Nomination: "The Undraftables" drafting and holding onto Antonio Brown, A.J. Green and Melvin Gordon for the duration of the 2019 season
Coach Taylor is the newest member of the LOC. So new in fact, that he had been in the league mere minutes prior to beginning his first LOC Draft. As such, one can absolutely forgive Coach Taylor for any short comings that may have come from the Draft, but all in all he had an ok haul and went on to finish at 7-7 at the end of the year. We won't delve into how fortunate he may or may not have been to get to that record...but, that's not why we are here! Because Coach Taylor has nominated the undraftables.
Picture this - you're dropped into an unfamiliar situation, with many people in the room you don't even know. Some weird dude is playing a 15 minute video he's made about some guy that won a fantasy title, handing out pennants and trophies, then starts to get up and down announcing random people's names. It is now your turn to pick a random name. You have a sheet in front of you with a lot of random names, ranked by position. Good luck.
That's a pretty accurate (and if you're reading this Mike, in no way did I write this to be condescending if that's how this came across...) description of Coach Taylor's first draft, and indeed his first experience, in the LOC. With his first pick, he selected Alvin Kamara (at the time a perfectly justifiable pick, albeit one that fell short of expectations), and with his second Adam Thielen, who aside from missing a few games due to injury had a good season. But that's when things started going down hill...as things usually do in the hindsight world of an LOC draft.
With his third round pick, Coach Taylor selected one Antonio Brown, at the time of the Oakland Raiders. Brown went on to play a grand total of 1 game, scoring 12.1 meaningless points in a Week 2 loss for Buccing The Trend. The less said about this the better, as we all know what happened next...(and before, which caused him to have a round 3 grade in the first place).
The next pick did fare better. Coach Taylor selected Melvin Gordon with his late 4th round pick. At the time, Melvin Gordon was poised for a lengthy holdout, but luckily for Buccing The Trend he decided to end this holdout in Week 5. Unluckily for Buccing The Trend, as is usually the case with players who holdout, Melvin Gordon did have a rather slow start to his season - one which Coach Taylor had to suffer through with Gordon in his starting lineup, as he wouldn't score double digit points until Week 9. But, in fairness to Coach Taylor, after that point he was pretty solid.
The final of the holy trinity picks came in Round 7, where in any other year an absolute steal would have been had by drafting A.J. Green. But 2019 was not one of those years, where a preseason foot injury cost him his entire 2019, despite various reports saying he would play at some point in 2019. To make matters worse, Coach Taylor held A.J. Green for the entire season.
All in all, I shudder to think the amount of games Coach Taylor held players who were not actually playing and the amount of games they missed together - not to mention 2 completely wasted draft picks. But, we do have to give him some credit, despite drafting 3 undraftable players, he did drag the roster to a 7-7 record. Is that hall of fame worthy? That's for you to decide.
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