Prompt 8 Wrote:8) Awards season is a big part of the offseason festivities. Take the stand, in 400 words or more, for one or more players that are not your own, and argue why they should receive awards glory. They can be your teammates or anyone in the league. How did their stats and on the field contribution contribute to their case this year?
Austin's Zoe Watts should easily be the slam dunk winner for offensive rookie for the year. Watts as a rookie was 3rd in the league in rushing yards with 1202 and a 4.1/attempt average, tied for third in TDs with 11, and also managed to get 8 pancakes plus 275 receiving yards and 2 receiving TDs. The rushing numbers are good enough to be in contention for RB of the year and so I think that Watts should clearly win.
Watts has two top competitors, one RB and one WR. At RB, Berlin's Danny King also had a good rushing season. King's line of 1068 yards for a 4.2 average was goof for 4th in the league. However, with only 6 rushing TDs and 148 receiving yards with 2 receiving TDs are in my opinion definitely a step below Watts' line. With inferior stats in pretty much every area except yards per attempt, I can't see any reason to vote for King over Watts even if efficiency is really important to a voter.
Looking to receiver, though, Baltimore's Dough Howlett is a more serious contender. Howlett led the league in receptions at 102 as one of two players to break 100 catches with a good 600 more yards than second place Heath Evans. Howlett also led in receiving yards at 1646 with 203 more than second place Yeti William Lim. For TDs, though, Howlett was tied for 6th at 11, 4 behind the 15 caught by the 3-way tie for first. The great yard and reception numbers should be good enough to get some votes for sure. For me, though, the tiebreaker is touches. Watts had 337 touches more than 3 times as many as Howlett's catches. I feel that the disparity in touches reflects that Watts' contributions to the team are more important overall.
A last consideration could also be team success - the Hawks finished 8-8 and 4th in the NSFC while Austin ended up 7-9 and 5th in the ASFC. Seeing as neither team made the playoffs, I don't think either player has an argument for being that element to have pushed the team over the edge into the playoffs. King's Salamanders were also out of the playoffs, finishing last in the NSFC. In fact, Orange County's QB Ramza was the only rookie leader in passing/rushing/receiving from the 6 playoff teams (and there's probably a deeper thread there).
Taken together, I think Watts' case for offensive rookie of the year is clear. Howlett's year was good enough that I wouldn't do anything crazy if the voters go with him instead, but I do think Watts has the edge.
Prompt 9 Wrote:9) It’s always important to look forward to the future. Examine your team, and in 400 words or more, talk about how they can improve themselves to get a stab at trophy contention next year. Are you loaded with draft capital for the next draft? Do you have plenty of cap space to sign free agents? Go through the roster and note the different strengths and weaknesses, and how you think those will change over the next few seasons. How should your team adapt?
Looking at the Copperheads' season, there's an argument that the best thing we need to do is to be luckier. Our record this year was 7-9 despite having a +46 point differential, better than 4 of the other 6 teams in our conference. The point differential is a fairly good reflection of our overall offense and defense with our total yards, rushing yards, and passing yards all being top 3 in our conference. We were only 4th in points per game, though, and I think the main cause is our turnovers. Looking at the raw numbers (20 turnovers, +1 differential) might not be so bad, but there were only 5 games where we had a positive differential. The totals look way better than the normal case on the back of our week 14 game against Arizona where we managed to get 3 interceptions and to recover a fumble while not turning the ball over ourselves. Our overall turnovers, though, seemed to be a lot of drives where we got yards but then had a turnover after getting a few first downs. I think improving there will be important if we want to be looking at the playoffs next year.
Penalties are also an area that I think we want to try and improve - we had an average of 3.5 penalties for just over 26 yards per game. Giving up a free quarter of the field per game isn't good. The game stats don't show how many of those led to first downs for the other team, but I can tell you that it sure felt like it was about all of them during the game.
As far as actual moves, it's clear that QB is going to need to be improved in the near future with Cole only getting deeper into regression. The presumed heir is S25 Daytona, but I don't know if he'll be called up next year or if we'll be trying to get one more year out of Cole. The rest of the offense outside of fellow S16 TE Larson is pretty young after the loss of S18 WR Gaines to retirement. OL is a bit lacking with a pair of players under 250 TPE - I'd expect us to try and improve in that area. The defense is mostly also younger with S16 CB Lavelle Jr. and S17 LB Edmond as the two vets. I'd expect that we'll be wanting to find replacements for them in the near future but I also think we could plausibly get by with them next season. The relatively few needs is important seeing as we don't have a first or third round pick in the S26 draft. As of right now we have a bit over $24 million of cap space prior to any OL bots. We do have S25 OL Quigley at 273 TPE in the DSFL, so I'd expect to see a promotion there for next season. That also leaves a likely $10+m of space to try and sign 1-2 big FAs - I haven't looked at the class to see who is out there for options, but I could see making the attempt.
Draft Steal (retired S35 CB) - Profile/Update | Wiki
Troen Egghands (retired S22 DE) - Profile | Update | Wiki