[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: 2098 is over, almost...
I mean, 12 teams are still hopeful to win IHOF Bowl XCV.

The second worst season in Merchantmen history has been achieved by Earnest Ashley and crew. With a 4-11-1 record, only the 2004 team of then rookie Fumblin' Justin McDavid with a 1-15 campaign was worse. Or maybe we should dub this the worst ever after all. With 265 points scored and 370 allowed, the -105 is by far the worst points differential by any Merchantmen team. The previous worst was set at -81 in 2021 (a 5-11 campaign) and equalized in 2090 (a 6-10 campaign).

If you've done the math, or checked for the scores, you'll see that we split the last two home games at 1 win and 1 loss.

We tried to put up a fight with the wild card hopeful Colorado Cutthroats, actually managing to take a 14-10 lead early in the fourth quarter, but at that point we had one good drive and our first touchdown came on a 61-yard fumble return, seeing 291 pounds Harold Gough score. Aside from that good drive, Earnest Ashley struggled mightily to find his receivers: Vinny Buysse had 2 catches on 12 targets, Clay Gaynor 3 on 10 and George Stuckey 4 on 12. It's fair to say that we needed to win the turnover battle to make up forgetting outplayed.

The Paris Musketeers had already clinched the top wild card when they came to town, but as they decided to not rest their stars, we may have put a dent in their confidence. Although he didn't get as much carries as in prior games, we held Offensive Player of the Year bound Chandler Ferguson to 62 yards rushing with a 3.26 average per carry. Ferguson finished the regular season with 2,525 yards rushing. The last time a player ran for 2,000+ was in 2086, while 2,555 was the league leading figure of Tucker Tigers' DeAndre Dahl in 2077.

Ferguson had a chance to get this game into overtime, but our defense stopped him on a two-point conversion attempt as we were defending a 22-20 lead. Our red zone offense struggled, Earnest Ashley ran for the only touchdown of the game for us, but successfully kicking 5 field goals added up to a just big enough lead to force that two-point attempt and secure victory with that stop. Rookie Vinny Buysse had 6 catches for 123 yards, helping Ashley into a season high for 60 minutes of 333 passing yards. Yes, he threw for 337 yards in the overtime tie at Bordeaux.

Final European Division standings:
1. Gothenburg 14-2
2. Paris 11-5
3. Bordeaux 8-7-1
4. Maassluis 4-11-1

Gothenburg goes into the playoffs as the #1 team in the league, Paris missed their chance to have the second best record in the conference, but were locked into the AOC #5 seed anyway. Bordeaux fell apart in the second half of the season, in particular in "december" with a 0-3-1 record and with that falling 1.5 wins behind the wild card that they had their hands on for roughly 2/3rd of the season. The playoffs will feature only 6 teams with double digits win totals.

I've decided to not go into all the players' and their individual accolades. In short: Earnest Ashley had a down year, his yards per attempt was his worst so far at 5.89, but in particular his passing touchdowns figure of 11 was mindboggling, although he did run for 8 touchdowns to make up for it. We experimented a bit with letting him run with the ball, but he's apparently only capable of it when it's not by play design.

How did our rookies do? Wide receiver Vinny Buysse came close, but was just short of being our leading receiver: he had 50 receptions for 941 yards and 2 touchdowns. Kicker Gino Shea converted 19 of 26 field goal attempts and 26 of 28 extra points. Defensive end Robbie Dobreski was active in only 4 games, recording 2.0 sacks in them. Safety Blaine Wright was inactive all season. Running back Dashawn McIntyre jumped into our special teams unit, was our second kickoff returner and in the last three games we put him a bit in the mix of the backfield rotation, but 23 ball touches says enough: he wasn't heavily featured. Tight end Wendell Borders played in all 16 games, but the plan to feature him in the running game failed, instead he did have 17 receptions. Linebacker Trey Ford was inactive all season. Long snapper Harris Custer was obviously active in all 16 games. Our veteran free agent Bart Hansen played in roughly 1/3rd of the defensive plays, sadly way too much on passing downs, which wasn't as planned at all, as we wanted him exclusively to help stop the run.

So, what does that 4-11-1 record also mean? Yeah, we've "earned" the #3 overall pick in the upcoming 2099 draft. Although the draft class is unknown as of yet, I've got a clear idea of what I want to do here. Then again, if there's a potential phenomenal quarterback out there, why wouldn't we attempt to move up to the 1.1 slot and get him? Just saying, the route to be taken isn't set in stone just yet.

12 teams are still hoping to win the IHOF Bowl this season. 20 postponed their dreams to 2099 and the Maassluis Merchantmen are one of them. A horrendous season, a challenging cap situation to start the off season, but I'm up for the challenge and feel confident that we can make some sort of 180° turn and challenge the Gothenburg Giants for the #1 seed.