So I think the biggest and most glaring mistake the team has made as a whole is having Gimmy Jaroppolo as the starting quarterback here. While he did lead us to an Ultimus win last season, thanks mostly to our amazing defense and weapons he had, he also fell off a cliff this season. His yardage was down to under 4,000 yards. He threw the fewest touchdowns of his career outside of his rookie season. But most importantly and crucial was the sheer amount of turnovers from him, especially in crucial points of the game, either in the opponents redzone or late in games when we needed to score to tie or take a lead. 15 interceptions and 5 fumbles later and Baltimore is 6-10 and missing the playoffs after having just won the Ultimus. Some other bigger mistakes came from the defense regressing a bit and not being as stout and the rest of the team just getting older at the wrong time.
It seems my player is a bit of a hothead. Playing fullback, I’m expected to do a number of things, namely block. In more than 1 game I’ve allowed a sack, and upon my qb being sacked, I would get unnecessary roughness penalties called, which put us back even further. The head cannon I have is that I hate when my qb gets sacked and so take my anger out on the player who got the sack. I’ve done it on occasions when I didn’t give up the sack as well. One of the other things I would say has caused my team some games, is fumbles. I play fullback and I’m expected to hang onto the rock. I’ve only got 2 career fumbles, but with our team losing most of our games by a field goal or less, holding onto the ball may have been what it took. Not allowing a sack, not getting a penalty, or not fumbling could have been deciders in many games. In OCO we had some ridiculous number where if we flipped all of our >3 point losses we’d have had 10-11 wins. Every mistake affects those games.
Most of the Austin Copperheads season was not just attributed to one specific play or during a single game, it was mostly attributed to us not being able to close out close games. We were consistently on the wrong side of games to the point where the team seemed to be a little demoralized. How many teams have had the top two offense in the entire league and missed the playoffs? Well the answer is at least one since we have missed the playoffs with scoring almost 500 points in 16 games. I'm not sure if this is attributed to one position group but all I know is you can not put the blame onto one specific part of the team, it was an overall shit show of a season for the Copperheads.
As a player, I had over a 10% drop rate with 9 drops on 87 targets, any of the drops could have factored in changing the outcome of the teams season.
We made the playoffs this year but it was far from smooth sailing. We barely crept in and a mistake in Week 8 against the Hawks nearly kept us out of the playoffs and under .500. We scored with just 1:15 to play and it was looking like we would walk away with a win. But then, on 3rd down, we blew a coverage and gave up a 56 yard game tying touchdown. Our final drive fell short but we would get a chance to rectify it in overtime. We got a stop and then immediately went to work, driving down to the Hawks 41 yard line. There, everything fell apart. IsHe threw a risky pass on first down that got broken up. The next play, he threw another risky pass and this time it got picked off. The game wasn't over yet, we could still get a stop. But once again, we blew a coverage and the Hawks scored the game winning touchdown.