Div 5A: Group A Mid-Season Report Card
Ignacio Valdes-Manzanedo
24-02-2023 04:23 PM
Ok, no time to bleep around.
Time for Group A to get their report card!
The Grading Scheme
Let’s break down how the grading scheme works since it might be a TAD different from your usual expectations of what you are used to when it comes to grades. First thing, the grades will be based off of pre-season expectations. If, for example, you are 5-0 and are expecting an automatic A, that’s not how to the grading scheme works. If I expected you to be 5-0 at this point you’ll likely get a C, maybe B-, but definitely not an A. Likewise, if I expected you to struggle and are 1-4 or 0-5, you won’t be getting an F. In fact, you might receive a B or C, depending on the second thing to look for: the quality of your opponents, and even, how you’ve held up in your games (Are you getting blown out or losing by 1 point?).
Each team will get a blurb on their season performance, their grade, the key players that have been involved so far, and a record prediction to close the year. Note: The key players are not the players I like best or who I believe are the best players on the team but rather it is based on their usage and how they are contributing this season. The letter grade reflects the following scoring system:
A – You’ve exceeded pre-season expectations. I never would have thought the team in question would have performed this well.
B – The team is surpassing the expectations that I placed on them ahead of the season, or perhaps you meeting expectations with your record, but have lost close matchups against tough opponents.
C – I was right, and the team is performing exactly as expected.
D – The team is underperforming. Huddles are strained and it feels like the season is slipping away. We’re a losing streak away from missing the playoffs.
E – Evil, this team is full of people I consider evil. This is a socially constructed grade that no one gets and fills in the gap that the school system has failed to classify.
F – Your team is really underperforming. This is abject failure.
OK so let’s get started! Enjoy.
Division 5A
Ballers (4-1)
The B- grade is between the 4-1 record, which is above expectation going into the season for this team and the easy schedule they have had so far. They just suffered their first loss of the season, finally playing against a formidable opponent, although Buffalo Wild Wings are a decent squad where they won by a single point.
Antoine Roger is known for his deep ball, and honestly, 564 yards in 5 games (4 throwing) is alright, but nothing spectacular, averaging 141 yards per game. I’m okay with the 6 INTs (while I would prefer less), but if you are going to have 6 picks going deep so often, I need to see more than 15 TDs. That is the life of a gunslinger though, and that’s Roger. Past those 2 receivers though, the team has enough talent to pass the ball around and make the defense work to know where the ball is going next. This would definitely help Roger’s completion percentage go up.
Jacob Gagné has crazy speed, and he ISN’T wearing cleats! 😮 Can you imagine if he got better grip on his first steps? He’s the clear deep threat, averaging 18.5 yards per reception and leads the team in all receiver categories, whether its receptions (18), targets (31), yards (333) and TDs (9). Danick Coulombe is the WR2 on the team and has great hands and athleticism, much like the rest of the team. That athleticism is translated to the defensive side of the ball as well, as the team has amassed 12 INTs, tied for the 2nd most in the division.
They have a tough 2nd half of the season, and I see them going 1-4 in their next 5 👀
Grade: B-
Key Players: Antoine Roger, Jacob Gagné, Danick Coulombe
Prediction Record: 5-5
Ice Up (4-1)
I had heard of the Marini brothers a bit before I started with the FPF media team and they made their comeback since Winter 2020 and haven’t really missed a beat, which is a great sign you’ve still got it. It’s hard to take time off and come back while teams keep playing and get more reps. They’ve gotten off to a very good start to the season, playing good-to-decent competition and have come out of it with a 4-1 record.
Max Marini has a good mix of short, intermediate and deep passes to his game but can get emotions get the best of him. He is playing best when he’s calm and cool in the pocket. It’s clear he has chemistry with Mickey Marini who himself is speedy and shifty after the catch. While he’s only found the endzone once so far, he is the chain movers on the team and it shows with his team-leading 21 receptions for 235 yards. Darius Simmons and Ty Smith are excellent WR2/3 options with Surya Chandel as a nice piece to round of the receiving core. They’ve got the size and boxing out ability to match up against most teams.
The defense is where this team needs a bit of improvement. Not a complete overhaul, but tweaking here and there. It may not seem like it from the points against angle, but they played many teams that lacked a strong quarterback which is why they were giving up between 12-20 points. They will have a tougher go in the last 3 games of the season where they finally play some teams with winning records. Their defense will be heavily tested again West Island Boys and Red “Not” Skins.
Grade: A
Key Players: Max Marini, Mickey Marini, Darius Simmons
Prediction Record: 7-3
Red “Not” Skins (3-0-1)
Red “Not” Skins got off to a great start to the season, but the longer I look and analyze, is it perhaps a case of False Kingship? Their 3 wins came against Speakeasy, BFC and Rico Ryders, who have a combined record of 4-11. They were then off for 3 weeks and the rust was REAL against Buffalo Wild Wings (on both sides really). The game had a combined 11 Interceptions that ended in a 25-25 tie. The roster is STACKED, so the 3-0-1 record is no surprise to me.
Mathieu Kieljan started the season HOT, throwing 13 TDs and 2 INTs in the first 3 games with one of the best receiving cores in 5A. With 1 bad game though, the TD-to-INT ratio went from 7:1 to 2:1. Hopefully it was a blip Kieljian will learn from and not repeat, but like was mentioned on the field: better to have such a performance now than in the playoffs.
Michael Pietrobon and David St Jean are amazing cap-valued receivers, Riley Pincombe and Craig Browning are STUDS that seemingly make eye-popping catches every week, and Frankie Scalzo has those reliable hands that move the cones for 1st downs, catching 100% of his targets so far this season. When I am mentioning Myles Keiller 6th.. my god, you are loaded at receiver. That said, the yardage doesn’t really show it, and with the GP’s the story tells me some roster inconsistency, which I also know is the case in talking with Kieljan. While the team has 13 INTs, lead by Pincombe and Pietrobon, they do worry me a little bit with just 1 sack on the season, although if I had to pick, the turnovers are obviously more welcome and the better stat to have. Especially when 3 of those picks have been returned to the house for 6. 18 points from your defense is awesome to compliment the offense.
The converts have been pretty good so far, converting about half of their extra points, but no 2 point attempts have been converted, which when they will need it down 2 in an important or playoff game, it’s nice to have run some with success during the season. Points to improve upon.
Grade: C
Key Players: Michael Pietrobon, Riley Pincombe, Mathieu Kieljan
Prediction Record: 8-1-1
Menace II Sobriety (3-2)
Breaking News! Bobby Sepentgis is no longer throwing nor playing for M2S. Instead, Ryan Dobbs-Garnett has taken over the reigns at QB and it started beautifully, with a 6 TD, 0 INT performance against The Tokyo Sandblasters last Saturday at Brossard. Dobbs has a nice cast of athletic, experienced and reliable receivers to make his QB debut more palatable in the Men’s divisions. With guys like Andrew Denis Lynch, Spring 2021 All-Start Chris Williams, Shaq D’Aguiar and Dan Dick, Dobbs can go under centre with less pressure on his shoulders, knowing that his passes can be a tad off target and will still be caught. That, plus having the depth at receiver makes it harder for defenses to lock in on just 1 receiver if the team just had that 1 stud receiver. Taking away a QB’s 1-trick pony would limit any QB, but more so a new QB throwing in Div 5, so their depth is clutch for Ryan to see success, like he did against Tokyo.
Their first 4 games before Ryan came in were all close, with the exception of the Ice Up loss. They were all one-score games and coming out 2-1 in those 3 close games is a good sign that they can win tight games that come down to the final plays. The games were against average-to-decent teams though, so hard to put too much stock in their early wins. The defense has 7 Interceptions in 5 games, which is alright, but the 3 sacks is surprisingly low, given that Andrew Denis Lynch is on the team. Clearly he isn’t rushing, and that was true last Saturday, but might be something the team will want to consider.
I’ll be very interested to see how they fare with Ryan at QB, but they do have a tougher schedule, especially since they are catching a Tip Top Shape team that has starting to hit their stride.
Grade: B-
Key Players: Shaquille D’Aguiar, Andrew Denis Lynch, Chris Williams
Prediction Record: 5-5
Him University (2-4)
Here’s another team shaking things up at the QB position. Out comes Travis Moses and in, at least for 1 game, is AJ Gomes. With AJ getting more and more reps at QB, and his dangerous running ability, this highly raw-skilled Him University team is once again dangerous offensively and are dangerous when covering the deep ball.
A lot of their losses have been from suspect defense, and their early season wins were from outscoring their defensive mistakes, but their last victory was probably one of their better performances. Granted, Ballers are a team that love the deep ball and don’t adjust even when the deep is taken away. While the offense under AJ was just a bit “off” sometimes, give them some time, it was the first game with a new set of receivers, and still, he completed 66% of his passes for 5 TDs. While the chemistry was a bit off with Joey Notaro which was strange, he did find instant chemistry with Brandon Kerr, who is the leading receiver in yards (337) and receptions (27) on the team. Between Joey, Brandon and Matteo Callari, the team has a 3-headed monster that defenses need to take notice and put their best defenders on them. Julian David has been a nice 4th piece to round out the depth at receiver. I’m not too worried about the offense, and it should get better with more games with AJ Gomes.
What does worry me is the defense. Can AJ Gomes and Joey Notaro teach these young guys the defensive basics in time. We’re at the half-way point and the basics should be there by now. The deep coverage will be fine with Gomes and Notaro, but will need the flat defenders to understand shifting zone defenses and improve on the communication aspect. Picking up drags was much improved even over the course of Monday night’s game.
So where does this team go? They have 2 tough matchups and 2 games they should emerge victorious. There were a couple of games I expected them to win and they came away with the L in the first half of the season, so let’s see if this team does in fact improve.
Grade: C+
Key Players: Matteo Callari, Joey Notaro, Brandon Kerr
Prediction Record: 4-6
Buffalo Wild Wings (1-2-1)
BWW have had a strange season too far. They lost in Week 1 by just a single point, put up the points against a struggling Him University defense in Week 2, caught a desperate Glory Boyz when they themselves were missing players leading to a big loss, and then the turnover mess against Red “Not” Skins ended in a tie. They’ve had a bit of everything so far this season, with the high point being 44 points they put up against HimU.
The team is athletic and when they are clicking, they look really good and a team that can make a run in the playoffs. That said, when they aren’t clicking, they look they like a Division 6 team. The team has been very average so far, but their athleticism has kept them in their games. There was one article I wrote that said they needed Fred Mallette to be a bigger part of both the offense and defense, and he ended up with 9 receptions, 124 yards, 3 TDs and a pick 6. So maybe they need me to mention it more often, but the team needs him to lead others and lead by example. I might go as far to say that the team will go as far as he and Vincent Guillette lead them on both sides of the ball. I can’t tell if Guillette is a good QB or not. He shows flashes of brilliance and then makes bad decisions that lead to INTs. He’s throwing 2 TDs for every 1 INT, which will not win you many games in FPF. Also only converting 3 extra points on 17 attempts will also not win you close games. The nice piece they added as an FPF rookie is Guillaume Fontaine. He’s the only other receiver that has 100 yards other than Mallette and leads the team with 4 defensive INTs.
There’s much improvement needed here, and they can turn it around if everyone plays their best.
Grade: C
Key Players: Guillaume Fontaine, Vincent Guillette, Fred Mallette
Prediction Record: 5-4-1
Clinkers (1-4)
This isn’t the return Marc-André Desaulniers was looking for, to throw interceptions that TDs, currently sitting at 9 TDs and 11 INTs. Luis Begin has been tearing it up, but when he has more receiving TDs (10) than Marc-André has thrown, it makes you double take and tell you a story that Clinkers are simply not scoring enough from other sources. While Begin is a great player, Division 5 is where you can no longer rely on 1 superstar to carry you like you can in Div 6. They do have Vincent Marquis as high-level talent, but his absence in their last game proved to be costly.
That said, two of their losses, they had the upper hand in the game and had victory in their sights. In Week 1, they held a 20-6 2nd-half lead against Menace II Sobriety that they let squander. After driving the field 6 yards short of the endzone, M-A threw a pick that left Menace 5 plays to win the game, which they did on the very last play of the game. Then against Tip Top Shape, they held an 11 point lead with 5 plays remaining where the W once again fell through their hands after TTS scored, converted the onside pass and scored on the 2nd to last play. So while the offense hasn’t done their part in scoring enough, we can also look at the defense not getting critical stops to win games. This team could easily be 3-2 instead of 1-4.
They have a tough schedule up ahead and if they want a shot at the playoffs, they need at least 3 wins, which will be hard for them to attain after just 1 win to start to the season.
Grade: C-
Key Players: Luis Begin, Vincent Marquis
Prediction Record: 2-8
Le Speakeasy (1-3)
Oh no, Vincent Richard threw his first TDs of the season on February 19th 😱. The offense forgot that the season started in January and are deeply missing their biggest offensive weapon, Mathieu Ouimet, seen in the team picture. The team only scored 1 rushing TD in each of their first games which will win you 0% of Division 5 games. Not only that, other than Clinkers facing Michael Deguire at QB, they have given up a LOW of 34 points. So the D hasn’t been much better than the offense. It has been a little while since they’ve played, so perhaps their ratings caught up to them, which is why they are in 5A and not 5B, but this is a team that definitely should have been in 5B, if not Div 6. The lone bright spot has been the defensive play of William Collin, with his 3 interceptions, one of which was brought into the endzone against Clinkers.
Man, there’s really not a lot to hype up on this team and don’t want to continue ripping the team. I remember them being alright, but the teams in 5A have all improved and their time away appears to have regressed their play. They will continue having a tough season, but Vincent Richard needs to build off the 4 TD/1 INT game against Clinkers. That’s a 1000x better than his first 3 performances and perhaps they can squeak out a win against Backwoods Football Club.
Grade: F
Key Players: William Collin
Prediction Record: 0-10
Backwoods Football Club (1-4)
Honestly, I’m not quite sure what to make of the Backwoods Football Club. I’m trying to look past at the 1-4 record, and do see that, apart from the high-flying West Island Boys, that they have a couple of 1 possession losses: 7 points against Him University and 5 points to Ice Up. These are 2 average to above average teams, so they are definitely competitive, but when they are faced with a very strong team like West Island Boys or Red “Not” Skins, they can put up some points, but clearly not enough, and can’t stop the offenses from scoring.
The season has seemed to mirror the play of Liam Gilmore. I’ve seen him play, and for every throw that wows you, there are 3-4 passes that leave you wondering. He’s deceptively quick, averaging a first down with every run, but defenses in Div 5 will quickly adapt and force you to throw (with a good rusher), and if 1 out of 4 passes are good one’s, I’ll take my chances on 4th down for you to beat me with an impressive pass. Hennessy Oraye has been their clear cut #1 receiver, with a third of Gilmore‘s targets going his way. Nothing wrong with feeding your star, but after Qwyntin Rice and Tristan Daniel, there’s little to go off of, but to be fair, to be able to go 3 receivers deep as threats is a solid core to run with, so Backwoods do have that in their favor. While giving up 30 is not great, I can see it in 5A division where offenses are very competent. What worries me is whether they are able to hit the 30 point mark themselves, consistently. They’ve done it twice in the season, so it is possible, but both times against below-average defenses. I think the team is heavily matchup-dependent and that in close games, only having scored 5 extra points all season which is a 27% rate, if they score 4 TDs and get 1 XP, that’s 25 points. That could beat Clinkers, not enough to beat Ballers, coooullllddd be a close game against BWW, a win against Speakeasy and a (close) loss to Glory Boyz.
After a 6-4 season last winter in the same div, I had higher expectations going into this season, but clearly the loss of Skylar Bayliff to the West Island Boys has been hard to replace. With my prediction of a 3-7 season, could that be enough for them to squeak into the playoffs? That will be interesting to analyze come late March.
Grade: D
Key Players: Hennessy Oraye, Qwyntin Rice
Prediction Record: 3-7
Glory Boyz (1-5)
The team is simply too good to be 1-5 and to not make the playoffs, but that’s what happens with a Week 1 loss after not playing in the Fall Cup and showing some rust (which happens with all teams), but then when your QB doesn’t come for Week 2. I didn’t see any Facebook group post asking for a sub QB, but maybe they asked guys they know and couldn’t find anyone. With Hiotis in at QB, I’m convinced they beat Clinkers. They then went up against tough teams in STT, Big Fat Bats and No Friend Zone and lost by a combined 8 points to STT and BFB. They were definitely in close in those games, but made1-2 plays less than their opponents. In their only win of the season, they got “luckly” that BWW were a depleted lineup, but did what they had to do. We’ve mentioned in on CTA, but they do not have an easy remaining schedule, with 2 of those defenses having good rushers that can neutralize Hiotis‘ running game.
While Hiotis has improved his play since the beginning of his FPF career, now throwing in the highest level of competition and the schedule putting them against tough defenses, 14 TDs to 11 INTs is not up-to-par with both his averages nor what you need from a 5A quarterback. His receivers are talented, and their big 3 of Antonio Venturino, Lucas Crivello and snapper Massimo Moniz have held up their end, but the receptions-to-target ratio have been lower than usual. They need some easier completions to do damage. He has included James Masciotra more in the offense this year, as he already has a career-high of 133 yards, in only 6 games. The guy who needs more touches in my opinion is Tristan Koutsoumbas. 6 receptions on 13 targets for 34 yards is not enough for a guy who has great after-the-catch escapability.
I’m a fan of the team and while they are aggressive, I prefer an aggressive team than a passive team on defense, where I often say passive teams need to be more aggressive. The thing that comes with it though, and they play close to that line for the refs, are that penalties come with the territory, so they can’t be up in arms when penalties are called. They gotta learn that while yes, it sucks, but that the calls won’t get changed and if the complaints continue, they will get OC’d. They are a fiery team, filled with passion, but they play best when playing with cool heads and just focus on their own game. They can’t let calls that go against them influence their game.
Grade: D
Key Players: Vincent Lajoie, Antoine Charlebois
Prediction Record: 3-7
Epilogue
Alright that wraps up the report cards for Div 5A. Next week we are back to the regular articles! Enjoy CTA for now!