[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: And... it's gone.
2098? Nope. On to 2099.

With 6 regular season games still to be played, we've already been eliminated from contention for the playoffs. We've been unable to put up a fight against the toughest schedule in the league of all 32 teams. We actually won 34-20 in Orlando in week 10, but an all remaining hopes crushing 20-6 defeat by the hands of the Gothenburg Giants in our own Oranje Haven ended all dreams of the impossible comeback.

First of all, our staff didn't learn from our 3-touchdown lead collaps against the Bordeaux Vineyards. After taking a 31-3 lead in Orlando, it was decided to bench Earnest Ashley (after completing 15 of 22 passes for 204 yards) and actually giving the Talons a chance to come back into the game, which they did. Their comeback stopped at 34-20, resulting in our first victory of the season, ending our streak at 8 losses.

With some renewed confidence, we went into the home game against undefeated Gothenburg. And for about 15 minutes we played along. From there on, Earnest Ashley's inability to find his receivers returned. We gave him the liberty to run with the ball (and doing much better with it than he did in Orlando), outgaining Bert Ta'Amu 54 yards to 28 yards with 16 carries each. I'm not sure it's a good idea to give Ashley 15 carries per game consistently, I was actually going to call the experiment a failure in Orlando already, but it was worth a shot to be tricky against Gothenburg. It wasn't to be though.

European Division:
1. Gothenburg 10-0
2. Bordeaux 7-3
3. Paris 7-3
4. Maassluis 1-9

We're not yet locked in fourth place, an incredible comeback to 7-9 with Paris starting to lose games outside the division (they are 1-3 inside it) will actually bring us to 3rd place. We'd still end up losing tie-breakers to the 2nd place team in the Deep South, which will be 7-9 at worst with a superior conference record. Alas.

We're not giving up hope though, we have a lot to learn from this team still. We get some tough competition still, odds are we'll finish the season with a strength of schedule way north of .600, it's not impossible to see it end up being near .666... It's currently at .675. Had we gone 10-0, we'd still have faced the tied toughest schedule. But it won't stop us from trying to please our fans. We'll going to want a sold out house in our remaining home games and try to win all three of them. That sole win so far was in Florida.

Not to mention that I really want no piece of those expensive top picks. Maybe if we can trade down, we can afford it, but y'all know me way too well: we'll go down fightin', trying to save face until the very end, working hard, even when it's all over. Because there's always next season and going into new journeys with rebuilt confidence is worth a lot.

We'll have a chance to play spoiler to a lot of teams that we have some beef with. And we can start with the very next game, at home against the Oakland Black Panthers and Douglas Grosz, who appears to be on a down season. Yes, that kid that I traded away after we failed to select Tristan Powell when we were supposed to.

We won our last division title that 2091 season, followed up with a well deserved good season in 2092, but after that, the drought has begun. This season is already our worst in that stretch though, as we haven been worse than 7-9 in that timespan. We went 6-10 in 2090, next worst was a 5-11 record in the 2030 season. And next worst after that? The inaugural 1-15 campaign in 2004, our only season with less than 5 wins. These 53 guys on roster can't be thinking they want to go into the history books as the worst or second worst Merchantmen team ever, can they?

So, chests forward, chins up. The playoffs are out of sight, but the season isn't over at all.