[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: It's all so quiet...
Yeah, the off-season isn't flashy so far.

First things first.
I made a blunder. A big one.
Okay, not really, I completely misunderstood how player agents work in this world. The plan was to make a big offer to the free agent quarterback Angel Henson, the guy that went #1 overall in the Brandon Bell draft. Bell won the head-to-head game, but currently is enjoying (is he, really?) his retirement. Henson mistakenly ended up in the free agents pool and at to be expected from quite possibly the best quarterback in the league, he wanted big money. In an attempt to make him an offer worth considering, I calculated what we could get available and made him a very serious offer: $205M signing bonus and a $44M salary for each of the next four seasons. The bonus is the highest I could offer, the salary was based on the calculation that we'd have about $127M available and need to reserve about $10M to be able to extend Robbie Zinn and Ed Schulz, our most prominent in their prime offensive players. We agreed terms with six expensive players to save cap space this season and even released angry defensive tackle Jumbo Mojica.

All for nothing, as it turned out we offered Henson the contract before we made the other moves. Apparently player agents will turn down 'over the cap' offers before it's time to make a decision. All the moves we made gone to waste, meaning we'll likely end up with a truckload of cap space going to waste, which we could have used to pull forward future contracts into flat ones. Henson ended up signing with his own team Frederick Red Menace for $146M/year over 3 years. No, we could not have made that work under the $524M salary cap.

We also missed out on the phenomenal wide receiver Tevin Lester, whom we figured we could still offer about $30M a year to play together with Henson. Yes. he's 34 years old, but he can still play ball. Alas, no team up of these two future Hall of Famers. Kid signed with the Chesapeake Chitterlings. A team that may have their window of opportunity to close for a season or two after their quarterback retired, but given the team's tradition and skilled general manager, I'm sure they'll surprise the league and post a 12-4 campaign anyway.

Instead we re-hired five restricted free agents: kick holder and nothing but a kick holder Jon Giles, special teamer and nothing but a special teamer Jose Meadows, fourth string tight end Ike Nixon, because we need a backup cornerback Britt Hudson and we have no idea how good this guard Vince Henselman can be.

Oh yeah, the draft kicked off and instead of trading out of the first round, we grabbed the highest graded guard of the class Nickolas Toler. Undersized, not one of the 10 best graded players in this class, but we have a looming hole at on our offensive line and he might be good enough to fill it. But the #12 overall pick on a guard, he'd better be as good as Ricky Castillo was in the 2030's, the best guard to ever play for the Merchantmen, in my opinion, and quite possibly the one player I think was snubbed for Hall of Fame honors, this kid carried the running game back in the day, even more than left tackle Kerry Zumdahl did, who did get enshrined. It was truly a tough decision to trade Castillo and Zumdahl to our biggest rival back in the day and to see them collect 3 IHOF Bowl rings each as body guards of the greatest of all: Jackie Collier. Our tiny little victory was in 2039 when we actually beat them en route to our first and lost IHOF Bowl.

Okay, so, what now? We have $132M in cap space. Yes, you're reading that correctly: $132M in cap space. Even after the consideration of draft picks, we'll still have $100M of unused cap space. Which means we'll get a chance to spend about $50M on the players that need a new deal to avoid seeing them run off as free agents. And still leaving us with $50M to spend on free agents. Which we direly need, because we have 48 players signed and 9 incoming draft picks. So we have $50M to spend on 3 free agents to add up to the 60 men pre-season roster.

We've currently got offers out on two long snappers, a guard who can mentor Toler and Henselman and a punter. Yes, we're trying to bring 3 punters into training camp. But I can assure you, I will offer some serious contracts to a handful of interesting players that currently have no idea they're on our radar. We hope to hear good news soon about some of them signing with us.

And from there on, it's back to draft goggles, a triplet of third round picks, and a bunch of later rounders to round out the roster, or to jump ahead of the undrafted rookie free agent pool. Which we have no business looking at with our crappy defensive coordinator and disastrous offensive coordinator. In terms of scouting, that is.

Enough rambling, chin up, glace ahead to what the future will bring us. No wait, what we will get ourselves in that future. It takes effort to make things happen, so let's make that effort. 2095 was just a setback, 2096 will be better, a new chance to tighten the gap to the Gothenburg Giants and reclaim what once was ours: the top spot in the European Division.