(S25) - PT 5 - Playoffs? You Kidding Me?

[Troen]

How’s your team looking with the season wrapping up? Are you poised for a deep trophy run, or are you just hoping to win another game? What strengths and weaknesses has your team shown throughout the season, and how has it led to your current situation? If your team has a shot, what needs to go right to make the cut; if they don’t, what problems need to be fixed in the offseason to better compete next year?

At this point the regular season is over and we ended up in 5th place needing 2 more wins to have had a chance for 3rd. During the games, it felt like our biggest two weaknesses were offensive turnovers and giving up too many return yards on kickoffs. Cole had 16 interceptions, which was actually about middle of the pack. It could be just that there were multiple red zone interceptions which obviously are much more of a killer than any others. We were also 4th in most punts, which suggests we weren't great at putting drives together.
On the other hand for the positives, we had the best point differential of any non-playoff team and were ahead of the 3 seeds in both the NSFC and ASFC. Part of that was having a lot of close losses (5 by 7 or fewer points) combined with 4 wins by 20+ points. So maybe our real strength/weakness is inconsistency - we had the skill and talent to put together a winning game against anyone, but didn't have the discipline to execute that every week and actually get the wins down.
Looking ahead to next year, I think our defense will be getting into a really good place as far as the top end is concerned. We did lose our defensive captain Carolinabbq Isbest after a tragic car accident, but the core is otherwise looking good and we had some great acquisitions in the last offseason. Our RB and WR situation looks good and so I think we're just going to be hoping for an improved QB next year. Daytona seemed likely to be the future - how will that play out?