IHOF FTW Boom or Bust

I will attempt to document here my journey with Fort Wayne Fury in IHOF. This is a multi-player FOF league ran by Ben (ihof.fof-belco.com). I took over the team at the 2097 draft. No guarantees.

Episode 1.1 - Who are we?

I don't think we have an answer for that yet.

I took over FTW half an hour before my 1st round pick was on the clock. Our first goal was to collect the pieces that are needed for our offensive and defensive philosophies. This was not a top heavy draft, in particular for the offense. Sitting at 1.13 and with no apparent suitors for a trade down, the choice was between three CBs, two WRs and a couple of undeveloped Ts. I really liked Barrymore (now CHE), but only Quik will be able to make him function with that 5'8" height.  The other CB was Rodgers (also CHE), but the projected low endurance downgraded him to the 2nd or 3rd round. Hitchcock looked pretty special and ended up as the choice for 1.13. The Ts turned out to be pretty good (now in ARI), but they will need some years to produce.

I typically make my board before the draft begins, and in this case I had a bit of confusing reads to make on the fly as the first round was unfolding. Since the draft wasn't really moving fast, or at all, I had evaluated the board before 1.20 fired. We had three LBs with late 1st/early 2nd round grades, got two of them (Bisset and Mordragri), and had a 3rd round grade on Kawaguchi. I also had 3rd round grades on DEs Polhemus and Wheeler. I still have faith in Wheeler, he's got good endurance and will be part of the 3rd down defense. Finally I got S Gibson at 3.17 -- i was expecting a bit more, but he's can start in our press 1 and cover 1 packages. With the remaining picks I got much-needed depth at DL, RB and WR.

Let's start with the defense -- I'll switch to 34 next season after inheriting a 43 coach. The right figure below shows how the defense projects for the next 2 seasons, adjusted for 34.

The offense looks a bit more in flux (left fig.), and the draft class wasn't that good. We got a UDFA TE that looks decent enough to play in 3 TE packages. And a bunch of RBs that may offer some surprise -- my favorite is Ballard (UDFA).

Episode 1.2 - Initial preseason games and roster moves

We went essentially with an all-rookie team into the first couple of preseason games and it showed. Our rookies took a beating from FRE (3-29) and CPC (6-45). Our goal was solely to see who could play and develop those guys a bit. Still, we made QB Micah Quick look like Hugh Patch Gaines. If you don't know who Micah is, I didn't know either. If you don't know who Hugh Gaines is, well, what can I say.

The run D was a nice positive, we may have to gear up the D a bit more towards defending the pass. The run offense was not that bad considering that mostly rookies were playing in the OL. RB Ballard, one of my favorite players from our draft class, apparently can run block. Go figure out. CB Hitchcock also delivered, he'll be a cornerstone of this defense once he fully develops.

We have a midweek before the next two preseason games, and we made a couple of roster moves. We are trading red-flag, 3rd-yr 69/69 G Rasmussen to BOR for their 2nd, 3rd round and 6th picks in the next drafts. Rasmussen is clearly late first round material being signed for 4yrs, 10M/yr, but we needed the roster spot badly before the season begins. He didn't really fit our OL mold, and we have been shopping him for a while since signing 62/62 G Stanley 'F-U' Finch.

We also signed a couple of veteran mentors for our LBs and CB.

Episode 1.3 - 2097 Weeks 1 to 3

We took a bad beating in Week 1 on the road against our division rival San Antonio Tidal Force (SAO), losing 16-31. We dropped 0-14 with 5 min left in the first quarter, and it was too much for our young team. We still made the game interesting in the second quarter, but produced no offensive points in the second half. The young D suffered a lot against the pass and the run. The run offense was horrible, and we couldn't move the ball consistently with the pass. The only highlight in this game were the 6 ST tackles by Andre Wight. We move on.

Week 2 and we are on the road, this time against CDO. We play a tight game, the defense surrendered only 6 points (their other 7 pts came from a pick 6 followed by extra point). We don't produce anything on offense, only 6 points, losing 6-13 in the end. This has the makings of a long season for our young roster.

Week 3 and we finally have our home season opener. We host my beloved Toronto Lake Monsters and shake things up a bit on offense. We go back to the original plan of playing Finkes at LT and benching Heflin, who for some reason made the starting line up. We move Wyatt Carr to the starting RB position, with Floyd Ballard playing mostly 3rd down. On the defensive side, we activate a 52 rated DT that I do not remember his name now. We change offensive and defensive game plans hoping for some volatility there (that can only be helpful at this point given where we are). It turns out that we come on fire en route to a 52, yes I said 52 to 20 win. I've never thought that this team could put 30 points this season, let alone 50. Toronto is struggling a bit early this season, we will take the win, but fully expect to go back to reality in the next game against Paris. Nice that rookie 4th round LB Enrique Kawaguchi had an INT return for TD.

Episode 1.4 - 2097 Weeks 4 to 17, and season review

The rest of the season showed that we are too inconsistent to compete against the top teams in the conference, as expected. That's what lack of offensive talent and poor cohesion does to you. Some ugly losses against GOT and AUG, unexpected wins against MAA and HAN, and close games against SAO and OAK. Our poor turf almost ended the career of our stud C, but he should recover. The poor field conditions forced us to be extra careful with key players. We finished the season with a shut down win against ATL (20-0), highlighting that the strength of this team is the defense. The offense was anemic throughout the season, producing only 18 ppg. We inherited a spread offense and definitely need a better scheme and more talent there. Somehow this team finished the season with a 7-9 record, which makes our fans hopeful but doesn't help our draft position. Alright.

We now evaluate the franchise and key roster positions on a scale of 0 (poor) to 100 (outstanding). This will help us quickly spot how things could be improved.

• Coaching: HC Kemp 85, OC Humphreys 51, DC Gaines 59, AC Janes 75, SC Hopkins 70

• Chemistry 43, Cohesion 60: We are not good in either category

• QB 34: we need someone that fits our offense. Dillon will never be the guy with his poor sense rush and roll-out style. we have not backup behind him, with the rookie 6th-round pick being essentially a scrambler.

• RB 48: Ballard offers some nice traits in the receiving game and 3rd down back. Bronson and Carr are capable backups. FB is a special teamer.

• WR 23: Only one starter (rookie Martinez) and a nice backup in Sheperd, but no top end talent there.

• TE 43: some expensive vets with 50+ overall ratings but wrong bars for my offense.

• K 57, P 79: we are fine there and can survive with these guys if needed. K Rovenstine has a strong leg but his kickoff game is a problem.

• DL 81: we have some good vets and a nice influx of young talent.

• LB 83: we are pretty strong there with the draft class producing 3 starters with 60+ ratings. this guys will fly in a couple years time.

• DB 80: a nice mix of vet and young players. we are covered there.

Episode 1.5 - 2098 Offseason and FA stages

This was a busy offseason. Our stadium renovation was finished, and players were happy with the quality of the new turf. We also had major changes in our coaching staff. We lost our nice HC Kemp (as expected) and brought in 38 yo HC Darrin Szabo. After 2 years as the PAR DC, Szabo was at the top of our list and shows a lot of promise. We also brought in OC Walter Mounts, who was our last usable option under the West Coast style. Both guys had long playing careers for IOW under the reigning champ CoyoteVice. Our defense switched to a 34 front with DC Roy Martinez. We also bring in Hunter Tuggle, a longtime GOT LB, as AC. We kept our SC coach.

At the top of the FA pool were 77/77 WR Powell (courtesy of malcpow) and 80/80 TE Sawyer. After analyzing the cap situation, we decided to go hard after both players, with the hopes of landing one of them. With the cap situation still under flow, including some dead money, major releases were needed to be able to afford bidding for the WR and TE. DC Martinez was given the task to work with the 2nd-yr DL plus any rookies that would be drafted. So our defensive leader NT Watkins, DE Foreman, and DE Cooper were released. CB Kumerow was traded to our longtime trading partner Kodos for hist TOR 3rd and 4th round picks in the next draft. These moves cleared up about 140M in cap space. Both the WR and TE signed with us -- they must be thinking they are coming to a pass-happy team.

After extending some key players like CB Hitchcock and LB Bisset, we were able to get former TOR 1.1 pick Shane Shelton after releasing QB Dillon. Then a series of interesting events happen. OBX (thaynes888) signs QB Dillon, and we see an opportunity to trade for the apparent odd man out 43/53 QB Korey Mason. It turns out that OBX planned to keep him as a high-quality backup, and after some back and forth we are able to finalize a trade for Mason involving a 2nd round pick and a rookie QB drafted in the 6th round. We will likely have to cut Shelton to afford extending Mason now.

We also saw an opportunity to obtain stud 4th-yr 80/80 RT Linstrom from AUG. Sawblade did not have cap space to extend Linstrom's contract, and we quickly agree on a 1st round compensation in 2 yrs time for Linstrom + AUG 5th round pick. No pressure on getting that 5th round pick right! Finally, we also traded RT Finkes to TEX for a 6th round pick.

All in all, this was a pretty substantial offensive makeover in FTW. We have a new QB, WR, TE and RT which will definitely make us better in the long term. However having all these changes in the same season is never good for short-term performance, but the earlier we make these changes the better.

Episode 1.6 - 2098 Draft

This is another top-heavy draft class with nice offensive talent. When the class comes out there seems to be an obvious QB as the 1.1 pick, and some 3 or 4 WRs that would go in the top 10. We sit at 1.14, not the ideal place for trading up or down without surrendering a lot. We also own another 8 picks in the draft, and we could certainly use more picks.

The draft proceeded as expected until 1.7, when the first opportunity for a trade up appeared with CHE's pick on the block. With a nice WR available (Buysse), projecting as 65 to 70, it was more or less clear that he wouldn't make past this pick. We decided to stay put, in particular after signing WR Powell. We simply did not have interest in offering more than what MAA was offering to trade up (2 firsts) given the many holes in our roster. We found ourselves in a situation similar to last yr's, with a top CB available to us at 1.14. We gladly took CB Nugent, specially after having traded away our starting RCB Kumerow to TOR. We made two more substantial trades, sending our 1st next season for CHE's 2.6, 3.5, 4.10, 6.8 and 7.7. So the choice was between 1.14 + 5 picks vs a 70-rated WR. We could debate about this forever, but i couldn't affort giving up 6 picks for 1 player at this stage (who knows if the trade would have worked as CHE had a pretty good offer from MAA). We also traded our 5th next season for HAN's 5th, 6th and 7th round picks. We end up with a grand total of 17 (!) picks. These are the players we got (post-PS2 ratings and player pages courtesy of Ben). I also add some quick analyses.

1(14) RCB Miles Nugent 53/62 -> I debated between him and Goldfarb (HAN 1.26). I honestly thought Goldfarb would be available in the early 2nd, but didn't notice that malcpow was around for the draft. Nugent may not be a 3-down RCB but he will be the effective starter. His projected intel, zone and bump were the deciding factors.

2(5) LG Percy Fenkner 26/75 -> I saw a few guys left on the board with top10 1st-round grades -- this spurred the trade with CHE. i thought about this trade for a while as the 1st that i had to give up is potentially top 10. It still made sense to get a similar player that we would get at let's say 1.10 for a lower cap hit and collect extra picks. Fenkner looks like our future LG.

2(6) WLB Derek Lanner 59/80 -> Lanner was definitely a luxury pick since we have a pretty good LB room. But he was too good of a prospect to pass, and he didn't disappoint. He will do a bit of everything for us and will allow a better cap management for the LB group. The plan is to lock our top 5 LBs for 100M/yr on average (slightly less than 20% of the cap).

2(11) RDE Skip Burrows 55/73 -> Highest-rated player on the board at this point. he'll be a day1 starter and join our talented DL room.

3(5) LG Tanner Finch 37/62 -> He was the highest-rated offensive player left on the board alongside RB Benn. Decided to add depth to the OL, and he's a pretty good starter moving fwd.

3(14) RB Rich Benn 48/58 -> He fits our mold of RBs. helps a lot with the passing game. great ST skills.

3(20) RCB Dwight Aviles 40/55 -> Was expecting a bit more of him, but the big INT bar couple with nice END, m2M and bump were the deciding factors. great intel. he will rotate with Nugent as RCB. huge to lock our future starting CBs with this pick.

3(25) RDE Dominic Hammond 36/56 -> Was expecting more too. still pretty good all around bars, will rotate and easy to keep around for cohesion.

4(10) SS Kevin Wells 40/58 -> we see him as a NCB/S hybrid. great value here.

4(14) SS Albert Jacquet 49/76 -> best value in the draft by a mile. he's our excep aff starting SS for the next decade. he's also flexible enough to play FS against pass-happy teams. 100 intel is the icing on the cake.

4(20) RDE Rich Steil 42/59 -> BPA at this point, will rotate as well.

5(26) LDT Trent Pearson 31/59 -> another BPA, great interior 3rd pass rush with enough run D to disturb the long routes in 1WR sets.

7(7) WILB Garrett Hammond 36/62 -> yet another BPA, great run defender. he allows a good rotation of LBs.

7(26) LT Nathan Becht 31/47 ->great pass protector -- he will start as LT. liability in the run game but what else can you get at the end of the 7th?

In addition we drafted RB Poole (odd bars, now cut) and a pair of 6th round QBs. Kato (5/52) was a nice find but had to be involved in the trade with Mason. Coleman would have been kept for chemistry but is now cut after the QB Mason trade.

Episode 1.7 - 2098 Regular Season