Prompt 11 Wrote:Write about your team’s biggest rivalry and what makes it so fierce. Is the competition founded in statistics and the team’s recent performance, or is it a rivalry that developed over time during the team’s history that would exist regardless of statistics?
I think the all time rival nod has to go to the Yellowknife Wraiths. All 3 of Austin's Ultimus appearances were clashes with Yellowknife - the first in the S20 was a win (37-20), but the later two in S23 (38-13) and S28 (24-19) were both losses. Despite that, I don't personally feel like it's an intense rivalry - like I don't see people bringing it up in the locker room when the schedule comes up. But still, I think they have to be the overall pick.
In terms of what feels like the biggest rivalry - I've felt like it's the Arizona outlaws. They've been good for most of the time since I joined the league, making the playoffs in 12 of those 15 seasons along with the S28-33 stretch where they won the division 5 out of 6 years. Our games against them in those years were also really important as we were struggling to make the playoffs ourselves (and we were the one team to sneak out a division win over them in S31). I haven't seen anything approaching the level of intense hatred like you see with NFL matchups like the AFC north with Steelers vs. everyone else being at times literal slugfests. Part of that is probably that we're not getting the same kind of on-field intensity, taunting, stomps, and so on, and so it's harder to take it quite as personally as NFL players can. Now maybe my experience isn't the same as those who are more invested in the mechanics of winning - those in the war room or doing the sim testing and strategy work and so on. I'm not a huge "hang out and chat" locker room person, so it's possible there are lots of heated discussions but I miss them when there were hundreds of messages while I was at work. I do think that the ISFL is a little harder to maintain a dynasty in vs. the NFL though - the forces of regression and schedule of TPE earning put restrictions in place that make it hard to always have a great team. So, even if a team was our nemesis 5 years ago they might be bad for a couple years and allow any past rivalry to cool down.
Prompt 12 Wrote:Choose a team or player to write about that isn’t your own. What did they do well in the last season? Have they shown any drastic improvements from previous years? What could they do better?
I think the Butchers and in particular QB Kazimir Oles Jr. absolutely killed it last season. Chicago had the best record in the league, scored 1 fewer point that the leader, and were additionally tops in yards gained, yards allowed, and pass yards allowed. Oles was obviously a part of doing so well on the points and yards, but I think he actually managed to put up a better stat line in his first year of regression than he did in previous years. Oles Jr. dropped in attempts/completions but improved his completion percentage, led the league in passer rating and increased it by nearly 7 points vs. the previous year and setting a career-high. Oles also had a career-lowest interception total. There's definitely an argument that with a great running game (Lalu Zohri had a great year, though I think clearly second to Cue Jr.) the QB just didn't need to do as much, but that's hardly something to fault the player for.
The year over year progress on the team also shows up in the record column, as they moved from 9-7 in S35 to 13-3 in S36. The collective defense is probably the real credit there - the team allowed 100 fewer points and nearly 50 fewer yards per game. As part of leading the league in fewest yards allowed, both passing and rushing defense improved in rank drastically. Points defense did get way better in the NSFC in S36 vs. the prior year (possibly due to the ASFC collectively scoring worse), though, so the Butchers were still only 3rd in the conference despite allowing 6.3 fewer points/game than in S35. That was sufficient to move from 8th in the league to 4th and they were only 6 points behind 2nd/3rd, but it's not as great as their yards allowed would have otherwise suggested.
Going into next year, I think the big thing is going to be the nemesis of most good teams - managing regression and figuring out replacements in the future. Obviously also beating Sarasota in the playoffs is something they would have preferred to do, but the Sailfish were also very good this year and they split the regular season matchups, so I don't know if there's a specific change to make for that.
Draft Steal (retired S35 CB) - Profile/Update | Wiki
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