If you've been following us here on the Inside Blog, you know it's been a busy week and will hopefully forgive me for not updating my Gamer Journal sooner. Today I want to share with you my Week 2 NCAA Football 09 Dynasty match up with West Virginia.  In Week 1 I narrowly escaped defeat against Virginia Tech and hoped for a better performance in my next game.  Fortunately I came through with a big 35-14 win over West Virginia, pushing me into the Top 25 at #24. 

The big reason for my success this week?  I like to think it was thanks to the return of my running back Derrick Hamby.  He was injured in Week 1 but came back ready to rumble against West Virgina and ran for 129 yards and two TDs, also catching 3 passes for 43 yards.  I love to run the ball so he's a critical part of my offense.  Here's to hoping he stays healthy the rest of the way.  Check out one of his better runs during this game.

My quarterback Nate Scott was no slouch either.  He didn't quite make it to the goal line in the picture at the top of the article but he did complete 14 passes for 173 yards and 2 TDs.  One of them was this TD pass over the top of a couple of defenders.

Next Week I face Tulane, which is really a tune-up game before I face Georgia, the #1 team in the nation.  Georgia wasn't on the schedule initially but I wanted to give myself a shot at a National Championship this year if I could upset them, so I added them to the calender before the season started. 

What's going on right now in your Dynasty?  I'd love to see some comments about your teams.  You can also reach out to me on Twitter and tell me what you think.

If you've been following the journal the last couple of weeks, you probably already know that I started my NCAA Football 09 dynasty with ECU last weekend.  While early on in season one, it's a great time to plot out my  recruiting plans for the year.  As I progress through the season, I'll be looking for your input to help me make decisions during the recruiting process.  Let's start by taking a look at my team needs.

If you take a look at my team chart, it's pretty clear that defensive is where I have a lack of depth.  I think you can expect to see my fill out my roster as best as possible on the defensive side of the ball.  On offensive I've only got a center and a tight end listed at needs, but given my week one offensive struggles I feel like I probably need to add some big time impact players on that side of the ball.  And even though I have decent depth there, in week one I was affected when both my starting running back and quarterback went down.  Here are a couple of notable prospects.

Chad Young is a good sized running back and also happens to be the #1 prospect in the nation.  I'm not anywhere on his radar right now, but it's a gimme that I'm going to add the nation's top prospect to my recruiting board every single year.  I always want to have a chance at saying I landed the #1 player in the country.

Jason Washington is a 4 star recruit who has a lot of the qualities I like in a wide receiver.  First of all, he's 6'5 and I am always looking for tall players who can be a redzone threat for my offense.  He's got fair speed and appears to have decent hands.  He doesn't look like he's too physically imposing, but a tall receiver with pretty good speed and hands is going to have a shot at being successful.  I'm not really on his radar either so he's considered one of my "reach" prospects.

What Do You Think?

You've seen a couple of my prospects but I have a recruting board full of them.  It's early enough that I can make significant changes to my approach, so I'd live to hear your thoughts on how I should try and fill out my roster.  Should I go after big name players or keep it safe?  Should I add prospects based on need or try and land the best players available?  What would you do if you were in charge of my ECU Pirates?

-raczilla

In the last update about my Detroit Lions Madden NFL 09 franchise, I teased out the fact that I'd made a trade that brought a big name running back to the team.  In this update I'll talk about how that trade went down, as well as give a rundown of three of my picks in the Draft, all of whom are already making a pretty big impact on my roster.  Even though I only talked about the pre-season battle between Daunte Culpepper in my last post, I've actually moved into the regular season and have a record of 3-0 with victories over the Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers, and Baltimore Ravens.  Much of this is no doubt thanks to the contributions of the players I'm about to highlight.  Let's check them out:

Brandon Jacobs:  He's the big name running back I was fortunate enough to be able to snag in a trade with the New York Giants.  I really like Kevin Smith since he was a local star here in Orlando at UCF, but I found that in Madden NFL 09 he wasn't a good fit for my style.  I wanted a back who could pound the rock and run over defenders and now I've got that in Jacobs.  The Giants took a first round pick and Smith straight up for Jacobs.  This surprised me as most other teams I talked to didn't feel like that was enough for their star backs, but I'm not going to complain about a trade where I clearly came out on top.

Despite the fact that I picked up Jacobs so he would run people over, in this highlight he bursts through the Ravens D untouched for a long TD run.

Ron Bradley: Detroit Lions fans know that #20 is Barry Sanders, but in my new franchise that number belongs to the first pick in the NFL Draft, Ron Bradley.  Bradley is a 6'1, 211 lbs FS out of Boston College.  As a top Draft prospect I knew he was my guy because I love to control a safety when playing defense.  He's more of a ball hawk than a tackler and made me nervous in the pre-season with some missed tackles but has since contributed well. 

Check out my big payoff for drafting him in the video where he takes a Joe Flacco pass and turns it into points for the Detroit Lions.

Corbin Casey: Corbin Casey was my second first round pick and is the perfect receiver to play across from Calvin Johnson.  He's a huge target out of LSU at 6'4, 207 lbs and has 96 speed, 93 acceleration, 85 catch, and 91 jump ratings.  Everything from his stride to his ability to go up in the air and get the ball reminds me of a young Randy Moss.  The fact that he's playing across from Calvin Johnson means teams will have to pick their poison in terms of who they want to double team. 

In this highlight at the end of a half during the pre-season, Drew Stanton rolls right and throws a dangerous pass across his body.  Casey looks for the ball and adjusts to make the catch without losing a step.  This was one of the best plays of the whole pre-season.

Jerry Gray: Jerry Gray was a throw-away 7th round pick out of Harvard that I was curious to see perform in the pre-season.  He's got 95 speed so my thought was that he might be someone I could have back receiving punts or kickoffs.  He is only a 56 OVR so I had no hopes of him seeing the field outside of special teams, but I still gave him enough carries during pre-season to see what he could do.  He ended up showing enough potential to be the lightning to Brandon Jacobs' thunder in my backfield.

I've posted two Jerry Gray highlights because I want to show just how far he's come in my offense in a matter of weeks.  I like to call the first video "welcome to the NFL" because it's literally the first play from the pre-season and Gray gets destroyed and fumbles the opening kickoff.  The Texans took the ball back for the score and I was ready to cut the guy on the spot.  I gave him a second chance and he's made some big plays both in the pre-season and in the regular season.  Check out his play below against the Atlanta Falcons.  He's proven to be a decent change of pace back and a good pass catcher and is slippery in the open field.

Off To A Good Start

As I said above, I'm 3-0 so far after adding these players and play the New York Giants in my next game.  What do you think of my moves so far?  I'm I doing the right things to get the Lions back on track?

-raczilla

Thanks for taking the time to check out the first two entries of my ongoing gamer journal.  As promised, I started my NCAA Football dynasty with Eastern Carolina University over the weekend.  I filled out my recruiting board and added one extra tough game on my schedule against #1 ranked Georgia to make sure my schedule was tough enough to have a BCS Bowl bid if I'm fortunate enough to go undefeated.  I'm playing on 5 minute quarters, Heisman difficulty with CPU auto-generated player names.  My week one opponent was #17 ranked Virginia Tech, a game the real life ECU Pirates won 27-22.  In my dynasty that game ended up being just as close.

As you can see by the screen to the left, we played in the pouring rain.  This always scares me a little because I know that dropped passes and fumbles in bad weather can be an equalizer, even when you feel you're better than your opponent.  And right away I was concerned as I fumbled the ball on the opening kick off.  I even held down the right bumper, but the ball came loose.  Fortunately the fumble was caused by a ridiculous face make penalty and I was able to get things on track relatively quickly.

The story of this game was defense and the star of the game was my free safety Mike Brown, a 6'0 200 lbs Junior.  I love to control my safeties on defense and made good use of the 78 OVR Brown.  He had 8 tackles and two interceptions, one of which you can see in the video below.  Watch me strafe back and forth and lure the QB into throwing a risky pass.

Thanks to my tough defense, this game was 17-3 going into halftime.  With 11 seconds in the half I'd marched down most of the field and made the following play to put me up by two scores.

As you can see, I probably could have made this much easier on myself if I'd noticed the wide open receiver a bit earlier in the play.  But he wasn't my first option and fortunately when I checked down he was still wide open.  I just had to work a little harder for the tip-toe catch to make sure I scored.

Despite my solid lead, my offense just wasn't getting job done for a good part of the game.  In the first quarter my starting running back Derrick Hamby was hurt and had to sit out the rest of the game.  He'll be back soon but my other Senior halfback Matt Sanders had to take his place.  Sanders didn't have a great game as he was held to around 3 yards per carry, but he did catch 7 passes for 88 yards, one of which came at a crucial point in the game.  Because of my offensive woes, Virgina Tech was able to score two straight touchdowns, tying the game at 17 with under a minute to go.  After a couple of solid completions on what I hoped would be a game winning drive, Matt Sanders came to the rescue.

This 48 yard reception fell just short of the goal line, but it allowed me to score the game winner on the next play in the form of a quarterback sneak.

As you can see in the screen shot, the rest of my team celebrates while my quarterback is on his back, but at least the ball had crossed the plane.  This was actually a bit of a scary moment as my starting quarterback Nate Scott was injured a few plays prior.  He's ok now so it was backup Drew Cantrell who had the honor of taking the QB sneak across the goal line and getting popped by a defender to seal the win.

So that's it, a 24-17 ECU victory in week one.  Not too bad, eh?  In week two I host West Virginia, which I expect could be another tough battle.  In my next update I'll also talk a bit about recruiting and get some feedback from all of you on my approach.  I also haven't forgotten that I owe you a Madden NFL 09 Lions franchise update, so look for that in the next Raczilla's Gamer Journal.

Until then, I'll leave you with one question.  How can I get more offense out of ECU?  Should I stick with their playbook or switch it up?  What do you think?

-raczilla

Well, it was a super close vote, but at the end of the day you chose ECU over Notre Dame as the team I'll use in my next NCAA Football Dynasty.  And though I wasn't sure which team would win, I was a bit surprised that Notre Dame almost pulled it off.  There are a lot of Notre Dame fans out there for sure but they are also sort of a polarizing team, which I figured would hurt their chances in the poll.  I guess that's why I put it up there in the first place.  I'm going to start that Dynasty over the weekend, but before I do that I want to talk about the Madden franchise I'm working on, and post a couple of video highlights showing some of the action.

Raczilla's Detroit Lions

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided I wanted to rebuild the Lions in Madden NFL 09 franchise mode (All Madden 6 minute quarters).  As I always do when playing franchise, I simmed through the first year so I could go through Free Agency and the NFL Draft, where I typically make some pretty serious moves when I first take over a team (even when they don't need it).  I drafted three players I'd hoped could have some sort of an impact on the team relatively quickly, but they key position that I knew I had to address was at quarterback.  I already had Daunte Culpepper, who happens to be a quarterback I've liked a lot over the years.  But I also wanted to bring in fresh talent, and I did that by signing Free Agent Matt Cassel.  The Pats didn't franchise him like they did in real life.  I figured it might be fun to let Daunte and Matt battle it out for the starting role during he pre-season, and that's exactly what happened.

In the first game I thought Cassel might work out a little better for me.  I threw an early interception with Culpepper and remedied it with a touchdown, but the pick left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.  As the pre-season carried on it was a bit tougher to make the decision.  Both quarterbacks had similar stats, although Culpepper's yards were a tiny bit better.  Both were able to protect the ball and I was able to form decent chemistry with the receivers no matter who I was using.  With that in mind, I almost felt like I had to go with the younger guy since he may not have reached his full potential.

But I didn't.  I ended up picking Daunte Culpepper, and I picked him for three reasons.  The first being that I really like Daunte Culpepper.  It's been a while but I've had success with him in franchise mode in the past.  Plus it didn't hurt that he was once the Madden NFL 2002 cover athlete.  The second reason comes down to compatibility.  Sometimes when I'm playing Madden, a certain player just feels right to me.  I think some players fit certain people really well.  It doesn't necessarily make them better than other players at the same position, but maybe a better fit for a specific user.  The third reason is because of a single drive I made at the end of a half, all thanks to Mr. Culpepper.  See the video evidence below.

Ok, here's the set up.  With under a minute to go in the first half of a pre-season game, I thought I had a great test to see what kind of clutch plays I could make with Daunte Culpepper.  I wanted to see if I could get into field goal range and get a few extra points before the half ended.  On this first play I have Brad Smith (snagged him from the Jets) running a post pattern.  As he cuts toward the center of the field, Culpepper makes a perfect throw, leading Smith to where only he can catch the football and putting me at mid-field.  The throw itself wasn't terribly tough, until you recognize that two defenders were in his face when he made it.

On the very next play with the clock ticking away, Culpepper found Calvin Johnson in the middle of a few defenders and placed the ball in a pretty tight spot after rolling right.  I did have to stop and plant to make this throw as there's no way it could have been completed if I was still on the move.  I've watched this throw a bunch of times and am still impressed by how Daunte was able to find the soft spot in the coverage and get the ball high enough where Merriman couldn't reach it, but where Calvin Johnson could do his thing.  Sometimes it helps to have a big receiver.

This is the third straight completion by Culpepper and the play that ended the drive in a touchdown.  The whole drive was literally less than 30 seconds as Daunte completed these three impressive passes in a row to score.  Here he's throwing to a rookie receiver I'll introduce in a future update.  For now let's call him Randy Moss Jr, because that's the kind of player I'm hoping he can become.  In the highlight you can see the Chargers have once again blitzed, leaving a window to quickly find the open man.  While the first two passes were placed a little more carefully, this pass to Randy Moss Jr. zipped past a linebacker and was low enough to the ground that the receiver had to lunge to catch it.  It's the best kind of throw where either the receiver would make the play, or the ball would fall harmlessly to the ground.

Raczilla's Lions or Culpepper's Lions?

As I went through the process of evaluating the quarterbacks at the end of the pre-season, this one drive kept coming back to me and I knew that Culpepper was my guy.  I'm going to stick with him for as long as it makes sense, but won't rule out playing Cassel if the right opportunity presents itself.  While this quarterback battle was the most interesting story of the pre-season, there were also a couple of additional story lines that were fun for me to follow.  I'll touch on these in my next Madden NFL 09 franchise update.  One story line involves the progression of my rookies.  The other involves a trade that brought a big name running back to the Lions .  Anyone want to guess who it was?  Post your guesses in the comments and I'll let you know  who it was in my next update.

-raczilla