[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: Alive and kicking, sort of
Yeah, these are strange times.

Let's focus on the football for a bit, league has been on a bit of an hiatus, but I hadn't taken the time to report on our week 13 game. Well, we sucked, monkey balls.

The defense generated 3 interceptions, we needed all of them to avoid the biggest loss in team history. The Orlando Talons crushed us 52-14, with 589 yards versus 141 yards not far from the result we deserved.

I mean, there was nothing that looked even remotely up to Merchantmen standards. Moe Sheldon completed 7 of 19 pass attempts, got picked off 3 times. The staff even decided to throw Francisco Farley into the lions pit and he got eaten alive, completing 1 of 9 with 1 picked off pass. Our anchor Theo Bondy was near invisible. Targeted just 11 times, gained a grand total of 40 yards. Our running game was unrecognizable, Thong' got 37 yards on 17 carries.

At the same time, the defense was unacceptably terrible. Nothing remotely close to what this collective of players are capable of. Just, totally horrible. Extremely bad. I'm really at loss here, have no words for it. Mindboggling.

Besides all that, we're still just 2 games and tie-breakers behind the division leaders. How absurd is that?

European division:
1. Gothenburg 6-6
2. Paris 6-6
3. Bordeaux 6-6
4. Maassluis 4-8

So yeah, we're still alive and kicking, although it feels more like we're just squealing. I do realize that our tie-breaker situation is still salvageable. We need to beat Gothenburg and Bordeaux to stay in the race and as such will always have tie-breakers over Bordeaux. To get tie-breakers over Gothenburg, we need them to fall to Paris as well, which will basically also require us to see Bordeaux beat Paris, which could create a four-way tie. If we somehow make up the additional loss. If we do though with the given scenario where all four win 3 divisional games, Paris and Maassluis will have common games tie-breakers over Gothenburg and Bordeaux, with Paris then holding us back on conference record. So yeah, we need to get at least 1/2 a win ahead of Paris. And if Paris falls to both Gothenburg and Bordeaux, we'll need Gothenburg to fall at least 1/2 a win behind us as well.

Alive and thrashing around, yeah, that's where we're at.