With the recent acquisition of the blunkster I HAD to get mallards thoughts on picking him up and some of his other strategies as a new owner!

1. Were the bills your number one team going into the bidding or did you have other teams in mind?

   Yes, the Bills were my #1 team going into the bidding. I went into bidding thinking that I was ready to spend around $15m on the Bills or a team similar to them because I know an elite in-game QB like Josh Allen can make things significantly easier on VFL QBs and that was a goal of mine with team selection. I was also looking for an elite defense, and the Bills have a top-3 defense in the game. I was a huge fan of the Cowboys (who probably have the best defense in the game IMO) leading up to the draft, but I cooled on Dak quite a lot once I played more with him.

2. Picking up koolaids and outlaw (fixxer) I’m sure were high on your list of things to do, could you give a brief description of your relationship with those players and anyone else on your team you picked up.

I actually got Koolaidz into the VFL waaaaaaaay back in like Season 2 or season 3 of the leaguearena days. We used to play together on the Gamebattles team play ladders back in Madden 12, and Outlaw (or FixXxer) was our QB. We played a ton of seasons back during the LeagueArena days but, to be honest, I didn’t pick Koolaidz up because he is a friend of mine; I picked Koolaidz up because the man knows how to play QB and you need people like that to be successful as an owner in the VFL.

3. With the recent acquisition of blunkey, I would like to know what was your thought process of dropping explikcit for him?

 Well, I had originally planned on picking up a few different QBs in the draft but those guys all ended up way out of my budget. It was looking pretty likely that we were just going to roll with Shady at QB when we decided to take a lottery ticket on an available QB. We ended up picking Explikcit up. Immediately after the draft, Blunkey messaged me and told me that I had made a mistake. At first I thought it was just typical Blunkey smack talk, but he made it clear that he genuinely wanted to be on the team and wanted to improve his game to the point where he could contribute to the team’s success.

4. I said in my interview with blunkey the only issue I see with him is how bad of a teammate I perceive him to be, he’s not a terrible QB. But do you have any plans for his linemates to be able to handle him?

So I tried him out, and he actually played pretty well. He was also very receptive to constructive criticism which reaffirmed to me that he was actually committed to winning. I still have Shady as a backup plan, but I’m cool with seeing if Blunkey can capture a little 3rd line magic for me this season.

5.     I don’t think there’s anything you can do to prepare others for bad teammate blunkey. Nobody is going to be ready for that level of blame game and it’s not fair to others to subject them to it. That’s why I’ve been working with Blunkey on that part of his game. He’s going to be on a short leash when it comes to toxicity, especially towards teammates. I have not hesitated to make roster moves so far, I will not hesitate to make more roster moves looking for the 9 guys that can get this team a ring.

This move is all about wins for me. Blunkey is the only free agent QB available with any VFL experience. He has his issues, but he also went 3-5 last season on a team that finished 6-30. There’s clearly *something* there in Blunkey’s game and I’m willing to take a chance on that, depsite what others in the league may say about it.

6. Doubling up as an AFL and VFL owner do you think this will begin to overwhelm you in the sense of workload?

It might, but so far being a VFL owner has been much less work than being an AFL owner. As a VFL owner, I have 9 guys on my roster who all want to play for me. As an AFL owner, I have between 1-8 guys that may or may not want to play for me. It’s a completely different world and I don’t think there will be much different between my workload this season and last season.

7. Do you have any suggestions for staff to make the league either more exciting or easier on owners? Or both?

Let players sign up as a line. Turn the AFL into a true play-with-friends league. Don’t make me force three people, whom I have never seen play and who have never met, to play together on a line for 16 games a season. Let friends play together in the AFL.