08-18-2023, 07:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-19-2023, 01:22 PM by xenosthelegend. Edited 1 time in total.)
This is the 2nd to last part, the last will cover each team in depth, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and which I think are the best and worst.
Spoiler alert, my team is neither.
19.181: Negs picks up a candidate for the next all time great Safety, Jasper Fontaine, S
Fontaine is low on all time stat lists, due to a lack of playing time; he's only been around for 6 seasons and 96 games. But he's already had 4 Pro Bowls, three 1st team All Pros, and a 2nd team All Pro. He's T-15th in picks, 33rd in PDs, T-25th in Defensive TDs, T-4th in FFs, and T-28th in FRs. With another couple years vying for 1st team All Pros, this will look like an even better pick, but as is right now this is an A+. Arguably better than Orpheus Czargyros already, and either way that pick was over 2 rounds ago.
19.182: Mobi picks the wrong position and a much worse player, Chim Rickles, S
I'm more than slightly convinced that this Mobi pick is due to Rickles being a NOLA player until the big sell off. Rickles is an 8 season player, who's T-15th in picks with Fontaine, T-6th in PDs, and T-25th in Defensive TDs. Rickles is a 3 time Pro Bowler and a 2 time 2nd team All Pro. As is, I think I'd give Rickles a B- or C+; I'm not sure Rickles is the best Safety available; I'd argue Prince Vegeta's SotY and 3 Pro Bowls with no All Pro team for his career is a better awards cabinet, and he also has better and more well rounded volume stats. There's probably others, too. But there's one other problem with this pick that bumps it down a full letter grade to D+ in my book: this is the wrong position. Mobi needs to fill his DL/LB slot still, and there are 3 people who will pick DL, and one person who will pick a DL/LB, between this pick and Mobi's final pick. On the other hand, Mobi's the only person who needs Safety left. It's actually possible that this didn't end up hurting Mobi at all; Simo picks a DL, Mobi ends up picking an LB, and if he had his eyes set on that LB from the beginning then this mistake did absolutely nothing. On the other hand, it's possible that he wanted a DL until a bunch of them were picked, I can't say for sure because I'm not in Mobi's head. And even then, Simo could have picked an LB, making this at best an unpunished mistake. Doesn't necessarily make his team worse, but as a pick, Safety here was just an unforced error. Again, D+.
19.183: Simo picks the larger but worse Riposte, Freezer Riposte, DT
"3 pro bowls. 9th or something in DT sacks. Probably got some other cool things too."
I'm not entirely sure, but was that meant to be a pun, Simo? Either way, Freezer made only 3 Pro Bowls over his 11 year career, got no major awards, and was in a 4 or 5 team conference for all but the final year of his career, so this is a really unimpressive pick in terms of achievements, at least to me. Volume-wise, though, this is a DT who played 147 games in the Old Sim, and thus is really impressive in terms of sacks, though not anywhere near as much anywhere else. He's T-40th in TFLs, 17th in tackles, T-34th in FFs and T-13th in FRs. I don't think I can give this pick higher than a C, though. It's just such an unimpressive resume outside of getting a decent amount of sacks for an Old Sim DT, not even an outstanding amount. Hell, he only reached 10 sacks one time in his career. All in all, I'm giving it a D+ at the end.
19.184: Frost picks a player who fell way, way too far, Benson Bayley, CB
"6x pro bowler and a solid and consistent player for their whole career. Also last HoF CB"
Bayley almost has to get an A+, as I think they were better than the last few CBs picked, and they were picked multiple rounds ago. In terms of stats, Bayley is 22nd in tackles, T-11th in picks, and T-28th in PDs. I think they're not only the best CB on the board, but the 3rd best CB picked in the entire 2nd half of the draft, only beaten out by Willie Miller and Dermot Lavelle Jr. While only 7 CBs by my count were drafted in this half of the draft, that's still quite a value pick considering this is Frost's 2nd to last pick. As said above, A+ pick.
19.185: Modern Duke takes a DL with a short career but pretty decent peak, Lennay Kekua, DT
"lennay - had to pick deadly"
For such a short and insufficient reasoning behind the pick, Kekua grades out quite well over his 8 seasons and 126 games. He got 2 Pro Bowls, but probably deserved a 3rd considering he somehow missed out while getting a 1st team All Pro. Both of his Pro Bowl seasons came with 2nd team All Pros, making this basically a 3/8 ratio of great seasons. He's also decently high up on all time stats, with the 19th most sacks, the T-15th most TFLs, the 28th most tackles, the T-6th most FFs, and the T-18th most FRs. Considering he's a new sim player, that's a really impressive resume. I'm giving him an A- for the pick.
19.186: Infinite takes an old, old player who I don't really like, Eli Kamaka, DT
Kamaka played 8 seasons at DT and made 4 Pro Bowls. That seems like a good ratio, but this is a really, really bad era thing. Kamaka played in the easiest time for DLinemen in the history of the ISFL, and the easiest time to get Pro Bowls in the ISFL. This is something that will also hurt Infinite's next DL pick, by the way. Also hurting it is the fact that I don't get how the hell Kamaka made the Pro Bowl in S4 with only 5 sacks. Kamaka looks OK in all time stats, he's 12th in sacks, 40th in TFLs, and T-22nd in tackles, but Eli is hit hard by the era adjustment, both on the Pro Bowl side and on the stat side. C- pick in my head, and the full depth of it will be explored when Infinite picks his 2nd DL player.
19.187: Rusfan takes a guy with reverse kicking splits, somehow, Stephen Harris, K
Harris is someone I'm not entirely sure how to judge. Well, let's start with the positives. Over 8 seasons, he made 7 Pro Bowls, won 3 KotY awards and 1 PotY, and made the Hall. He's top 10 all time in 40-49 yard field goals (88.7%), and 50+ yarders (90.9%), albeit he only had 11 50 yard attempts so it's somewhat hard to judge that. He's 4th all time in FG% at 92.1. Finally, he had a really strong rate of punts inside the 20 at 17.5%, a total that ranks 54th all time. This is enough to get a B as a pick even with the upcoming issues.
Those upcoming issues start with Harris being an awful Extra Point kicker at 95.5%, T-43rd all time among kickers with 50 games under their belt. He's also got a surprisingly bad time at making field goals from 30-39 yards, making only 87.7% of his kicks from that range makes him 58th out of 80 all time. Finally, and most damagingly for me, he's the worst punter distance-wise out of anyone drafted at 45.7 yards per punt. I'd give him the edge over Jacob Small, who is only 0.07 yards (that's 2.5 inches) better than him all time in yards per punt, with a career that was more new sim than old sim, but everyone else is FAR, far better. Future's well over half a yard better per punt, Turkleton's nearly a yard better, and the other 6 kickers picked are over a yard better per punt. Some of them are over a yard and a half better per punt. So, Harris is one of the best kickers ever, up there with Alex, Future, and Micycle, but he's the 2nd worst punter of this group. I'm not sure how to rank him as a result, fully. I think I'm going to go with a B.
19.188: Zayn gets a guy who broke the tracker again, Alexandre LeClair, WR
"HOF Wide Reciever, 6 time pro bowler, despite significant WR boost from new sim, he is still 13th all time in yards and 11th in touchdowns"
I am 99% certain that LeClair is listed as Alex or Alexander or Leclair somewhere because according to the tracker he doesn't have any pro bowls whatsoever. He's 13th in yards, T-11th in touchdowns, and 16th in yards per reception all time. A+ easily. How does Zayn keep getting these guys?
19.189: DarknessRising picks the lone TE drafted to not be the best in a single season yet, Mister Hogmally, TE
"Zayn told me about this old guy Glenn mcpoyal but I feel whilst may have 7 pb and teoty, hogmally already dominating receiving stats and has a good few years to go (in team with lack of wr) so should end up better"
Hogmally has one major problem in my estimation, and it's a problem that may be solved in the future but hasn't been right now. Sure, he has 4 Pro Bowls and a trio of 2nd team All Pros over his 7 year career that's still in progress. He's an amazing 10th in yards and 8th in touchdowns, while having an outstanding 10.9 yards per reception. He's...also almost as bad a blocker all time as James Angler, with barely over 250 pancakes and 10 sacks allowed already in his career. With S43 a third over, he's given up a sack and at this point is IMO worse than Angler. But that's not the big deal, it's the lack of TEotY or 1st Team All Pro. Multiple undrafted TEs have one of those; Zee Rechs has more than one of each, even. And yet, DarknessRising chose Hogmally. D pick, and almost hilariously, I think Darkness would have been much better off if he let Wraiths bias creep in one more time and had him choose a player who spent his career on the team with him.
19.190: Let'splay gets great value out of his QB pick, in his, AKA my, opinion, Dexter Zaylren, QB
I have a long thing for why I give myself an A for this pick.
There is a single question that I think is most telling when it comes to these sorts of drafts. What do you value most, peak, efficiency, volume, why are you drafting who you’re drafting? Well, the one I care by far the least about is volume. It’s a nice cherry on top of careers like Sailor, Boss, and Colby Jack, it’s the reason for a LOT of QBs in the Hall, and it’s something I actively dislike when it’s the only thing to a player’s name.
This knocked out literally every QB in the Hall besides one who had not been drafted by my first pick, and had me considering 2 other QBs not in it; one destined for the hall eventually and one who won’t make it because awards voters are the exact opposite and will let volume distract them from actual greatness constantly. (See: Matthias Caliban’s 3 positional award wins while never being within half a yard of ANY/A of the league leader)
Of these 3 QBs I decided between, I actually knocked out the Hall of Famer first and earliest: Childish Gambino is one of the only Old Sim QBs who has a better passer rating than Mike Boss, and he even leads the league in playoff passer rating! The problem is that he only played 4 seasons as a QB, played nowhere near enough games in the playoffs for that passer rating to be significant (5 games total by my count), and the 2 seasons he was the best QB in the league are counterbalanced by one good season and one godawful one. Granted, that good season was enough to get him the QBotY, but it really wasn't anything special.
Then there's Charlemagne Cortez. I have given a ton of praise over the years to Cortez, and feel he's the most efficient QB of all time, with the single best QB season of all time in S30. His pair of 1st team All pros and 4 pro bowls over 6 seasons, along with the MVP, give a more accurate view in my opinion of his career than his lone QBotY. S31 was the only season of his career where he wasn't at least a 7/10, and he was only a 4/10. He has the 3rd highest passer rating behind Carter Knight and Wendell Sailor, and is the only player in league history with a better yards per attempt than Mike Boss, all while having a WR group nowhere near as good as the other QBs of the time. That being said, while I love him dearly, and believe he's better than half the QBs in the Hall along with a QB who made the Hall from his generation, he does have 2 downsides: First off, only 6 seasons makes his career shorter than the average. Second off, while Cortez isn't exactly a playoff choker, he did regress heavily; his passer rating fell from all time great to average, and his Best Ever yards per attempt fell less precipitously to still great but not as jaw-dropping as his regular season 7.96. And as someone who spent their first career on arguably the most snakebitten playoff team of all time, I was not going to deal with that shit again. I wanted someone who made the playoffs their own.
Enter Dexter Zaylren, who is in my opinion the greatest Playoff QB of all time. Zaylren only made 3 Pro Bowls, 1 MVP, and only was 1st team All Pro once over his 7 year career. But he is one of the most efficient QBs ever, and easily the 3rd most efficient that's still on the board, with the 19th best yards per attempt at 7.42, and the 4th best Passer Rating at 97.55. The only people higher than him are Cortez, Sailor, and Knight. More importantly, though, he has nearly 400 pass attempts in the playoffs, and brings to the table a 99.94 passer rating (2nd to Gambino all time) and a great 7.48 yards per attempt, 13th all time. Anyone who is better at one of those stats is either far worse in the other or has less than 200 attempts. Zaylren took those stats to 3 rings and 4 appearances without an all time great WR around him in Honolulu especially. The grade for this pick may be partly due to how this project is being done, with me doing the grading for my own picks, but it's still getting an A.
20.191: Let'splay picks another guy who he thinks belongs in the Hall, Ed Barker, OFlex
"Ed Barker had 5 pro bowls and a number of seasons before we started doing the All Pro teams that I'd have put at 1st team. Heck, he actually had a couple of seasons that I thought were better than the actual WRotY that season. I advocated for him to make it to the Hall, and while he ended up missing it, I'd still stand by that statement. If you care more about volume, he's 12th all time in yards, 26th in TDs and Receptions. Considering I also wanted to bolster what I felt was my weakest offensive position, taking him as my last pick of the draft feels great."
Barker also has the T-21st yards per reception at 16 exactly. Really, this comes down to there being 3 years of his Pro Bowl seasons that I thought were better than the WRotY, and if I was going back over his career he'd have 3 1st Team All Pro. With that in mind, I can't help but give him an A- as a pick. He'd probably get a straight up A if Zayn didn't get Alexander LeClair right before. Also, 5 pro bowls over 9 seasons is not a bad ratio by any means either.
20.192: DarknessRising takes a Canton who missed out on Canton, John Canton, CB
"The cb s1 with 7 pb and dpoty, zayn said still up there in ints and remains top 50 pd"
"Yeah John Canton feels like someone who fell through the HOF cracks"
Canton might be the worst CB taken, but he's not at all bad. With a DBotY and 7 Pro Bowls over 10 seasons, Canton has a better awards cabinet than multiple CBs in the Hall. He's T-11th in picks, T-46th in PDs, and T-10th in defensive TDs. Really, it comes down to whether you value his rate of 1 pick over every 4.4 games, or dislike him having only 1.06 PDs per game. The one really good mark and the really bad mark combine to make me give him a C+ overall. If nothing else, him remaining barely in the top 50 in PDs is not exactly a point in his favor.
20.193: Zayn picks one of 2 QBs I already talked about for a while, Childish Gambino, QB
"2 time MVP, the 2nd highest QBR for players who only played in the old sim (behind Avon Blocksdale who was my backup choice), and won QBoTY 3 times in his 4 years
I decided that despite his incredibly short career at QB, he was so dominant that he deserved it he nod in my opinion, while he obviously doesn’t have the counting stats, I feel like it’s hard not too pick someone who was so dominant
GIF of Gambino shaking his pecs"
Zayn's strategy kind of pigeonholes him into someone who is competing for 2 seasons. But he's kind of already set up for that, with a pair of peak over longevity WRs and some picks that continue that philosophy in other places, too. A as a pick, might legitimately be a C or worse pick for a team that had been built in the other direction, but Zayn's team is here for a great time, not a long one. Can't really fault it strategy-wise, though it will make it a little difficult to rate Zayn's team against everyone else.
20.194: Rusfan picks a player who I don't really like at this spot, Tychondrius Hood, OFlex
Hood seems to have the volume of a player worth a pickup; he's 26th in yards, T-21st in Touchdowns, and has 15.1 yards per reception to his name. The problem is that's all he really has; he's only got 3 Pro Bowls and doesn't even have a 2nd Team All Pro despite playing for 5 seasons after their creation. He doesn't even have a WRotY. There's a ton of players who have at least an All Pro team, or a better Pro Bowl amount, to their name and similar, if not better, volume. Raphael Delacour, Videl San I'm pretty sure had one, Sean O'Leary made 7 of 9 Pro Bowls, this is an F of a pick.
20.195: Infinite takes an old, old player who I don't really like, Nicholas Pierno, DT
Pierno played 7 seasons at DT and made 5 Pro Bowls. That seems like a good ratio, but this is a really, really bad era thing. OK, jokes about how this is basically a repeat pick aside, there's a couple things that make Pierno much, much worse. Starting with how his pro bowls are...kinda jokes. This is the same thing that hits Kamaka, but Pierno was the 4th best DT out of about 10 in S7, was far worse than that in S8 and S9 but made the Pro Bowl in both of them somehow, and then also had a bad year with 5 sacks and nothing else in S11, but still made the Pro Bowl. All but one of Pierno's Pro Bowls, similar to Kamaka, are either jokes due to being good but not outstanding years in a tiny league, or mediocre or even bad seasons that somehow made the Pro Bowl anyways. I'm guessing Infinite took these two players because they were old Yeti players he remembered made a decent chunk of Pro Bowls, but I'm guessing he didn't remember just how flimsy those Pro Bowls were. D- pick. He's OK in a couple all time stats, 25th in sacks, T-47th in tackles, but that's nowhere near enough to make up for what is, in my view, a 1 pro bowl 7 season career.
20.196: Modern Duke picks the last HOF OL, Adam Mellott, OL
This pick kinda automatically gets an A, he's definitely the best OL remaining, but before moving on, I want to go into more detail about why I consider him better than Byron Dolls. It really comes down to Mellott having a higher, more consistent peak, and a better award cabinet than Dolls despite only making 3 Pro Bowls, none of which show up on the tracker. 2 OLotY and a 1st Team All Pro in a different season speak for a lot. That's even ignoring things like the new sim/old sim divide that helps Mellott have more pancakes and arguably less sacks allowed.
20.197: Frost picks arguably the best Punter in league history, Dean Jackson, K
"1x KOTY, 4x PunterOTY, 8x pro bowler, kicking goat of the early time of the league and has a case for best punter OAT"
I feel like that case is decently flimsy, reliant on a lot of favorable era adjustment, and an award cabinet that looks farther removed from its closest competitors than it should be due to bad awards later down the line, but of the people who have any argument for the GOAT Punter, Jackson's probably the best at kicking among them. He played for 11 seasons and made 8 Pro Bowls in the process. He's 9th all time in Punt Average among people with 50 games, at 47.1, which is just above Alex Dasistwirklichseinnachname for 2nd among Old Sim kickers; only McCormick beats him in that category and McCormick only had half a career. The real problem with Jackson's candidacy for Greatest Punter Ever is his rate of punts inside the 20. At 14.5%, he rates 75th of 91 total players to ever punt the ball. Even accounting for old vs new sim, the only worse HOF kicker is, funnily enough, McCormick at 14.1%; everyone else is at least one percent higher if not multiple. So I don't think Jackson's the best Punter ever. But what he does have is one of the best resumes for kicking. While he's slightly off at XP%, 96.3% ranks 37th among kickers with at least 50 games played, he's 7th in terms of percentage among players who played kicker for 50 games. He's only 0.045% below 6th place in Venus Powers, too. What's more notable are his performances at specific ranges: he's ranked 13th in both 30-39 (96.25%) and 40-49 (84.6%). About the only criticism one can have of Jackson as a field goal kicker is that his FG range drops off a cliff, which is a legitimate weakness: He only made 53.3% of his kicks from 50+ yards. Combine that with a really, really bad rate of punts inside the 20 and Frost might have the single worst kicker choice from the range of the opponent's 33 to midfield of the entire draft. Still, pretty much anywhere else this is a top tier pick. I'm giving it an A- only because as it turns out Dean Jackson's specific weaknesses synchronize with each other in the worst way possible. Still a fantastic choice for the last kicker of the draft.
20.198: Simo (AKA Zayn) takes the last pick of the draft chronologically, Buster Bawlls, OFlex
"U can also pick ur flex spot now"
"I'll do that tonight when I get to the computer. Tempted to just pick Auchfunf so both my players make it."
"Do you want to do more research or do you have your pick yet?"
"I was wanting to but fuck it I'll take Buster Bawlls. Goat FB."
":dogekek:"
Bawlls went to 6 Pro Bowls and has four 1st team and two 2nd team All Pros over an 11 season career. One of those 2nd teams came in a year where he didn't go to the Pro Bowl, and if I remember correctly he would have been a 1st team All Pro in S27 if we had done them then. If a Fullback ever makes the Hall, he is probably going to be the first one. As such I can really only give this an A+ considering Simo doesn't really need a change of pace RB or a 3rd WR considering who else he picked. Or, well, considering who Zayn picked; this was done by Zayn, which makes sense because he's been boasting a "Buster Bawlls 4 HOF" Discord nickname since I came back to the league.
20.199: Mobi picks a player who doesn't look good on the tracker, Carissa van Campen, LB
Campen looks much better outside of the tracker, as she has an extra Pro Bowl and 1st team All Pro that the tracker doesn't see. She's made 2 total Pro Bowls and one type of All Pro each in her 6 year career. Due to the shortness of her career, she doesn't show up very much on the stat sheets; she's T-41st in TFLs, and then makes the top 50 in Safeties and Defensive TDs via having one each. That being said, she's...fine. Not great, not terrible as a pick. I'll give it a flat C.
20.200: Negs ends the draft technically, Marlon Brando, DE
"1x dROTY
2x Pro Bowl
2x First team AP"
"Very blorgl to be the last pick in the draft"
This pick is very much down to a pair of really impressive DE seasons where he got 17 and 16 sacks in back to back seasons. Overall, Brando has the T-19th most sacks among DEs, is T-12th in Tackles, T-7th in Safeties, T-25th in FFs, and T-12th in FRs over 11 seasons at the position. On one hand, Brando has an extremely impressive peak that is basically the headliner to his HOF candidacy, and it's a really good headline. On the other hand, the only other season of any note is a 9 sack, 4 TFL, 2 Safety, 3 FF/2FR season that was his rookie year. Those 33 sacks over 2 seasons are great, but they're also over half of his all time sacks. They're also over a third of his TFLs; 12 of his 35 total career productivity came in his S34 and S35 seasons. Those seasons are also tinged with a bit of bittersweetness, as both times Brando was being voted as very much the 2nd best DE behind outstanding David Moyes seasons. Overall, I'm conflicted; 2 first teams are good, but neither were as the best, his peak is great, but outside of that and his rookie year he accomplished almost nothing, and 2 pro bowls over 11 seasons is just bad. I'm going to rate this C-.
This is the 2nd to last part; the last part will be me covering every single team and then tiering them. I hope to get that out over the weekend, and I'll see you then.
Spoiler alert, my team is neither.
19.181: Negs picks up a candidate for the next all time great Safety, Jasper Fontaine, S
Fontaine is low on all time stat lists, due to a lack of playing time; he's only been around for 6 seasons and 96 games. But he's already had 4 Pro Bowls, three 1st team All Pros, and a 2nd team All Pro. He's T-15th in picks, 33rd in PDs, T-25th in Defensive TDs, T-4th in FFs, and T-28th in FRs. With another couple years vying for 1st team All Pros, this will look like an even better pick, but as is right now this is an A+. Arguably better than Orpheus Czargyros already, and either way that pick was over 2 rounds ago.
19.182: Mobi picks the wrong position and a much worse player, Chim Rickles, S
I'm more than slightly convinced that this Mobi pick is due to Rickles being a NOLA player until the big sell off. Rickles is an 8 season player, who's T-15th in picks with Fontaine, T-6th in PDs, and T-25th in Defensive TDs. Rickles is a 3 time Pro Bowler and a 2 time 2nd team All Pro. As is, I think I'd give Rickles a B- or C+; I'm not sure Rickles is the best Safety available; I'd argue Prince Vegeta's SotY and 3 Pro Bowls with no All Pro team for his career is a better awards cabinet, and he also has better and more well rounded volume stats. There's probably others, too. But there's one other problem with this pick that bumps it down a full letter grade to D+ in my book: this is the wrong position. Mobi needs to fill his DL/LB slot still, and there are 3 people who will pick DL, and one person who will pick a DL/LB, between this pick and Mobi's final pick. On the other hand, Mobi's the only person who needs Safety left. It's actually possible that this didn't end up hurting Mobi at all; Simo picks a DL, Mobi ends up picking an LB, and if he had his eyes set on that LB from the beginning then this mistake did absolutely nothing. On the other hand, it's possible that he wanted a DL until a bunch of them were picked, I can't say for sure because I'm not in Mobi's head. And even then, Simo could have picked an LB, making this at best an unpunished mistake. Doesn't necessarily make his team worse, but as a pick, Safety here was just an unforced error. Again, D+.
19.183: Simo picks the larger but worse Riposte, Freezer Riposte, DT
"3 pro bowls. 9th or something in DT sacks. Probably got some other cool things too."
I'm not entirely sure, but was that meant to be a pun, Simo? Either way, Freezer made only 3 Pro Bowls over his 11 year career, got no major awards, and was in a 4 or 5 team conference for all but the final year of his career, so this is a really unimpressive pick in terms of achievements, at least to me. Volume-wise, though, this is a DT who played 147 games in the Old Sim, and thus is really impressive in terms of sacks, though not anywhere near as much anywhere else. He's T-40th in TFLs, 17th in tackles, T-34th in FFs and T-13th in FRs. I don't think I can give this pick higher than a C, though. It's just such an unimpressive resume outside of getting a decent amount of sacks for an Old Sim DT, not even an outstanding amount. Hell, he only reached 10 sacks one time in his career. All in all, I'm giving it a D+ at the end.
19.184: Frost picks a player who fell way, way too far, Benson Bayley, CB
"6x pro bowler and a solid and consistent player for their whole career. Also last HoF CB"
Bayley almost has to get an A+, as I think they were better than the last few CBs picked, and they were picked multiple rounds ago. In terms of stats, Bayley is 22nd in tackles, T-11th in picks, and T-28th in PDs. I think they're not only the best CB on the board, but the 3rd best CB picked in the entire 2nd half of the draft, only beaten out by Willie Miller and Dermot Lavelle Jr. While only 7 CBs by my count were drafted in this half of the draft, that's still quite a value pick considering this is Frost's 2nd to last pick. As said above, A+ pick.
19.185: Modern Duke takes a DL with a short career but pretty decent peak, Lennay Kekua, DT
"lennay - had to pick deadly"
For such a short and insufficient reasoning behind the pick, Kekua grades out quite well over his 8 seasons and 126 games. He got 2 Pro Bowls, but probably deserved a 3rd considering he somehow missed out while getting a 1st team All Pro. Both of his Pro Bowl seasons came with 2nd team All Pros, making this basically a 3/8 ratio of great seasons. He's also decently high up on all time stats, with the 19th most sacks, the T-15th most TFLs, the 28th most tackles, the T-6th most FFs, and the T-18th most FRs. Considering he's a new sim player, that's a really impressive resume. I'm giving him an A- for the pick.
19.186: Infinite takes an old, old player who I don't really like, Eli Kamaka, DT
Kamaka played 8 seasons at DT and made 4 Pro Bowls. That seems like a good ratio, but this is a really, really bad era thing. Kamaka played in the easiest time for DLinemen in the history of the ISFL, and the easiest time to get Pro Bowls in the ISFL. This is something that will also hurt Infinite's next DL pick, by the way. Also hurting it is the fact that I don't get how the hell Kamaka made the Pro Bowl in S4 with only 5 sacks. Kamaka looks OK in all time stats, he's 12th in sacks, 40th in TFLs, and T-22nd in tackles, but Eli is hit hard by the era adjustment, both on the Pro Bowl side and on the stat side. C- pick in my head, and the full depth of it will be explored when Infinite picks his 2nd DL player.
19.187: Rusfan takes a guy with reverse kicking splits, somehow, Stephen Harris, K
Harris is someone I'm not entirely sure how to judge. Well, let's start with the positives. Over 8 seasons, he made 7 Pro Bowls, won 3 KotY awards and 1 PotY, and made the Hall. He's top 10 all time in 40-49 yard field goals (88.7%), and 50+ yarders (90.9%), albeit he only had 11 50 yard attempts so it's somewhat hard to judge that. He's 4th all time in FG% at 92.1. Finally, he had a really strong rate of punts inside the 20 at 17.5%, a total that ranks 54th all time. This is enough to get a B as a pick even with the upcoming issues.
Those upcoming issues start with Harris being an awful Extra Point kicker at 95.5%, T-43rd all time among kickers with 50 games under their belt. He's also got a surprisingly bad time at making field goals from 30-39 yards, making only 87.7% of his kicks from that range makes him 58th out of 80 all time. Finally, and most damagingly for me, he's the worst punter distance-wise out of anyone drafted at 45.7 yards per punt. I'd give him the edge over Jacob Small, who is only 0.07 yards (that's 2.5 inches) better than him all time in yards per punt, with a career that was more new sim than old sim, but everyone else is FAR, far better. Future's well over half a yard better per punt, Turkleton's nearly a yard better, and the other 6 kickers picked are over a yard better per punt. Some of them are over a yard and a half better per punt. So, Harris is one of the best kickers ever, up there with Alex, Future, and Micycle, but he's the 2nd worst punter of this group. I'm not sure how to rank him as a result, fully. I think I'm going to go with a B.
19.188: Zayn gets a guy who broke the tracker again, Alexandre LeClair, WR
"HOF Wide Reciever, 6 time pro bowler, despite significant WR boost from new sim, he is still 13th all time in yards and 11th in touchdowns"
I am 99% certain that LeClair is listed as Alex or Alexander or Leclair somewhere because according to the tracker he doesn't have any pro bowls whatsoever. He's 13th in yards, T-11th in touchdowns, and 16th in yards per reception all time. A+ easily. How does Zayn keep getting these guys?
19.189: DarknessRising picks the lone TE drafted to not be the best in a single season yet, Mister Hogmally, TE
"Zayn told me about this old guy Glenn mcpoyal but I feel whilst may have 7 pb and teoty, hogmally already dominating receiving stats and has a good few years to go (in team with lack of wr) so should end up better"
Hogmally has one major problem in my estimation, and it's a problem that may be solved in the future but hasn't been right now. Sure, he has 4 Pro Bowls and a trio of 2nd team All Pros over his 7 year career that's still in progress. He's an amazing 10th in yards and 8th in touchdowns, while having an outstanding 10.9 yards per reception. He's...also almost as bad a blocker all time as James Angler, with barely over 250 pancakes and 10 sacks allowed already in his career. With S43 a third over, he's given up a sack and at this point is IMO worse than Angler. But that's not the big deal, it's the lack of TEotY or 1st Team All Pro. Multiple undrafted TEs have one of those; Zee Rechs has more than one of each, even. And yet, DarknessRising chose Hogmally. D pick, and almost hilariously, I think Darkness would have been much better off if he let Wraiths bias creep in one more time and had him choose a player who spent his career on the team with him.
19.190: Let'splay gets great value out of his QB pick, in his, AKA my, opinion, Dexter Zaylren, QB
I have a long thing for why I give myself an A for this pick.
There is a single question that I think is most telling when it comes to these sorts of drafts. What do you value most, peak, efficiency, volume, why are you drafting who you’re drafting? Well, the one I care by far the least about is volume. It’s a nice cherry on top of careers like Sailor, Boss, and Colby Jack, it’s the reason for a LOT of QBs in the Hall, and it’s something I actively dislike when it’s the only thing to a player’s name.
This knocked out literally every QB in the Hall besides one who had not been drafted by my first pick, and had me considering 2 other QBs not in it; one destined for the hall eventually and one who won’t make it because awards voters are the exact opposite and will let volume distract them from actual greatness constantly. (See: Matthias Caliban’s 3 positional award wins while never being within half a yard of ANY/A of the league leader)
Of these 3 QBs I decided between, I actually knocked out the Hall of Famer first and earliest: Childish Gambino is one of the only Old Sim QBs who has a better passer rating than Mike Boss, and he even leads the league in playoff passer rating! The problem is that he only played 4 seasons as a QB, played nowhere near enough games in the playoffs for that passer rating to be significant (5 games total by my count), and the 2 seasons he was the best QB in the league are counterbalanced by one good season and one godawful one. Granted, that good season was enough to get him the QBotY, but it really wasn't anything special.
Then there's Charlemagne Cortez. I have given a ton of praise over the years to Cortez, and feel he's the most efficient QB of all time, with the single best QB season of all time in S30. His pair of 1st team All pros and 4 pro bowls over 6 seasons, along with the MVP, give a more accurate view in my opinion of his career than his lone QBotY. S31 was the only season of his career where he wasn't at least a 7/10, and he was only a 4/10. He has the 3rd highest passer rating behind Carter Knight and Wendell Sailor, and is the only player in league history with a better yards per attempt than Mike Boss, all while having a WR group nowhere near as good as the other QBs of the time. That being said, while I love him dearly, and believe he's better than half the QBs in the Hall along with a QB who made the Hall from his generation, he does have 2 downsides: First off, only 6 seasons makes his career shorter than the average. Second off, while Cortez isn't exactly a playoff choker, he did regress heavily; his passer rating fell from all time great to average, and his Best Ever yards per attempt fell less precipitously to still great but not as jaw-dropping as his regular season 7.96. And as someone who spent their first career on arguably the most snakebitten playoff team of all time, I was not going to deal with that shit again. I wanted someone who made the playoffs their own.
Enter Dexter Zaylren, who is in my opinion the greatest Playoff QB of all time. Zaylren only made 3 Pro Bowls, 1 MVP, and only was 1st team All Pro once over his 7 year career. But he is one of the most efficient QBs ever, and easily the 3rd most efficient that's still on the board, with the 19th best yards per attempt at 7.42, and the 4th best Passer Rating at 97.55. The only people higher than him are Cortez, Sailor, and Knight. More importantly, though, he has nearly 400 pass attempts in the playoffs, and brings to the table a 99.94 passer rating (2nd to Gambino all time) and a great 7.48 yards per attempt, 13th all time. Anyone who is better at one of those stats is either far worse in the other or has less than 200 attempts. Zaylren took those stats to 3 rings and 4 appearances without an all time great WR around him in Honolulu especially. The grade for this pick may be partly due to how this project is being done, with me doing the grading for my own picks, but it's still getting an A.
20.191: Let'splay picks another guy who he thinks belongs in the Hall, Ed Barker, OFlex
"Ed Barker had 5 pro bowls and a number of seasons before we started doing the All Pro teams that I'd have put at 1st team. Heck, he actually had a couple of seasons that I thought were better than the actual WRotY that season. I advocated for him to make it to the Hall, and while he ended up missing it, I'd still stand by that statement. If you care more about volume, he's 12th all time in yards, 26th in TDs and Receptions. Considering I also wanted to bolster what I felt was my weakest offensive position, taking him as my last pick of the draft feels great."
Barker also has the T-21st yards per reception at 16 exactly. Really, this comes down to there being 3 years of his Pro Bowl seasons that I thought were better than the WRotY, and if I was going back over his career he'd have 3 1st Team All Pro. With that in mind, I can't help but give him an A- as a pick. He'd probably get a straight up A if Zayn didn't get Alexander LeClair right before. Also, 5 pro bowls over 9 seasons is not a bad ratio by any means either.
20.192: DarknessRising takes a Canton who missed out on Canton, John Canton, CB
"The cb s1 with 7 pb and dpoty, zayn said still up there in ints and remains top 50 pd"
"Yeah John Canton feels like someone who fell through the HOF cracks"
Canton might be the worst CB taken, but he's not at all bad. With a DBotY and 7 Pro Bowls over 10 seasons, Canton has a better awards cabinet than multiple CBs in the Hall. He's T-11th in picks, T-46th in PDs, and T-10th in defensive TDs. Really, it comes down to whether you value his rate of 1 pick over every 4.4 games, or dislike him having only 1.06 PDs per game. The one really good mark and the really bad mark combine to make me give him a C+ overall. If nothing else, him remaining barely in the top 50 in PDs is not exactly a point in his favor.
20.193: Zayn picks one of 2 QBs I already talked about for a while, Childish Gambino, QB
"2 time MVP, the 2nd highest QBR for players who only played in the old sim (behind Avon Blocksdale who was my backup choice), and won QBoTY 3 times in his 4 years
I decided that despite his incredibly short career at QB, he was so dominant that he deserved it he nod in my opinion, while he obviously doesn’t have the counting stats, I feel like it’s hard not too pick someone who was so dominant
GIF of Gambino shaking his pecs"
Zayn's strategy kind of pigeonholes him into someone who is competing for 2 seasons. But he's kind of already set up for that, with a pair of peak over longevity WRs and some picks that continue that philosophy in other places, too. A as a pick, might legitimately be a C or worse pick for a team that had been built in the other direction, but Zayn's team is here for a great time, not a long one. Can't really fault it strategy-wise, though it will make it a little difficult to rate Zayn's team against everyone else.
20.194: Rusfan picks a player who I don't really like at this spot, Tychondrius Hood, OFlex
Hood seems to have the volume of a player worth a pickup; he's 26th in yards, T-21st in Touchdowns, and has 15.1 yards per reception to his name. The problem is that's all he really has; he's only got 3 Pro Bowls and doesn't even have a 2nd Team All Pro despite playing for 5 seasons after their creation. He doesn't even have a WRotY. There's a ton of players who have at least an All Pro team, or a better Pro Bowl amount, to their name and similar, if not better, volume. Raphael Delacour, Videl San I'm pretty sure had one, Sean O'Leary made 7 of 9 Pro Bowls, this is an F of a pick.
20.195: Infinite takes an old, old player who I don't really like, Nicholas Pierno, DT
Pierno played 7 seasons at DT and made 5 Pro Bowls. That seems like a good ratio, but this is a really, really bad era thing. OK, jokes about how this is basically a repeat pick aside, there's a couple things that make Pierno much, much worse. Starting with how his pro bowls are...kinda jokes. This is the same thing that hits Kamaka, but Pierno was the 4th best DT out of about 10 in S7, was far worse than that in S8 and S9 but made the Pro Bowl in both of them somehow, and then also had a bad year with 5 sacks and nothing else in S11, but still made the Pro Bowl. All but one of Pierno's Pro Bowls, similar to Kamaka, are either jokes due to being good but not outstanding years in a tiny league, or mediocre or even bad seasons that somehow made the Pro Bowl anyways. I'm guessing Infinite took these two players because they were old Yeti players he remembered made a decent chunk of Pro Bowls, but I'm guessing he didn't remember just how flimsy those Pro Bowls were. D- pick. He's OK in a couple all time stats, 25th in sacks, T-47th in tackles, but that's nowhere near enough to make up for what is, in my view, a 1 pro bowl 7 season career.
20.196: Modern Duke picks the last HOF OL, Adam Mellott, OL
This pick kinda automatically gets an A, he's definitely the best OL remaining, but before moving on, I want to go into more detail about why I consider him better than Byron Dolls. It really comes down to Mellott having a higher, more consistent peak, and a better award cabinet than Dolls despite only making 3 Pro Bowls, none of which show up on the tracker. 2 OLotY and a 1st Team All Pro in a different season speak for a lot. That's even ignoring things like the new sim/old sim divide that helps Mellott have more pancakes and arguably less sacks allowed.
20.197: Frost picks arguably the best Punter in league history, Dean Jackson, K
"1x KOTY, 4x PunterOTY, 8x pro bowler, kicking goat of the early time of the league and has a case for best punter OAT"
I feel like that case is decently flimsy, reliant on a lot of favorable era adjustment, and an award cabinet that looks farther removed from its closest competitors than it should be due to bad awards later down the line, but of the people who have any argument for the GOAT Punter, Jackson's probably the best at kicking among them. He played for 11 seasons and made 8 Pro Bowls in the process. He's 9th all time in Punt Average among people with 50 games, at 47.1, which is just above Alex Dasistwirklichseinnachname for 2nd among Old Sim kickers; only McCormick beats him in that category and McCormick only had half a career. The real problem with Jackson's candidacy for Greatest Punter Ever is his rate of punts inside the 20. At 14.5%, he rates 75th of 91 total players to ever punt the ball. Even accounting for old vs new sim, the only worse HOF kicker is, funnily enough, McCormick at 14.1%; everyone else is at least one percent higher if not multiple. So I don't think Jackson's the best Punter ever. But what he does have is one of the best resumes for kicking. While he's slightly off at XP%, 96.3% ranks 37th among kickers with at least 50 games played, he's 7th in terms of percentage among players who played kicker for 50 games. He's only 0.045% below 6th place in Venus Powers, too. What's more notable are his performances at specific ranges: he's ranked 13th in both 30-39 (96.25%) and 40-49 (84.6%). About the only criticism one can have of Jackson as a field goal kicker is that his FG range drops off a cliff, which is a legitimate weakness: He only made 53.3% of his kicks from 50+ yards. Combine that with a really, really bad rate of punts inside the 20 and Frost might have the single worst kicker choice from the range of the opponent's 33 to midfield of the entire draft. Still, pretty much anywhere else this is a top tier pick. I'm giving it an A- only because as it turns out Dean Jackson's specific weaknesses synchronize with each other in the worst way possible. Still a fantastic choice for the last kicker of the draft.
20.198: Simo (AKA Zayn) takes the last pick of the draft chronologically, Buster Bawlls, OFlex
"U can also pick ur flex spot now"
"I'll do that tonight when I get to the computer. Tempted to just pick Auchfunf so both my players make it."
"Do you want to do more research or do you have your pick yet?"
"I was wanting to but fuck it I'll take Buster Bawlls. Goat FB."
":dogekek:"
Bawlls went to 6 Pro Bowls and has four 1st team and two 2nd team All Pros over an 11 season career. One of those 2nd teams came in a year where he didn't go to the Pro Bowl, and if I remember correctly he would have been a 1st team All Pro in S27 if we had done them then. If a Fullback ever makes the Hall, he is probably going to be the first one. As such I can really only give this an A+ considering Simo doesn't really need a change of pace RB or a 3rd WR considering who else he picked. Or, well, considering who Zayn picked; this was done by Zayn, which makes sense because he's been boasting a "Buster Bawlls 4 HOF" Discord nickname since I came back to the league.
20.199: Mobi picks a player who doesn't look good on the tracker, Carissa van Campen, LB
Campen looks much better outside of the tracker, as she has an extra Pro Bowl and 1st team All Pro that the tracker doesn't see. She's made 2 total Pro Bowls and one type of All Pro each in her 6 year career. Due to the shortness of her career, she doesn't show up very much on the stat sheets; she's T-41st in TFLs, and then makes the top 50 in Safeties and Defensive TDs via having one each. That being said, she's...fine. Not great, not terrible as a pick. I'll give it a flat C.
20.200: Negs ends the draft technically, Marlon Brando, DE
"1x dROTY
2x Pro Bowl
2x First team AP"
"Very blorgl to be the last pick in the draft"
This pick is very much down to a pair of really impressive DE seasons where he got 17 and 16 sacks in back to back seasons. Overall, Brando has the T-19th most sacks among DEs, is T-12th in Tackles, T-7th in Safeties, T-25th in FFs, and T-12th in FRs over 11 seasons at the position. On one hand, Brando has an extremely impressive peak that is basically the headliner to his HOF candidacy, and it's a really good headline. On the other hand, the only other season of any note is a 9 sack, 4 TFL, 2 Safety, 3 FF/2FR season that was his rookie year. Those 33 sacks over 2 seasons are great, but they're also over half of his all time sacks. They're also over a third of his TFLs; 12 of his 35 total career productivity came in his S34 and S35 seasons. Those seasons are also tinged with a bit of bittersweetness, as both times Brando was being voted as very much the 2nd best DE behind outstanding David Moyes seasons. Overall, I'm conflicted; 2 first teams are good, but neither were as the best, his peak is great, but outside of that and his rookie year he accomplished almost nothing, and 2 pro bowls over 11 seasons is just bad. I'm going to rate this C-.
This is the 2nd to last part; the last part will be me covering every single team and then tiering them. I hope to get that out over the weekend, and I'll see you then.