He came into the final week of the season in the 4 seed with a 91% chance of making the playoffs, and as of the time of writing this article, he has an 85% chance of making the playoffs. Considerably higher than the 3 teams below him, yet we are less than 24 hours away from knowing that the Gooners will be missing the playoffs. It’s a collapse that this league has never seen before, ever.
The Gooners started the year off on a 4 game win streak and winners of 5 of their first 6 matchups. In that 5-1 start they had back-to-back 160+ point performances, and 2 performances of 137+ points. Since week 6 they have only been able to eclipse 123 points just twice, both in winning efforts, but it all came to an end when they scored a season low 93 points in the final matchup of the season.
It’s the question that everyone is asking: “How do you go 5-1 and miss the playoffs?”
We don’t know the depths of disgraced GM, Mr Gooner’s, mental illnesses, but we can try to find what led him to blow up his season, and his home.
In examining Cadens rosters in weeks 1 & 2, he boasted Jordan Love, Derrick Henry, James Conner, Tyreek Hill, Kupp, Bowers, Devontae Smith, JSN. On his bench he had Chubba, DHop, Khalil Shakir and Nick Chubb.
Now before going further, can we just point out how absolutely STACKED this team is. Literally, ballers every where.
That lineup produced back to back weeks of 161 and 160 points respectively
In week 3 Caden only score 110 points, but it’s worth noting that this when Tua went out and so did Kupp. So here’s Mr Gooner, with 2 key players hampered by either personal injuries or their QB is injured. How does he respond to adversity? Well, let’s just say he didn’t particularly handle it very well. He leaves a note on the kitchen counter telling his wife he ran out for a carton of milk.
Remember that stacked bench he had? Well, he offloaded it + Kupp to Latte Larry’s for the price of AJ Brown, Matti, and Anthony Richardson who scored 5.98 points in a winning week 4 effort. Celebrate the 137 points Mr Gooner… The fent hasn’t entered your blood stream yet.
The lineup hit a what we thought was a bump in the road in week 5. Mocha Joes exploded for 134 points thanks to the emergence of Chirstian Kirk and Trevor Lawrence. “It’s just a stutter step. I’ll bounce back”.
Throughout the weeks, we’ve seen players like Trey Sermon, Raheem Mostert, Ray Ray McCloud, Mike Gesiki come and go out of the line up like the traveling vets that they are. Honestly, a lot of this is bad luck. Untimely injuries, bye weeks, Injuries to QB’s on high draft picks, random disappearing acts. This is no different than what any other team has had to go through though.
The biggest difference between Cadens lack of success vs the top teams in the league — His absolute putrid inability to find value in the FA and waiver wire market. I mean putrid. When he through his dollar bills and did the Young Joc dance in Vegas, he was throwing away his vision when evaluating FA talent. Nobody had fewer FA transactions that was vying for a top seed in the playoffs than Caden and the transactions that he did make were absolute abominations. Duds. Zeros. He still has $64 left in waiver claims… Why didn’t he make a serious run at Jennings? Or Guarendo? Instead he settles for Pacheco in a below average Chiefs offense and relies on rookie MHJ. If that doesn’t pain a picture for you, then this will:
His inability to read value in the FA market is ever so prevalent when you look at the D/ST teams he picks up. In the final weeks of the season, when he needed it most, he picked up the Bills D/ST who had the lowest points (-10.5 …. Yes, negative 10.5). He also had a 40 point Jordan Addison on the bench FWIW. I digress, back to the D/ST. His D/ST has netted him negative points on 4 separate occasions (league high by 3) and has scored 3 or less points 7 times. Yup, you guessed, also a league high. His total net for negative points accumulated throughout the course of season attributed by his D/ST woes is -24 points.. Negative 24 points….. Seems like you could have used some of those, huh? Sucker.
The Gooners are now The Goners and have thus proven to be what we all know to be true– A poverty franchise with a meddling owner.