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*The Jungle - Baron1898 - 02-12-2022
This is part 2 of my series on Chicago. You can find the first part here.
Introduction: Draftocalypse
Quote:Historic. Legendary. Epic.
Those are the words used to describe the league-altering potential scope and size of the NSFL's S15 Draft Class -- or for the purpose of NFY, the S14 DSFL Draft Class. With 88 prospects and counting, it's not hyperbole. It's a tidal wave about to crash on the shores of sim football.
This excerpt opening an article by @Roly helps to paint a picture of what March 2019 felt like in the league. A draft class of this size, recruited in r/nfl, had not been seen since the league's inaugural draft, and the organizers of the reddit recruitment did not anticipate such a crowd. The community was absolutely buzzing with activity, filled with excited new recruits who would go on to become new core members of the community as many of the older cohort filtered themselves out. There are too many S15 veterans still active today to name individually.
Obviously, the league was not equipped to handle such a magnitude of rookies. The DSFL reopened the doors of its bot teams to human players once again, re-establishing the Palm Beach Solar Bears and Norfolk Seawolves as real teams. But this only delayed the problem for a year; in no time at all the S15 draft would arrive, and the wave of players threatened to crowd out the limited starting spots available in the upper league. It was finally time to do what had not been done since Season 2: expansion.
The following story is both significantly longer than the first part, covering over an entire calendar year of events, and significantly more recent, albeit still nearly two years removed by the time of publication. It involves a few significant returning characters from part 1 and quite a few newcomers. It also involves a substantial amount of drama and general nastiness, culminating in an explosive final two weeks that puts the Blues drama to shame and ranks among the most contentious episodes in league history. I will do my best to cover these events as impartially as possible.
Part I: Football for Chicago… Again
The end of Season 13 took place in a much different environment from the one many readers are familiar with. The league had not expanded its number of teams since Season 2, when the Philadelphia Liberty and Las Vegas Legion were added to create an eight-team league. For nearly half the league's history to that point, ever since the Legion relocated and rebranded as the New Orleans Second Line, the NSFL had remained relatively stable. Draft classes would usually draw in around two or three rounds of prospects, with only a select few in each class becoming regular high earners. Teams had offensive lines composed entirely of robots; user offensive linemen were exceptionally rare. So it's no understatement that the recruitment class from r/nfl sent shockwaves throughout the entire community, most notably and importantly for our purposes in the form of league expansion, which was announced on April 7, 2019.
Head Office decided on a staggered rollout of the two new teams. Both would draft players in the monstrous S15 NSFL Draft at 5th and 6th overall but would be required to send all of those prospects back down to the DSFL for the year. In the following offseason, there would be two drafts: the normal S16 NSFL Draft, for which the expansion teams would select 1st and 2nd overall, and an expansion draft, where they could select from a pool of veterans not protected by their current teams.
One week after the announcement of expansion, the first major puzzle pieces were revealed: the identities of the new expansion GMs. The spots were highly coveted, but two applicants were chosen: @AdamS and @Oles. The former, along with his first co-GM @JKortesi81, would be the first of the pair to announce his team's branding - the Austin Copperheads. There's an interesting quote from AdamS about his thought process for the name and location:
Quote:Once I was in the process of working towards expansion I also switched from my original plan of going back to Vegas. I thought rehabilitating the city for our league would be a good thing but there was definitely some strong hesitancy for that idea. For those who do not know, Vegas had a franchise, the Legion, which was...badly run to say the least… Eventually, I just discarded the idea and started fresh.
Oles, however, did his process a bit more publicly. As a veteran last having GMed the Philadelphia Liberty to their first (and so far, only) Ultimus championship in Season 7, Oles was a natural and eager choice for an expansion GM, and he stated that he had thrown his hat into the ring before the choice to expand was even finalized. However, he was not yet settled on a name. He created a poll for the general community to vote between three potential brands: the Louisville Pedigree, the Louisville Bootleggers, and the Chicago Butchers.
In a striking parallel with AdamS, Oles had this to say about why he was considering a franchise in Chicago:
Quote:As for Chicago, we all know the history Chicago has in the NSFL, the much maligned Chicago Blues were quickly moved to Palm Beach in favor of the Solar Bears branding, and Chicago has quickly become a no go zone for teams. If I went with Chicago I'd want to redeem the city and give it justice.
By May 1, Oles was ready to announce that the Chicago Butchers would be the victorious brand over the Bootleggers and his personal favorite Pedigree. He also announced that @Muford – the same Muford who co-founded the Chicago Blues – would be his co-mod, and unveiled the team colors (red, silver, and black) and team logo. Although there was some sentiment that Chicago's colors were not quite unique enough in a league with two other red and black teams, the general feeling after the announcement was highly positive, praising the design of the logo created by @enigmatic.
Only two days later, the enormous draft class that had kicked events into motion was finally drafted into the big leagues. The S15 NSFL Draft, streamed on May 3, saw the Chicago Butchers making their first ever selections from the 6th spot in the draft order as a result of the expansion lottery. The team had GM players Kazimir Oles at WR and D'Pez Poopsie at DE; beyond that, though, they naturally had holes to fill at practically every position. They chose:
Pick 6 – Lightsout Lewis, LB @flyeaglesfly29
Pick 16 – Xerxes Ridley, CB @plantane
Pick 26 – Guy Nikko, LB @Duress
Pick 36 – Jack Rambo, S @oz3700
Pick 46 – Timmy Hoss, TE @smaxx77
Pick 56 – Ben Bortboy, RB @spinarnie
Pick 66 – Trevon Simmons, DE @Tyreke
Pick 76 – Avery Thomas, S @Tesoroano7
Pick 86 – Andre Thornton, WR @Drizzy
Pick 96 – Paul DiMirio, K @Nykonax
Pick 106 – Neon Demon, CB @kissthe6rings
Pick 116 – Poster Nutbag, DT @Thee_Autumn_Wind
Pick 126 – Buddha Lebowski, LB @BuddhaLebowski
All 11 of these players were required to spend Season 15 down with their DSFL teams. The Butchers, meanwhile, would get two more chances to fill out their roster, starting with the S16 Expansion Draft. Chicago would pick first in an alternating snake draft of unprotected players with Austin, and select:
Pick 1 – Kwame Abayomi Mbanefo, DE @Rabidsponge21
Pick 4 – Curtis Saul, DT @Evok
Pick 5 – Achilles Hondo, CB @HalfEatenOnionBagel
Pick 8 – Marc Spector, DE @RedCydranth
Pick 9 – Kulture Fulture, K @Saliva^
Pick 12 – Bobson Dugnutt, CB @Bzerkap
Pick 13 – Roger Batoff, WR @yoye
Pick 16 – Declan Harp, TE @OBESE
Pick 17 – Aksel Danielsson, RB @JSS
Pick 20 – Seer Zaphyrous, RB @7hawk77
Pick 21 – Felix Hasselhoff, WR @DELIRIVM
Pick 24 – Will Foster, DT @ztevans
Eagle-eyed viewers might notice some familiar names among that list of draftees – 7hawk77, the Sabercats GM whose elevation to Head Office caused Muford to leave the Chicago Blues for San Jose, and RedCydranth, the GM who would replace Muford as Jiggly's co. But neither would be a Butcher for longer than a day. Chicago would quickly create a trade with the Arizona Outlaws, swapping Spector, Zaphyrous, and their S17 2nd for RB Ricky Adams (@TheDangaZone) and LB Gekyume Stokeley (@soryantyler).
That wasn't the most impactful trade of the Butchers. Earlier that same day, the two expansion teams traded quite a few draft picks between them. In return for Austin's 1st rounder in S16, the second overall pick, and 4 million in S16 cap space, Chicago gave up their S17 and S18 first round picks and their S18 second. It was quite evident that both teams were taking radically different team-building approaches, and the Butchers were mortgaging the future in order to compete in the short term.
The Butchers would only pick three times in the much smaller S16 NSFL Draft, with the 1st, 2nd, and 11th overall picks in their toolbox. They selected:
Pick 1 – Sam Torenson, RB @Jonny2x
Pick 2 – Blake Faux, LB @AlexF
Pick 11 – Ben Tu'inukuafe, OL @Ben
There was one position the Butchers did not target in any of the drafts: quarterback. But there was a solution on the free agent market, one seemingly tailor-made for Chicago: a disgruntled young quarterback who had yet to see the field in the NSFL and just so happened to have a near-blinding loyalty to the Windy City. And with a three-year contract for Rose Jenkins, the Chicago Butchers would start their inaugural season with a user at quarterback more associated with the city, for better and for worse, than anyone else in the league: @Jiggly_333.
Part II: The Revolving Door
The Butchers had a very clear goal in mind from the start: win an Ultimus within the next two or three seasons. Unlike the Copperheads, the Butchers entered their first NSFL season with a highly competitive roster, fronted by a young and earning quarterback and with high earners across the defense to pair with the league's best receiver in Kazimir Oles.
Not all of their acquisitions over two offseasons paid dividends. Only the first four picks in Chicago's massive S15 draft crop were called up in Season 16, with first rounder Lightsout Lewis position changing to safety; the other nine would never see the field for the Butchers. All of the expansion draft picks, barring Bobson Dugnutt and the two players traded to Arizona, were on the roster for the season, as well as the top two picks of the S16 draft; Ben Tu'inukuafe went back down to the DSFL.
The season's results on the field validated Chicago's approach. As the Copperheads trudged through a winless 0-13 season, the Butchers tied for the league lead with a 10-3 record and placed atop of the NSFC. At the center of their success was the defense, which ranked only behind the Otters in terms of points allowed. Five of Chicago's players qualified for the S16 Pro Bowl: Declan Harp, Kazimir Oles, D'Pez Poopsie, Kicker and Punter of the Year Kulture Fulture, and rookie running back Sam Torenson, who also won both Offensive Rookie of the Year and Running Back of the Year. Oles and Muford would land General Managers of the Year for their exemplary first season.
Chicago's aggressive strategy didn't reap an Ultimus immediately. After their bye week, the Butchers were upset at home in the NSFC Championship game by Philadelphia. In a vacuum, basically any expansion team would love to have such immediate success. But Chicago's success was not made in a vacuum, and there remained a ticking time bomb of urgency, especially since the team had no picks in the first two rounds of the upcoming S17 and S18 drafts.
On August 9, just as the offseason was getting started, Muford stepped down from the co-GM position. His replacement would be an internal promotion: flyeaglesfly29, the team's first ever draft pick. The new team management immediately went into the S17 NSFL Draft with a limited cache of capital, and procured:
Pick 28 – Lilcringer Kendrick, OL @nairbretsamdaerb
That's it. The Butchers passed on both of their remaining picks in the fourth and fifth rounds. Kendrick never made it onto the ISFL roster.
The rest of the offseason was a mixed bag. It was known that next year's S18 draft class was projecting to be nearly as large as the seminal S15 class had been, and so Chicago's lack of its first two picks in that draft became less of an issue. They traded away their 9th rounder in that draft for Cole Walker, a 99 TPE inactive defensive end.
More pressing were the free agents. The Butchers resigned D'Pez Poopsie and Ricky Adams to one-year contracts early in the offseason and Aksel Danielsson to his own one-year contract towards the start of Season 18. Meanwhile, Kwame Abayomi Mbanefo and Gekyume Stokely left for Orange County and Philadelphia.
Even before the season, there were some troublesome signs for the Butchers's continued success. In a pre-season predictions article, @nickyvmlp wrote,
Quote:This team has way more inactives than I thought they did. Their entire receiving corps besides Kazimir Oles? Inactive. Their entire defensive line? Inactive. Their running back unit besides Sam Torenson? Inactive. I guess that’s what happens when you A) build through the expansion draft, B) trade up in one draft, and C) not have any draft picks left from another draft. But still, this team is in serious danger of plateauing or worse, since a lot of their players aren’t getting much better, and they aren’t having the best of luck signing free agents.
nickvmlp projected the Butchers to go 7-6 in Season 17, but they would actually exceed that record by a game and end up in a three-way 8-5 tie for the top of the NSFC. Once again, the Butchers finished with a stellar defense that tied for the second fewest points allowed in the league and an offense powered by Sam Torenson leading the NSFL in rushing yards. Torenson and Kulture Fulture pulled down consecutive RBOTY and KOTY awards, respectively.
For the second season in a row, however, the Butchers would be bounced in the first round of the playoffs, this time by the Baltimore Hawks in a 40-6 rout. Chicago's aggressive win-now philosophy had not yielded fruit in two straight seasons, and the pieces were coming unglued. A retooling would be necessary, and the enormous S18 draft class offered hope that Chicago could spruce up its locker room with more young, active players.
But the team's management exiting the season was completely different from the one that had entered it. Around two weeks into Season 17, Oles left the GMing position, occupied by real-life challenges and leaving flyeaglesfly in charge as the primary GM. A day later, on September 10, fly announced his new co-GM as the one and only Jiggly. Not two weeks later on the 23rd, fly stepped down and Jiggly was once again in charge of a Chicago franchise, this time with @Toasty as his co.
The situation facing the new duo was bleak, although not unfixable. The Chicago locker room was "completely empty except for occasional weekly messages" by Jiggly's own account, with only a few truly active players. He stated that a full rebuild was not in the cards; the Butchers had a few great pieces to build around, including "a stud RB" in Sam Torenson.
So it was a complete shock when, on the very first day of the offseason, the Butchers traded Torenson away to the Philadelphia Liberty in return for S8 RB Marquise Brown and an S18 5th round pick. The next day, Chicago dealt Philly's 5th rounder, as well as Chicago's own 3rd and Blake Faux, to Austin in exchange for a 2nd round and 6th round selection. Yes, the same Blake Faux that the Butchers had traded away two 1st round picks and a 2nd rounder for the right to take back in S16.
The Butchers still only had one pick in the first three rounds of the S18 NSFL Draft, the one they had received from Austin. The picks made by Jiggly and Toasty were:
Pick 15 – Mike Hockhertz, S @CDub2
Pick 35 – Footballer Blockerman, OL @cpetrella
Pick 42 – Jake Utler, RB @PersonMann
Pick 43 – Scott Brewer, TE @Gibby
Pick 46 – Caden Bright, OL @Nykonax
Pick 50 – Benjamin Gordon, OL @efiug
Pick 58 – Zach Bailey, CB @Ocelot
Pick 59 – Connor Johnston, DT @cwjohnston
Pick 66 – Otto VanJensen, LB @Otto
Pick 68 – Will Smith, WR @Pio15
Pick 73 – William Mitchell, S @ConMan_NH
Pick 76 – Tore Andre Flø, OL @bluesfan55
Pick 83 – James Lux, DE @Yoyo8484
Pick 93 – Max Power, K @waywardson
Pick 96 – Victor Bravo @captaincrunch00
Pick 103 – Nicholas Grimmer, S @Ngrimmer21
Pick 106 – Big Jim Slade, TE @Jspivey01
Hockhertz, Utler, Bright, and Gordon would be called up to the NSFL in S18; the rest, with the exception of Zach Bailey a season later, would never make it.
Jiggly signed a variety of extensions over the offseason: 3 years for Kulture Fulture, Declan Harp, Achilles Hondo, Jack Rambo, and Xerxes Ridley, and 1 year for D'Pez Poopsie. Barring Rambo and Ridley, these were not young players, and the Butchers overall had an age problem: even with Ricky Adams retiring after S17, the Butchers had the most regressing players of any team in the league.
Meanwhile, the on the field product continued to backslide. The Butchers posted a losing season for the first time in franchise history with a 5-8 record and missed out on the playoffs on a tiebreaker. The glue of the team in the first two seasons, the defense, regressed significantly and gave up more points than any team besides the Austin Copperheads. At least Kulture Fulture won Kicker of the Year again.
The real headliner for the season, though, were the trades. Jiggly and Toasty finalized six trades in their time together during Season 18:
- October 15, trading D'Pez Poopsie to the Hawks for DE Steven Oats (@TheActualSlowpoke), an S19 1st, and an S20 3rd
- October 15, trading Xerxes Ridley to the Second Line for LB Ronald "The Watt" Watkins (@BenDover) and an S19 3rd
- October 18, trading Kazimir Oles to the Outlaws for WR Josh Parker (@goilers) and an S19 1st
- October 24, trading Chicago's S20 1st and 2nd rounders for Austin's S19 1st
- October 26, trading the 1st rounder they got from the Outlaws for WR Action Jackson (@KillaScrilla)
- October 28, trading Felix Hasselhoff to the Liberty for $500,000 in S18 cap space
There were some common threads in these trades. Three of Chicago's most prominent users, including the original GMs of the team in Muford and Oles, were traded away for draft capital… but then Chicago traded away its top two picks in Season 20 for a first rounder in S19, bringing them up to a ludicrous four 1st round picks in the S19 NSFL Draft.
So why the stockpiling of Season 19 picks? It wasn't actually meant for drafting, but rather to trade most or all of them to San Jose for RB Marcella Toriki, or more specifically the user behind her, @bex. Here's some interesting background behind this from Jiggly himself:
Quote:So I gave Toasty a plan: we trade a first round pick for her. He went into negotiations, didn't tell me much, but SJS wanted more than that. Toasty knew about my plan to step down after this was done, so he did most of the negotiating. When they rejected one draft pick, I suggested we get more first rounders and just stockpile them for this future trade.
I figured that if they wouldn't take just one first rounder, they'd probably jump at three. But, if we trade three, then we wouldn't have one for ourselves, so I told Toasty to look for a way to get us to four first rounders. He did. And when we made the offer of three, they didn't take it. I made a judgement call, looked at the draft class and said that it'd probably be better to punt on this draft and take the next one if we can land a high earning and charismatic user like Bex, who at this time I was still planning on asking to take my place as GM of the Butchers next to Toasty.
Once Season 18 ended, Jiggly stepped down from GM. The next day, Toasty announced his new co-GM: @ValorX77. It would require a trade with Yellowknife – an S19 1st and 2nd rounder, plus $2 million in S19 cap space, for an S19 2nd and Ryan Leaf Jr. – to bring Valor aboard.
There were a number of important decisions to be made early in the offseason. Action Jackson left for the Sabercats in free agency, leaving a gaping hole at the WR position. Even more crucially, Toriki had used her mutual option to leave San Jose and enter free agency, making Chicago's stockpiling of draft capital useless and inciting a serious bidding war for bex's favor between a number of teams. Marquise Brown also retired after Season 18 ended – another disastrous return on investment for the Butchers and making running back a place of serious need.
But Chicago came up empty handed yet again. Bex signed with New Orleans for $5 million a year, choosing to play a complimentary role to Forrest Gump instead of taking an obscene $10 million annually contract that Valor and Toasty had apparently offered. Serious holes needed to be filled. Luckily, the team still had some serious draft capital in the upcoming S19 NSFL Draft and would be getting reinforcement from Toasty's GM player, Willie B. Hardagain. With their picks, they took:
Pick 4 – Sean O'Leary, WR @Blueline
Pick 6 – Sweet James-Jones, WR @
Pick 19 – Willie B. Hardagain, LB @Toasty
Pick 23 – Jeremiah Legend, LB @azimuthal-swift
Pick 24 – OJ Littlewood, RB @EarlEarl
Two days after the draft, Toasty stepped down from the position of Chicago GM. A day after that, he was traded to Arizona.
What happened?
Part III: Something Sweet This Way Comes
Quote:Sweet James-Jones is here to pimp all you hoes pockets. He's here to take the NSFL by storm. Stats, skrilla, and errrything in between. Sweet James don't play that fugazi ahhhh bull shit so if you pass on Sweet, he's gone bust yo ahh and make you regret passing the proverbial "dutchie". Catch me in the third ward with yo bitch, or in the endzone fa six. Trillest WR and player in the entire draft. Don't fuck up and pass on the Sweet because he gone burn yo ahhhhhhhh. Bihhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Chuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Editorial note: there is a lot of language in this part of the article.
Sweet James-Jones. One of the most infamous users in league history, Sweet burst onto the scene from the moment he joined. His story is intimately tied into the history of the Butchers, encapsulating the downward spiral of the franchise into a toxic, notorious destination in the eyes of the NSFL community.
Sweet was a vocal media poster and Discord presence within hours of creating his player, known for talking in what can be generously described as an exaggerated rapper caricature and frequently going after other users on the forums and in rookie chat. Many people enjoyed Sweet's personality and eagerness to participate, but there were a few people who were rubbed the wrong way. One of the most prominent was Toasty, who shared a draft class with SJJ.
On October 3, Sweet posted a mock draft article called "The Sweetest Mock Draft" looking at the DSFL Draft. Besides mocking himself at 1OA (of course), Sweet had this to say about Toasty, a former Portland GM who was threatening to hold out if he wasn't chosen by Portland in the draft:
Quote:This CB coming out of Who Gives a Shit State is projected to end up in Portland. Willie claims that he will hold out if he does not end up in Portland. Basically, and I say this with the upmost respect, this guy might as well call it quits now. Just give up. Instead of actin' like a bitch and steady crying ya eyes out, why don't you get drafted where you get drafted and go do something, lil bahhhhh… I would not take the risk if I was any other team because who wants to play with a grown ahhhh cry baby?
Toasty soon fired back, both replying to the thread and tagging Sweet in the rookie discord,
Quote:I have done more in this sim league than you ever will. But there are guys in here say the rookie mentors that do more than me. You are just gonna be another Ryan Lefevre. All talk and then 2 weeks later you are IA. I am sick of hearing you trying to be cool and talk in third person
To say that there was bad blood between them was an understatement. Toasty would go at first overall to the Pythons, while Sweet went to Myrtle Beach and continued to be one of the highest earners in his draft class, especially for a non-recreate.
So why did Toasty, in his position as Chicago Butchers GM, proceed to draft Sweet James-Jones in the first round of the next NSFL Draft? Obviously wide receiver was an enormous concern for the team. But if Chicago wanted to double dip at receiver with their two high picks, there was still another option with Rayne Gordon (@RainDelay), taken by the Wraiths one pick later.
Let's set the scene. It was November 24, 2019, two days after the NSFL Draft. The night before, Toasty had posted and quickly deleted a screenshot in the league discord. To quote a contemporary eyewitness,
Quote:Toasty screenshotted something out of GM chat that was supposed to be something amusing that valor had said but he forgot to post the cropped version and it showed valor saying that SJJ's attitude was bad
The drama started to spill over from there. Valor, who was on Discord when people started asking about the incident, clarified that the Chicago GMs were still negotiating Sweet's contract because "he demanded a ton of money". It came out that Sweet had left the Chicago locker room in the meantime.
Then Sweet jumped in and, without preamble or forewarning, immediately began sharing screenshots of his private messages with Toasty:
![[Image: wx8UEbc.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/wx8UEbc.jpeg)
![[Image: KbclL0Q.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/KbclL0Q.jpg)
When asked what exactly he had demanded, Sweet stated,
Quote:They offered me 3 for a total of 11M & 3 for a total of 15. I counter offered 2 for 15 & then that’s when they started posting the Ryan leaf shit & deleting it in here
The entire discord was buzzing with activity, with some league officials like @ADwyer87 attempting to at least somewhat calm down the rampant toxicity. Toasty soon fired back though, sending yet another screenshot of the negotiation chats:
![[Image: szYMgxi.png]](https://i.imgur.com/szYMgxi.png)
There can certainly be debates over whether drafting someone that you have no intention of ever playing, in the hopes of immediately flipping them for other assets, is a good strategy. But regardless, Toasty was toast. Within a half hour of sharing that screenshot, Toasty resigned from his GMing position and left Valor in charge of the franchise. He wanted out and got his wish a day later, traded to the Outlaws in exchange for rookie DT Beat (@DonnoMania), inactive S15 LB Allen Josh (@NamelessNate), and rookie QB Zack Vega (@WALDO). Later that same day, Sweet would ink a one-year, $7.5 million rookie contract.
Only a few days before the season started, Valor announced that @ItsJustBarry would be his new co-GM in Chicago. The team outlook was in a pretty low place – players described the locker room as dead and inactive, there had yet to be more than a single season without GM turnover, and the roster was still filled with numerous holes and inactives.
Unfortunately for Chicago, Season 19 played out pretty much to chalk. They went 3-10, worst in the league, and wielded the NSFL's second lowest-scoring offense to pair with the second-worst scoring defense. Worse yet, they wouldn't even have the first overall pick in the S20 NSFL Draft, since they had traded their 1st and 2nd rounders in S20 for the 1st rounder in S19 that they had used on Sweet James-Jones. Valor had also gotten himself into trouble mid-season by tampering with Logan Uchiha (@CalvinP), although that punishment only affected team cap space and Valor's personal GM pay.
Chicago made a few moves in the S20 offseason. Valor's player, defensive tackle Ryan Leaf Jr., was extended through Season 23, and Zack Vega was extended through Season 21. Caden Bright and Benjamin Gordon were cut, and Ben Tu'inukuafe – who had still not been called up to the NSFL – signed a new deal with New Orleans. Most importantly, Chicago landed a marquee free agent for the first time in franchise history with WR Ahri Espeeyeeseetee (@'steelsound'), who signed for three years and a combined $19 million.
In a relatively small draft class, Chicago's complete lack of high-end capital meant that their own selections were all in the third round, and that was only worsened by a trade that sent two of Chicago's S20 3rd round picks to Arizona in exchange for $4.5 million in cap space. With their two remaining draft picks, the Butcher selected:
Pick 22 – Kemorian Moore, WR @Rowdyyy
Pick 23 – Vince Hammerson, K @Channel88
Neither Moore nor Hammerson played a snap in Chicago.
Just when the Butchers were about to emerge from their first ever offseason without management turnover, Barry resigned only hours before Season 20 was slated to begin on January 20. This time around, Valor was able to find his new co-GM the same day with steelsound, the prized free agent arrival.
As the season got underway, Chicago got a few more extensions inked: two years with Jake Utler, two years with Mike Hockertz, and one year with Sweet James-Jones for $4 million. They also traded three times: with Colorado for LB Martavius Mack (@'Allplanet'), Antonio Sandoval Jr. (@TheMemeMaestro), and an S22 5th in exchange for an S21 4th, with Orange County for S Dan Schneider (@'LGMForever) in exchange for $4 million in S21 cap space, and with Philadelphia for LB Guy Nikko (@Duress) and an S21 3rd for an S21 3rd, S22 3rd, and Colorado's S22 5th.
The extension with Sweet was ill-timed. On January 27, 2020, he posted a retirement thread, calling out multiple users by name and threatening violence, including suggesting that some users should stick knives down their throats. His retirement thread was quickly scrubbed by Head Office, and he was banned indefinitely "for inciting violence against multiple users and targeted harassment" both on the retirement post and in personal messages, both on Discord and on the forums.
Sweet's last message, now immortalized for all eternity on his retirement post, reads:
Quote:so valueless yet here you are, commenting on it. Fookin SIMP
Classy until the end.
Part IV: The Season Before the Storm
Sweet James-Jones was banned as Season 20 entered its fourth week, with the Butchers sitting with a 1-3 record. Unfortunately, Chicago's woes didn't end when Sweet left. The team went 4-9 on the season, again worst in the league. The big offseason acquisition, Ahri Espeeyeeseetee, won Wide Receiver of the Year, but there wasn't much else to celebrate in the Windy City.
As was tradition by now in Chicago, there were still more trades to be made during the season. The Butchers swapped picks and players with the Otters – giving up Curtis Saul, an S21 1st (the first overall pick) and an S21 3rd in exchange for Thorian Skarsgard (@MrStennett), an S21 1st, an S21 2nd, and $2 million in S21 cap space. There was another swap with Baltimore – sending over Guy Nikko and an S21 5th and receiving Stevie Vassallo (@Libertines) and an S22 6th. The Butchers signed Vassallo and Jack Rambo to extensions lasting through the end of Season 23.
You might think they would be done, but they were not. Chicago also gave Arizona an S21 2nd and S22 5th in exchange for LB Leighton Lee (@youngcricket) and a million in S21 cap. These aren't a bunch of young players in their prime that Chicago keeps swapping picks for – they're (mostly) veterans, oftentimes deep in regression or ready to enter it.
Valor also began to stir up noise with a media article released on February 8, questionably either in or out of character, in which he says that
Quote:Reports out of Chicago that an ownership change is in the works, and possibly fueling rumors of either a new stadium or even a relocation… it’s been recently discovered that Videl had purchased a large piece of land In Havana, speculation is that she may attempt to move the butchers to that city in Cuba, but would have to get Head Office approval to do so.
Keep this plot thread in mind as we transition into the S21 offseason.
There was a lot on Valor's and steel's plates heading out of the season. There were still so many holes on the Chicago roster, and the team was at this point infamous for its lack of consistent activity.
They hit the ground running shortly before the offseason started, with Ryan Leaf Jr. transitioning to running back like he was always destined to be. As soon as the playoffs ended, Thorian Skarsgard signed an enormous 3 year, $20 million contract; Sean O'Leary signed an even bigger 3 year, $24.25 million deal; Beat inked for 3 years and $14 million.
There were also two trades made in the offseason. The first sent over an S22 4th to Austin in exchange for CB Xerxes Ridley, the same player they had traded away back in Season 18. The second took place after the team's Season 21 NSFL Draft, which went as follows:
Pick 6 – Osiris Firestorm-Fjord, TE @HalfEatenOnionBagel
Pick 20 – Jerome Davis, WR @Get_Right
Pick 30 – Perry Tucker Jr., LB @Perry87
Pick 51 – Bubba Twatford, LB @Bubba Twatford
Pick 61 – Raheem Okusi, WR @Raheem James
Pick 71 – Emmett Higgins, OL @H0PPY75
Pick 81 – Thelonius Junk, K @TheloniusJunk
Twatford, Higgins, and Junk wouldn't ever play for Chicago, but finding eventual starters on 4/7 picks, especially without terribly high draft capital, was a well-needed boost for Chicago's young core.
Shortly afterwards, Chicago would acquire DT Trae Bacon (@RobCubed) for a 9th rounder in the S22 Draft, a draft which was at this point projected to be the largest in league history. They would also cut Kulture Fulture and extend Zack Vega through S24. The general consensus was that the Butchers were probably not in championship contention, but that Valor and steel were building the team back up after some disastrous management decisions had left Chicago in a bind. Season 21 started on March 9, 2020. By the end of the month, the entire franchise had been turned upside down.
Part V: All Hell Breaks Loose
March 8. There is one day left before the season starts, but the Butchers cut Kulture Fulture, one of the greatest kickers of all time. Saliva^ makes a discussion post complaining that he had been cut with no forewarning from the team – "no messages, no anything". Steelsound soon responded to the post, calling Saliva^ an inactive player both on the forums and in the locker room and stating that sim testing favored Diego Espinosa, an inactive S18 kicker signed by the Butchers four days prior.
March 16. It's Week 4 of Season 21. The Butchers were 0-3, and would be 0-4 once the game against the Baltimore Hawks was streamed in the evening. Steel announced a trade with the Philadelphia Liberty, sending over Chicago's 1st and 2nd rounders in the gargantuan S22 NSFL Draft in return for RB Farley Hank (@Beebob), DT Johnson Harding (@adam2552), and Philly's S22 3rd round pick.
This trade was immediately lambasted by the community at large as highway robbery by the Liberty. Why were the Butchers again going for a win-now mentality, trading for a low TPE defensive tackle and a running back about to hit regression at the expense of two high picks in the best draft class of all time – potential young, active, high-earning players that could form a new core for the Butchers?
An hour later, Waldo announced in a media post that he would both be switching away from quarterback to wide receiver at the end of Season 21 and that he wanted out of Chicago altogether. Zack Vega was the successor-apparent to the aging Rose Jenkins, had just received an extension, and probably would have taken over the starting QB spot within a season or two. But Waldo was eager to leave Chicago and spelled out his reasoning in the article, calling out Valor and steel specifically:
Quote:At the beginning of my tenure in Chicago, our locker room was dead and terribly inactive. We were the worst team in the league and I had about a 5% chance to ever play QB for the team. Since then, our locker room has gotten better, more rookies are talking, more people are hyped for the team and the league, but that’s not what has driven me away from this team I once loved.
It was the fact that they couldn’t see what they were doing was wrong, that it was a bad move. They’ve created this bubble — or an echo chamber — of players on the team that think this is a good move. They consistently denied that the moves they made were wrong and when presented with basic facts that proved them wrong they would look them dead in the eyes and deny it. It’s like arguing with a brick wall, and your GMs shouldn’t be like that, at least in my eyes.
MrStennett and steelsound fired back in the comments, bringing up what Stennett called Waldo's "sordid sim league history" and defending the recent trade as a move that made sense for a team trying to compete for a championship. The implicit assumption, of course, being that the Chicago Butchers were indeed trying to compete for a championship.
Steel also wrote his own media article later on that same day. This article is too long and covers too many points to quote in volume, so here's a link to read it for yourself. Steel discusses his entire GM tenure in length, from arriving in Chicago as a self-professed mercenary only concerned with money to the numerous trades made over the past season and a half. In there is also an announcement that Ahri Espeeyeeseetee will be transitioning to CB effective immediately.
Specifically concerning the Farley Hank trade, steel says,
Quote:I will at this point concede, there is no long term potential in trading for a soon to be in-regression player, and absolutely Beebob could stop being active and earning once he hits regression, who knows. But there is also no guarantee the 1st rounder's going to stay active and earning either, and in this case I am taking the body of data with Beebob that says he will be. It's risk vs. reward, the reward here being a player we pretty much know what sort of production he brings to the table.
The general leaguewide viewpoint was that the Butchers were simply not constructed to compete in the short term, and that the aforementioned trade was counterproductive to the rebuild that Chicago needed to embark on. But steelsound objected to this, stating,
Quote:We are ramping up our efforts to compete this year and next, because that's the only way we will be able to. If we wait for the S22 pick to mature, and the S23 pick to mature, by the time those picks get to comparable levels of TPE where they affect the sim, the core of our team will be regressed/moved-on/retired. The reality of our situation is we had to manufacture a window, or not at all until it's time to move on from Jenkins some time around S25 or S26, since Waldo doesn't earn enough to be a reliable starting QB for a championship team.
Steel goes on to refute many of the arguments made in Waldo's post, saying that the entire 5-person war room had been on board with the short-term window strategy over the offseason. He argued that trading for higher TPE, inactive players was better than lower TPE, potentially active players for this very reason, even though the locker room might suffer.
Waldo responded not 20 minutes later, saying that his lack of feedback in recent days had been due to real-life family concerns and that he had consistently argued for holding on to picks and rebuilding in the war room. Steel argued back that Waldo's opinions didn’t consider any of the recent DC or strategy changes and had advocated for drafting a DE in the S21 Draft who had since gone inactive.
Meanwhile, @Memento Mori and a few other users piped in with the most common critique of Chicago's reasoning:
Quote:The reason your trades have been so derided by the community is not because you're failing to achieve your goal, but because the consensus is that this is the wrong goal to pursue. The community (as a whole) is generally of the opinion that the level of talent on Chicago's roster is such that the roster cannot be transformed into a championship winning roster by Season 23.
March 18. The league was again expanding to accommodate the gargantuan Season 22 class, because time is a flat circle. Many suitors for the new teams (which will eventually form into the Honolulu Hahalua and the Sarasota Sailfish) released media articles announcing their proposed brandings. Valor, still the GM of the Butchers, got in on the fun and released a short article announcing his bid for an expansion team in Havana.
It wasn't all fun and games in the comments though, where multiple past and present members of Chicago expressed their distaste for Valor's seeming desire to jump ship. It was perhaps most fully encapsulated by Oles, who said that it was "horribly disrespectful to go for an expansion team" when Valor was still in charge of another team in desperate need of leadership stability.
March 21. Valor resigned from the Chicago Butchers GM role. Leaving steelsound in charge of Chicago, he held a presser a day later and announced that he was asking for a trade for Ryan Leaf Jr. In response to a question by @NamelessNate about Chicago's recent actions and Valor's part in it, he stated that "it wasn't my decision" on the recent trades and that the team wanted to sneak into the playoffs this year with all of the recent acquisitions.
March 23. The winners of the expansion teams were announced, and Valor is not one of them. Steel sent out a media announcement that he was still searching for a new co-GM with the Butchers and would open up official applications on the 27th. By the end of the Week 8 games played that same day, the Butchers were sitting pretty with a dismal 2-6 record and their hopes of sneaking into the playoffs were slim. A day later, Chicago officially cut Waldo from their roster.
March 28. It all comes tumbling down.
The night before, steel complained in the GM chat that Chicago's game strats hadn't been inputted correctly and received dismissive responses both from some HO members and from other GMs. Fed up with the general attitude of the league towards Chicago, which could not have been any lower, steel transferred control of the Butchers locker room to Jiggly and then jumped ship.
In the morning, Jiggly attempted to keep the situation under control by bringing back Oles into the war room and planning to make him GM eventually. In order to do that, Chicago would be forced to take his player, Tyler Oles Jr., in the following draft's first or second round; of course, Chicago traded away both of those, so the war room began to discuss which players they could use as trade bait for picks. The most valuable of those players was steel's CB, Ahri Espeeyeeseetee.
Right on cue, steel announced his player's retirement to the community at large. The Butchers war room, lacking any successor at the GM position, apparently had no active communication with HO aside from the implication that an outside GM would soon be brought in. Jiggly, essentially the de facto head of the franchise, made a comprehensive media post on the 29th explaining events from his perspective and fighting back against calls to rebrand the team.
Early responses to the post were encouraging, supportive of Jiggly for being transparent at such a chaotic time and criticizing the community as large for demonizing Chicago. @infinitempg came in to share some of Head Office's perspective at the time, saying that steel had repeatedly entered his strats in the incorrect order and had lambasted HO as lazy and incompetent. He also revealed that there had been nearly a dozen applicants in the day since steel quit asking about the Chicago job, and that it would be a bit before Head Office would decide on it.
However, not everyone was sympathetic. Memento Mori refuted the statement that anti-Chicago sentiment among the S22 rookie class was baseless. He instead pointed to multiple instances of steel's aggressive and argumentative behavior, from Fulture's cutting to lashing out against constructive criticism of the Philadelphia trade to dismissing Waldo's post. Mori said,
Quote:To be clear: I don't condone any personal attacks on steel… But his actions as Chicago GM were harming the league. There are teams with worse rosters than Chicago, sure. But all of those teams have younger players, more young players and more picks to fix the team with. Chicago will get worse before it gets better, because of the way the team has been managed… For the most part, people weren't criticising Chicago for the sake of it. They were doing it out of concern for the resulting effect on league health of having a team as badly run as Chicago.
@Frick_Nasty and iamslm22 also jumped in to dispute Jiggly's account of events, with the former stating that steel was the only GM not setting his DC correctly and GM chat was not bullying him. The latter expressed a viewpoint that
Quote:Steel quit the league for 100 reasons - and it seemed to many people like he set up the DC intentionally to have errors so he would have an excuse to quit. He burned bridges with members in another part of the league community recently.
Editorial note: Despite being active and present for this drama as it happened, I am only now realizing that the second half of slm's comment is referring to a rather infamous game in the NSFL Werewolf server that, while being incredibly fascinating and drama-filled in its own right, has no relevance to this story.
Later that evening, Head Office would announce that while they had made a decision on Chicago's new GM and sent over their candidate to the Butchers war room for consideration, the war room had rejected the candidate. Jiggly and Stennett were named interim GM and given the responsibility of choosing a permanent GM with their war room.
This did not go over well in the community at large. Multiple comments on the announcement post criticized letting the same war room who had been in support of Chicago's recent choices make the decision over who would be the next GM. Jiggly came out and said that "we did not believe" that HO's chosen GM was experienced enough for the job and that Chicago would handle the situation by themselves.
There's an interesting comment from @gucci, talking about an article he had written a week or so before on the Butchers' history:
Quote:Jiggly told me this when I was researching my Chicago article: “During this time I was desperately holding onto the team not because I wanted power, but because I just wanted a team in Chicago. I was obsessed with keeping the team. I was continually mocked by the rest of the league in the GM chat to the point where there were people calling for my team to be contracted.”
Sound familiar? This is the Chicago Blues happening all over again…
These events are drama years in the making.
March 30. Jiggly releases another tell-all article, one so incendiary that it is currently the 11th most replied to article in league history. You should read it for yourself.
Again we backtrack to the night before on the 29th. Jiggly described being in contact with a member of Head Office, who told him that there were currently a ton of candidates jostling for the GM spot and who was told by Jiggly that Jiggly and Oles would be the best choices for GM.
HO did not share that assessment, because they would come back a few hours later and present their hand-picked candidate for Chicago's consideration: @TubbyTim69, at that time the co-GM of the Philadelphia Liberty. Tim, told by HO that he was officially the new GM of the Butchers, got invited to the Butchers discord server and added to the war room, where he searched his name and immediately found a multitude of disparaging comments about his qualifications and a comment from Oles that it "Shouldve been Me and Jiggly". Meanwhile, Jiggly had already asked Head Office at this point what would happen if the war room unanimously rejected Tim's appointment.
Jiggly and the others in the war room proceeded to grill Tim with questions about everything: the players, activity, retention, draft picks, the sim. In both Tim's and Jiggly's point of view, Tim answered the questions well, and Jiggly even admitted that " we couldn't really find enough of a professional reason to not accept them as GM." Tim was qualified, active, and prepared for the job.
There was one problem, a fatal one, in Tim's candidacy. He wanted to relocate.
Jiggly told Tim that he wanted to announce their decision to the team himself, being the unofficial franchise head, and then removed Tim from the war room entirely.
Quote:We sat back for a moment. We all were voting yes to them just because it felt like what we were obligated to do. But as I said, something just didn't feel right. We started talking about what if we said no.
Jiggly managed to convince the rest of the war room to essentially revolt, rejecting Tim's appointment and inviting nearly every HO member into the locker room to speak with the players and war room. After Jiggly and the rest vented about feeling rushed and crowded out of the appointment process, Head Office let Jiggly and Stennett assume interim control and pick their own new GM. Jiggly justified this all under the umbrella of a "Soviet Era of the Chicago Butchers", dressing up the situation as the mandate of the people seizing the means of production from Head Office.
Yes, this is really bizarre.
Summarizing the comments to this media piece is practically impossible. There was early backlash against the concept of the war room that had dug Chicago into a hole being trusted to dig itself out. There was also considerable consternation at Jiggly's repeated assertions that the mystery GM candidate, who was not publicly announced as Tim until the day after, was not qualified enough to take over the job. Quoting bex, then commissioner of the league,
Quote:The user is a current GM and has been around longer than I have.
It is hard to know the exact situation when the only real exposure to Chicago has been Steel, Waldo, and Valor. Heaven forbid someone come in and learn more about the situation.
They don't need to go on to be a good GM somewhere else because they are currently a GM somewhere else doing just fine.
Multiple commenters lambasted Jiggly for steering the war room against a qualified candidate and pushing himself as a suitable replacement, even as Jiggly insisted on one hand that he wasn't rejecting Tim with that in mind while throwing his name into the ring as a possible GM on the other. There was also drama when Jiggly called out someone for posting a link to one of his Twitter posts as doxing, even though that same account had been posted by Jiggly himself multiple times and as recently as the week prior.
Later the same day, Jiggly posted yet another media article announcing that the Chicago Butchers had reached a decision concerning the next GM, with the options being Jiggly/Oles, AdamS, @Bayley/Muford, and an undisclosed 6th candidate. Jiggly admitted that he and Oles were the frontrunners until the recent drama had made their unpopularity clear. The war room briefed the rest of the team on each of the candidates and their plans for the future, and Bayley and Muford won with an outright majority of the votes.
There was an issue with Bayley in that a rule exists preventing teams from appointing current prospects as GMs, which ironically had previously been repeated as a reason by members of Chicago's war room why Tim wasn't a good choice for GM. The answer in both cases is that the rule can explicitly be waived under extenuating circumstances, such as expansion or a team having no GM.
Therefore, a trade between Chicago and Baltimore was finalized, with the trade deadline being specifically waived, that would give Chicago an S22 2nd rounder in exchange for a 3rd and 6th. This trade gave Chicago the pick in the first two rounds that they were required by rule to have in a draft with their GM's player.
March 31. The dawning of a new day in Chicago. Tim shared his side of the story, announcing that he was the mystery GM candidate that the Butchers had rejected. Meanwhile, Valor posted a wonderful interview of the new Chicago GMs Bayley and Muford, which you should read here. The new GM pair were cautiously optimistic, and they acknowledged the difficulties of the situation while also offering hope for the future direction of the team. To quote Muford,
Quote:Just know, that we are here to make some noise, and make people realize that Chicago can be that place again. It was back when we first created and Chicago was a feared team in the league, and I want to get back to that level. It might take a few seasons, but just know, Chicago is coming back. Redemption tour."
Conclusion: Some Form of Finality
![[Image: DGaGgSj.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/DGaGgSj.jpg)
Credit to @Hallmonitor_20.
The Las Vegas Legion were the laughingstock of the league. An early expansion team, the Legion never broke 3 wins in any of their first four seasons of the league and were the center of an infamous mass retirement scandal. The team moved and rebranded as the New Orleans Second Line, rehabilitating the culture of the locker room and getting rid of the Legion's negative stigma. Four seasons after their last game in Las Vegas, the Second Line won the Season 9 Ultimus.
The Colorado Yeti were the laughingstock of the league. Not only did they post the first winless season in league history, they did it twice in consecutive years, going 0-28 over Seasons 6 and 7. Colorado's frequent high draft picks were infamous for busting or jumping ship to more successful franchises. There were frequent calls to relocate the Yeti, to clear the stigma of the branding and to start fresh with another name. But the Yeti clung steadfast to their Colorado roots, and the team leadership spent a considerable amount of effort to bring in new active players and remove the perception of the Yeti as a broken franchise. After losing the Ultimus in Season 13, the Yeti would finally break through their curse and bring home a trophy by beating the Otters in Season 22, overcoming a 21-3 deficit in the third quarter.
The Chicago Butchers were the laughingstock of the league. Poor leadership and poor decisions crippled the team, brought on by an ever-revolving door of GMs who all seemed intent on reloading and chasing a window of championship contention that had long since slipped away. Bayley and Muford changed the picture, revitalizing a team on the brink of collapse. They brought stability and purpose back to the organization, healing the perception of the Butchers in the eyes of the league. In sharp contrast to the turnover that came before them, Muford and Bayley GMed together for nearly an entire calendar year before Muford stepped down on March 6, 2021, appointing @TheCC as the new co-GM. Bayley wouldn't leave the team until December 10, over a year and a half since he joined. @TheCC has been the GM ever since. Chicago once couldn't go more than a season without a change in GM or co-GM. The stability since Bayley and Muford took over is beyond remarkable.
Chicago still hasn't won an Ultimus. They stand alone as the only team to never make it to the championship game. I don't know how much longer they'll be waiting. But the Butchers are not a laughingstock, not in the universally reviled sense that they used to be, and the Yeti before them, and the Legion before them. Those days are behind them. The league is healthier for it.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for the incredible response to the first article about the Chicago Blues. I hope I haven't wounded the feelings of the city of Chicago too badly.
(9681 words for whatever unfortunate grader gets assigned this article)
RE: The Jungle - Yeenoghu - 02-12-2022
I've been a Butcher for over a year and a half, and I didn't know most of these details. Really glad you are back in the league and making content like this.
RE: The Jungle - Crodyman - 02-12-2022
Thank you for this incredible series. I'm hoping we end that championship game drought soon.
RE: The Jungle - ValorX77 - 02-12-2022
This is exactly what I didn’t want to read.
(PTSD)
RE: The Jungle - Bayley - 02-12-2022
This is awesome @Baron1898 . I really appreciate the kind words as well. Chicago is in a great spot now
RE: The Jungle - zaynzk - 02-12-2022
This is awesome media, I hope to see some more history lessons from you
RE: The Jungle - Duilio05 - 02-12-2022
I have missed your media so so much. Well done. @Bayley it was a pleasure doing business with you that draft.
RE: The Jungle - slate - 02-12-2022
Another incredible piece, great work. I can't thank you enough for linking to the original media pieces, it's awesome to read through how people responded at the time.
RE: The Jungle - Jiggly_333 - 02-13-2022
The only issue I have with the article is that you imply the gamble in the Torenson for Brown trade was that we expected Brown to be good. We traded for Brown for LR activity, which he helped a bit with. The real gamble was that Torenson told us he was exploring free agency no matter what at the end of the season, as his contract was up. He said that he would consider us in the same way as any other team, so we told him to come back to us after the season and we'd give him his money. That's why we considered him trade-able, that was explicitly what we'd discussed before the trade. We knew that Brown wouldn't be there next season at the position, but he would be in the locker room. Then he re-signed with Philly without even talking to us. That was the gamble that didn't pay off there. We didn't just trade him for no reason and likely would've lost him without getting anything for our trouble if we hadn't traded him.
Anyway, reading about the Soviet Yunyun gave me some extreme stomach pains and some uncontrollable shivering from remembering the stress, so good job at capturing that moment in history.
EDIT: I'll also add that DAMN FUCKING RIGHT Muford and Bayley were the perfect GMs for that team and I'd gladly put my life on the line again to put them in charge.
EDIT EDIT: And you forgot that there was the whole "tampering" thing where HO told me multiple different things at different times while trying to get things done and I got hit with a bunch of punishments for that after I'd already left.
RE: The Jungle - Raven - 02-13-2022
Amazing article once again! Great to keep the history alive and well known.