(S23) - PT1 - With a Little Help From My Friends

[Troen]

Written Option: Everyone’s got hope for the upcoming season. Describe how your team is situated and how your teammates will be contributing this season. Are you hoping for playoff success, or simply to improve from the previous year? Are any of your teammates poised for breakout seasons or awards recognition?

I believe the Copperheads are is a good position going into S23. We did have a pair of expected retirements in the form of long-time veteran DE Grayson Kuusela and single-season RB Ryan Leaf Jr. who really brought a next level to the offense for S22. To help with those and other holes, we traded for S22 DE Slinky Claxton, called up S22 players RB Kichwa Jones and Colt Mendoza, and will be starting S23 draftee Griffin Porter. Combined, we're hoping that we'll have be able to maintain our rate of offensive production from last season with Jones subbing in for Leaf Jr. and be able to shore up our defense. Our defense last year wasn't actually terrible - we tied for second fewest points allowed in the ASFC - but our limitations were very much on display in the ASFC championship game loss to the Otters where we stored 38 but gave up 50.
As far as breakout - I think that the best defense requires team play with everyone executing their assignments. That being said, I think CB Mendoza is the most likely breakout after a bit of a slow start in his first DSFL year but then catching fire later in the season. He's brought a number of innovations from his GMing experience, but just having a second quality CB on the roster will help out quite a lot against teams with strong passing games. We managed to do OK with just one starting CB and then 4 safeties last year, but I'm expecting the deeper secondary to be a distinct improvement.
Taken together, I think that we have a decent chance to make it to the playoffs again and then hoping that our improvements are good enough to make it further.