Each drafter was asked to defend his team and say something nice and something mean about each of the others. Your candidates:
THE Acehio State
There are consequences to such behaviors [original photo courtesy of Ace's new employers at Eleven Warriors]
OFFENSE: QB Jake Rudock (U-M), RB Josh Ferguson (IL), OW Braxton Miller (OSU), WR Michael Thomas (OSU), WR DaeSean Hamilton (PSU), H-back Kyle Carter (PSU), TE Adam Breneman (PSU), LT Jack Conklin (MSU), RT Kodi Kieler (MSU), LG Billy Price (OSU), RG Kyle Kalis (U-M), OC Dan Voltz (UW)
DEFENSE: WDE Joey Bosa (OSU), SDE Darius Hamilton (RU), NT Austin Johnson (PSU), DT Willie Henry (U-M), OLB Darron Lee (OSU), MLB Riley Bullough (MSU), OLB Joshua Perry (OSU), CB Eli Apple (OSU), CB Darius Hillary (UW), HSP Sean Davis (MD), S Tyvis Powell (OSU), S RJ Williamson (MSU)
SPECIAL TEAMS: K Paul Griggs (PU), P Cameron Johnston (OSU), KR Josh Ferguson (IL), PR Braxton Miller (OSU)
Ace: My defensive front is downright terrifying. The best player in the draft, at a position of relative weakness in the conference, dropped to me at #3. That front four (plus Darron Lee) would be very stout against the run and produce a fearsome pass rush more than capable of covering for any perceived weakness in the secondary—and my secondary is pretty decent with a nice ceiling if RJ Williamson takes a step forward this year. My linebackers will clean up anything that somehow manages to get past the line, the corners are good, and Tyvis Powell is a steadying presence in the back.
The criticisms of my backfield are legitimate, though Ferguson's fumbling is getting too much attention (hi, Seth); he's the best weapon out of the backfield in the conference, which is key given the dearth of receiving talent this year, and he's also an explosive runner with good patience and vision—he's much more than just a receiving threat. Rudock won't set the world on fire but he's got the best group of pass-catchers to work with out of any of our teams, he'll take care of the ball, and I'm actually more confident he'll have a strong season this year than Hackenberg. My line features a potential top-ten pick at left tackle, a good Wisconsin center, two guards poised for major breakout years, and a right tackle who didn't give up a sack and blocked the run well last year.
What I believe sets my team apart, aside from the defensive line, is the Braxton Miller pick. Not only does he provide an explosive threat from the slot, he's backfield insurance for both Rudock and Ferguson—Ohio State is going to move him all over the field this year (Miller: "It's like playing a video game") and my offense would utilize him in similar fashion. I'm still shocked he went after Cardale Jones, who provides nothing if he doesn't win the starting job.
[After the jump: you get to vote on this]
THE OTHER GUYS SAY SOMETHING NICE AND NOT NICE
Brian: Ace assembled a rather magnificent DL. Sliding Hamilton out to SDE is an excellent idea, Austin Johnson is a top quality player, and Willie Henry just may bust out this year. Having Bosa inexplicably fall to him as the third pick helps out, but he filled in the holes around him excellently.
I like Jake Rudock, but Ace clearly got the worst backfield of the four teams. The other teams have at least one top level player--Ace has a slot receiver and a guy who's going top out at "eh, pretty okay." That will seem like heaven to Michigan fans. In the wider context not so much.
Adam: Your defensive line is obviously praiseworthy, your corners are sleepers that will probably look like great picks when the season's over, and your linebackers and safeties remind me a lot of my own so I can't say anything negative about them without indicting my own team.
As Brian mentioned, your backfield is what it is: a pretty alright stopgap QB and a guy who, though talented, plays for Illinois. There's also a lot of Penn State on that side of the ball when you take into account who will be coming in off the bench, and while they'll almost certainly be better this season there's just a lot of Penn State on that side of the ball.
Seth: Your front five is the stuff parents use to make their quarterback children behave: Keep your PSI over 12.5 son, or one day Lee and Bosa are gonna getchya! If it turns out Rudock is actually better than Cook, then I say halleh-hail to the-luyeh! You wound up with good receivers in THAT receiver pool, even if Hamilton's production was all screens. Conklin is 1st round value in round 4.
But there are a lot of minor gripes:the right side of your OL needs some major Drevno-ing, Josh Perry only gets so many tackles because his lane is always the open one, Ferguson fumbles, and R.J. Williamson gets beat too consistently by good players (and Purdue). I say minor because the half of your team that is ALL BUCKEYES will win a second national championship, thus making you just as irritatingly impervious to criticism as they are. Speaking of: what's your address? There's a mob outside Ann Arbor Torch and Pitchfork who's asking.
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When Man Was Ball
OFFENSE: QB Christian Hackenberg(PSU), QB Cardale Jones(OSU), RB Ezekiel Elliot (OSU), WR Amara Darboh (M), WR Tevaun Smith (IA), TE Nick Vannett (OSU), TE/FB Dan Vitale (NW), OL Taylor Decker (OSU), OL Taylor Marz (WI), OL Dan Feeney (IU), OL Robert Kugler (Purdue), OL Ray Ball (UW)
DEFENSE: DE Anthony Zettel (PSU), DT Jaleel Johnson (IA), DT Maliek Collins (Neb), DE Yannick Ngakoue (MD), LB Nyeem Wartman-White(PSU), LB Vince Biegel (WI), LB James Ross (M), CB Jourdan Lewis (M), CB Briean Boddy-Calhoun (MN), CB Wayne Lyons (M), S Montae Nicholson (MSU), S Jarrod Wilson(M)
SPECIAL TEAMS: K Brad Craddock (MD).
Brian: It has possibly the top pick in the upcoming NFL draft at QB, another potential first-round QB, two potential first round OTs, the best tailback in the league by light years, a truly brutal front five featuring the #2, 3, and 4 returning TFL gatherers in the league plus Maliek Collins, who will be a first round pick if he chooses to enter the upcoming draft, and a trio of potential NFL corners. Oh, and Penn State's MLB and a Northwestern H-back. And a very boring safety, and the Lou Groza winner.
The receivers aren't great but look around the league: I'd rather have the sure things in the run game I have than a marginal upgrade at WR.
THE OTHER GUYS NICE/NOT:
Adam: Your corners are excellent, and I don't really see a weakness on your defense. Your backfield is great, what with two of OSU's three Heisman contenders available to swap in and out and a dude with the skill set to be a non-hyperbolic unstoppable throw god.
You've done a good job scouring the rest of the B1G to create a facsimile of Penn State's receiving corps. Hopefully your line is as stout as it looks, because Hackenberg is going to need all the time he can get.
Ace: Pairing Elliott with a really strong offensive line guarantees the offense will be good; taking Marz as a right tackle was one of the better picks in the draft. The defense is similarly strong, boasting a good D-line and the best pair of corners any of us assembled.
I thought you botched the quarterback situation, though. Using consecutive picks on Hackenberg and Jones, you took two in a row and came away with no sure things; Hackenberg could very well be on the Devin Gardner Is Broken Forever path minus the part where he's mobile and Jones could be glued to the bench. While Vitale was a great late pickup, he doesn't make up for the worst group of receivers by some distance. Your offense is in danger of becoming one-dimensional.
Finally, while it was mostly for the lolz, picking Cole has a high likelihood of being a throwaway pick, and combining that with the quarterback situation it makes your team dangerously thin at a couple of key spots.
Seth: This is nice: your edge blocking is serious—Vitale was a stroke of genius—and combined with Elliott, stopping outside runs to either side is gonna be a bitch. And nobody beats this left to right: Lewis, Biegel, Zettel, some Iowa NT you say is good whatever, Maliek, Ngakoue, Boddy-Calhoun. Craddock is the type specimen of Homo Australiokickercus.
This is not as nice: You forgot a passing game, drafting a zombie to throw to receivers as underwhelming as my defensive line except taken 40 picks earlier. The best that can be said about your safeties is one is boring and the other should be able to answer more questions than "What's wrong with the Michigan State defense?" this year.
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Seth's High-Flying Green Cheese
Fair is fair.
OFFENSE: QB Connor Cook (MSU), RB Corey Clement (WIS), WR Leonte Carroo (Rut), WR Geronimo Allison (ILL), WR Mike Dudek (ILL), Slot Jalin Marshall (OSU), TE Jamal Lyles (MSU), OC Jack Allen (MSU), OG Pat Elflein (OSU), LT Alex Lewis (Neb), RT Mason Cole (UM), OG Graham Glasgow (UM)
DEFENSE: NT Ryan Glasgow, 3T Malik McDowell (MSU), DE/DT Lawrence Thomas (MSU), Passing down specialist DE Kemoko Turay (RU), SAM Joe Schobert (WI), MLB Desmond Morgan (UM), WLB Steve Longa (RU), Spur Michael Caputo (WI), SS Jabrill Peppers (Mich), FS Jordan Lucas (PSU), CB Will Likely (MD), CB Trevor Williams (PSU)
SPECIAL TEAMS: K Rafael Gaglianone (WI), P Peter Mortell (MN), KR/PR Will Likely (MD)
Seth: I have the best players. I gave every player star rankings on my draft board (you are welcome to go dispute those) and at the end my team averaged 4.13 to Ace's 3.83, Brian's 3.79 and Adam's 3.60. I also ranked our players for each position and averaged those out. Seth: 2.31, Brian: 2.44, Ace: 2.50, Adam: 2.75.
I built an incomparable interior OL with adequate OTs and the conference's best blocking TE. They and Clement will force you to put 8 in the box to stop them, and if you try that I have Cook plus Carroo, Geronimo, and Marshall to punish you for it.
On defense everybody else had two DL and Ace had three before I got to my sixth pick, so there was no way I was catching up with that. So I got the best group of linebackers and a sick 5-man defensive backfield in Likely, Caputo, Lewis, Peppers, Williams to suffocate offenses instead of trying to stab them. What it lacks in pass rush on 1st and 2nd down it makes up for in your guys will never ever be open, and on 3rd down I unleash the Turay, who by the way Brian is more comparable to Ziggy Ansah than Thieren Cochran. My special teams are excellent. Come October, I add Mike Dudek.
THE OTHER GUYS NICE/NOT:
Ace: You've got the backfield most guaranteed to be very good at both spots, a great interior line, and a nice group of receivers. I really like your offense.
But I hate your defense. Easily the weakest line, with the surest thing being Michigan's nose tackle who's very solid but not a two-gapper or a playmaker. Steve Longa is Rutgers Josh Perry (ask Khalid Hill), Caputo misses more tackles than he should, and your top corner is 5'7". Kemoko Turay, your pass-rush specialist, had all of 2.5 sacks after September, when he started facing real offensive lines, and 1.5 of those came against Indiana's woeful excuse for a passing offense. Peppers can only do so much.
Adam: Your entire offense is guys I researched and was hoping to grab at some point. Picking after you was an exercise in "Ugh, dammit." I mean that. To a man, I would take every one of those guys.
Your defense? To a man, I would not take every one of those guys. Or most of them. (Peppers excluded, naturally.) They aren't bad players, there's just not a guy who stands out to me as someone I wrung my hands over not getting.
Brian: Seth probably won't get enough credit for what looks like a truly excellent interior line, because everyone's all about skill position guys and tackles. With Clement and Price he's got a good case for second-best run game.
Drafting Kemoko Turay threw his entire defense into chaos. After realizing that Turay was a 6'6" 230 pound guy who couldn't be relied upon to stand up to much of anything in the run game he assembled a 3-3-5 featuring a MLB at the SAM spot* and a defensive line that is by far the weakest of the four teams. Lawrence Thomas may or may not do anything at all; Ryan Glasgow is a good player but gives you nothing in the pass rush, and Maliek McDowell is an intriguing player if he's the emerging dude you flank with monsters. That looks like a worse front seven than several actual teams in the league this year and it's supposed to be an all-star team.
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* [Ed-S: we argued about this in chat and Brian finally agreed he was wholly incorrect on this point; Schobert is definitely a SAM.]
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Adam's If J.T. Barrett Played for Iowa, Basically-ers
OFFENSE: QB J.T. Barrett (OSU), WR Jordan Westerkamp (Neb), OT Jason Spriggs, (IU), TE Jake Butt (UM), C Austin Blythe (Iowa), RB Justin Jackson (NW), OG Brian Allen (MSU), WR De'Mornay Pierson-El (Neb), OT/OG Josh Campion (Minn), WR RJ Shelton (MSU), WR Levern Jacobs (MD), OG Ted Karras
DEFENSE: DE Shilique Calhoun (MSU), DT Adolphus Washington (OSU), S Vonn Bell (OSU), CB Eric Murray (Minn), LB Raekwon McMillan (OSU), DE Drew Ott (Iowa), OLB Ed Davis (MSU), S/HSP Nate Gerry (Neb), DT Vincent Valentine (Neb), LB Joe Bolden (UM), CB Demetrious Cox (MSU), S Jordan Lomax (Iowa)
Special Teams: K Joe Julius (PSU), P Blake O'Neill (UM), KR RJ Shelton (MSU), PR De'Mornay Pierson-El (Neb)
Adam: At the time I selected him, my "starting" quarterback had a 33% chance to start. This seems like a bad way to start a defense of my team, but there was a lot of writing on the wall even then. Braxton Miller wasn't healed enough in the spring to be ready to win the job in the fall (and certainly not considering the competition), so I ruled him out. Then there was the article about OSU's color-coded hierarchy and how Cardale Jones was in the tier below Miller and Barrett. Having ruled Miller out even before his move to H-back, I felt comfortable taking a guy with a 12-game track record of success and a tenuous lead on the official depth chart over one whose first meaningful throws came in December, even if those three games were impressive.
As for the rest of my personnel, my offense was deliberately built to do this, except with a freakishly athletic TE that can sow destruction via a pop pass option. I have the slot bugs, shifty running back (who can catch, too), and dual-threat quarterback to make defenses play 11-on-11 while being unable to cheat toward the run or pass.
My defense has a pocket-obliterating line, two lockdown corners, one safe safety and one who's as dynamic as they come, and a linebacking unit that looked a lot better before Ed Davis' knee went poof but can serve their purpose, which was always to simply mop up the leftovers after the D-line feasted.
Ace: I'll support the Barrett pick even if it was a somewhat unnecessary risk. He's the most likely to win the OSU job and he's the only true dual-threat in the conference—a very good one at that—if he does. Getting Pierson-El where you did was a great addition especially given the type of offense you want to run, and Jake Butt was the tight end worth grabbing in the early rounds.
On the other hand, Jackson and Westerkamp were both reaches, you have the weakest O-line, the defensive line doesn't seem as fearsome as it should with three picks in the first ten rounds, and I have a healthy distrust of half your secondary.
Brian: Jake Butt was a savvy pick, as was De'Mornay Pierson-El. I can't believe we let DPE drop so far when he is clearly the best slot shaped object in the league—so good he can even make an impact on punt returns.
Using the first pick on Barrett when he is far from certain to play consistently was probably the worst pick of the draft, because he had Cook and Bosa sitting there being entirely sure things.
Seth: I really liked Ed Davis until he got injured, and dropping Butt and Murray in consecutive turns deserved whatever sound effect you probably deleted. Three of your four defensive linemen are really scary. Barrett will probably start and appear as efficient in OSU's offense as every other Urban Meyer quarterback before he turns out to be nothing in the NFL.
But you don't have an Urban Meyer offense; you have Northwestern's running game and a passing game that is charitably described as Jake Butt and the three dwarves. Your OL is the worst. Cox, Lomax, Gerry, and Bolden are all big holes in your defense. It's tradition around here for the worst team to be snakebit, and the football gods are making it very clear which that will be.
Wrap
Who's got the best offense/defense (other than you)? Who's going to which bowl: Rose/Orange/Citrus/Outback
Ace: Seth has the best offense, period. His weakest points are tight end, where Price is a suitable but unspectacular player, and right tackle, where Mason Cole may still be a little undersized to be the run-blocking bulldozer you'd normally want there, especially in an offense built around Corey Clement. Otherwise every spot is strong on that side of the ball for him.
Brian's defense is right up there with mine; he's got a better secondary but can't quite replicate my front seven.
I'm headed to Pasadena due to a mauling defense and a versatile offense that has a ton of options through the air and the #1 X-factor in the country. Brian's defense gets him to the Orange Bowl as long as his QB situation isn't a total disaster. Seth's offense gets him to the Citrus but his defense holds him back from going any further. Adam is relegated to the Outback because outside of Barrett there isn't an area of his team that truly scares me.
Brian: Other than me, Seth has the best offense. Cook/Clement plus a pretty good OL is enough. Other than me, Ace has the best defense. That DL tho.
I win the Rose by a thousand million miles for several reasons my compatriots have no doubt elucidated. Of the other teams, I'd say Adam is second as long as Barrett actually plays since Barrett is probably a significant amount better than Rudock and he doesn't have Seth's defensive mess. Then Ace, then Seth.
Adam: Other than me, Seth has the best offense. As I said earlier, there isn't a weak link on that side of the ball.
Other than me, Ace has the best defense. I went back and forth between Ace and Brian here, but Ace's defensive line is just terrifying.
I'm going to the Rose Bowl because of the balance I have on both sides of the ball, Brian's going to the Orange, Ace to the Citrus, and Seth to the Outback.
Seth: Second-best off offense is Ace, with Brian close behind him. I like Ace's skill positions better, Braxton can be used in so many ways, and I openly campaigned for Ace to take Rudock because I am on the 4th round draft pick train, baby! Brian is gonna be hell to defend running outside, but the passing game is no better than Michigan's.
Defense it's Brian by the nose this time, even though he neglected safety, because he won't need them; Lewis and BBC can take any receiver in the conference mano-a-mano, and his DL is nearly as good as Ace's, but with better LBs.
Rose: Me, because my DL is the only weak spot and it's good enough to be papered over by what's behind it; everybody else has two or more major holes. Orange: Brian, who's cursing the fact the WR depth didn't extend far enough to get a better #1 than Darboh. Citrus: Ace, but the Sparty kind of Citrus where he won the head-to-head but wasn't eligible for a higher bowl due to some arbitrary rules he ignores while blaming it all on Brian having more followers, which is accurate abut lol. Outback: Adam Ferentz.
Vote
