Well here we go. Another season, another long off season. But this off season is not as long as any others in Mike Hockhertz's career. Things are finally looking up for the Chicago Butchers. We made the playoffs for the first time in a long time. Previously, the team was under some less than favourable management. Lots of poor drafting and trades. Steelsound took over with the task of reforming the team. And he tried. We had an aging QB and he went for it. No hate there. What happened next was the problem. All of a sudden, it was cool to slam Chicago and thus the social think tank of the ISFL bullied the Chicago GM out of his position and made him quit the league. So it's been a rough past, but that is when the team saw the light. Bayley and Muford turn up and create a different attitude here. The problem is that they have limited picks to say the last. A second rounder they have to use on Bayley's player, and then a 6th through 10th. And you know what, those guys put the grind in and hit every pick. And everyone knew it too. Everyone knew how good of a draft we had. And finally there was some hope to all the darkness from before.
We knew it was gonna be a bad season, but we were building. So when the next draft rolled around, we were even more motivated to keep hitting picks. And you know what, we did. We re vamped the offense. We added starters on defense. We stock the cupboards full of prospects. People recognized how good we were becoming so we were actually attracting free agents. Guys like Swag and Oles came over and joined us in the previous off seasons. Finally general chat on discord wasn't so negative on Chi town. So here we are in Chicago, after all the crap HO and the league put us through finally succeeding in the draft and creating a place people want to come to. We are feeling pretty darn good. And then, expansion creeps in. HO decides to expands and opens the expansion draft players and the most recently drafted players eligible? You guessed it, those two incredible drafts we just had. So another blow to the team that was just coming out of the darkness. And because we hit on every pick in two straight drafts, we had roughly a dozen rookies or second year players eligible to be drafted and yet only 6 protection slots or so. It is unfortunate, but it happens. All we could do was what our GMs did seasons before. Head down and grind. And it worked, we made the playoffs for this first time since Chicago was good post their own expansion draft. But it came with a grain of salt, we knew we were losing two starters just like that. And it's hard to imagine that any other team would get hit that hard.
Look at the champions in the past few years of Colorado and OCO and SJS. They should be the ones getting hit the hardest. The champions should have the best players and the most to lose. Yet here we are, a building team that just happened to have 2 really strong drafts in a row being hit the hardest. The doesn't make much sense. So there COL and OCO and SJS go resuming their normal ways losing a player here and there and now, the youngest and brightest team in the league has to replace starters on the fly. I have no doubt that Muford and Bayley will do it again and make it work on the fly. The worst part is that Mike is on the downhill of his career. He doesn't have too many years left and now our prime has just been delayed by a few more years because HO couldn't delay expansion a year or two more. HO knows that Chicago was coming up, but to preserve the league's sanctity, HO needs to keep the up and comers down and make sure COL, OCO, and NOLA makes the playoffs every year to keep the people in charge happy. The league would fall apart if those three teams didn't make the playoffs so I'm not surprised at all that the expansion draft happened at this time where the teams on top have the least to lose. Very convenient if you ask me. It's almost discouraging to have another couple good drafts in a row again because we will just lose 2 starters during the next draft. It almost advantageous to only draft 3 good prospects per draft. But oh well, time to try again next year and possibly grab home field for the wildcard. Worst case scenario we build a couple more years and Mike finally sees success by the last year before he retires. 820
We knew it was gonna be a bad season, but we were building. So when the next draft rolled around, we were even more motivated to keep hitting picks. And you know what, we did. We re vamped the offense. We added starters on defense. We stock the cupboards full of prospects. People recognized how good we were becoming so we were actually attracting free agents. Guys like Swag and Oles came over and joined us in the previous off seasons. Finally general chat on discord wasn't so negative on Chi town. So here we are in Chicago, after all the crap HO and the league put us through finally succeeding in the draft and creating a place people want to come to. We are feeling pretty darn good. And then, expansion creeps in. HO decides to expands and opens the expansion draft players and the most recently drafted players eligible? You guessed it, those two incredible drafts we just had. So another blow to the team that was just coming out of the darkness. And because we hit on every pick in two straight drafts, we had roughly a dozen rookies or second year players eligible to be drafted and yet only 6 protection slots or so. It is unfortunate, but it happens. All we could do was what our GMs did seasons before. Head down and grind. And it worked, we made the playoffs for this first time since Chicago was good post their own expansion draft. But it came with a grain of salt, we knew we were losing two starters just like that. And it's hard to imagine that any other team would get hit that hard.
Look at the champions in the past few years of Colorado and OCO and SJS. They should be the ones getting hit the hardest. The champions should have the best players and the most to lose. Yet here we are, a building team that just happened to have 2 really strong drafts in a row being hit the hardest. The doesn't make much sense. So there COL and OCO and SJS go resuming their normal ways losing a player here and there and now, the youngest and brightest team in the league has to replace starters on the fly. I have no doubt that Muford and Bayley will do it again and make it work on the fly. The worst part is that Mike is on the downhill of his career. He doesn't have too many years left and now our prime has just been delayed by a few more years because HO couldn't delay expansion a year or two more. HO knows that Chicago was coming up, but to preserve the league's sanctity, HO needs to keep the up and comers down and make sure COL, OCO, and NOLA makes the playoffs every year to keep the people in charge happy. The league would fall apart if those three teams didn't make the playoffs so I'm not surprised at all that the expansion draft happened at this time where the teams on top have the least to lose. Very convenient if you ask me. It's almost discouraging to have another couple good drafts in a row again because we will just lose 2 starters during the next draft. It almost advantageous to only draft 3 good prospects per draft. But oh well, time to try again next year and possibly grab home field for the wildcard. Worst case scenario we build a couple more years and Mike finally sees success by the last year before he retires. 820
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