[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: Is this the best we've got?
Or what is a 1-3 record in pre-season worth?

No more practice, it's time for the real games. We completed our pre-season campaign with a couple of losses: 23-3 at the Williamsburg Colonials and 24-17 at home against the Outer Banks Ospreys. Earlier on we beat the Frederick Red Menace 20-13 and lost 15-12 at the Moontown Darksiders.

The last two games we sent out the projected first team offense to start the games and let the backups finish it off. But that's usually not how pre-season games play out. S, I actually didn't start RB Bennett Holmes, to make sure he would get the majority of the carries, and so he did indeed: RB Van Goodwin had 6 carries, while Holmes had 34 carries in the last two games. Winfred England and Earnest Ashley took place under center, in that order. It's safe to say that, at least in pre-season, England can't do much better (or worse?) than Ashley has done for so long here as he completed 24 of 50 passes for 310 yards, with 1 touchdown and 3 interceptions. Calvin Maxwell carried the offense, completing his pre-season with 4 100-yard games. And as per usual, the staff botched the usage of players on the offensive line, although this pre-season we didn't get to see our wide receivers, fullback and backup quarterback play on the right side of the line, they just substituted the guys out that needed the reps, while those that didn't need it, played a full game. Awesome, staff, awesome.

The defense was a bit less daunting than in the first two pre-season games, this time not holding the opponents to under 300 total yards. The pass rush pressure was downright disappointing, with just 1 sack, 3 blocked passes and 8 hurries in 68 pass plays. Yes, that's very pathetic for a unit as talented as ours.

All in all, almost nothing to get excited and optimistic about. I'd rather have the unrightfully feared 4-0 campaign. The Paris Musketeers were the only team to win all four 2103 pre-season games. To be fair, the last time we did go 4-0 in pre-season, we indeed missed the playoffs with a 7-8-1 campaign. That was in 2093, the first season in currently tied longest playoffs drought, which could extended to being the longest ever if we fail this season. More worrying is that we scored only 52 points, the least of all 32 teams. It's not our worst pre-season in that regard, we scored only 42 points in 2097, 41 in 2088, 47 in 2063, 44 in 2027, 45 in 2022, 42 in 2012, 37 in 2010 and 51 in 2005. Of all those seasons, in 2012 we went 10-6, going from 5-0 to 5-5 to 10-5, upset the division winning Bordeaux Vineyards in the wild card round and then got ran over by the Tucker Tigers RB R.J. Ellard. And in 2027 be rebounded from a 3-4 start to still win the division with an 11-5 record and make it to the AOC Championship game, where we lost to - you guessed it - the Tucker Tigers. But more importantly, it's a reason to not get too worked up about it, but it sure doesn't feel comfortable to see this talented offense still struggle, while the defense got basically ran all over just like in the last regular season campaigns.