ellison this offseason. (He was playing RT mostly, but still.) We're lucky to get a guy who might actually be a long term LT option for us. This was a little overkill on the mid/late courtesy picks we've built up. You can get a pretty good sense for my excitement level based on where guys went relative to the kicker.

FA2/Camp

Our boy Weber is asking for $3.5m/yr on a 3 year deal in FA2. Man. This might be a Buddy Weber career after all.

We have no holdouts.

We're able to extend T Sean Flowers that doesn't impact his cap this year and adds three years after this at $11m/yr. I think that makes sense for us.

We do what has to be done and cut G Shepard. We then get a little stupid and just won't quite SS Ted Matthews. He was one of our first picks in this thing. He just won the Bowl MVP. We don't have that Belichick gene y'all. This Matthews contract will be debacle next year when it jumps up to $12.5/yr. It's also very likely a ticket out of town for DE Blackledge. We're going to have some turnover.

Adding as many guys as we did in the draft doesn't make sense to do in the future. UDRs are at least on short, no/low bonus contracts. Our late picks are kind of cloggers when every dollar counts.

Being sentimental this year is definitely going to end up costing us in the future.

But the boys are back. QB Weber re-ups on a $11m/3yr deal. We're even able to get our stud punter back for peanuts in FA2.

We're really young on the OL, but we've got no holdout shenanigans. We seem to be as good as any team we've had.

Beats me really. Bye week, great. There's some horrendous shit on the card here though. I don't really know what happened to the defense. I would have bet heavily that this team would rush the passer well at least. We were so very bad against the pass this year. It's honestly about as minimal a set of core changes that you could make from one year to the next.

We win in the divisional round, 34-17 against Kansas but still give up a ton of yards.

We finally get what we deserve and fall to the Chits in Chesapeake. 30-23 in a game where we allow over 500 yards.

Chesapeake beats Tucker in the Bowl in a rout, 37-6.

WR Donnie Farmer and DE Blackledge are 2nd Team All Pros.

We'll have to go back and check everything. The offense is a house of cards, and we're throwing the ball 45 times a game in a Smashmouth offense just to kind of see if we can. So I get that we're right on the edge of turning to crap there.

The defense is loaded though. I clearly screwed something up.

HAN is my worst nightmare even in this parallel universe!

We franchised Blackledge, but I don't think there's a bizarre path to keeping him like we've executed a few times.

Sure, sure, we're giving ourselves nightmares in this one too.

FA1/Draft

There are two non-stud QBs that I like a little bit in this draft. They're both affinity fits. (Yeah, I said it.) One is the 5th highest quarterback grade and the other is the 8th. We're going to get one or both of these guys. They look like just the kind of 45-rated losers we can dust up into champions with some dance and voice lessons.

Weber can mentor or something. One more year of Weber? We lost our O-Coordinator this offseason. So we're moving from a really poorly cast Smashmouth setup to the Balanced attack of our new OC Deandre Hopkins. (Correct.) I'm convinced almost anything is possible with Deandre. Strides on the O-Line will help as well.

It's a weird side effect of signing our longsnapper to the monster cap hit contract each year, but we're a perennial bottom 3 team in the staff draft. Our stadium situation also isn't that great, so profitability is pretty marginal even in these last few successful years. Hopkins is solid as an OC, with good development bars. But he's not a stud with everything you'd want.


This draft ends up feeling like an old school SP draft. We remade the receiving corps in about three minutes here. T Glen Horner is going to be good as well. Both QBs we had targeted are still there at the end of the 4th. We planned to nab both of them, but the other guy, QB Derek Sanford, goes in front of us in the 5th to Williamsburg. Sanford looks to be the more polished passer.

The guy we got, Dominic Ellis, ran a 4.48, has a big scramble bar, and looks like he'll just be fun to see what happens with in this offense. I don't see big bars in his future, but his combines and the big scramble bar jumped out. He'll either bring a completely different element to what we're doing or sink us with a million fumbles.