FOF8: Some Holiday Seasons

[MalcPow]

So the new game has been out for a bit now. I feel like I have just enough of a sense for what's in there to start one of these, but I'll make no claims of any expertise with all of the cool new layers of the game. Maybe I can learn a little bit about some of those out here in plain sight, or maybe the flailing and frustrations will be worth a couple chuckles.

The hook here is that it's the holidays. And with no place colder, and no mascot more endowed with anything even resembling festive facial hair... we're going to fire up a career as the Vikings and pay homage to those young, blonde Santas running around the lakes of Minnesota.

I'll hit go on generating 15 years of history and come back to this a bit later. I think there's still some pull for me toward some flavor of a challenge for this career, but I'm not sure what that will mean just yet. Follow along, make suggestions, ask questions, crack jokes, etc. I don't know how long I'll go, but we'll see what happens...

[MalcPow]

So, not sure how I feel about where we ended up here. I like some things about the state of affairs, namely, that this Vikings franchise has been the absolute laughingstock of the league for this career. One playoff appearance in 15 years. The worst historical performance record by a healthy 8 win margin. Basically, a run of utter futility that makes me feel pretty good about our chances to improve, even if I'm still trying to learn the route tree, ideal weights, and BMI ratios while I reach for another fistful of brownies.

Team "Performance"



Here's the roster look at the end of 2030:

Offense



Defense



The basic punchline is we have a lot of young talent. There's a stud QB who was a 1.1 pick a few years ago. There's a star WR the team signed an offseason ago. There's a pretty decent collection of other guys on both sides of the ball, and the bulk of them are entering their primes. We've got a boatload of cap space as well.

Cool situation to walk into, but it's probably set up a little too well. My guess is QB Riddick Prescott is on the cusp of being really dang good, and there are enough other guys here to roll out of bed and make the playoffs very shortly. That sounds fun and all, but well, we're here for knowledge, pain, and suffering (or something).

A couple of these guys have contracts coming up, like 4th year 84/84 RT Norm Word and 4th year 58/58 MLB Francisco Franz. I can see a few ways where we let guys walk and end up with some work to do. We're probably looking at some sort of big trade or something as well. Put your tinfoil immersion hats on to craft a narrative for that one.

[MalcPow]

I think we're going to just roll with this young group and try to find some challenge in a few other quirks.

I think those quirks for now will be:

-All contract renegotiations take place at FA1:1. If we want to extend a guy, we have to do so before the draft, free agency, any ratings movement the next pre-season, etc. It's not that big of a thing, but it's probably when guys are asking the most and your sense of everything else is lowest. And all of the agents we deal with are stubborn negotiators who don't want their clients distracted by contract talks outside of this very small window.

-Much like they do in West Side Story, we really value long snappers. We'll carry our dude with the best snapping ability on a contract that's roughly 20% of the cap. The cap is $248m this season. We're going to sign our guy to a 3 year deal at 50m per year. We'll do this every three years and lock in a round number that serves as a cap crunch.

I'll try to leave it at that for now, just for simplicity's sake. We may very well need some more wacky stuff at some point, but we'll stick with this until we feel the wild whimsy coming on.

[MalcPow]

We're in FA1:1 now, and our big extend decisions are QB Riddick Prescott, RT Norm Word (who we franchised, probably won't do that again), and a good portion of our D-Line.

We extend Prescott, Word, and DE Satterlee. Satterlee doesn't really seem to fit the 43 Over scheme we're running as he's an almost 290 lb end, but he seems pretty athletic based on his combines. We'll roll with it for now.

We've got 30 guys under contract and still have a ton of cap space as we roll into FA1:2. Ducking out for a bit, may think about an even larger cap hit for our snapping crunch gimp.

[Young Drachma]

This will be useful for me. I am tempted to get it, even tho I barely play it when I do. Feel like some of the new features might appeal to me, though. Following along.

[MalcPow]

We went ahead and signed our longsnapping cap destroyer to a ~30% cap deal at $75m per for three years. It just felt right.

We tried to sign one of our free agents back, CB Doug Rutledge, who was our best cover guy back there. He went to Tampa instead. It's a spot we'll have to address at some point.

I think the 30% cap hit is going to add a challenge here. The curse side of having the interesting young team we walked into is that they all pretty quickly want to get paid, and there aren't a lot of older guys looking to take cuts. We'll need to draft well and sign some decent fillers.

I'm moving to the draft next and will post our new guys. I don't think we have to be focused in any particular direction. I'll probably be most interested in adding guys who might have some scheme or specialty fit that the new game mechanics might let us utilize better. We'll see how it goes.

[MalcPow]

Will have some real updates later... just checking in to see if the screenies in the overview post are showing up for anyone else. They look fine on my laptop, but just noticed they're not working on my iPad. Drop a line if you're cruising through here. Thanks.

[MalcPow]

2031 Draft

We've got the 11th pick and we just let things fall to us before really looking over too much. Houston takes a clear stud QB at 1.1, which seems to be a possibility in many draft classes. Not sure exactly how I feel about that, but it might not be a bad thing for leagues to have good QB talent.

1.11



We take the stud-looking TE here. I think with our RB/WR/TE trio we should really be able to run most of our offense through these dudes. I've never really been one of the guys who optimized TE usage in the past, so this will be a cool little side game.

2.10



This is a pretty colossally stupid waste, but I'm kind of hedging against a scenario where Riddick Prescott is too uninterestingly good or something. Lincoln looks like quality value here. Not a superstar, but a guy you can probably win with. He's also a scrambler, which Prescott is decidedly not, and could end up being a fun change of pace if we ever had an injury or some other reason to make a change. We really need a CB. I just didn't see anybody good enough to keep me from going with the Jimmie Lincoln backup plan.

3.9



Martin is the best ILB left on the board. I think what he actually could do is let us move our current SLB Sherman Zimmermann inside to MLB, where I think he'll be pretty darn good. Martin is a little guy at 6'0" 227, and I think we'll have to take a look at his weight training options. He also looks like he can rush the passer. I might try him in the WLB spot and try to utilize some blitzing.

4.8

I went back and forth on a couple guys here. We have obvious holes at CB and on the OL. We are relatively set on the DL right now. But we chose not to extend two guys who will be starters for us, so we know already they won't be back after next season.



We talk ourselves into DT Allen Abram. He may not fit our scheme, and maybe that will be huge. We'll have to see if he can move up or down from a weight standpoint. But, I'm pretty confident this dude will rush the passer. Kind of one dimensional in that way, but I think it's an important dimension. We'll see what kind of production we can get out of him, and if a move to DE after some weight loss makes sense, that's not so bad either.

4.27

Our digression about the DL we're going to lose next year and taking Abram earlier in the 4th leads me to make a really dumb trade. We move DTs Schlesinger and Colacino, both of whom our scout has as 60/60 types, for a 4th and a 7th in this draft. Both are weird weight fits, with Schlesinger as a 272 lber who sees himself as a DE, only he is straight 0 as a pass rusher. Colacino looked more useful but we didn't extend him. He was more of a run defender. I don't know. We'll back into an empty cupboard here somehow...



It frees us up to do... well, nothing of particular note. We need some interior line help. Euhus looks like a guy who will be good enough.

5+

Rnd 5 - Randy Purrington, C, Nevada - Las Vegas
Rnd 6 - Adam Atkins, DT, Texas
Rnd 7 - Dean Fryar, DE, Yale
Rnd 7 - Jake Boddy, DT, South Carolina

Purrington is more interior OL depth, although he may need to start for us. We go all DL after that, and Ivy Leaguer Dean Fryar might see some DE time for us this year.

I feel good about this group as a whole. Spano is going to be a fun weapon. Jimmie Lincoln is a nice backup QB/wacky starter in waiting. The other guys have some real ability, even if they're not well-rounded. Will be fun to try to use them.

[Young Drachma]

That TE does look like he could be a go-getter and not bad value for 11th overall. Interesting to see how these guys pan out for you. Nowhere but up!

[MalcPow]

Yeah, for anyone curious, I'm mostly taking a bars are king approach to drafting so far in this version. I'll look at bar signatures, combines, and I guess weight/height/scheme stuff as a bit more flavor. Going with the big bars seems like a good play though.

[MalcPow]

We do some weight training and position switching stuff as we head through camp.

LB Sherman Zimmerman gets moved from the outside to MLB. He may be our best defender at 55/75 post camp.

DT Allen Abram gets converted to LDE for us and loses some weight down to 288 lbs. I should have probably tracked this better, but I think that ends up being a very significant bump for his skillset. The pass rush abilities must be a bigger part of the DE overall calculation. He comes through at 47/66 after camp.

DE Dean Fryar, our 7th rounder, loses some weight as well. He sits as a very respectable 41/49 and will definitely have a role in our DE rotation.

We signed a couple of undrafted ILBs and converted them to outside roles in Noah Card and Rick Malbrough. I think at least one of them will play a little.

We don't do anything particularly interesting with the playbook. Basically just generate our 200 plays. I'm hoping to play with the actual gameplans a bit, and I'll report as we go if I don't seem to have enough plays to do what we want.

I'll put some Offense/Defense screenies up next and offer a bit more commentary.

[MalcPow]

Offense



So we look pretty good here. QB Riddick Prescott is approaching full development. RB Zach Russell looks pretty good. TE David Spano, our first rounder, is a very manly 42/82 right now. SE Grayson Chellgren is a robust 67/67 and pretty clearly a top end receiving option.

Our LT is old. Other parts of our OL are very young. Norm Word at RT is a complete stud who we should probably try to run behind.

We should have enough continuity in place to not get killed by cohesion problems, but we're going to play some rookies. I think that always tests what might otherwise look like a pretty solid roster.

Defense



We're really young on this side of the ball. SS Darrin Bodell hopefully gives us enough of a cohesion boost in the secondary that we're not a complete disaster. DT Charles Clancy looks nice with a 69/69 rating, but he's a 272 lb DT and he's probably miscast on the outside. We'll see how much the weight matters and ask him to defend the run in the middle with a bunch of rookies in the mix.

MLB Zimmerman and rookie WLB Martin are talented and we'll have to hope that translates. The secondary is shaky.

[MalcPow]

We start out 1-3. It's hard to argue the defense is anything but atrocious. I mean we are ungodly bad so far. I've just been rexing a new defensive GP for each week. We're allowing 33.8 points per game so far. The offense isn't exactly a well-oiled machine, but we seem reasonably efficient. We're getting killed though.

We remain atrocious rolling into the halfway point at 1-7. The defense is still brutal. Rookie C Randy Purrington seems to get consistently beat the hell up based on the participation grades at the bottom of game logs. The offense is fine. We appear to be throwing the ball to our RB Zach Russell a tick too much. I'll probably make an adjustment there.

2-10 as we head for the final quarter of the season. We lead the league in some passing categories, but, well, we're giving up 31 points per game. *wipes brow*

We finish "strong" to get to 4-12. Feast your eyes.



A fair amount to unpack there. Will circle back with more thoughts. We had a good/competent offense, even if we ended up throwing the ball a ton. Familiars did not seem to be a problem. The defense was absolutely awful. I have no doubts that I'm very much to blame for making us worse there. Trading the experienced DTs and not resigning our veteran CB who slipped into FA put a lot of youth/garbage on the field.

I may also have to do some kind of gameplanning on D next year. Yeesh. Room for improvement on the offensive side as well, but this looks mildly close to what was intended. We just literally couldn't rush the passer or do anything in the secondary. Scarily bad passing numbers against us for a bad team. And well, now that I mention it... the rushing numbers are eye popping too.

A lot to do!

[MalcPow]

DE Allen Abram ended up as DROY. SE Grayson Chellgren was a First Team WR. Chellgren had the most receiving yards in the league by a fair margin.

Herb gives us a 2 for Team Performance. Thanks buddy.

Dan Reid, our LT last year, retires.

We've currently got the #2 pick.

Taking a look at the draft and potential FA1 extensions tomorrow.

[Young Drachma]

WR Chellgren reminds me of my WR who had a 1600 yd season or something a million drops. Must be endemic to bad teams or something.

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

WR Chellgren reminds me of my WR who had a 1600 yd season or something a million drops. Must be endemic to bad teams or something.

Could be. Familiars and fatigue tend to lead to negative outcomes, and I think that sometimes gives guys with seemingly good hands more drops than you'd expect. When we're chucking the ball in obvious throwing situations when behind that probably magnifies those factors.

[MalcPow]

We make a number of extensions. Our toughest call is probably RB Zach Russell. We were kind of looking at a choice between him and DT Charles Clancy, our underweight but highly rated interior guy. With the way our defense played, I'm not particularly excited about potentially losing Clancy next offseason, but we have some limitations. We'll have to see if we can work it another way or sign him as an FA. I was tempted to just roll forward without Russell locked up as well, but we had the space.

QB Prescott, RB Russell, WR Chellgren, TE Spano, MLB Zimmerman, RT Word... that's starting to look like our core.

First glance at the draft isn't exactly what we would have hoped I don't think. There's a stud DT who will likely be there at 1.2 if we're so inclined. There's a decent CB up there as well, although the second pick seems a little rich. Decent argument to trade back a little, but I'm mildly wary of getting too cute.

There's a stud receiver sitting there as well. That seems like an odd direction for us to go, but I have a hard time passing up the obvious skill spot stars.

We have about 8m in cap space left after extensions. We spend half of it to bring in DT Ashton Ward. He's another underweight guy at 271 lbs, but we get him at 4m for each of the next two years instead of keeping Clancy at something more like 13m. Good hedge for us going forward a bit, and probably also means we'll be starting a pair of 270 lb DTs this year. (Am I doing this right? Help?) We'll see what that means. We can't be worse.

Draft later.

[QuikSand]

Not used to seeing many FOF teams with a QB passer rating over 100 that still draft at #2 overall. Impressive.

I have a vague sense that the in-game penalty for the less obvious things like cohesion, poor-fit-in-scheme, and the like might be amplified in this version of the game.

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Not used to seeing many FOF teams with a QB passer rating over 100 that still draft at #2 overall. Impressive.

I have a vague sense that the in-game penalty for the less obvious things like cohesion, poor-fit-in-scheme, and the like might be amplified in this version of the game.

I think that's very likely. I had a sense that this wasn't going to go so well despite the bright shiny talent guys. There were a lot of other spots where we ran out rookies or completely new faces. We did lose a lot of close games, which probably means this could have been a 7-9 team or something. And I have few doubts I was running the things I was controlling suboptimally, but I'm guessing I had a few levers set fine on the offensive side.

Good chance to move somewhat slowly and learn a little though. I'm definitely interested in having a hand in a more consistent defensive gameplan this next season and not just rexing things.

[MalcPow]

Pittsburgh takes the stud WR in front of us at 1.1. That makes things easier.

I'm still grappling with trading down to get more value. That likely means doing something sensible like taking the best CB on the board at the 10th pick or so and probably getting a 2nd rounder or a future 1st or something for our trouble. If we made the pick right now, we'd get a stud DT who is a scheme fit. I'm trying to weigh things out. Trading for future 1sts and whatnot has always felt like a quick way to stretch the AI's competitive boundaries, but if I can play pretty close to all out with the straightforward limitations I've placed here that would be a nice thing to discover. I'm also just legitimately not sure the all out play isn't to just take the stud DT.

*Jeopardy music*

We take the DT.

1.2



He's got a 6.9 raw Grade and 7.5 adjusted. That's a high raw Grade. The dash is top end. A number of other combines are very good. He's got nice looking bars and the scouts think he's Underrated. My guess is he's very good. Just a lot of boxes checked to make me think he's a lock to be a 70+ type. Will he have some insane impact on our team? I don't really know and finding out holds some interest for me. I have some rough working assumptions that you need good DL depth because it's a spot that fatigues and subs as much or more than any other and that running the 4-3 means we need to have some impact on the DL.

2.2



I'm surprised this guy slips to us here. He was on our list of a few options we'd probably take if we had traded back to the 10-15 range. He looks like he'll be a pure FS type and patrol that deep zone. It's not the CB we need, but we're getting warmer at least. There was another WR I really liked who I assumed we'd take here. He got popped at 1.19 in a strong play by the AI. Score one for the machines.

On Shelton, I'm pretty bullish on big Grade, no combine guys. When they have good bars to go with it, I don't overthink it.

3.2



This is another steal for us. I know we went safety and then guard with these last two picks, which is probably the money move in this range of SP drafts if you're just looking to get some big red bars, but these guys are really good I think. I think the AI tends to value these positions, so I don't think there's a huge cue here that these spots don't matter. But Shelton and Anstaett should probably be off the board before we get them. I like these guys.

And for those following at home, I like Anstaett because those are some big bars for a guy with good combines and a 5+ raw Grade. I have very few reasons to suspect he's not something like what the bars are telling me. So we're probably getting a 60+ long time starter here in the 3rd.

4.2



My least favorite pick so far. I like Smith as a good solid ratings type who gives us some depth quality. There are more interesting players still on the board, but they all have a much better chance of slipping deeper. I do wonder if some of these solid types don't have as much value as the "precision tool" type that I could somehow put in perfect positions. The 6'4" height gives Smith at least something of an elite attribute to go with his otherwise vanilla skills.

Rnd 5 - Pat Giles, RB, Nevada - Las Vegas
Rnd 6 - Nicholas LaChapelle, OLB, Northern Illinois
Rnd 7 - Jay Blackwell, CB, Washington State

We round out with a punt returner, some more LB depth, and our first CB snag in the 7th (smart!).

There's a lot of quality here. We'll add a couple UDRs as well. And we're up against the cap, so I think that will be that.

[MalcPow]

SLB Fernando Logan is holding out as we head into camp. I'm not sure how much we care. We don't really have the cap space to make him rich, so we just roll with it.

We do a little bit of weight training but not much. The "once a career" aspect of it will make it both less of a pain in the ass to tend to each year and also probably more of a commitment to scheme stability for your roster.

Off Roster



Def Roster



SLB Logan continues to hold out. We are still atrocious at CB. Our offensive skill talent looks very good. QB Riddick Prescott seems to have settled at 71/71. That puts him in the 6th-8th range in a universe that has a good amount of QB talent.

[MalcPow]

We start 3-1. So far we can't really throw the ball, and we're gaining 293 yds/gm and allowing 397 yds/gm. Seems like a sustainable model. Not really sure what has happened to our passing attack...

We reach the halfway point at 5-3. Our offense has come back to life, and we look much more like the team from last year. We just happen to be winning a few 42-38 games now. The defense is still a disaster, but we have a legitimate pass rush. DE Allen Abram is fairly one dimensional, but he's creating enough pressure for us to force a few incompletions at least. That and a very large turnover differential appear to be putting us on the right side of a pretty thin line right now.

I'll let the Summary tell the second half story...



We end up 8-8, which I think fits us. We had chances down the stretch to squeak a few out, and if we had beaten Chicago on the road in Week 17, we would have won the division. The numbers seem to imply our run defense is a key factor in our struggles. Our lack of a running game might be a problem as we look to, I don't know exactly, control some clock or close out games or something. Our center was a good value snag, but he's a poor run blocker. Our LT situation needs to be addressed as well. I guess I can't be too greedy about our passing game, but I think a blind side upgrade would help us quite a bit.



We have a number of award winners. All of the guys shown are First Teamers and DE Allen Abram snags a Second Team award. Not exactly the typical trappings of an 8-8 team, and I'm sure I'm part of the problem there. I'm also fairly sure we'll start rolling people when the cohesion kicks in after another year or two.

[MalcPow]

MLB Sherman Zimmerman is testing our limits this offseason. He's got a year remaining on his rookie deal with a cap hit of just under 3m. He's asking for an extension that would add 20m to that number for this year with some big numbers going forward as well. I guess that DPOY award does wonders for a guy's sense of self.

We've only got 11m in cap space but we're going to figure it out. Mostly because Zimmerman's one of #OurGuys and we're sentimental that way. DT Ashton Ward is the guy we signed last offseason. He's underweight for the inside but I think we can move him outside to DE and get good production. He's willing to keep the good times going with a fairly flat extension that keeps him around at 4-5m per for the next four years. That frees us up to trade DE Satterlee and clear close to 10m in space each of the next two years. We get a 3rd and a 5th for a 60+ DE with five years of starting experience for the organization.

That's where the cap hit hurts. It's tough to keep your good/solid starters around and eats into continuity. We've got a couple more brutal extensions coming with TE Spano and eventually DT Slatus. Hopefully some of our other big guys like Prescott and Chellgren are old enough at that point that they're willing to start taking a bit of a haircut. I've also just been giving guys what they ask for on extensions with no restructuring. It adds a little wrinkle but it's more or less an efficiency thing.

We need to clear another 8m or so to do an extension a year early on Spano. I think that will end up being the difference between carrying him at 15m/yr and something more like 23-27m/yr with an extension next offseason. We look like we'll have quite a bit of space next year, but it's deceptive because we'll be locking in a new 3 yr deal for our longsnapping moneypit.

Our best path to get where we need to is a cap out of RB Zach Russell. We probably regret making him a major resource hog/core guy. Mostly because we don't seem to be getting a ton out of our running game and our passing game is focused other places. I can't see us giving him another deal, chance we may even take a big cap hit to let him go at some point in the next two seasons.

[MalcPow]

2033 Draft

We go in with some pretty meaningful needs. We don't have a Left Tackle. We've got one stud DT and a pair of subpar younger guys as candidates to start at the other spot. We've got three rotation quality DEs who I like, but all three are edge rushers who bring very little to run defense. We're still very thin at the CB spot.

Looking at the board, it doesn't look like we're going to solve the LT situation in this class. That likely means Norm Word is going to play out of position or something. I think that likely takes him from an 80s type to a 60s type. We probably won't make a position change, but just thinking out loud right now.

My guess is CB/DT early. We also interviewed some decent looking RBs who could be tempting. All the more reason our commitment to Zach Russell is frustrating, but we'll figure that out as we go.

1.17



The board plays out a little surprisingly. A very intriguing RB and the DT I thought would be there for us both go right in front of us. We end up with a call between a DE with some endurance questions and DT Ty Cook. We consider trading back but just take Cook. It's not sexy, but he looks like a good starter and he's developed enough that I think he steps in and plays well right away.

2.16



Fairfield was one of a number of RBs we interviewed who looked promising. He probably should be gone by now. Good value for us here. Probably means Zach Russell doesn't make it to the end of his contract if Fairfield is the player we think he is.

3.15



3rd round need pick at what might be a critical position? Turnbull was near the top of our board when looking at guys who were listed at or who could conceivably make the move to LT. Not sure it's a great sign that he's still sitting here, but we've got no one to play the spot and he looks like a near 50 acceptable starter type. I'm wary that it's a bit of a trap to play a meh rookie at the LT spot on a team that expects to be good, guess we'll see.

3.20



We use the extra 3rd we picked up by trading DE Stellani to grab another DE. Wilcox looks like more of an early down LDE type who can defend the run. It's a skillset we don't otherwise have. I think he'll play a good amount for us out there this year. I'm hoping we can shore up the run defense a little this year. Adding two rookies to the DL may hamper that a bit until they have more experience though, even if they're definite skill upgrades.

4.14



More LB depth.

Rnd 5 - Pedro Harris, G, Nebraska
Rnd 5 - Otis Blake, K, Oregon State
Rnd 6 - Julio Sualua, TE, South Carolina St.
Rnd 7 - Kevin Volz, DT, Oregon State

RB Silas Fairfield looks like a steal. The rest all look like very practical post-holiday purchases to fill needs we can't otherwise address. We've got $190k in cap space post draft. We've been playing with injuries set at 50 to keep things moving but still have some variety. We likely need to make a cut or two as we head into the season to have the flexibility to cover a few dings.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



We're still a similar team I think. I think we hit pretty well on the RB Fairfield. The rookie LT Turnbull got starts for us at that spot in the preseason, but I think we're going to move him to RT and have Norm Word play the blind side in Week 1.

I worry mostly about two things...

One, it's clearly freaking impossible to find CB talent. I think that's a spot for the first round, and maybe only the top of the first round. We've been unwilling to stretch to add guys at that spot and we've really had to scrounge to find decent bodies. We're lucky to have the group we have with how little we've actually spent in money and draft resources.

Two, we're really young. Which means we lack experience and cohesion, and that the guys we play get expensive quickly. We're really up against the cap and next year won't be better. We're probably carrying at least one too many "max contract" types. We'll see where it goes, but I think we're being pushed to think through whether we can just keep rolling it over and hitting on draft picks who we develop but can't really afford to keep.

[MalcPow]

2033 Season



I won't hold you in suspense. We win a close one at home in the Wild Card round and then lose a close one on the road in the Divisional. We make the playoffs and win one, which is nice. It feels like we're kind of running in place a bit though. Looks like it's time to go get some CBs...

[Young Drachma]

What about the trade market for potential CB help?

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

What about the trade market for potential CB help?

We may have to. Will roll over shortly and see how rough the cap situation is looking. Trading our first rounder might be an attractive financial choice.

...

TE Spano, OLB Martin, and FS Shelton are First Teamers. RT Norm Word is a Second Teamer.

[MalcPow]

We make an Offensive Coordinator change, bringing in 67 year old Kyle Shannahan to install a West Coast system. You may have noticed from our dominant running game that we've been a Smashmouth club for the entirety of this career so far. I know it seems strange to make a switch on offense, but I'm looking to take another run at putting a playbook/plan together and Shannahan can run 67 plays to our old guy's 58. We'll try to move toward more of a short passing team this year. We somewhat unintentionally have been the longest passing team in the league for a number of years.

We extend our DC, which seems like folly but he looks good on paper. We've been running a 43 Over, which a quick glance at the various staff available each offseason leads me to believe is probably a shaky play. It seems clear that the True 34 tends to have the most replacement coaching talent available, and I worry that we're a little vulnerable if our guy ever gets a head gig. Not sure what we can do there. I'll once again take a crack at thinking through some kind of system/core principles to guide us on this side of the ball. We returned to something more like randomness and rexing for most of last season. Stop me if you could tell. It's just going to take time and some attention to get a few plans built.

I think I'll start from the point that FS Shelton is going to be running around in a deep zone, and we'll play more Cover1 or Cover2 depending on the opponent's talent. My guess is we'll need to move toward more of a clear decision on whether we play more Press or Man and actually try to craft our mediocre talent in a particular direction.

As an update, it looks like we're going to have to make a few moves to clear enough cap space to sign our cap crunch guy. So yeah, up against it a bit. Good times.

[MalcPow]

We trade RB Russell for a pick at the top of the 4th round. We're eating about 5m in dead money for this year and next because of the cap out last year, but we save about 12m each year in salary. Had to be done.

Continuing to diagnose our roster a bit... it's not really rocket science, our talent on the defensive side is just very pedestrian. Even DT Slatus, who we spent the #2 pick on, has really only settled into being a 70 guy with 50 endurance. Very good, but not a dominant gamechanger or lynchpin. MLB Zimmerman is very good, and an injury that knocked him out for the last few weeks and playoffs probably doomed any lucky run chances we had. Our LB group in general could be considered very good, but I think we're going to lose Sean Martin for financial reasons after this year. Our CB talent is just flat out bad, and we have no identity or fit focus back there to try to get good production out of poor general ability. FS Joey Shelton is a keeper, and we'll need to figure out how to do that. SS Darrin Bodell is a big time cohesion piece, but I worry we're not getting enough talent/fit from that spot.

QB Prescott is clearly trending toward wanting a supermax contract in his next deal. Backup Jimmie Lincoln is a different looking creature with a very high scramble bar (Prescott is a 0 there), who could give us a different look and continues to be content to sign really cheap deals since he's not playing. That kind of switch would really only help us financially for a couple years, but I'm slightly intrigued by getting a little running yardage from the spot as well.

TE Spano and WR Chellgren, with now RB Fairfield, give us enough skill position talent. We're going to lose our number two WR James Berlat during this FA period. He's been productive for us, but I think he's replaceable. We are getting to a point where enough of our late round/UDR types are still sitting around that our next guys up don't have to be rookies with no experience or continuity.

The OL is pretty good. LT Harry Turnbull clearly boomed or something last camp, he's just better than the guy we drafted which is a lucky break. Our one question on the line comes down to thinking about a different skillset for the C spot. Randy Purrington just isn't a run blocker, despite being very strong everywhere else. If we see a guy with more of a running game bar profile, we might have to give it a shot.

We may end up cycling through some of our DL talent here as well. DE Allen Abram has had a good run with us, I'm just not sure we can justify his next contract ask. DE Ashton Ward, who I thought we got a great deal on with an extension last year, now has a 0 for pass rush strength and his starting to look old and mediocre, even as a one dimensional guy. Might be eating a little to give us more cap breathing room there.

[MalcPow]

We end up making a trade here in the FA1:1 stage. We target a few CBs, and it becomes fairly clear that the guy to get was one we really liked in the draft class where we took DT Slatus with the second overall pick. He ended up going 9th that year.



The price is OLB Sean Martin (a 60+ guy with back to back 1st Team honors on his resume), three 2nd rounders (2.26 and our next two), and OLB LaChapelle (who has talent but wasn't playing much).

I never know exactly how to feel about making trades with the AI, but we're having enough trouble with the cap/reneg limitations that I'm willing to see if we can play mostly all out and see what happens. Martin was in his last year and we flat couldn't afford the reneg at this stage. We've been getting outstanding value out of our 2nd rounders, but, as discussed, there haven't been any CBs around. Probably a strong argument at this point that Sadowski would have been a better 1.2 pick than Slatus, so we basically have to do a deal like this. We'll have to figure out how the hell we extend him now in a year, but that's a problem for another day. We have a CB! Woohoo!

[MalcPow]

We release DE Ashton Ward to clear a bit more space.

C Randy Purrington wants a real contract apparently as well. I can't really see how that will work, so I guess we will be looking for a replacement. We can only get a 4th and a 5th. That feels stupid but we do it anyway.

We decide to keep SS Bodell for the cohesion and leadership. He's been our defensive captain for five years, for whatever that's worth. We may try to utilize him as more of a nickel though.

Our last call is DE Allen Abram. We can't afford an extension for him either but I don't really want to just gut our team for all this cap play. We're going to just roll in with Abram and maybe try to sign him as a free agent after next year. That might be an avenue we need to explore more. I'm not entirely convinced that we're not paying more for these guys with these year-early FA1 extensions than we would be if they hit free agency. Part of the challenge I guess.

[MalcPow]

2034 Draft

1.27



We continue our complete obsession with the secondary by taking SS Richie Scott here at the back of the first. We consider a few other players, but we like Scott and it frees us to move Bodell to more of a nickel role. We'll see if moving from very little talent in the secondary to quite a bit back there makes a major difference.

3.27



We look at trying to package our collection of 4ths and 5ths together to move up a couple of times, but nobody really bites. I watch the handful of interesting WRs go off the board in the late 2nd/earlier 3rd that we were targeting. So we sit tight and go with what seems to be the money play, the mid round LB who looks like he has some serious bars. He's also very undersized.

4.3



If one is good, two must be better right? We've got plenty of LBs now I think.

...

We end up grabbing some more DE depth, a WR, a TE, a 6'6" center who can run block a little, and another safety. I forget to grab the list from the in game email, so this is all you get.