[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: Lock 'em up!
It's that time of season: pre selecting the 2090 roster.

Alright, we haven't even started the 2089 season, but it's in good Merchantmen tradition to try to lock up as many players of the potential 53-men roster as possible for the next off-season. As such, the likes of FB Clay Brosseau, TE Tyler Kotz, LT Myron Hamilton, DE Archie Exner, CB/PR Clarence Blackwell and LS Timothy Biegen got extensions. Most are now signed through the 2091 season, Kotz signed only a 2-year deal (he's our fourth best TE, might not even play a down this upcoming season), Exner got locked up for 4 seasons for $40M over that timespan. Some of them might be easy targets as free agents, but I'd rather have them signed and lose some cap space by cutting than losing out on a slightly better replacement and losing the guy that is familiar with the team facilities.

That leaves one player not yet signed for next season: DE Gene Kondovski. He's a little bit undersized, but this guy feels like the kind of defensive end we love to put on the field. Excellent pass rush technique, very good run defense and play diagnosis and at least some pass rush strength. The new Daquan Strugielski? Probably not, but with the support cast around him, he can excel. Or we'll just rotate between him, Exner, Andy Russel and Tony Whiting, which is what we did last season. Kondovski's meager 3.0 sacks was the lowest of this quartet. He's in the last year of his third round rookie contract, looking for a (for his skill set) reasonable $48.7M over 3 years. We have the cap space (or close to), so we'll go and make him an offer that will be lower on this year's salary, much higher on the bonus money, clearly higher overall and just enough to stay exactly under the cap.

Extending Kondovski will also put us over the cap next season, but only by $19M or so, which is (aside from this off-season), a very safe zone for the Merchantmen. Without retirements, it would put us at 52 players signed, 1 restricted free agent (LB Wentz) and 10 draft picks to work with due to the additional 1st, 2nd and 5th round picks from the Hanalei Dragons. Who seem to be reloaded pretty quickly, having signed veteran QB Alvin Engelberger as a free agent (my staff sees him as the 5th best quarterback in the game). This might end up being a low 1st rounder, as is per usual for the Dragons, usually. Why didn't we go for Engelberger? He's signed for a hefty $35M salary and a $40M bonus each of this and next season.

Is that 53-men roster set in stone after re-signing Kondovski? Never say never. We have a couple of players that are still options to cap out their contract if needed. I'd rather not to, because now is the perfect example of a season where we want to spent ever $10K of cap space to have more room to renegotiate with the locked up players next off-season.

Another decision I made was to activate Francisco Farley for the last two pre-season games. He'll be splitting the playing time with Brandon Bell there. We don't have to see anymore from Moe Sheldon, we know he's a .500 land quality quarterback, with this offense should be good enough to push us back into the division title race.

We're going to not tweak too much with the game plan of the first two games. The pass/run split has been as close as 50/50 as it can get. FB Brosseau was on the field on just over half of the running plays and about a third of passing plays, that's progress from recent seasons. On a lower level, our run blocking tight ends Blake and Crawford have been on the field occasionally on running plays and a handful of passing plays. The carries split for running backs is a complete clusterfuck in pre-season, backup Szproluk saw the most activity in the first game. Patter and Thong' had promising ypc figures, almost exclusively playing from behind our projected starters on the offensive line (with G Thiesen getting the nod here, G Watson will play in the second couple of games).

And with that, it's on to those second two pre-season games. First one at the Colorado Cutthroats and next up at home against the Arizona Miners. The latter will be visiting without Ellis McAlister, he didn't get a new contract there. In fact, McAlister is sitting a top the free agents pile. Together with Tre Lynn, the Gothenburg Giants starter for the last 13 season, including their winning IHOF Bowl run in the 2083 season and being their starter in the lost bowl game last season. Both are good enough to start for a third of the league's teams, on paper. We're one of them. But most of them have a young guy with the potential to be better than them. Or so they hope, both the player and the team. Had we not re-signed Sheldon, either Lynn or McAlister would be a suitable alternative.

Oh yeah, those last two pre-season games. We'll have to see what happens there. And then it's on to opening day against the Gothenburg Giants, in Oranje Haven. It'll be interesting to see which quarterback they will bring in as their starter. And many other new faces, that's for sure.