07-14-2024, 08:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2024, 08:48 PM by shadyshoelace. Edited 2 times in total.)
Quote:2. Tell us about your draft class. Is there anything that makes it special in comparison to other classes? Where did your fellow draftees land, how are they doing? Did anyone turn out to be an unexpected steal of that draft based on what you know today? Do you think anyone in your draft class will become a hall of famer? If you’re new to the league, how do you think your class will do? Where do you think people will get drafted to?
With the season 44 draft class one of the last few cohorts not yet facing regression and nearing the top of the league TPE leaderboards, it seems like a great time to check in on the users and players that made up the class and see where they are today and how the overall class stacks up. The draft class consisted of 57 players across five rounds (technically, one pick was made in the fifth round). Today, it looks like somewhere on the order of 24 or so are still active; 16 have cleared the 1,000 TPE threshold (for reference, this is as many or more as the season 42 and 43 classes had reach the mark despite having additional time to accrue points). On its face, this makes the class look like a successful one.
The highest TPE players in the class at present are Cape Town Crash QB Thor Bǫllrsveifla (28th overall draft pick), New Orleans Second Line WR Thomas Passarelli (1st overall), Baltimore Hawks DT Carter Goad (12th), Arizona Outlaws WR Jordan Bamford (11th), and Honolulu Hahalua QB Lenard McRobinson (24th). As you can see, several teams found value picks despite not having selections at the top of the draft. The remaining first round players - A Waffle, Orange Julius, Ryan McBean, Thor Dangerson, Jamie Orion, Tuna TurnDaBallOva, Pete Moss, Joey Battle, Triceracop, and Joe Bazooka are a mixed bag but mostly strong picks. While Julius, Dangerson, Orion, Turndaballova, Battle, Triceracop, and Bazooka are all in the 1000+ TPE club, there are a few picks teams would surely like back: Pete Moss stalled out at just 346 TPE and switched to kicker, putting up the league's worst field goal percentage last season; A Waffle has reached just under 600 TPE after resuscitating his career in Honolulu after being traded from Chicago; McBean has reached 645 TPE and is a serviceable player on the defensive front.
A few other later picks are worth mentioning: 45th overall pick Crazy Tomato has 909 TPE, good for 20th in the class; 23rd overall pick Zenzeroni Xystarch II ranks 7th in the class with 1202 TPE.
The high-caliber players are relatively evenly distributed amongst teams, with 11 teams having a 1K+ player from the class. New Orleans is likely the "winner" at the top end of the draft with the #2 and #8 TPE players, while the "losers" would appear to be New York (0 S44 players remaining, although they didn't have a selection until the end of the second round) and Colorado (only their third round pick, the inactive Felix Waterman, is still on the roster).
The quarterback group in this class is particularly intriguing, in my completely unbiased opinion. The first passer off the board, Berlin's TurnDaBallOva, just completed his second season in the big leagues and is gunning for the record books. Over two seasons, he's thrown the ball almost 1,500 times for over 10,000 yards, leading the league in yards by a large margin in each season. McRobinson, the second quarterback drafted, has had a promising if not stellar start to his career as the league's premier rushing-focused quarterback; with several mobile QBs joining the league as rookies this season, time will tell if he started a revolution amongst the league meta. And Bǫllrsveifla, cowardly turning his back on the ground game, is obviously the gem of the draft from a value-over-slot perspective, although he's yet to put up the eye-popping stats his TPE would indicate he's capable of.
While this class has not yet reached its peak and will only continue to improve its standing over time, there are some very promising players to keep an eye out for. Bamford, Passarelli, Thigpen, TurnDaBallOva, Goad, Orion, and Xystarch each made the Pro Bowl roster in season 48, with TurnDaBallOva receiving MVP votes and McRobinson finishing as runner up for Performance of the year.