[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: 2102 a season to forget
Or a season to learn from?

The season is done. We put up a fight in week 17 against the Gothenburg Giants, but in the fourth quarter, we let the victory slip through our hands. Or more literary, on fourth and ten, Earnest Ashley get sacked, fumbles and the game ends there, as his Gothenburg counterpart Mercury Pierce can knee drop to victory, showing Ashley once again what Pierce and his team can do: reach the playoffs.

But Pierce and company needed to air it out the way Ashley did, proven by the top of the list of yards per reception, which is flooded with not just the three Merchantmen wide receivers all in the top 3 in the league, but also with 4 Giants in the top20, with their two tight ends actually dropping out of the top10 after an underwhelming performance today.

But at the dn of the day, it were the Giants winning 34-27, scoring 17 unanswered points in the last 10 minutes of the game. As a result, they pick up the second and last wild card in the Atlantic Ocean Conference. And their next stop will be in Paris, as the Musketeers choked a bye week by losing 15-9 at the Bordeaux Vineyards in a touchdown free game. It has become quite the tradition for a European wild card team requiring to visit the division champion in the wild card round.

European Division standings:
1. Paris 11-5
2. Gothenburg 10-6
3. Bordeaux 9-7
4. Maassluis 4-12

Ramble rant warning!

4-12. This is the second worst win/loss record in franchise history, doing even worse than the 2098 team that went 4-11-1 and only the 2004 team had a bigger claim to infame with a 1-15 record. But things are worse if you're looking at the point scored and allowed differential: -122 is a new all time low, beating the previous low of -105 set by the aforementioned 2098 team.

Browsing through our team roster, there are few players that actually were on our team in both that dreadful 2098 campaign and the today finished regular season. The list has 11 names of players that went through both disaster seasons. Linebacker Trey Ford wasn't to blame in 2098, we kept him inactive all season long. That also applies to then also rookie safety Blaine Wright and to a lesser degree for defensive end Robbie Dobreski, active in only 4 games that season. Fullback Owen Johnston played in only 2 games back then, but this season he was a member of our special team unit. But 7 players can't get away with their name being associated with both -100 seasons. Safety Devon Farrell can at least claim that he was also on the last playoffs making Merchantmen team, with 4 playoffs games played he's the only one on the team having seen post-season action in orange-white-and-blue of today's roster. Leaves 6 guys to give more blame to: cornerback Zachery Weisz, defensive tackle Harold Gough, fullback Damien Wanamaker, wide receiver Ed Schulz, wide receiver Vinny Buysse and quarterback Ernest Ashley.

As a mid first round pick, Ed Schulz hasn't been a real disappointment, being the third most productive receiver of his class, despite being taken as the sixth highest wide receiver and also behind a tight end. 2098 rookie Vinny Buysse is by far the most productive receiver of his class, baring in mind that he also got a lot more targets than his peers, but still not bad fo the fourth highest taken wide receiver. Nobody is going to blame a fourth round fullback (Wanamaker), a third down rushing downs defensive end (Gough) or a third round nickelback (Weisz), which means all eyes are on that one guy that's called the quarterback: Earnest Ashley.

Ashley kind of revitalized his career this season, posting his third 4,000-yard season after coming short of that 6 seasons straight. With just 49.2 percent of his passes completed, he lived up to his 50/50 reputation, but with 6.97 yards per pass attempt and 15 interceptions in 587 attempts, it wasn't all bad. He was struggling a bit behind a young inexperienced offensive line, getting sacked 44 times, but that wasn't all that far of the mark of 37 in the previous two seasons behind an overpaid underperforming quintet. His left tackle Johnnie Houston has finished the regular season without finding a job elsewhere, but tackle Isaac Delgado (starter for 3-12-1 Atlanta), guard Nickolas Toler (starting for Paris), guard Roger Staigvil (backup for 7-8-1 Outer Banks) and Robbie Zinn (initially starting for 5-11 Harlem, but currently riding the bench) did.

It raises the question once again: what to to with Earnest Ashley? Next season we'll be spending $30.12M of cap space on bonus money for him and the same figure applies for the 2104 season. His base salaries of $40M and $45M are market value for a playoffs making quarterback, but after 9 seasons he's brought us 59 victories and 81 losses, with 1 tie to mix it up. More importantly, only twice did we come within 2 games of the division champion and both times we finished the season with an 8-8 record. In 2099 a win in week 17 would have gotten us to the division title on tie-breakers over Paris and Bordeaux. We lost 23-3 in Gothenburg, Ashley threw for 160 yards on 40 attempts, we got outgained 466 to 183 yards. Nope, we were not worthy and sadly enough that was the best season with him, on an offense that was already loaded with then rookies Calvin Maxwell and Ken Torphy, Vinny Buysse and Ed Schulz as the other two wide receivers, the offensive line still composed of the five guys I mentioned earlier and with Clarence Gore still our receiving tight end.

Which reminds me, Gore was also on our team this season, but when he showed up, it seemed that he had no memory of every having played together with Ashley, completely unaware of having 409 receptions for 4,621 yards for us. The majority of that production obviously from the hands of Ashley. At least Gore can claim to have played in 4 post-season games for us, just like safety Farrell can.

The good news? In the last bunch of games, not only did we play along with teams that smoothly rolled ito the playoffs, it was almost like our offense was clicking in a way that it hadn't clicked before. Don't get me wrong, Buysse and Maxwell have been second and third in the league in receiving yards, with Torphy third in rushing yards to boost, but it never felt like this offense was actually capable of beating their opponents. Boosted by the #1 defense in points allowed as recently as 2099, this offense has struggled, week in, week out.

Brining us back to the original question: who to blame? Ashley or is there somebody else out there who has been on the team all this time and quite responsible for how our offense operates? Is it time to axe our offensive coordinator, on duty with us since the 2097 season? Has his leeway based on the very first season - a 10-6 record that kept us out of the playoffs by just half a win, a result of chocking with 5 losses in the last 7 games of the regular season - finally vanished? Not quite though, the plan was to replace him in each of the last three off-seasons, but there were no suitable replacements available on the market. But maybe the 2103 off-season will make a difference...

As a result of our dreadful season, we'll be picking #5 overall in the draft. The last time we were supposed to pick this high (the 2101 draft), we had already given the pick to Arizona for the rights of Ken Torphy. Which was during the 2099 draft, when we actually used the #3 pick on Calvin Maxwell. This does mark the third time in 5 off-seasons that we have been bottom5 material, that's something we've never ever done before.

To end my rant of disappointment, missing the playoffs marks our 10th season straight of doing so. We were close twice in that timespan, but most often we were out of the picture a couple of games before the regular season final. It would be nice to snap this streak, as this ties our longest drought earlier set in the 2013-2022 seasons. We bounced back in 2023 with a phenomenal season, with a 12-4 team that actually deserved to get much further than the wild card round loss.

So, maybe in 2103 we'll finally get our rebound. Which will be the 100th season in the existence of the IHOF and with that the Maassluis Merchantmen. Will it be a season just like any other, or a more special one? Hopefully, correction, it will definitely mark the start of a new era for the Merchantmen.