[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: The Mega Make Over
It has begun...

Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, the battle against the deepest cap disaster in Maassluis Merchantmen history has begun. The 2102 off-season started with the retirement of Adam Harmon, Chuck Murray and Mark Perkins. Yes, that was quite the list there as they combine for 34 seasons with us, playing in 527 regular season games and 8 playoffs games. Neither of them played elsewhere in the IHOF, all three were undrafted rookies when they joined us. Perkins retired as the IHOF's all-time punt returner. How about that. Yes, usually I would write a lot more about players with such awesome careers with us, but the off-season has been so busy, extremely busy, the odes to the players that left us will have to wait for later on.

The off-season continued with the departure of our cornerback duo Ernie Grant and Omar Leszynski. Grant leaves us after 7 seasons, 105 regular season games (without post-season participation), joining the Orlando Talons. Leszynski left for the Texas Sharks after 6 seasons and 64 regular season games.

Free agency was a net loss of 3 players for us, so far. Backup center Rickey Mason signed with the Chesapeake Chitterlings after 5 seasons as a backup with us. Most of his action in 62 games came on the special teams unit. He will be reunited with kicker Gino Shea, who left us after 4 seasons. Running back Dashawn McIntyre also left us after 4 seasons, he's joining the Outer Banks Ospreys.

The biggest exodus came at the end of the pre-draft free agency as we showed the door to 8 players, and bear with me: center Robbie Zinn, guards Nickolas Toler and Ronald Staigvil, tackles Johnnie Houston and Isaac Delgado, defensive end Richie Piotte, defensive tackle Caleb Domis and linebacker Preston Bradford. No, I don't have want to tally up the number of seasons (5+ for each of them) and games played they add up to. I will add that, unlike the 3 undrafted legends that retired this off-season, this released bunch of overpaid pricks never made us make the playoffs. Never.

We re-hired one restricted free agent: special teamer and linebacker Wally Cooley.

And then the draft, oh boy oh boy. We traded down from pick 1.7 to pick 1.13 and then further down to pick 1.24. We missed out on many decent players because of the swaps down, but combined with the trades of our cornerbacks and several in prior off-seasons, we finished the 2102 draft with - and you'd better sit down for this - a grand total of 19 draft picks. Let's stick with their abbreviated positions and their names, for now: 1.24 LB Tony Burks, 2.6 TE Garrett Alcala, 2.13 CB Logan Wallace, 2.24 K Oscar Harrington, 2.28 CB Zachary Centers, 3.5 CB Wesley Cabrera, 3.18 RB Rondell Robertson, 4.3 OT Harold Gruenwalder, 4.7 G Brett Stickney, 4.23 S Daryl Heath, 5.2 C Lincoln Stonge, 5.6 OT Salvador Horton, 5.13 DT Mitch Potchynok, 5.23 G Floyd Graham, 5.24 LB Marco Nichols, 6.5 S Eduardo Cowdrick, 6.31 TE Raul Milliken, 7.7 WR Rick Emerson and 7.31 CB Steven Van Pelt.

Are we there yet? Not entirely, because, although we avoided a draft pick penalty loss, our cap situation was fixed just temporarily. We're sitting at 46 players on roster and $36M over the cap. Yes, still very deep into trouble. We have a dead cap hit figure of almost $218M for this season, almost $69M next season. Welcome to the Merchantmen of the 22nd century.

is there light at the horizon? We haven't started renegotiating with players at all. But we will, because I do want to bring 53+ players to training camp. Earnest Ashley and Vinny Buysse are first in line, a cap out contract for both would get us in the clear.

And then, there's one more puzzle to solve: how will we manage to extend the contracts of Calvin Maxwell and Ken Torphy? Extention of Maxwell's contract will be, well, a non-issue, it has to be done, despite that his agent wants quarterback money for his client ($316M over 5 years, roughly $60M per season). Torphy's case will be harder, he's done a bit too little from behind an expensive and very talented offensive line to justify his demands. Really, Ken? $160M over 5 seasons?

So, plenty to mull about. And plenty of opportunity for rookies to jump in and get a starting gig, but as it looks now, half of our starters for the 2102 season will be rookies. We went from oldest team to third youngest.

So yeah, Mega Make Over sounds about right to me.