FOF7: Misfit Skins

[MalcPow]

Let's pretend I hit some clever notes on Washington being a dysfunctional mess and the perfect choice for a dynasty about outcasts, ne'er-do-wells, and near certain disaster. I did have a few thoughts along those lines when I picked them, but there won't be any role playing or Dan Snyder fanfic as we move through however many seasons we can before it all just falls apart.

Quik was the first that I'm aware of who coined the Island of Misfit Toys concept for an FOF dynasty, and I'm going to borrow it here to see if there's any chance of finding success in that format in the current version of the game. The broad strokes of the idea/challenge/fool's errand: winning with a team composed entirely of undrafted free agents.

Quik is also one of the community's finer technicians when it comes to building teams of meticulously crafted chemistry and cohesion. In past versions of the game, the Misfit career tended to be a complete lost cause until eventually, with some critical mass of semi-competent players and an overwhelming buildup of cohesion and chemistry, you'd find some success and luck your way to an eventual Bowl win. I am not sure if the current version of the game will be easier or harder in that regard, but I'm hoping to mess with some different gameplans and system concepts and a challenge like this should force some new ideas. I'm not likely to go too crazy on the chemistry front, but I'd imagine we'll be solid there just by virtue of having no better reason for carrying a lot of these guys early on.

I'll be simming through the '14 season and releasing all these "good" players into the wild shortly. I'm hoping to move fairly quickly if I can, so this may be light on screenshots or other pretty features. I'll try to give some descriptive color on the guys who seem to be emerging as our core group. And I'll be sure to post the Team Summary screens documenting our early bloodbath seasons. There may be late bloodbath seasons as well. If I had to guess, my sense is that this may be really difficult and frustrating. DON'T FORGET TO CLICK "SUBSCRIBE TO THREAD"!

[MalcPow]

We go 5-11 with our real team, which is probably a bad sign. Maybe this even sets us up to get fired or something. Only time will tell. The Packers win the Super Bowl.

[MalcPow]

We cut everyone. And as luck would have it, the game generates what appears to be an absolutely monster draft class. We won't have a chance to play on any of the really bright shiny objects in the top half of the first round. Does a loaded top end mean some really awesome scrubs will slip to us?

I'm going to gift all of our draft picks to Cleveland for the time being. This world has a benevolent god for those fine, tortured people. They get all of our picks for the next three years and our only current organizational asset is the CLE 2017 7th rounder. We'll see how long it takes them to win a title with a lot more draft resources. Most likely, the AI implodes with the added cap hits and complexity. Cleveland.

It takes a bit of fiddling and searching this first year, but should be a faster process in the future where we're likely erring on the side of cohesion unless we see some obvious upgrades. We sim through Training Camp.

The Offense



We could have done a lot worse than Skip Woodard. His bars generally suck but he was a 33 Sol guy with 13 Intelligence. He also really wants to win (97) so, well, I'm sorry Skip. His Sense Rush is 13, but he is a 93 Scramble Freq guy. The Sense Rush is probably going to be a real problem with this squad. I'm not sure exactly what I think of the high scrambling guys, but I do tend to think it keeps a guy with limited talents from just chucking the ball every down. Going to call it a positive for now.

The RB group is by far our best base of talent. All three of these guys were floating in FA with identical Cur/Fut overall ratings, like 29/29 on the scout overview screen. That's a tell in FA2 for a lot of rookies that they are likely to have some upside. The same holds true for guys you draft and hit your roster in FA2 with very similar or identical Cur/Fut overall ratings. We're in solid shape here. None of these guys is good, but they're the best we have.

SE Korey Upshaw is similarly a respectable talent. 31/38 with high endurance. He's our best hope for a passing game.

The OL has no discernible strength really. A lot of undeveloped guys who are going to get murdered.

Our kicking game is absolutely excellent.

The Defense



We tried to target some specific things. It looks awful. CB Britt Compton is probably our best player on this side. We're going to set some records.

[MalcPow]

Wow. We won a game.

It's every bit as bad as it looks. We got hit with a few injuries (I'm simming with 30 as the setting just for some variety), but we're just bad. The defense delivered on its lack of potential. We moved OLB Gantry into the WLB role midseason because his current pass rush rating was higher than our other guy Hutchins. He probably could have snaked a DROY award with empty sack production if we'd had him there the whole time.

Our punter, Garrett McMorris, wins 1st Team Punter.

We've got some work ahead. Those passing game numbers are scary.

[QuikSand]

Cool idea. And thanks for the h/t along the way.

Originally Posted by MalcPow

I'll try to give some descriptive color on the guys who seem to be emerging as our core group.

Yes, please.

[MalcPow]

Simming forward we end up making a HC and DC change in the Staff Draft. We made some changes last year as well, but the fact we spent very little money on the team last year put us near the top of the selection order this year.



Mel Tucker popped up as a 78 Suitability and he looks pretty impressive. 44 years old and I am guessing Mel will be our guy for a long time. Our staff is going to be pretty good in general it looks like, and we're definitely trying to load up on some of the young talent and player development ratings. I'm trying to ignore interviewing for now, although I guess it might make sense to start interviewing lower level QBs who might slip through the draft? Probably not worth the extra clicks there.

[MalcPow]

We end up bringing in 15 or so new faces, but a number of them don't survive our cuts down to our post-TC roster.

The Offense



Rookie QB Andrew Carlton looks like a viable alternative to Woodard. He probably would have started over Woodard if they had both come in as rookies together. 42 Sense Rush for Carlton gives him a clear advantage over Woodard's current 12. We're probably stuck with Skip for now though. Big Cur advantage and Carlton had a 28 Sol and has 46 Intel. I'm still banking that somehow Woodard's 33 Sol and 13 Intel will make a him a decent Avoid Int guy at some point. We'll probably be looking at a new rookie each year who shows this level of promise. Sticking with Skip Woodard will only become more and more advantageous as the cohesion benefits accrue. Maybe we'll give Carlton some starts late if we're as atrocious as we were. (Which is likely.)

No real notable other additions. I think we're banking on some experience strides.

The Defense



Same probably holds here as well. We will likely start a number of these new guys though. SILB Donnie Gomes and a couple of the new guys in the secondary will get some looks. We may just simply suck too much in the secondary to ever be good. I'll be following that closely as the talent left over for us has been really rough so far.

[MalcPow]

We win Week 2 in Cleveland in a freakshow where we get a fumble TD and a punt return TD. Cleveland.

We give the reins to Andrew Carlton for four games after our 1-3 start. It just felt like Woodard was getting sacked 5+ times a game and fumbling. Carlton does no better really so we switch back to Woodard.

We win Week 11 in New York in a 3-0 game. I have not seen many 3-0 games. Way to go fellas.

And we take another one at home against Baltimore in Week 16. We score 27 in that one which is an explosion for us.



3-13 feels like progress for this group. The underlying numbers seem to offer some sobriety though. A lot of 32s in that Rank column. Offensively... I think we got worse. Woodard is probably our guy for the time being. I'm not sure how I get him more weapons. We're just waiting for these guys to develop and some cohesion to come I think. The RBs are solid for what's happening around them. Defensively there are some signs of improvement.

We seemed to play some very tight games where we were able to infect the other team with our general suckiness. Any team with decent QB play seemed to just blow us the hell out though.

Cincy wins the Bowl.

Garrett McMorris expands his trophy case with his second straight 1st Team Punter award. If we get a punter into the Hall with this career, it'll all be worth it.

[MalcPow]

Heading through the offseason... We have a very good staff. Whatever the hell else might be wrong with this group, our coaches are top notch. We may end up proving the limitations of good coaching.

We've been signing these guys to the 2yr/minsal with min bonus deals. Our first crop of guys go through renegs and we try to tack an extra year onto some of our key guys like QB Woodard, WR Upshaw, and CB Compton. We keep almost everyone really. We do lose our backup ILB because he won't resign after playing time issues this year. I can't really blame a guy for being pissed he didn't play on this team. We lock up our superstar Punter and very good Kicker. We are still an extremely cheap team even with all the raises.

The top of the draft has 3 very high quality QBs... *gazes longingly*

Now that we're starting to have a few guys with positional experience, I think I need to make sure we're building a stable of maxed out return/special teams guys. We've been trying to snag them here and there, but I think we're probably looking for a roster with 2 actual RBs and RB ST stud. Probably 4 WRs with an ST guy or two. Basically, I think we need at least one ST stud in the RB, FB/TE, WR, LB, CB, and S groups. If we do that, we should have enough other guys from those groups who can supplement.

And I think I'd like to find an option who is a little different than Woodard.



I can't really complain too much about what he looks like. There's some red on the board there. I think Sense Rush is killing us though. And I'm guessing that the focus Ben and others place on the Accuracy bar isn't just for fun. Our otherwordly passing numbers are for the most part expected. But if we can find an alternative who might look a little better in those spots... I'd be tempted to make a change.

[QuikSand]

I wonder if, at this level, bars like QB Timing and WR Adjust To Ball might be more important than we're used to. I tend to ignore them when playing with skilled players, but if you're going to have stiffs running around, maybe those matter? Dunno.

I think you might miss that 4-500 yards of QB rushing.

[QuikSand]

Whomever you trot out there at QB, pump some time in camp to developing formations. That 10 formations limit could be looming really large for you, on top of everything else.

[MalcPow]

We didn't really find a better option than what we had with Woodard. A little extra film study didn't help him break the 10 formation barrier either.

Offense



Not many changes on this side. We add FB Asher Keppler to the mix as a guy who clearly had more talent than our previous guy and who looks to bring some blocking to the spot. Returning starter at every other spot. Not exactly what you might want to hear after what this group did last year.

Defense



A few new names as we continue to tinker with our LB corps a bit. SILB Edwin Elliott and SLB Casey Prior definitely slant toward coverage LB skillsets, but both have more potential than what we were trotting out. We might see some good statistical production from WLB Chabala in year 2 as he approaches full development.

[MalcPow]

Felt like we were due for this one, but we get goose-egged. We played 6 close games. A year ago we played basically the same number and stole three of them. This year we didn't get any.

It may sound crazy, but the offense was much better. We played some legitimate offensive games this year. (We averaged 8 points per game last year. This year's 13 is at least merely awful.) We may be way down the line with Woodard for a while now. It's just going to be hard for us to sit through a development cycle with a young guy and no supporting cast. That said... we just won 0 games. Korey Upshaw put up something resembling a WR season. I see things to build on here.

Defensively... We probably need to wait this thing out for a bit. Adding two or three new starters each year is hurting our cohesion. We do have at least some base of talent and role players now though.

On both sides we have glaring needs, but we're probably looking at letting this group grow and supplementing more or less with clear upgrades. I'm not sure there's going to be a talent solution to our problems. Two more years of development from this group should start to give us a chance to get back into scraping out a few wins.

[MalcPow]

WR Korey Upshaw is holding out. So is ILB Taje Williford. Happy to pay them both. I wonder if we will ever be in a situation where we don't have seemingly inexhaustible funds. Upshaw is at least a relevant player in the broader scheme of things. I'm not sure Williford plays on another team. But he gets paid too.

We add only five players. None of them will start.

Offense



Defense



I'm probably burying the lede a little bit here. As we moved into the preseason and after looking at the development of QB Andrew Carlton, we're going to give him a shot as our Week 1 starter. The AI suggested him above Woodard in the depth chart screen, and there are some things he brings to the table from a Sense Rush standpoint that intrigue me. He's still a high scramble guy. Here's how he looks. We'll see how long we stick with him.

[MalcPow]

We start out 2-2.

Then we head into Week 9 at 5-3. Might as well snapshot here for posterity's sake.



The defense seems to have some general level of competence. Those aren't awful numbers. The big key seems to be the complete swing in our turnover dynamic though. Woodard was a fumbler who ran a lot and took sacks. Carlton is running less, but he's on pace for roughly half the sack total.

We still look pretty bad in a lot of key areas, and this whole turnover thing could swing against us. But 5-3 after our ofer last year is looking pretty good. Will sim forward shortly.

[MalcPow]

We lose a little bit of the magic down the stretch. But we're playing meaningful games and there's no question we're a much more competitive team. We've been trying to build our O-Line around some of the RB talent we had in place, and it looks like that finally paid some dividends this year. RB Chester Hardy broke out but also led the league in fumbles, which we might have to do something about. If that's a cue about his underlying avoid fumbles rating, I'm not sure we're ever going to have enough margin for error to knowingly put the ball in his hands as much as we have been.

Looks like we had a little fumble luck in the number of balls we recovered on both sides of the ball. We'll see where that goes.

And we're approaching middle of the road in the cohesion categories.

I feel better about how we looked with Carlton. Going to stick with him for now.

[MalcPow]

The Giants beat the Jets in an all-New York Super Bowl.

Garrett McMorris returns to his throne as the 1st Team Punter. Which might be the subplot I'm most fascinated by in this whole thing. He's been 1st team for three of his first four years. Nothing is impossible.

[MalcPow]

We have four holdouts. I guess this will be a thing for us. WLB Chabala and RB Hardy are our two of our key/better players. ILB Taje Williford plays the WILB spot for us and this is his second straight hold out. S Archie Sabo got the starting nod at SS last year despite being a 25/25 guy. They'll all get paid because we are running at basically half the cap.

Our dynamic duo of SS Sabo (25/25) and FS King (15/15) don't even cumulatively match SS Inoue's 45/45 overall rating. But Inoue is one of those big Pun Hitter and Run Def strong safety types. Those guys seem to do well from a rating perspective, and probably fit well with more normal defenses. I think we needed the coverage profiles that Sabo and King gave us.

RB Hardy ends up getting what amounts to our first real contract. He's carrying an annual cap hit of ~$6m now.

[MalcPow]

This year's class looks better than what we've seen for awhile. We got spoiled early by that group of RBs from our initial class. WR Upshaw, the kickers, most of our D-line/O-line... we're definitely still relying on that first class for the bulk of our starters. We'll bring some guys in this year who I think will work their way into a starting role eventually.

Last year's group might be cut down completely by the time we get to Week 1. I think it's true generally that guys need to play to develop, but it seems even more so at this talent level. We might have some mentors eventually that ease things a little, but these marginal guys who don't come right into a real role seem to fizzle into complete crap very quickly.

I might go position group by position group to give us a look at what we have after I get this team through the pre-season. (Roster shots the last couple of years have been posted right before Week 1, and I think I'll stick to that standard going forward..)

[MalcPow]

Offense



QBs - We're going to stick with Andrew Carlton even though our staff is now curiously recommending a switch back to Woodard. Carlton is at full experience but seems to be stuck on 39/43 or so with some little bit of unfulfilled potential in his bars. Woodard is probably the better player in some objective sense, but the complete revolution in our ability to hold onto the ball last year is a big deal. I think Carlton is the right combination of less of a sack taker and we might have enough sample to speculate that Woodard is a fumbler. Emmett Redding is just a third guy to meet the roster limitations.

RBs - On a similar topic, we're going to keep feeding Chester Hardy. He fumbled 12 times in 271 touches last year. He fumbled 1 time in 193 touches the year before. His totals in the two years prior were also low. Freak thing? Rapid fumble aging in year four? Hardy Dakis is a capable backup and KR for us. Rich Horn is a ST specialist. Rookie Buddy Gunn looked pretty interesting going into camp but came through the preseason just fair. We're carrying him but he'll be inactive barring injury.

FB/TE - Asher Keppler is a talented guy who is near the top of our non-kicking future rated players list. Rookie TE Grant Godfrey is a clear cut above our incumbents, Talley and Kreklow. We're taking a few chances on cohesion this year with three new rookie starters and Godfrey is one of them. I'm hopeful he can emerge as a true starter here and we can use the second TE spot for a special teams role.

WRs - Small tweak here as well. Korey Upshaw remains our stalwart SE. But we're giving the starting FL spot to Lincoln Burgess, a year two guy who has a 71 BPR and some solid skills that I hope give us a tick more explosiveness. SE Derrick Stuart is our little slot guy with a Getting Downfield and 3rd Down Catching skillset and some non-zero other skills. (Non-zeroes are really well-rounded for us in this universe...) FL Winfred Garland was our former FL starter and an original Skin whose cohesion I hope we don't miss too much in a lesser role. SE Luther Bates showed some promise early but has fizzled without playing time. He's our leader but probably not long for the team. Fulcher and Durham are ST specialists but Durham should probably jump into WR4 consideration.

OL - Four rookies make the team, with C Larry Szalay our biggest decision as we slot him ahead of original starter Jimmy Pineo. Szalay has a chance to be an actual player and Pineo is a pure run bar guy we converted from tackle in our initial camp. We're sticking with the other guys who have been starting for us the last four years in an effort to smooth the transition a tick, but we were actually top half of the league at the end of last year in OL cohesion with our group of guys who'd been there from the start. G Titus, G Downs, and T Perkins are the other rookies, and they all have some promise as well. Gs Middleton and Fox, with Ts Williamson and Booker, will continue to do their thing. The LT spot has been particularly tough to find talent at. I should probably just accept that OL is going to be a cohesion exercise and work to focus on that. Hopefully the rook doesn't mess us up too much.

K/P - The heart and soul of this team. K Fulcher has been very accurate and good for us. P Garrett McMorris is the guy we put on giant banners outside the stadium.



DL - We've had a tough time finding guys here as well, which is a little surprising. The whole group is largely mediocre, but they've been here since very early on. We generally skew toward Run D over pass rush with this group, but it's more mediocrity than real identity.

LBs - WLB Chabala is our 34 pass rusher, with a PRT bar that has crept up to an 82 right now. WLB Earnest Conley is a rookie who might have a similar PRT with some other skills as well. I'm hoping he can develop as a backup and eventually take over for the very one dimensional Chabala. SLBs Casey Prior and Miles Dixon are coverage bar guys with Prior checking in as the kind of guy I might actually play in another setting. He's a 68-74-45 guy in the coverage ratings, which we'll take every day with this group. WILB Taje Williford seems to think pretty highly of himself but he's basically just a 58 RunD bar in a group that's pretty light in that category. SILB Edwin Elliott is the other coverage type backer we have. He's been a bit more slow to develop despite starting every game the last two years, but he's very likely to be our guy here for a long time, even with a very low RunD bar.

CBs - Britt Compton seems to be fading a bit, and I think his high overall is being helped by Endurance and Interceptions. We're going in with our group of Farrell, Cleaver, and Howe as the starters/nickel guys. Mel Wolfe is pure ST.

S - Our other rookie starter is another cohesion risk, SS Aiden Leadbetter. He has a chance to be much more talented than the Sabo/King group we went with last year, and we're giving him the strong side with Sabo moving to FS. Inoue being inactive is probably getting too cute. But I'm just gonna go with a coverage group and hope we survive.

[MalcPow]

Ok...



We had some injury stuff that probably magnified some of our issues early, with three of the rookie OL guys forced into duty at one point. I think OL cohesion stung us pretty hard early in general. The move to start Szalay is almost certainly right for us long term, but the loss of Pineo's 80 current RunBlock bar probably put us back under whatever absolute garbage threshold we were at before.

We probably don't have the talent to run the shorter passing attack I'm trying to run here. But I'm wary of sacks, turnovers, etc.

I'm less worried defensively... but I'm also starting to understand why Williford holds out every year. The guy makes 100+ tackles from the WILB role. We're so bad that he's on the field far more than I'm used to seeing in a normal setting. I should probably put a better player there? Or if it has to be a one dimensional guy he needs to be a complete stud run stopper.

That does bring up a slightly interesting observation... it has been very difficult for us to find truly elite single bar guys. Even if I wanted to accumulate a series of specialists for running downs or pass rushing, I'm looking typically at guys with future 60-70 bars tops. And they're very undeveloped and there's risk that their potential isn't really there. So even our "system" type guys are really more in the 50-60 range with their one good bar when they make it to full red. That's a talent issue we can't seem to shake.

Anyway, I would argue that we played much better in the second half of the season. Either with some cohesion gains, experience, development, or just plain injury recovery. We'll roll it over again and see what happens.

[MalcPow]

Garrett McMorris takes home his fourth 1st Team Punter award.

WLB Calvin Chabala led the league in sacks with 20.0 this year. He snags a 1st Team OLB award.

Seattle wins the Bowl. They've played in four of the six so far, winning two.

Cleveland has yet to break the .500 barrier.

[MalcPow]

WR Upshaw and ILB Williford hold out again. Notable only because Williford keeps his streak intact. There are a few more decent LBs we'll be bringing aboard this offseason that might eventually force him to the bench.

We tried to insert some new faces into starting roles last year and it seemed to cost us early on. I'm not seeing any obvious immediate upgrades, so we'll probably look to roll out a team that is very similar to the one we played a year ago. Guys who have a chance to be future starters will hopefully gain experience and we can ease their cohesion impact by giving them some time on the bench first.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



We're gonna see what we get from basically the same group. A couple of the LBs we brought in like Barlow and Swift are probably future starters. We saw some steps back from our RBs from a rating standpoint. That's not a great development if those guys are already in decline. Not really sure what to expect this year.

[MalcPow]

Well, we went 5-11. It might be rose-colored glasses but I see some progress. We're more of a consistently mediocre team than an awful one that occasionally gets lucky. We'll likely run it back a few more times with this group and try to really get to the cohesion benefits. There's no question the prospect of a Bowl win seems pretty remote right now... but we have to see what happens when we actually start running a team out there that is near the top of the league's cohesion tables. Those effects can be quite large.

We could really use some kind offensive skill position talent though. I may also need to rethink what we're doing there. I think that might mean more playing time for some different guys. Upshaw has seemingly been our best WR talent, but he's more of a generic guy without much GD or BPR. We may need guys who can make a bit more happen.

[MalcPow]

Williford holds out again.

We're going to end up losing some guys who are pissed about playing time. QB Skip Woodard is one of those guys. It's hard to be completely sold that Andrew Carlton is some special player, but I think he's better than Woodard and we are pot-committed with cohesion for now.

CB Roderick Meier is another young guy who I would have like to work in more after some development, but he's livid after three years of marginal work and won't be coming back. Stuff like that may make it tough for us to ease guys in over time unless we start trying to sign some weird long term contracts before they get mad.

It looks like a couple of the leftovers will have a chance to be future starters for us.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



We end up moving on from a few WRs and other guys who have been here for awhile. The influx of rookie talent made it tough to keep some of those guys on the 53. I don't think we're sacrificing too much from a cohesion standpoint. We're still going to be starting almost the entirely same crew.

I made a concerted effort to bring in a few more ST and return guys. We got very lucky with the two extra RBs we're carrying from return standpoint. I'm hoping we can really make a difference there this year. Main RB Chester Hardy continues to fade, but we don't have a better answer.

We're slowly... really slowly... building a better team. And Williford is a backup this year, so maybe the holdout streak will end.

[MalcPow]

I'm not going to pretend to fully understand. I think the game sensed I was starting to lose hope and decided to throw me a bone. This was definitely not our usual team. We lost one game by more than one score. The offense was a monumental leap forward. The defense was quite good for what we're running out there.

We're a top 6 cohesion team in everything but the Secondary, where we are 12th. But we aren't an elite force of cohesion or anything with separation from the rest of the league.

Our ability to run the ball does seem to coincide with the completed development of 3rd year center Larry Szalay.



It's not an exaggeration to call him possibly our best player. The monster run blocking bar that doesn't come with zeroes everywhere else is a pretty big separator from our usual scraps. I'm glad we made the call to play him and let him grow a bit. Probably says everything about how silly this is that I'm talking this way about a 57/57 center.

We win the division over a 10-6 Dallas team based on divisional record. We'll be hosting them in the Wild Card Round.

[MalcPow]

We jump out to a 20-0 lead in the first but give it all back. We end up with 446 yards of total offense to their 334. It is a completely different sort of game than we've played for the vast majority of this career.

But we lose 28-23.

Detroit wins the Bowl.

Korey Upshaw is a 2nd Team WR. Which is honestly incredible after some of the seasons we've had. 1389 yards, 11 TDs, and a 7.55 YPT. They're not even great numbers, but it's a Babe Ruth performance compared with our seasons to date.

Garrett McMorris is the 2nd Team Punter. Blasphemy.

[QuikSand]

So basically, this just happens. With nearly every decent empty cupboard team, when you start playing a ton of guys who have been on the roster a fairly long time (even just 4-5-6 years) you somehow flip a switch, and the collective advantage of cohesion and position experience just seems to make the team pretty good, almost no matter what. Been there.

[Simbo Klice]

I'm enjoying this dynasty, keep up the good work!

[MalcPow]

We extend our staff. Just to screenshot him again, Mel Tucker might be the best coach I've ever seen...



We've got 52 guys under contract before we even get to the draft. Fingers crossed for some RB talent. Chester Hardy is fading fast. Our punt returner, Norbert Watkins, put up some impressive stats as the backup, but I think we all know there's some sort of backup stat boost. Whether that manifests because of situational usage or some other factor, it's not likely that Watkins's performance will translate into an every down role.

Just glancing at our team in general, this is going to be year 8 for our original crew... and almost all of them look superficially like they're in decline. I guess that makes sense. We're still almost certain to run this same group out again and hope for the cohesion boost.

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

So basically, this just happens. With nearly every decent empty cupboard team, when you start playing a ton of guys who have been on the roster a fairly long time (even just 4-5-6 years) you somehow flip a switch, and the collective advantage of cohesion and position experience just seems to make the team pretty good, almost no matter what. Been there.

Yeah... it still comes as a shock every time. I'm hoping we're there. I don't have the patience to really test it in this career, but I'll call it informed intuition that rookies just mess up a team's vibe as well. I wouldn't be shocked if the positional experience effects are non-linear and you take a real kick for playing those young guys with a ton of green.

Our ability to run an offense went from 'no' to 'yes' last year though. I'm not sure there's any other way to describe it. And I can't really attribute that to much other than some sort of cumulative threshold crossing with regard to cohesion. I think we also got to almost total full experience among our starters by the time we got into the second half (where we played quite well). Fully developed players who have never been on another team are a good recipe.

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by Simbo Klice

I'm enjoying this dynasty, keep up the good work!

Will do, thanks! I think we're probably looking to win a Bowl. I'm not sure if we'll continue to make progress or if that will become an exercise in catching fire in the playoffs with the right 10-6 or 11-5 team. I do have a general curiosity toward seeing if Garrett McMorris can make the HOF as a punter as well. Which will probably keep this thing going for awhile regardless.

I won't lie though. It's frustrating to look through all of the crap available to us with these constraints. It makes me realize the AI does eventually snag most of the talent, even if there are some flaws/human advantages that let a number of very talented players slip into the middle rounds. Particularly at the WR position, you can really land impact guys at the back of the 1st and throughout the 2nd. Suffice it to say I've gotten spoiled in my SP careers and the skill position misfits are more than a bit of a letdown. I do wonder if the lack of any impact skill talent makes our next steps of progress really difficult, or if we'll get all-league seasons out of mid-40s players like we just saw from WR Upshaw just through cohesion, etc.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



We end up with a similar looking squad. We release Taje Williford to make room for few more ST and young potential types. Longtime nickelback Alec Howe is cut as well. The image is misleading as Hardy will still be our primary RB. Carlton appears to have taken a step forward or more fully unmasked to a 51/51. Not sure what that will mean for performance.

[MalcPow]

I simmed this one on a plane. So I know pretty well what it means for his performance...



We seem to move in the wrong direction in a lot of ways. We also seem to have a little bit of magic dust "winning formula" working for us. It doesn't hurt that the division is atrocious and an 8-8 New York team is our closest competition. It does hurt that we play a first place schedule following our success last year.

The team ends up being pretty weak statistically speaking, but we win on turnovers, good special teams play... smoke and mirrors.

We get the Rams at home in the Wild Card Round. It is a game very typical of our season. They outgain us by a wide margin but turn it over four times to our zero. We get an interception return TD. We win 29-21.

We try to pull a similar trick in the Divisional Round in Seattle. They kick a 4th quarter field goal to win it 10-9 though. I guess we can take something from the fact they went on to win their third Bowl, but it was an ugly game and season.

One emerging trend seems to be that we get absolutely torched by teams with a very good to stud WR. I think the talent gap there really shows and they pile up yardage. We basically need to hit the dice rolls and get a few picks in those games.

C Larry Szalay is the 2nd Team C.

We get our first retirement as G Doug Fox, an original, hangs them up after getting moved into a backup role this year.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



We try to bring a little bit of new blood into the d-line. That group has been aging and I'm realizing how quickly things go when you're dealing with guys at this talent level. It's two camps of decline and they are 20/20 players basically.

We're also breaking one of the rules we seem to have identified and going with a rookie starter at FS. We've had Sabo in that role for a number of years but he's fading and we're hoping we got lucky with Norbert Codie.

[MalcPow]

We are more ourselves than ever. We completely max out the turnover battle. We are once again very good on special teams. We are a disaster from a yardage differential standpoint. But we once again outscore our opponents and work our way to 10-6, this time snagging a Wild Card and ceding the division to an 11-5 Philly team.

I won't hold you in suspense. We go on the road to Green Bay and get beat up 20-0.

Going to give some thought to the next wrinkle we can try. We'll continue to get gains from Andrew Carlton in the passing game from a cohesion standpoint, but Korey Upshaw is aging and Chester Hardy is near death. We have some depth ready, but old age hitting some of these guys is hurting our ability to push the cohesion angle much further. I'm not really complaining with our latest run, but I'm hoping for something other than a lucky stud RB or some other strange occurence to give us a shot at a title team. Have to think on that some more.

[MalcPow]

Philadelphia wins the Bowl. A team we finished a game behind in the division and split our season series with. MAYBE WE'RE RIGHT THERE.

The love for Garrett McMorris has dried up completely now that he's not punting for 6000 yards every year. (He led the league in average and was a very close 2nd in net average... and we apparently punted a ton anyway. What's the deal? I need this stupid punter subplot...)

We have rebounded enough from a credibility standpoint that there are two teams amenable to having us take them over: Oakland and Cleveland. Cleveland has one playoff appearance in this entire career. Now we know we were better off without those draft picks.

OLB Calvin Chabala retires. He had a 20 sack season for us and we probably could have stat whored him quite a bit if we weren't looking to get other guys some playing time in different packages.

We pissed off SILB Edwin Elliott by going with the younger and better overall/run stopper Jesse Webster as our SILB last year. I want to reverse course and put Webster back in the WILB role, Elliott as SILB, and potentially go to another old man in SLB Casey Prior in that role. Basically, I want to try to go cohesion over talent in the LB corps, barring some big ratings crunches on the old guys (which will almost definitely happen). We went a tick younger in too many spots defensively last year. I think we turned the clock back on our cohesion benefits by doing so.

We end up having to franchise Elliott to even have this as an option since he's demanding a trade. We'll all tune in during the preseason to watch these guys turn into dust before our eyes.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



A number of our rookies look quite promising. This year is about the old guard though. We enter Week 1 with a group that is top two in each cohesion category. I'm not expecting anything crazy. Just hoping for 8-8 or better with something resembling more reasonable underlying numbers.

[MalcPow]

We play much better. Our defense is impressive. I don't have much of an explanation for the pass rush. WLB Ernest Conley is a little more than the pure one dimensional PRT bar guy on the weak side, but he is not that much more. I expect a 17.5 sack and 42 hurry season will win him something. Some of the other guys are quite limited. DE Elliott is a 2nd year guy who is a backup with one big PRT bar. He somehow managed to get to 10.5 sacks as a 34 DE without a single start.

We win back the division. We nearly snag a bye, but must have missed out on one of the downstream tiebreakers like common opponents. We get Philly at home in the Wild Card round.

[MalcPow]

We beat Philly 31-14.

We go into Green Bay to play the 11-5 team who out-tiebroke us for the bye. They beat us 26-13 as we struggle to run the ball but otherwise play a fairly even game.

Statistically, it looks like our best season. I think I have a sense for how some of the little tweaks rippled through into performance, but we'll see if I can recreate the same environment next year. Our 14.3 points allowed per game was the best in the league by a 3.5 point margin. That's certainly a function in part of running a crappy ball control offense, but it's also pretty good to see after a few years of looking very shaky on that side.

Green Bay wins the NFC Championship and then loses to Pittsburgh in the Bowl.

Ernest Conley is a 1st Team OLB.

[MalcPow]

Big wave of retirements for us as WR Korey Upshaw, SS Archie Sabo, and WR Damian Durham hang them up.

Upshaw has been our lone real WR for basically the entirety of this career and is an original. He retires with the 5th most receptions all-time, the 4th most targeted passes, and the most drops. The 119 drops over a ten year career does seem a bit excessive. But we are going to miss him, probably badly.

We will miss Sabo as well. He was a good complement to the far more competent Leadbetter, but we played him as something like a low 20s overall player this year. Those guys retire. We also pissed off our third safety by doing so. We may be back starting a rookie safety next year.

Durham was a pure ST guy who had a brief run as a 3rd/4th type in the offense. We're going to lose the rest of our ST specialists soon. Year 10 might be the year the low ratings guys punch out.

Dang. The Upshaw thing is a blow. It felt like we had just turned a little bit of a corner. You roll teams that play like the one we had last year into the playoffs enough times and you'll eventually take a Bowl home. I'm not sure if we're going to be back at that level in the coming year with Upshaw out of the picture.

[QuikSand]

Anyone who doesn't really feel like cohesion matters very much should TAKE A FUCKING LOOK AT THIS. MalcPow is not using some sleight-of-hand genius gameplans here. He's assembled a roster fairly well, I'm sure, given the crazy limitations -- but let's be absolutely clear. The reason that set of 32/32 starters all over the place is a perennial playoff team is cohesion, first and foremost.

Don't mean to distract from your challenge and effort, but it's plain as day. Stiffs new to the team stink. Stiffs with full position experience and several years cohesion each play pretty well.

[MalcPow]

Offense



Defense



A couple of our aging guys drop into single digit zone. DT Ezekiel Hodges just flat out dies. So do a few others. We have to play some younger guys just by virtue of what survives a pretty rough camp. Not sure what to expect.

QB Kennedy Ruiter looks like our next future starter. Time will tell if that's in two years or six.

We do go to lengths to ensure, to Quik's point, that everyone other than are forced rookie starter at safety is positionally developed and has been around the program for a bit. It's what we've got basically.

[MalcPow]

We're a pretty seemingly bad team. There are a whole slew of injuries that I would have expected to turn this thing into a dumpster fire very quickly. WLB Ernest Conley misses 10 games. SS Aiden Leadbetter breaks his wrist and misses multiple games and then plays hurt. (Which leads to our nightmare dual rookie safety tandem.)

But... we dominate the turnover situation once again. +20. We force 32 fumbles and recover 18 of them. It's admittedly not something I really track, but forcing 32 fumbles seems like a whole heaping lot. It won't come as a shock to learn we have no particularly punishing identity with this group of half-dead and barely alive to begin with scrubinos. The cohesion gods may work in mysterious ways though, and I'm guessing a general advantage in the turnover outcomes is part of the show.

We had to beat Philly in their place in Week 17 to both win the division and secure a bye. I don't really understand this team. We're not good. Are we good?

[MalcPow]

We beat Green Bay at home, 14-9. They outgain us and we put a fairly putrid 269 total yards up. But we sack them 5 times and find a way.

[MalcPow]

We put up 223 yards of total offense on the road in Carolina in the NFC Championship game. We force four fumbles but only recover one. We win it on a punt return TD with two minutes left.

27-23 Misfits. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACOHESIONCLES!!!???

[MalcPow]

We lose a couple guys to injuries and have to do some shuffling.

[MalcPow]

We luck into a Buffalo team that really isn't that good. They're a 11-5 WC team who went on a magical run of their own. It's up and down but we get an Int TD, a big pass play TD, and win the thing with a short fieldgoal as time expires.

WLB Ernest Conley is the Bowl MVP. Gonna click around and digest this one a bit.