Quote:
Originally Posted by TheseBoots
Congratulations on making the playoffs, MIJB, but that injury to Singleton is brutal! Can you switch to a run-based game around your backup, or will you just air out and let the dice roll how they do? Seems tricky when one of your big strengths is the passing game.
From reading your reports and watching some of the videos out there it's clear that Gothenburg are an absolutely brutal winning machine with insane consistency. What's the secret to their success do you think? Anyway, I'm hoping for a season where you take the division in the near future =)
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Thanks. Despite our history and tradition, it's only the 3rd time in the last 20 seasons we made the playoffs, but somehow I think this team is less deserving than we've been half of the 17 seasons we didn't make it. I do think we're a playoff caliber team, with Singleton that is.
Interesting questions. I tend not to want to go too much into detail, some of the competition in IHOF reads along and it could give them more of an advantage over me than vice versa. But I'll nevertheless try to elaborate a bit.
I think Singleton (as is his stand-in Tanner) is such a powerful scrambling QB that he makes for an additional running threat and somewhat turns the balanced offense into more running than passing anyway. The OC is run-oriented (Smashmouth type), but I'm always wary for overdoing things and know my biggest shorting coming: game planning. It's not my thing and all I know is I'm barely better at it than the seemingly completely random AI. Missing our center also makes it unrealistic to shift to heavy running, that's a crucial position for a good running game. It's not surprising our running game has been below our standards over the last couple of games. Tanner is a unexperienced version of Singleton, in theory Tanner should be able to play like Singleton did as a rookie.
The current owner of the Gothenburg franchise (Julio Riddols) no doubt is the reason why Gothenburg thrives and has turned the European division from Maassluis dominated to Gothenburg dominated. He seems to have game planning figured out and makes the difference there between our two franchises, whereas I somehow have lost a step in that area while the average level of game planning in IHOF has clearly increased.
Julio Riddols more so than me gets the best out of limited players, in part because (I think) he takes the time to craft and redo his game plans during the season, almost from game to game. That's something I feel like I'm too limited in to understand game mechanisms enough to make it work for me. It can do wonders to check on opposing teams' tendencies to do crazy stuff like running a lot out of a 104 formation, which then becomes very easy to counter, but you'll have to be 100% convinced your opponent does it all the time. I think he's capable of doing that as well.
I'm sure we'll win a division at some point again. Becoming the third franchise with 1000 regular season wins is a realistic goal for the 2113 and 2114 season, we're at 980 now. And it's a challenging one as well, because the Kansas Creationists (and predecors) have caught up and are at 981 wins now. Although it's a bit of a silly comparison, because we're only 1 of 4 franchises that had the same ownership since the beginning and 2 of them are lightyears ahead of us, and the fourth even further behind us than we're behind Tucker and Chesapeake. Fairbanks has the same owner since opening day 2004 as well, but that owner switched placed with non-playing commissioner for a short period of time.