And we’re back with the defense. Just like in part 1 I’m going to break each position group down. All the same ideas, all the same caveats. If you forget them, feel free to go back to part 1 and give me another view count. Thanks for choosing Carls Jr, home of the BIGASS FRY. Here we go. Offenses though are quite robust around the league. It’s going to be a bit of a task for defenses to try to keep up with all the changes that have occurred. Traditionally defense usually lags behind anyway so it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. A true shutdown defense is exceedingly difficult to create in a world where offensive firepower is just crazy coocoo banana pants nuts, as ours is. So let’s take a look at what teams have put together.
DEFENSIVE END
(I’m going to rate the DE’s equally. If a third exists, it will be barely considered unless it can be swapped in. If it’s only one, they’re going to be judged more harshly for it. This is another one where the team by team breakdown may have some differences as players are judged within the context of their own roster and not vs their positional peers).
Elite
AUS Troen Egghands 1,225
Slinky Claxton 796
Owen Isaac 391
HON K. Kāne-Maikaʻi 1,093
Asher Montain 831
Ismael Sanchez 390
Good
COL Immanuel Blackstone 1,396
Arlington Heights 403
Tycker Om 397
SAR Son Goku 1,000
Ernest Lover 549
Demon Jaxson 477
OCO Rapid Eagle 1,123
3’ Jeffrey 444
YKW James Cho 940
Leonard Taylor 507
ARI Sandro Ryeu 827
Logan Noble Jr 594
BER Mario VonPebbles 1,105
SJS Raylan Crowder 722
X. F. Jaxon-Waxon 646
BAL Mike Karpaasi 712
Etrigan T. Slayer 535
Maui Waialiki 326
NOLA Medicinal Toblerone 711
Azarius Ranger 573
Still kinda good but this position is overpowered around the league
CHI Von Hayes 986
PHI Tex Wrecks 699
Sam Roes 390
Laxus Dreyar 286
NYS Brick Van Sanzo 546
NYS Jayson Kearse 491
Well, this is the most stacked this position has ever been. I feel like that’s beyond safe to say. Imagine getting to 1k in TPE, barely cracking 6th, and the climb to 5th is almost an entire season’s worth of TPE. This is ridiculous. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around this level of firepower at a position where historically people below 400 TPE were making the Pro Bowl for essentially the entirety of the league’s history. I don’t even know what to say to the bottom half of the list here. Tackles in the league are in trouble. Especially those who have lesser OL squads. I’m dreading what this next category will look like.
DEFENSIVE TACKLE
(Same as DE. They’ll be judged as one unit on the team breakdowns to better account for the overall look and feel of the combined DL).
Elite
CHI John 'Tripod' Smirh 1,030
Daymond Brooks 978
Timmy Dimbi 499
Really Good
ARI Pete 'Plop' Miller 1,340
Chuck Roth 683
SJS Otis Allen 1,338
Yuuto Kira Cloudera 660
OCO Rotticus Scott 1,256
Goat Tank 743
NYS Leon McDavid 1,322
Bubba Thumper 643
NOLA Magnus Rikiya 1,209
LeBong Simwell 692
Good
BER Claude Miller II 876
Hank Steel 810
YKW Patrik Money 1,181
Nero Alexander 295
AUS Tyler Montain 1,097
SAR Fawn Dillmiballs 1,056
You sure you wanna pick this fight?
COL Big Edd 724
HON Bane Kaʻanāʻanā 483
Momona Keiki-Kāne 343
PHI H.-T. Haywood 637
Brent Silva 50
BAL Nuniq Annastesia 547
Well, the other half of the DL is monstrously overpowered as well. This entire process has been sobering to realize exactly how straight up bloated the league is. I knew already that teams were operating with crazy high amounts of actives compared to like...3 years of league history. The level the current crop of players are at though is just mind boggling. And as was recently pointed out to me, with the new sim, new traits, and archetype setup changes, there’s far less dropoff at high levels than there used to be. Remember that scene in one of the Expendables movies where an unlucky bad guy peon comes around a corner and is faced with like..the entire cast and they just shoot him for like a solid 15 seconds? That’s how I feel about the D-Line sin the league right now. And there’s Chicago, ahead of the game on both sides of the line. At this point I wonder who the power players really are in this league. Either way, let’s move on to Linebackers. I’m sure that won't make me wanna drink.
LINEBACKERS
(With the varied LB alignments and setups anywhere form 2-4 LBs could be on the field at a time. I’m gonna rate the top two at about 75%, 3rd at 20% and the 4th at about 5% if a team has one.)
Elite
SAR Derred de Ville 1,115
Haha Mango-Panda 1,103
AUS Dex Kennedy 1,044
Brach Thomaslacher 896
Griffin Porter 780
Jim The Vampire 354
SJS Lawrence Bass 1,158
George Fisher 877
Tyron Brackenridge 542
Good
ARI Galf Wilf 960
S. Koniecpolski 954
L’Gazzy Burfict 701
COL Adélie de Pengu 1,058
Melvin Murder-Moose 860
Rusty Rucker 658
CHI Juan Domine 905
A. Chainbreaker 685
Wasrabi Gleel 637
Mike Hockhertz 409
OCO Deshun Jones 1,096
Joseph Joestar 823
Sergio Kitchens 286
HON Heinrich Kackpoo 1,041
Guy Fields 702
Holden Summers 403
NYS Jack Banks 1,014
Hank Winchester 693
Makoto Otawara 451
Still not bad but kind of a work in progress
YKW Douglas Quaid 1,387
Big Slammu 469
Mack Arianlacher 432
BER Adam Schell 835
BamBam McMullet 536
H. McCringleberry 533
PHI Gary Goodman 683
Jimi DeSoto 642
Thomas Rose 479
Inspectah Deck 352
NOLA Busch Light 698
Vincent Jones 543
Ugarth the Dissector 481
Quenton Bode 276
BAL A.J Lucas 478
Spike Suzuki 454
Chet Larson 354
Dexter Jackson 329
Linebacker is packed to the gills with high level talent all over the league. My shock no longer exists. Sarasota just ekes out on the top spot over Austin. They lack the depth and volume the Copperheads have but they have two of the heaviest hitters in the league. It’s viable and I’m not going too deeply into strategy as I stated before. Really though everyone should be pleased with where they are lineup wise. Much like bounty hunting, Linebacking is a complicated profession and you need a variety of skillsets for it. Well, we’ve got that all over the league. As someone who’s player primarily goes over the middle I am straight up not having a good time right now. Let’s go to the corners.
CORNERBACK
(With the top two on the field at all times, I’m going to grade them equally. A 3rd CB would likely be in the Nickel position in any formation they’re in so I’m going to heavily favor the top 2 to the tune of about 90%.)
Fuck you and your entire magnificently run organization
CHI Osiris Firestorm-Fjord 1,156
Tyler Oles JR 1,031
Tyron Shields 1,030
Elite
NOLA Andrew Witten 1,185
David Rector 857
Dorothy Zbornak 690
ARI Desmond Scarlett 1,192
Tayshawn Crunk 692
Mason Gillion 540
NYS Colt Mendoza 1,132
Dukburg QuakStak 714
Good
BER Matt Krause 1,066
Swantavius Jones 701
Jeeeeroy Lenkins 642
Asher Quinn 636
BAL Eldrick Avery 1,048
Ben Stackinpaper 783
Dermot Lavelle Jr. 395
OCO Brandon Booker 1,223
Richard Leaking 660
HON Jim Waters 933
Ray-Ray Jackson 657
Cadillac Harris 535
SAR Harrison Andrews 875
Peter Patterson 702
AUS Lesean Paris Crooks 919
Tomage McGullager 523
B. Alexander-Arnold 392
Oh no baby what is you doin?
SJS Rich Triplet 719
Rashad Hilliard 658
Rickie Vaughne 634
COL Randy Vuxta 724
Albert Ruschmann 696
R. McFredbeard 367
YKW Dan Foster 696
D. McJimmerson 690
Mervin Leonard 498
PHI Doy Fieri 685
Atlas Quin 484
James Hoffman 404
Well, CB is not quite as OP as a few of the other positions. That’s something I guess. Even so there appears to be a clear pattern here. Chicago has ⅓ of the CB players who have at least 1k in TPE. YKW and Philly have 240 more TPE combined across 6 CBs than Chicago does across 3. One of those teams is gonna be harder to pass on is what I’m saying here. We do have a lot of very solid CB tandems across the league though, and this is probably the first real time for that as the position has notoriously dragged behind others. And yet I still needed to take a pause and do some dishes to relax myself from all these big ass TPE numbers. You might argue that I’m literally making it worse by doing so much comparison and you would be right but you don’t have to throw it in my face like that. Good day.
SAFETY
(All safeties are listed together. Without knowing how each plays in the new sim and not wanting to use much bias from the old, I’m just gonna weigh them about 60-40. Any 3rd safeties will be considered for their potential Nickel and 3-3-5 value but not super heavily as I don't know that this is even the plan for the team’s in question.)
Elite
OCO Prince Vegeta 1,347
Eugene Smoothie 1,012
Bob Bob 739
Tyrone Biggums 716
SAR Cuco Clemente 1,182
Jamie Nkiah 1,059
Teddy Utterstruzen 575
Good
HON Shawn Dawkins 1,197
Davriel Lavigne 705
Buck Thornton 467
YKW Johnny Hellzapoppin 1,013
Magnus Valdyr 889
ARI Wesley Eriksen 968
DB Jadakiss 937
PHI Matt Cross 1,115
Jeremiah Zelos 527
SJS Philip Stein 925
Brendan Lanier 755
AUS Maverick Bowie 886
Gregor Macgregor 735
Diet Good
NOLA Mason Blaylock 994
Steven Wadham 471
CHI Hamish MacAndrew 838
Damian Blackfyre 644
Oliver Sloan 466
COL Joel Drake 795
N.S. FootballLeague 655
NYS Bob Roberts 644
Thor Kirkby 631
Dogwood Maple 529
Mac Griddle 466
BAL Iheart Syracuse 658
Tony Yeboah 619
BER Benoit Blanco 467
Derek Wildstar 463
Well, this is less disgusting so there’s that. Except for OCO up top there. That’s pretty fucking ridiculous. That said, even the bottom tier are traditionally players who can compete. The new sim may skew thigns a bit more to the top end as we’ve discussed but none of these players are what we’d call a liability. Safety is going to be one of the more interesting positions to watch in the new sim to see how both how it’s treated directly, OCO signed another 900 TPE Safety while you read this, and also how the position is indirectly tread as it comes into conflict with the various new offensive schemes and abilities those players also have.
Overall the defenses in this league really are at the epak they’ve ever been in my view. Short of maybe that one insane season where there wa sno offensive line and the sack leaders had like 20 and 30 sacks. The fact that we’ve skipped right past healthy and into wildly overpopulated and terrifying though is a more than small issue. Even positions like CB and Safety are breaking record after record for TPE and depth. Honestly it’s just the icing on top of the cake here. In fact, that reminds me I have cookie dough in the fridge and it’s probably okay to eat my feelings if they’re feelings of abject terror at some of the rosters teams are putting on the field.
Those offenses plus these defenses are leaving some teams out in the cold here that would have had playoff caliber rosters for almost the entirety of the league’s 26 season history. I can easily see a team with 500+ starters across the board ending up with a losing record because not only has the upper limit has risen so much, but the basement is now also above ground. This flood of players at ridiculous levels explains the entitled nature of some GMs to both their DSFL stashes and the level of player they’re able to put on the field without even really breaking a sweat. I guess we’ll see exactly how each of those teams stack up in part 3.