[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: It's over
The season of disaster is finally over.

We ended it in style, with a serious 27-10 drubbing in our own house by the hands of the Gothenburg Giants. They spared us in the fourth quarter, otherwise this season would have turned into the worst ever. Now, it ended up being tied for worst. Yeah, I measure this by points scored and allowed margin. -81 over 16 games: disgusting. Previous time we did that was in 2021. Since the 2029 season, we've had 3 seasons with a negative points differential: -24 in 2063, -73 in 2088 and -81 in 2090 (this season).

Division Standings
1. Gothenburg 12-4*
2. Paris 7-9
3. Maassluis 6-10
4. Bordeaux 4-12
* #1 seed

I should be flabbergasted, which I actually am mentally, but that's mostly because of other events in my life. Still, the contrast between what actually felt like a team that was built and ready to make a playoffs run and turns out to be the worst I've ever put on the field, that contrast is surreal. Some day I'll look back on this season and wonder what the bleep went wrong here.

Quarterback situation
Going into the season, I felt very strongly about Moe Sheldon being the guy. One of the "most careful quarterbacks", this should work out well. Yes, he's more prone to get sacked, but we have the OL to protect him. After 10 games and a 4-6 record, I was done with Sheldon. He had just 4 games over 200 yards with 9 interceptions. We had lost 3 games we really shouldn't have.

So, back to Brandon Bell it was. After a 1-2 record, I was ready to write him off, he actually posted another win (I kept him in because I feared Sheldon would not do weel with our left tackle Nathan Hadinger out), but the win did not convince me.

Last two games, back to Sheldon. He sucked, terribly. Gothenburg kept him to 66 yards, while Colorado picked him off 2 more times.

Okay, there are two possibilities: the game plan, initiated by me, but designed by my staff, it sucked. Number two: both quarterbacks just don't gel with the game plan at hand.

I'm throwing the second one away. Looking at our running game, it was good, but far from spectacular. We have a strong expensive line, excellent cohesion, running backs with hole recognition. Francisco Patter got a lot of third down carries, which can be bad for the yards per carry (it was 3.66) figure, he converted 16 of 31 attempts, which is acceptable on an average running game, but not on this team. This personnel should have done better than this. Reggie Thongchanh got few third down carries and managed to average 4.67 yards per carry. It's better than one would want from a change of pace back, but in this setting, it has to be 5.0 at minimum to be considered a success. Moreover, they combined for 4 touchdowns of 43 red zone carries. Perhaps we ran too little once we got downfield?

Now, that offensive line. The running game was not what we hoped and expected for.: 9th in yards per game, 17th in yards per carry. Our pass rush percentage allowed was 2nd best in the league, but once our pocket was invaded, the number of sacks was very high, we were 18th in avoiding sacks. Not sure what to make of that, really. It feels weird to see those two together.

Our passing game overall was abmysal. We were 31st in passing yards, which in a way can be explained by being tied for 27th in pass attempts, but our yards per catch (29th) and yards per attempt (24th with a 5.77 figure) are simply unacceptable with a top five wide receiver on the team. Unacceptable, period. Theodore Bondy tied for 3rd most receptions, was 9th in receiving yards, but medicro in touchdowns. Our WR2 Branden Sandlin had 32 receptions (on 447 pass plays), our rookie tight end Clay Gaynor 37 receptions (531 pass plays), our WR3 Harris Wilkerson 46 receptions (280 pass plays).

The defense? The run defense clearly improved down the stretch of the season and we finished with a near league average 4.17 yards per carry allowed. We tied for 22nd in least rushing yards allowed. Teams ran a lot against us, so that's an acceptable number.

In contrast, teams surprisingly decided to not throw the ball against us, we had a league low of 552 pass attempts against us. Sadly our clearly better than average pass defense personnel played way below league average, allowing 24th best yards per pass attempt. All that despite that we had the 2nd highest pass rush percentage, which generated the 4th highest sack percentage.

Now the crucial downs and ends of the field. We were the worst red zone offense, scoring just 3.8 points per visit. Our third down conversion rate was slightly below league average, but with a 5th best yards to go figure, that's just not good enough, you have to be above average if you're usually in a better spot to get there.

Defensively, the yards to go on third downs was very even across the league, surprisingly. The difference between league average and league worst was marginal (an extreme example: Gothenburg was 3rd in third down conversions, but 32nd in to go yardage). Our red zone defense was close to league worst.

One thing we really excelled in was generating turnovers, and not in a good way. We ranked 5th in most giveaways, most notably with an incredibly uncharacteristic high number of fumbles lost. Thongchanh fumbled 8 times, I thought this guy was extremely steady, his total of 12 in 5 prior seasons was convincing to me, punt return duties can apparently do that to a player? Sheldon fumbled 5 times, which is about on par for him. Patter fumbled 4 times, acceptable numbers to me.


Season in a nutshell? Perhaps. It was for the most part a frustrating season. I think we pissed away (excuse my language, okay, not really, otherwise I would have written something else here) at least 3 games that were lining up to be smooth victories. Combine that with two of the biggest blowouts in 87 seasons of team history, it makes clear that we were very capable of making things go from bad to worse unnecessarily on a very consistent level. Had we improved those 5 games though, we still would have ended up as a 9-7 team with a very negative points differential, but actually sneaking into the playoffs. So it goes? It seems unfair to not at least in part credit the opponents for their efforts, but I'm talking about games where we visibly dominated and purely lost on turnovers.

So, 2091? We're lining up to be in a terrible, but manageable cap situation of roughly $70M over the cap. We've 'earned' the #9 overall draft pick.

What about our rookies and other promising youngester?

TE Clay Gaynor (pick 1.17) had 37 receptions for 335 yards and 1 touchdown, contributing with 3 key run blocks. He was basically on the field for us on all downs, but didn't visibly do much to improve either the passing game or running game. Our staff does say he improved roughly 12 points on the 1-100 scale in overall ability, which is acceptable for a player of his supposed caliber.

WR George Stuckey (2.18) and WR Trey Samuels (5.17) were inactive all season long. Their lack of current ability, combined with lack of special teams skills and lack of a mentor made it seemingly pointless to put them on our active roster. In retrospect, Stuckey might deserve to get another look next season, while Samuels will obviously stick around, because, you know, you can't really know much about a young player until after his third training camp (I should keep on remembering that!).

G Marvin Silvan (undrafted) was activated early in the season to be part of our special teams unit. He actually got some action there in 11 games. He did not improve according to our staff.

K Mark Giles (2.20) converted 35 of 38 field goals and 18 of 19 extra points. (Yes, we had only 19 PAT attempts, how depressing is that!?) The staff claims he improved into being "fully developed" and is a top5 kicker.

LB Brant Rayburn (undrafted) was kept inactive all season long. By the time I felt he deserved to get a spot on the active roster to give him some chance to improve, he picked up a viral infection to side line him for several weeks and as a result he remained inactive.

LB Brandon Brady (1.19) improved to being almost fully developed, getting a +18 by the staff. On the field, he actually lead the team with 101 tackles. He was mostly kept in pass defense short zone coverage, which is probably why he ranked 2nd on the team in most catches allowed. He made 2 interceptions, which shockingly was enough to be top 3 on the team.

CB Adam Harmon (undrafted) was active in the first four games, but after Ted Frias got hurt, we activate Jessie McNeil and when Frias was ready to step back in, I decided to deactivate Harmon, hoping McNeil would help boost the pass defense. Harmon didn't play much on the defense though, he was mainly a special teamer. He didn't make much progress according to the staff.

S Chuck Murray (undrafted) was on our active roster all season long and on the field about 40% of the time. He made little progress, said the staff.

S Jon Brotzman (undrafted) was active all season long, but the staff for dubious reasons felt he wasn't ready to see a lot of action. All that despite that they consider him to be one of our best special teamers. Hard to understand, but that's what your coaching staff can do at times. Consequently, he made little progress.

Other young players:
QB Brandon Bell (2nd year, 1.13 pick) made hardly any progress. A huge bummer, as he got 4 more starts to prove himself and being mentored by Moe Sheldon should have helped him. But no. In limited action, his production was shockingly bad compared to last season's stats.

WR Harris Wilkerson (2nd year, 7.9 pick) became our WR3, somehow got more catches than our WR2 branden Sandlin, but despite his activity didn't make much progress. His production was acceptable.

DT Darien Fletcher (2nd year, 1.9 pick) is the kind of player that from day 1 already presented himself as a grizzled veteran and it feels weird to mention him here. He will probably get All IHOF first team honors for the second time in his short career. With 61 tackles, 23 assists and 7.5 sacks, 18 hurries his numbers were up compared to last season. By fear of exhaustion, we actually toned down his overall activity late in the season, but I think it didn't hurt his productivity at all.

CB Ted Frias (3rd year, undrafted) made some minor progress according to the staff, despite that they told me going into the regular season that he has no room for improvement anymore. He played about half the time, in part because of missing 4 games.


So, what next? We'll watch the playoffs from home and take a look at the bargain bin of free agents to see if we can find some 1st through 3rd year players who are worth a look in pre-season next season, I can think of a couple of players (and the loyal readers of my ramblings must know some of them *caugh* Ruben Caminiti *caugh*). And think hard, really hard about what to do with our complete incompetence in making an in my opinion very good team actually play up to their ability.

We've gotten over the hump of the late '10s to early '20s, but that's so long ago... Football in the IHOF has changed, and apparently we haven't found our position in this new era of football yet. I thought a run heavy offense would work. It doesn't, the staff doesn't even listen to me when I tell them to run it anyway. So yeah, back to the balanced plan, but finding plays that can actually work. yeah, good luck with that...

But, there's still hope. Yes, it's still there. But I really have to go work for it, hopefully figuring out how and when the right moment appears...