I feel like this somehow makes me even more bummed out.

This is like the Chiefs losing to the Patriots in the AFCCG in '18. I know they would've beaten the Rams had they gotten a shot at them. But they just didn't get the job done.

I know you're supposed to take satisfaction in being beaten by the eventual champion - but not when it's the semi-finals. That just makes you realize how close you were before you shit the bed.

In either event, congrats Phog. I think we can close the book on any 'best division' dialogue. Some serious firepower to deal with there. I noticed you did exactly what I've seen you do in most of your games. 3-3 game and then 3 straight TD drives.

Your boys just strafe teams. And that's a good offense, but they're also oddly inconsistent. You'll get held down for a quarter or more here and there but then pop off 24 points in a 15 minute span and all hell breaks loose. Just a difficult team to deal with - only way to beat you seems to be to force a turnover that stalls that 'run' out before it gets up to speed for you.

Well, this was fun. Congrats, Phog on the championship. Now the pressure is on you to repeat.

Looking forward to the next season later this year. Hopefully I can plug a few holes between the draft and FA.

You seem pretty confident that you would have rolled Bentonville in the bowl. You do realize you're 0-1 against Bentonville, right? :p

He's 0-1 against my Mudbugs as well. We just decided to pull a pre-Mahomes Chiefs like performance in the playoffs after going 14-2 in the regular season and only having lost to two playoff teams.

Yeah, I lost to Bentonville - by 1. And then completely shredded the offensive system after Dak threw for 4.2 YPA....FOUR POINT TWO!! Smith at his worst probably never pulled that off. I was pissed and I think I went on a 5 game winning streak from there.

And the Mudbugs also beat me...by 1. And in that game I was missing both my #1 and #2 CBs, not to mention my #1 and #2 runningbacks. As well as my best defensive lineman (which really screws me up when I don't have any solid blitzing LBs to adjust to it) and my starting G. And yeah, you were missing Ekeler, but not much else. And Carson was your #1 RB who absolutely carried the load for you. Dude went off for 245 total yards and 3 TDs - you think it would've been better had Ekeler been there? I don't imagine he's beating that performance but mostly just taking touches away from it.

Yeah, I was pretty sure I could take ya. Both. Tulsa was the squad that had me worried (and possibly facing Mahomes). And sho 'nuff, he won it.

I think we can all be pretty confident that if we played the 2018 season 100 times, the Newport Beach Neptunes would be the champions in about 85 of those.

The surprise for Newport was that our defense ended up tops in the league, which was what I was expecting given our draft focus, but the offense actually carried us for half the season while the defense was finding its rhythm. For the first half of the season, I feel like the offense was the more productive unit. Then at the end of the season the defense was rolling and the offense sputtered.

But when you had your chance, you sho 'nuff didn't......

Chiefs lost to the Titans AND the Texans during the regular season.

How'd that go in the post-season?

I'll let y'all decide who is who.

I need that draft in a big way.

I think I've focused in on a couple of serious problem areas and one thing I did in this league and the other was stagger contracts well and draft mostly young players (though I took over 4 or 5 rounds in so a couple of picks were made that I'd have never gone with).

Obviously everyone's in the same boat there, though. But I left myself no FA rollover precisely because I intended to keep the roster mostly intact for 3-4 years and supplement with draft picks. I gotta get those right.

coulda, woulda, shoulda. But didn't. 0-2 :thumb:

So you're the Texans? I mean the Mudbugs essentially ran the ball down everyone's throat so I assume they'll pick the Titans in this scenario...

Well, my offense was never a problem, except during the end of the season what with all the injuries.

The key was making some adjustments for the _efense through the first half of the season. And similar to the Chiefs this year, they came through with some very good games the last half and the playoffs.

So I guess those adjustments payed off. And some luck along the way also.

Thanks everyone for the congrats. :thumb:

ROFL Actually, I'm the Joplin Red Rockets, but I thought I would try to knock your cockiness down a couple of notches.
The only thing I've learned so far in Sandbox is that I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing or what an outcome of a game is going to be.

I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it. I had 3 seasons (2 teams; 1 for only 1 year, IIRC) in V1.0 and I won the bowl and lost in the CG twice. In this setup I lost in the damn CG again and then missed the playoffs at 10-6 in the other league due to tiebreakers.

So in 5 seasons with 4 different squads and largely different strategies, I've never had a season worse than 10-6, have advanced to 3 CGs and won a title.

It's a pretty solid track record. But like I said when this all started back up, we've never REALLY done much that wasn't in the rearview and that sort of ability to predict what players WILL do (rather than gameplan based on what they DID do) is going to separate the wheat from the chaff. I think I'll be okay there, but I truly have no idea. I may really suck at this 3 years from now...

Pretty good track record, for sure.
This was our first year. We're both definitely happy with how we finished, but I don't think I learned a whole lot on how to get better with game planning. It seemed like whatever changes that I made didn't make much difference in the games.
I did learn how to do better at drafting and free agency, though. Without knowing exactly what was involved in game planning, I didn't know enough about which players to target. For example, I thought that I would focus on a RB that excels at receiving, to go along with Mahomes. Not knowing that I wouldn't be able to game plan how my RB would be used (rushing/receiving) I drafted James White too high.
I had a really good time playing and I'm looking forward to next season.