[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: Up, Down, Left, Right, But we're still in the race
We've reached week 12 and the European Division has already been decided: the Paris Musketeers will win it with 5 rounds of games remaining. So... How the [bleep] did we get there from our encouraging 3-1 start?

We've bounced around. We ran into a silly loss 38-24 at home to the Atlanta Vipers, responded with a smooth 31-16 win at the Fort Wayne Fury and then got into a three-game losing streak. We lost 38-35 at home against Paris, already basically ending the division title pursuit for us. We then lost 24-19 at the Houston Stallions and followed up with yet another annoyingly underperforming game: a 27-10 loss to the Bordeaux Vineyards. Since then we've regrouped a bit, working ourselves up from last place in the division to sitting in the #7 seed by a weaker common games record than the Orlando Talons. We snuck into beating the Gothenburg Giants 15-12 and Oakland Black Panthers 27-21, both on the road.

European Division:
1. Paris 11-0
2. Maassluis 6-5
3. Bordeaux 5-5-1
4. Gothenburg 4-5-2
Yes, the Gothenburg Giants already tied 2 games. And no, there's nothing European about ties.

We have 5 games remaining on our schedule and frankly, if we're really a playoffs caliber team, we should stand a chance against all five opponents, all have a worse record than ours is, although some just by half a game.

Our quarterback Ellis McAlister has sort of resparkled his magic. He's thrown interceptions in each of the last 5 games, but still went from 7 in 4 games to 12 in 11 games. With 239 yards per game and 17 touchdowns thrown. Progress, huzzah!

Running back Jimmie Feffer has launched himself to the top of the rushing leader board with 107 yards per game and 9 touchdowns in 11 games. At 4.83 yards per carry, he's more than just useful.

Our rookie of the year candidate Theodore Bondy is losing terrain on the Frederick Red Menace lucky charm quarterback Orlando George. With 61 catches for 923 yards and 4 touchdowns, he's having a WR2 worthy season, except that we're already expecting WR1 play from him. Tight end Monty Elliott (647 yards, 5 touchdowns), Dennis Nadell (459 yards, 2 touchdowns) and Artie Blazewicz (418 yards, 2 touchdowns) are clearly not able to carry the offense. But then, Bondy is the real thing, so says my solid staff, we have a player to build our offense around. Or better yet, let him play the kind of role we had J.R. Mills play, but with even more talent than that future hall of famer had. Imagine that.

Elsewhere, I can't by any means be even remotely proud of our defense. 386 yards per game allowed, 3rd worst in the league, with the least takeaways... Our so-called best cornerback in the league has allowed a league 'leading' 58 catches in the first 11 games. Good heavens. Imagine how incredibly bad we would be if we didn't have a very talented bunch of players.

Nevertheless, we're still hanging on, tie-breakers away from the #6 seed. The Solecismic Software playoffs probabilities machine actually ranks us slightly ahead of the Orlando Talons as the 6th likeliest AOC team to make the post-season.

And as an added bonus, if we have no draft pick to improve, we traded our first rounder to the Chesapeake Chitterlings and instead have routing interests against the Outer Banks Ospreys. So far so good, they're sitting at 3-8 in the cellars of the Atlantic Coast division.

Today I opened my Fortune Cookie, it read: "All's going well. The phase of success is here!" So either we're on the brink of another improbable IHOF Bowl run, or it's something else entirely... I think I can live with either, both would be really swell, though.