Note: This is an intro to the series and the beginning will involve me referring to myself in the third person. I am so sorry.
Matthew Morrow isn’t a stranger to football. A former professional RB he has been around the game for years and has noted friendships with more famous football personalities like Coach Luke and Hester Allen. So when Matt became a super booster for Akron, it wasn’t as much of a surprise as you would think. Despite Coach Luke’s initial struggles, Matt continued to pour money into the program and constantly lobbied in support of Luke’s job. He became a constant voice around the program and had been heard on many occasions trying to talk Luke into recruiting his son one day, “the next Barry Sanders” he insisted.
When Matt parlayed his football money into even more riches by franchising his Bookstore-Bar Model, it was presumed that money would go right into the Akron Zips football program. Instead that money went into two things, buying a stake in Blaze Pizza and buying the Washington Football team. The sale price of the WFT was never disclosed but with Dan Snyder heading to prison most believe Matt got it for a hell of steal.
Officially changing his name to Owner Matt, Matt quickly announced the team would be relocating and he planned to change the game forever
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This series will follow our journey as the Dublin Shamrocks in Madden NFL 20. To start things off, I downloaded the Madden NFL 21 rosters to give us a more current starting point. Some of the rookie years are messed up but it should give us a decent bedrock. For the first season we are still Washington and largely just trying to lose as many games as possible so that we can land K-Dubs as our first pick. This is set during Year 4 of Rubber City Dynasty and we’ll follow as closely as possible from there. While we will follow the Shamrocks, our interest will likely be spread out among all the former Zips and Pokes so we’ll take a broader view. A lot of discussion will take place on the Discord but I’ll keep up with these Newsletters as a way to compile all the info. Feel free to hit me up with any questions but just note that this will be a pretty casual series as we all just have fun following our favorite Akron alumni.
So, to start the season off, Owner Matt’s biggest decisions lie around how to ensure he loses as many games as possible. K-Dubs projects as a top-5 pick and will likely be the second QB off the board, after Nebraska Heisman Winner Buck Lamb. To ensure this happens I have a meeting with Jay Gruden to see where his mind his at. He tells me how important winning is to him and lays out an innovative plan to get there. I take him at his word and as such promptly fire him and send him packing. I now begin my search for the worst coach in the game. The problem? Jay Gruden was that coach. So I hire this guy.
For our purposes a guy like Golden who hasn’t changed with the times is perfect. This season the goal was to lose, as stated, so I won’t bother you with the week by week results. They are on the twitch video below if you are interested in the whole thing. The important things to note are that we benched Haskins after he won a game, the Chiefs won the Superbowl and we scored the Number 4 Overall Pick.
With the Jaguars, Titans and Dolphins ahead of us things look a little dicey. Me and Coach Luke debate using Haskins to trade up and ensure we get K-Dubs. Buck Lamb should go First but all three of those teams could end up taking QBs. We decide to sit tight and wait with baited breath.
WE GET K DUBS. The Jags in classic fashion took an SEC DB with their first overall pick. Then the next two teams also didn’t take a QB. I briefly consider trading back but being worried about the risk I go ahead and grab our boy. Man does he look happy to be a Shamrock.
The experts hate the pick but we love it. The rest of the draft goes pretty well for us as we get some good pieces. We grabbed a 68 OVR WR with a 2nd Round Pick we received for Haskins, a 70 OVR LT with our 3rd Round Pick, a 66 OVR RT with our 4th Round Pick, a 68 OVR LG with out 5th Round Pick, a 60 OVR OLB with a 7th Round Pick and a 58 OVR WR with our last 7th Round Pick.
I’m very happy with the draft overall, mostly developmental guys but we got some really strong value picks in the mid rounds. It was an offense heavy draft which we need since our team already has a young and talented defense. Of note is that the Jags ended up grabbing Buck Lamb in the 3rd round so the projections were all way off. Go Jags though.
Heading into the season our lineup is as below:
Well, there’s definitely some holes to fix. We are going to limit ourselves to realistic moves as much as possible as Madden will let you game the system. Within reason though we will use our excess Cap Room and try to give ourselves a little help. We will likely trade for a TE at the very least to try and give K-Dubs some weapons. We’re going to leave off here for now but check in on the Discord for updates and if you have any feedback or ideas. It’ll be a little easier to organize these going forward as we follow the journey season by season. The Dublin Shamrocks’ inaugural season starts now
Let’s F’in Shamrock
UPDATE: Year 1 stream 11/16 at 7 PM
https://discord.gg/8VdQZgjm3B