So this will be my first interview, and I am ecstatic to announce that it will be with my GM and Butcher CB, TheCC, the tyrant himself, I hope I am able to get some good questions out and hear some interesting answers.
Question: Now that the season is over, how do you think you personally performed throughout the season?
Answer: I’m going to assume that you’re asking about how I feel I did as a GM with the Minnesota Grey Ducks this season. I think that I did pretty well. I was juggling quite a few things in the league this season, but I think that I did a good job of spending as much of my time as possible helping my Ducks. I had one slip up with a DC or strat, but it was when I was in the middle of moving into my new house, so I at least have some kind of excuse. Gragg has a lot of data that shows that we had one of the best draft classes in the league, so I’m extremely happy about that. We did our research during the draft, and we definitely got a great group of guys, and then you guys kept the TPE earning rate up, and we helped when you guys needed it!
Response: as a player i’d agree on that, you did an amazing job and the whole draft class has been amazing in a player way and a community way, which is an amazing get and you were always helpful when there were any questions any of us asked.
Question: Adding on to my last question, how do you feel about how the Butchers did this season, what was the reaction after the loss in the first playoff game after the great regular season?
Answer: I’m super proud of how the Butchers did this season. We ended up having the best regular season record in franchise history, and we had fun doing it. We were feeling a lot of uncertainty before the season started, due to the migration from the old sim to DDSPF 21. It was fun because we were able to experiment a bit more. Crody did an amazing job of testing week in and week out, making sure that we had the best strategy he could find. Our reaction to the playoff loss, in a single word, was frustration. We’ve been in the playoffs for three seasons in a row now, but we just can’t get over the hump to make it to the Ultimus. Our current core is getting very close to regression, so we need to get it done quick before we have to retool our roster. We were really hoping to get Mike Hockhertz and Sean O’Leary each a ring in their last season, and unfortunately we weren’t able to accomplish this, which was very disappointing. Hopefully the rest of our vets don’t suffer the same fate.
Response: the regular season was nothing short of impressive, and it’s always frustrating when you find a hill that you just can’t seem to climb, and it’s always sad when your experienced players have to leave without the title on their resume but i’m sure the next few seasons will be happier in term of postseason luck.
Question: Speaking about the Butchers, how does it feel to be apart the best defence of the regular season?
Answer: It feels great! Defense wins championships, but unfortunately this just wasn’t the case for us this season. It just feels awesome seeing your defense stifle the opposing offense drive after drive after drive. One thing that was very frustrating was that I believe that we gave up the most passing yards in the entire league. This is insane considering me, Osiris Firestorm-Fjord, and Tyler Oles Jr are ALL cornerbacks that are over 1k TPE. Shouldn’t we have been shutting the opposing wide receivers down? I think that we had a big amount of takeaways, but it was still frustrating. Maybe it was something that had to do with our strats. Who knows? It’s hard to tell. As a whole though, our offense was great. Even the passing defense wasn’t horrible, because we didn’t give up very many touchdowns, I believe.
Response: Giving up yards must be certainly frustrating as a top CB but it looks like as an outsider that the defensive efficiency was top notch so I definitely think you can hold your heads high.
Question: Coming from a more experienced player in the squad, how have the rookies integrated into the squad?
Answer: In regards to the Butchers, our rookies integrated amazingly. Most of our rookies were on defense - Oliver Sloan (who switched to defensive end halfway through the season), Alejandro Chainbreaker (who led all rookies in sacks, I believe), Wasrabi Gleel (who had a DROY caliber campaign). They were all big pieces of the defense, helping us to have the league leading defense as we outlined in the last question and answer! As for Minnesota, the rookies got up to speed even faster than we could’ve hoped! You guys were great, helping to lift us out of our early season losing streak and give us some hope for the playoffs, even though we narrowly missed out.
Response: It’s always good to see the rookies on your team come up strong and make an immediate impact, especially playing with yourself on defence, and yes the Minn rookies were great and I feel we all did great.
Question: And finally for the player, what are your hopes for the next couple of seasons coming up?
Answer: Well this next upcoming season will be my player’s, Tyron Shields, last season before his first season of regression, I believe. He’s had a pretty lackluster career for the most part, making it onto the Defensive Rookie of the Year ballot in his first ISFL (NSFL at the time) season in S23, although he got the least votes on the ballot, and he also made the Pro Bowl that season which was awesome. Outside of that season he hasn’t accomplished much. I’m really hoping to finish his career off with at least one more award worthy season. Just making it onto a ballot again would be nice. I’d also love for him to win an Ultimus before he goes out. If he continues to be average it’s fine, it’s just sim football, but he is my first sim player ever and it would be cool to accomplish some goals with him before retirement!
Response: Getting an achievement is always rewarding and the goal is always an Ulimus, I have a feeling the Butchers can really do well next year, especially if they draft well, but hey that's up to there GM, whoever that is.
Question: So it’s your last season as a GM for the Minnesota Ducks, how does it feel to be leaving the organisation, and what's your feeling moving onto bigger things?
Answer: It’s very very sad. I didn’t think that it would be so sad. I knew I couldn’t GM the Ducks forever, because I was nearly positive that I would be moving on to the Chicago Butchers eventually, and also I think that you shouldn’t GM in the DSFL for more than like 4 seasons or so. I think that the DSFL is about more than developing players - it’s about developing users, war room members, and GMs. There are nearly always people in the war room that deserve a shot. Like I said though, I’m very excited to GM in the big leagues. I’m working with a brand new group of GMs, and new mechanics like cap space, so it should be a fun time. I know I’m up to the task!
Response: Leaving something you’ve grown yourself must be bittersweet, and after 4 seasons it must felt like leaving your comfort with your MINN GM position, however I think it’s noble that your thinking about the development of other people in the league and the DSFL was lucky to have you as a GM, and I’m sure you’ll be up to the task of an ISFL GM.
Question: The season didn’t start off great for the Ducks, how was the mood behind the scenes from the bad start to the eventual pickup that happened as the season progressed?
Answer: Obviously there was some disappointment, and some frustration, but I think that the prevailing mood was urgency. I know that Russ in particular was in my DMs saying things along the lines of “we need to figure this out and turn it around now”. I was a bit more relaxed than that, because I knew that we didn’t compare suuuuper well to the rest of the league at the start of the season, due to the fact that we were banking on a lot of rookies deciding to become great earners. Luckily, you guys WERE great earners, and our league leading draft class helped us to turn things around and compete for a playoff spot!
Response: It’s great to hear that you had confidence in us, it’s also great to hear that the future GM is on the ball when it comes to improving the teams performance, and I like to feel we rookies repaid your faith in us.
Question: A reason for the tick up in performances over the season was the rookies developing really well, what were the thoughts on the rookie class before the season and did those feelings change or were they reinforced as the season went on?
Answer: As I mentioned a bit in the last question, your rookie class was so so so awesome. I’m so happy to have ended my Minnesota GM career with such an amazing class. However, I’ll be completely candid here on this question. PRIOR to the draft, in the war room we were pretty low on your draft class as a whole. Just to clarify, I mean your entire draft class, not your class of Ducklings. For some reason, we had the feeling that there wasn’t as much sim talent in this draft class as we had hoped there would be in your class. In retrospect, I think that the reason we had these feelings towards your draft class was purely because we were disappointed in the size of your class. You came from a r/NFL class, which has been known in the last two draft classes to attract a huge number of people to our league. 271 in the S22 class, and something like 150 in the S25 class, while yours has “only” 79, which is still a larger class than is typically found in the ISFL in non r/NFL classes. Due to many reasons, most of which were out of our (the recruitment team) control, your class was smaller than others, which disappointed us, and I think that we let those feelings carry over into our overall feelings on the class, if that makes sense. Luckily, you guys have proved us wrong and you’ve made it clear that your class has a ton of very promising users. After we drafted our class of Ducklings, we started to change our minds a bit, thinking “Okay, I think we can work with this. These guys have been good so far.” Then as the days and weeks wore on, you guys just never quit, and some of you even picked up even more steam, writing media and buying equipment. You guys are awesome. You, shrub, painted, Gragg, Skorch, xQC, jhatty, jackkmart, CLG, and even Forthefight all met or exceeded our expectations for each of you!
Response: It’s interesting to hear your concern, and it’s understandable that you were worried after seeing the reduced numbers compared to your expectations, although I'm sure your scouts were glad in seeing they don’t have to do too much work! But I'm glad we were able to change your mind on the class and exceed expectations.
Question: You are leaving the GM position to Russ, how confident are you in his ability to lead the team forward and how was his development as a GM like as the season progressed?
Answer: I have full confidence in Russ to continue to move our team in the right direction without me. I’m still around to help you guys however I can, and I’m still around to help make sure he’s on the right track when he has questions. He’s taking the locker room makeover seriously which is great. Over the course of the season, he was great at soaking up information. Very early in the season, we knew that it would be my last in Minnesota, so we made it a point to get him ready to be the head GM, and to make sure that he had the answers that he needed for his new GM that he would select at the end of the season. He can’t remember absolutely everything, and there were some things that I may have forgotten to teach him, or some things that just didn’t come up last season that may come up this coming season, but I’m always just a DM away, and he knows that. Russ, Crody, and the Ducks are going to be fine and I know that for a fact.
Response: It’s good to hear your confidence in your mentee, as a player under you two I also have all the faith in Russ and I’m sure you’ve done all you can to prep him, and I'm sure his mind is at ease knowing you're willing to continue helping if needed.
Question: And to end on a bright note, what were your favorite moments as a GM for Minnesota from your entire time there?
Answer: One thing that comes to mind is the game against the Tijuana Luchadores this last season when we absolutely torched them. Just seeing how happy everyone was with our team’s performance, and seeing how active the team was, and just seeing nearly every single rookie that we had popping into the locker room to celebrate was amazing. Another top moment was last season, I believe, when Negs threw something like four interceptions in one quarter, or maybe it was one half, I don’t remember exactly. It was horrible and we were not having a great time in the locker room. But at a certain point, you just realize how ridiculous it is and it starts to get kind of funny. After his fourth or fifth interception, whichever one was his last, we were all in shock in the locker room and Negs comes in with “I’M A MEME” and I just lost it. It was absolutely hilarious. I was actually laughing out loud haha, it still makes me smile thinking about it. Another moment that I enjoyed also involved Negs - he was easily the most active prospect in our locker room leading up to his draft. We knew that he really wanted to play for us (and he told us that this was the case after the draft). I can’t remember exactly, but I think that he may have DMed me saying that he was hoping that we’d take him with our second round pick, and he may have even told me something like “If I fall into the late first, I’d love it if you traded up for me because I really want to play for Minnesota”, or something. Little did he know, we were absolutely certain that he would be our pick at #1 overall in the first round. He jumped into voice chat, where a lot of us were hanging out, and he just absolutely lost it and celebrated with us. It was an extremely memorable moment. There’s two more things that immediately come to mind. The first is the media that Gragg, Painted, and shrub collaborated on together, making a case for Russ and I to win the GMs of the Year award. I literally almost started tearing up when I was reading it. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me in this sim league. That media was better than any sim award that I could possibly win, and I can’t thank them enough for the kind words. The final moment (that I can think of, at least) that I’ll mention is my goodbye to Minnesota. Like I talked about earlier, I didn’t think it would be so sad. I mean, I’m not going anywhere. I’m still going to be one of the most active people in the locker room, and I’m still helping in any way that I possibly can. But it was just sad stepping down. I really enjoyed being one of the leaders of our awesome team. For the non-Ducks reading this, bullying CC is the most common pastime in the Minnesota Grey Ducks Discord server. I don’t mind it, it’s funny. But when I announced that I would no longer be the GM of the team, all of that bullying was put on hold while everyone said their goodbyes or thank you's or congratulations or what have you. It was a really sad night, but it was nice seeing everyone’s true feelings for a second, before we got back to our normal selves the next day.
Response: As a player under you, even though it was just for a season, I was shocked and saddened by the news as you were amazing for us rookies, what Gragg, Painted and Shrub wrote was 100% correct and I feel privileged to play under you, and again when you announced your moving on those words I and others said were truthful, we were sad to see you go but happy for you to move up to a ISFL GM position. We are, however, ready to continue to bully you with smiles on our faces. Those moments you mentioned this season were truly great and memorable, and that Negs story makes a great amount of sense knowing what I know about him, it sounds like he was very memorable for you and i’m sure he appreciates that very much.
Thank you for the interview CC, and thank you for being my first GM, I will truly remember the times you lead us and I am so glad I got drafted to the Ducks so I got to play under you, quack.
split of 25% - @TheCC and 75% for me cause CC won't take more
Question: Now that the season is over, how do you think you personally performed throughout the season?
Answer: I’m going to assume that you’re asking about how I feel I did as a GM with the Minnesota Grey Ducks this season. I think that I did pretty well. I was juggling quite a few things in the league this season, but I think that I did a good job of spending as much of my time as possible helping my Ducks. I had one slip up with a DC or strat, but it was when I was in the middle of moving into my new house, so I at least have some kind of excuse. Gragg has a lot of data that shows that we had one of the best draft classes in the league, so I’m extremely happy about that. We did our research during the draft, and we definitely got a great group of guys, and then you guys kept the TPE earning rate up, and we helped when you guys needed it!
Response: as a player i’d agree on that, you did an amazing job and the whole draft class has been amazing in a player way and a community way, which is an amazing get and you were always helpful when there were any questions any of us asked.
Question: Adding on to my last question, how do you feel about how the Butchers did this season, what was the reaction after the loss in the first playoff game after the great regular season?
Answer: I’m super proud of how the Butchers did this season. We ended up having the best regular season record in franchise history, and we had fun doing it. We were feeling a lot of uncertainty before the season started, due to the migration from the old sim to DDSPF 21. It was fun because we were able to experiment a bit more. Crody did an amazing job of testing week in and week out, making sure that we had the best strategy he could find. Our reaction to the playoff loss, in a single word, was frustration. We’ve been in the playoffs for three seasons in a row now, but we just can’t get over the hump to make it to the Ultimus. Our current core is getting very close to regression, so we need to get it done quick before we have to retool our roster. We were really hoping to get Mike Hockhertz and Sean O’Leary each a ring in their last season, and unfortunately we weren’t able to accomplish this, which was very disappointing. Hopefully the rest of our vets don’t suffer the same fate.
Response: the regular season was nothing short of impressive, and it’s always frustrating when you find a hill that you just can’t seem to climb, and it’s always sad when your experienced players have to leave without the title on their resume but i’m sure the next few seasons will be happier in term of postseason luck.
Question: Speaking about the Butchers, how does it feel to be apart the best defence of the regular season?
Answer: It feels great! Defense wins championships, but unfortunately this just wasn’t the case for us this season. It just feels awesome seeing your defense stifle the opposing offense drive after drive after drive. One thing that was very frustrating was that I believe that we gave up the most passing yards in the entire league. This is insane considering me, Osiris Firestorm-Fjord, and Tyler Oles Jr are ALL cornerbacks that are over 1k TPE. Shouldn’t we have been shutting the opposing wide receivers down? I think that we had a big amount of takeaways, but it was still frustrating. Maybe it was something that had to do with our strats. Who knows? It’s hard to tell. As a whole though, our offense was great. Even the passing defense wasn’t horrible, because we didn’t give up very many touchdowns, I believe.
Response: Giving up yards must be certainly frustrating as a top CB but it looks like as an outsider that the defensive efficiency was top notch so I definitely think you can hold your heads high.
Question: Coming from a more experienced player in the squad, how have the rookies integrated into the squad?
Answer: In regards to the Butchers, our rookies integrated amazingly. Most of our rookies were on defense - Oliver Sloan (who switched to defensive end halfway through the season), Alejandro Chainbreaker (who led all rookies in sacks, I believe), Wasrabi Gleel (who had a DROY caliber campaign). They were all big pieces of the defense, helping us to have the league leading defense as we outlined in the last question and answer! As for Minnesota, the rookies got up to speed even faster than we could’ve hoped! You guys were great, helping to lift us out of our early season losing streak and give us some hope for the playoffs, even though we narrowly missed out.
Response: It’s always good to see the rookies on your team come up strong and make an immediate impact, especially playing with yourself on defence, and yes the Minn rookies were great and I feel we all did great.
Question: And finally for the player, what are your hopes for the next couple of seasons coming up?
Answer: Well this next upcoming season will be my player’s, Tyron Shields, last season before his first season of regression, I believe. He’s had a pretty lackluster career for the most part, making it onto the Defensive Rookie of the Year ballot in his first ISFL (NSFL at the time) season in S23, although he got the least votes on the ballot, and he also made the Pro Bowl that season which was awesome. Outside of that season he hasn’t accomplished much. I’m really hoping to finish his career off with at least one more award worthy season. Just making it onto a ballot again would be nice. I’d also love for him to win an Ultimus before he goes out. If he continues to be average it’s fine, it’s just sim football, but he is my first sim player ever and it would be cool to accomplish some goals with him before retirement!
Response: Getting an achievement is always rewarding and the goal is always an Ulimus, I have a feeling the Butchers can really do well next year, especially if they draft well, but hey that's up to there GM, whoever that is.
Question: So it’s your last season as a GM for the Minnesota Ducks, how does it feel to be leaving the organisation, and what's your feeling moving onto bigger things?
Answer: It’s very very sad. I didn’t think that it would be so sad. I knew I couldn’t GM the Ducks forever, because I was nearly positive that I would be moving on to the Chicago Butchers eventually, and also I think that you shouldn’t GM in the DSFL for more than like 4 seasons or so. I think that the DSFL is about more than developing players - it’s about developing users, war room members, and GMs. There are nearly always people in the war room that deserve a shot. Like I said though, I’m very excited to GM in the big leagues. I’m working with a brand new group of GMs, and new mechanics like cap space, so it should be a fun time. I know I’m up to the task!
Response: Leaving something you’ve grown yourself must be bittersweet, and after 4 seasons it must felt like leaving your comfort with your MINN GM position, however I think it’s noble that your thinking about the development of other people in the league and the DSFL was lucky to have you as a GM, and I’m sure you’ll be up to the task of an ISFL GM.
Question: The season didn’t start off great for the Ducks, how was the mood behind the scenes from the bad start to the eventual pickup that happened as the season progressed?
Answer: Obviously there was some disappointment, and some frustration, but I think that the prevailing mood was urgency. I know that Russ in particular was in my DMs saying things along the lines of “we need to figure this out and turn it around now”. I was a bit more relaxed than that, because I knew that we didn’t compare suuuuper well to the rest of the league at the start of the season, due to the fact that we were banking on a lot of rookies deciding to become great earners. Luckily, you guys WERE great earners, and our league leading draft class helped us to turn things around and compete for a playoff spot!
Response: It’s great to hear that you had confidence in us, it’s also great to hear that the future GM is on the ball when it comes to improving the teams performance, and I like to feel we rookies repaid your faith in us.
Question: A reason for the tick up in performances over the season was the rookies developing really well, what were the thoughts on the rookie class before the season and did those feelings change or were they reinforced as the season went on?
Answer: As I mentioned a bit in the last question, your rookie class was so so so awesome. I’m so happy to have ended my Minnesota GM career with such an amazing class. However, I’ll be completely candid here on this question. PRIOR to the draft, in the war room we were pretty low on your draft class as a whole. Just to clarify, I mean your entire draft class, not your class of Ducklings. For some reason, we had the feeling that there wasn’t as much sim talent in this draft class as we had hoped there would be in your class. In retrospect, I think that the reason we had these feelings towards your draft class was purely because we were disappointed in the size of your class. You came from a r/NFL class, which has been known in the last two draft classes to attract a huge number of people to our league. 271 in the S22 class, and something like 150 in the S25 class, while yours has “only” 79, which is still a larger class than is typically found in the ISFL in non r/NFL classes. Due to many reasons, most of which were out of our (the recruitment team) control, your class was smaller than others, which disappointed us, and I think that we let those feelings carry over into our overall feelings on the class, if that makes sense. Luckily, you guys have proved us wrong and you’ve made it clear that your class has a ton of very promising users. After we drafted our class of Ducklings, we started to change our minds a bit, thinking “Okay, I think we can work with this. These guys have been good so far.” Then as the days and weeks wore on, you guys just never quit, and some of you even picked up even more steam, writing media and buying equipment. You guys are awesome. You, shrub, painted, Gragg, Skorch, xQC, jhatty, jackkmart, CLG, and even Forthefight all met or exceeded our expectations for each of you!
Response: It’s interesting to hear your concern, and it’s understandable that you were worried after seeing the reduced numbers compared to your expectations, although I'm sure your scouts were glad in seeing they don’t have to do too much work! But I'm glad we were able to change your mind on the class and exceed expectations.
Question: You are leaving the GM position to Russ, how confident are you in his ability to lead the team forward and how was his development as a GM like as the season progressed?
Answer: I have full confidence in Russ to continue to move our team in the right direction without me. I’m still around to help you guys however I can, and I’m still around to help make sure he’s on the right track when he has questions. He’s taking the locker room makeover seriously which is great. Over the course of the season, he was great at soaking up information. Very early in the season, we knew that it would be my last in Minnesota, so we made it a point to get him ready to be the head GM, and to make sure that he had the answers that he needed for his new GM that he would select at the end of the season. He can’t remember absolutely everything, and there were some things that I may have forgotten to teach him, or some things that just didn’t come up last season that may come up this coming season, but I’m always just a DM away, and he knows that. Russ, Crody, and the Ducks are going to be fine and I know that for a fact.
Response: It’s good to hear your confidence in your mentee, as a player under you two I also have all the faith in Russ and I’m sure you’ve done all you can to prep him, and I'm sure his mind is at ease knowing you're willing to continue helping if needed.
Question: And to end on a bright note, what were your favorite moments as a GM for Minnesota from your entire time there?
Answer: One thing that comes to mind is the game against the Tijuana Luchadores this last season when we absolutely torched them. Just seeing how happy everyone was with our team’s performance, and seeing how active the team was, and just seeing nearly every single rookie that we had popping into the locker room to celebrate was amazing. Another top moment was last season, I believe, when Negs threw something like four interceptions in one quarter, or maybe it was one half, I don’t remember exactly. It was horrible and we were not having a great time in the locker room. But at a certain point, you just realize how ridiculous it is and it starts to get kind of funny. After his fourth or fifth interception, whichever one was his last, we were all in shock in the locker room and Negs comes in with “I’M A MEME” and I just lost it. It was absolutely hilarious. I was actually laughing out loud haha, it still makes me smile thinking about it. Another moment that I enjoyed also involved Negs - he was easily the most active prospect in our locker room leading up to his draft. We knew that he really wanted to play for us (and he told us that this was the case after the draft). I can’t remember exactly, but I think that he may have DMed me saying that he was hoping that we’d take him with our second round pick, and he may have even told me something like “If I fall into the late first, I’d love it if you traded up for me because I really want to play for Minnesota”, or something. Little did he know, we were absolutely certain that he would be our pick at #1 overall in the first round. He jumped into voice chat, where a lot of us were hanging out, and he just absolutely lost it and celebrated with us. It was an extremely memorable moment. There’s two more things that immediately come to mind. The first is the media that Gragg, Painted, and shrub collaborated on together, making a case for Russ and I to win the GMs of the Year award. I literally almost started tearing up when I was reading it. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me in this sim league. That media was better than any sim award that I could possibly win, and I can’t thank them enough for the kind words. The final moment (that I can think of, at least) that I’ll mention is my goodbye to Minnesota. Like I talked about earlier, I didn’t think it would be so sad. I mean, I’m not going anywhere. I’m still going to be one of the most active people in the locker room, and I’m still helping in any way that I possibly can. But it was just sad stepping down. I really enjoyed being one of the leaders of our awesome team. For the non-Ducks reading this, bullying CC is the most common pastime in the Minnesota Grey Ducks Discord server. I don’t mind it, it’s funny. But when I announced that I would no longer be the GM of the team, all of that bullying was put on hold while everyone said their goodbyes or thank you's or congratulations or what have you. It was a really sad night, but it was nice seeing everyone’s true feelings for a second, before we got back to our normal selves the next day.
Response: As a player under you, even though it was just for a season, I was shocked and saddened by the news as you were amazing for us rookies, what Gragg, Painted and Shrub wrote was 100% correct and I feel privileged to play under you, and again when you announced your moving on those words I and others said were truthful, we were sad to see you go but happy for you to move up to a ISFL GM position. We are, however, ready to continue to bully you with smiles on our faces. Those moments you mentioned this season were truly great and memorable, and that Negs story makes a great amount of sense knowing what I know about him, it sounds like he was very memorable for you and i’m sure he appreciates that very much.
Thank you for the interview CC, and thank you for being my first GM, I will truly remember the times you lead us and I am so glad I got drafted to the Ducks so I got to play under you, quack.
split of 25% - @TheCC and 75% for me cause CC won't take more