Word From The Mouth: Yum! Yum! Edition! (En francais: "Edition Miami! Miami!")
I want to start off by saying hello and thank you for reading to all my many followers for your support. I think that the weeks are getting longer and less interesting from my point of view. I’m hoping that next spring we get back up to 8 or 10 teams cause with 5 teams in division 1 it’s not too fun to show up and know that you are going to whoop the team you’re playing. I love this league and this is where I started playing and will continue to play, but we need full teams to show up every week (Ed's note: are you still on about this?!?)
Last Week Recap
So I didn’t get to watch any of the division 1 games this week so I have decided to do a full week recap instead of just one game I didn’t see or just covering my teams game. Since this is a league article and not just a Trollers report I think this will make it better.
I will start with the Trollers taking out Les Gros Coqs (39-12). I’m not going to lie, after seeing who showed up for the Gros Coqs I knew we going to win, it was just going to be a matter of by how many points. I know we played decent enough to win, but I really don’t think it’s fair for Dom to be playing running around. We need to establish a pocket for him to stay in. The guy was only down one score at half time which might have been from a weak roughing the passer penalty, but we’ll take it especially since I scored. Second half was a different story they couldn’t do squat. They got it into the red zone once or twice but then were picked off. The final score was 39-12 but this was the same thing as last season when they beat us twice with a depleted roster. Yes, it’s a win, but it doesn’t mean anything the Gros Coqs are still a very good team.
The Outlaws had a doubleheader this week with the first game against the Deep Threats which was a close game until half time the Outlaws blew the doors open and did whatever they wanted. Has JC evolved to the point that Francis gets as many catches as Jon, but was able to get twice as many yards or is it that Francis is that good (Ed's note: Francis is gettng tested for PEDs this week, and if he's not on at least some HGH he's out of the league). My bet would be that Outlaws took Jon out of the game and allowed JC to hit the short to intermediate routes. Maybe Francis made a guy or two miss but since I didn’t see I couldn’t tell you. I’m tempted to contact some of my other sources to find out but I’d much rather say he probably dropped a few early and they just left him wide open figuring it was 50/50 if he’d catch it.
Now for the best division 1 game of the week: Outlaws vs Revolucion. This one came down to the very last play with Remi just getting his hips into the end zone when he made the catch. I know a lot of people were freaking saying the ball wasn’t in, but remember this is the MFL, not FPF where you need hips and ball. I know Gabe was reffing the game alone, but at the end there were two other officials watching the game and both said it was a TD. What it really comes down to is that Revolucion needed to make one final play and weren’t able to do it. It’s never the ref blowing the game for you like you guys all think. One play and you would have gone to overtime where Steve wouldn’t have choked like Daniel Carlson did for the Vikings did on Sunday. Steve would have just thrown a jump ball to Smuda and that’s it. Can’t wait to see how these two teams play each other next time.
Game Preview: Outlaws vs Trollers (GotW)
These two teams played in week one and Outlaws won by seven points in a game that the Trollers were severely out played and yet they still had a chance to win at the end of the game, but that was then and this is now. Steve has found chemistry with Smuda and the Trollers will have their wristbands and will be able to speed things up. This will be a good one so come out for 10:30 to see which team walks away victorious.
QB - Steve has been great for years and yes he doesn’t have the best arm strength, but he makes up for it in intelligence and by setting you up by running the same plays over and over (Ed's note: And the fact that he's a constant running threat!). Steve is good at getting the ball out quickly and knows where he wants to go with the ball so you need to take his first read away and get at him quickly. Max on the other hand has really good arm strength and can launch it the length of the field at any point. Max is also very good at making the rusher miss on his first attempt at flagging him. He's also improved at spreading the ball all over the field which is good for him since defenses need to cover the entire field now. I have to go ahead and give the advantage to Outlaws, but not by much.
WR - Outlaws have one of the best receivers in the league in Smuda, but they also have guys like Remi and Vince who are both really fast and are very hard to catch from behind. You also have Adam and Antoine who can make a few plays here and there but are limited on football experience and sometimes might not run the right route. For the Trollers you have Ben And Josh as the top two targets. You also have Andre who is a top 5 speed guy in this league and who just needs to get more touches. You also have Lesniak and Kevin (Ed's note: did you just third person yourself?) who are pretty good at finding the open holes when needed (Ed's note: that's not what your wife told me). I think that I have to go and give the advantage to the Outlaws, but if I was given either of these two groups I wouldn’t be mad or angry.
Defense - Outlaws have Smuda calling the shots for them and has been doing a good job of it, but again look at all the speed they have so it’s easy to have a good defense. From a statistical point of view they have the top defense in the division by far. The Trollers have one of the top rushers in Andre and have the top safety in the division in Ben. With the Trollers it is all about scheme and they have played together long enough and have perfected what to do and where to be at all times. You don’t win back to back titles by just being athletic, brains come in to play. The Trollers get the advantage in this one because of years of experience playing together.
Predictions
Here we go again picking the winners seems to be all I do this season. Right now I have gone 5-1 and that’s pretty good, but it also helps that the division only has 5 teams and only 2 or 3 games a week. This week is no different as we only have 2 games and 1 of them is my team.
Outlaws vs Trollers NA (Ed's note: Outlaws)
Deep Threats vs Revolucion Revolucion
Power Rankings
#1 Outlaws (5-0)
#2 Trollers (1-2)
#3 Gros Coqs (2-2)
Sorry Revolucion and Deep Threats, maybe next week you can make this list. Revolucion was so close to a huge upset that I would have had to put them on here if they pulled it off.
Stud & Duds
Since there were a limited number of games and the Trollers played only half Les Gros Coqs I didn’t even look into that game as I didn’t see a point in it. This week is the first time that the stud and the dud are on the same team.
So this weeks Stud goes to Steve from the Outlaws. I know he doesn’t play defense but he lead his team to a 2-0 record over the weekend. Over the two games he completed 50 of 75 passes for 525 yards and 12TDs and he only threw 1 Pick. That was quite a Saturday afternoon.
Since an Outlaw was the Stud, I also picked one as the Dud and without further stalling your Dud of the week is Mathieu. The guy went out there and stunk up the place. I thought he was a solid rusher, but you played two games and got zero sacks and no defensive stats at all. Yes, you did catch 4 balls for a total of 38 yards and no scores. I remember a few weeks ago you talking about what the record was for TDs in a game after you had six. How far you have fallen. Now you’re this weeks Dud. Get some sacks,do what you are there for and maybe this won’t happen again.
I'm glad that some of you were able to read this far I know there are a lot of words, but thank you. For you guys who can’t read, but have been informed about what I wrote thank you to whoever read this to you. I hope you will continue to read my article each week and if not hope it’s not because I wrote something about you that you didn’t like. Suck it up, play better and I won’t have things to say about your performance. Now remember to have fun be safe and it’s only a game no one is getting a call to play in the NFL, not even the CFL, you’re here in the MFL.