The Journey of Lenny Boggins - Part 1 - By Jack & Sledge Productions

Bespectacled Boggins in his consistent coaching attire of a visor, polo and slacks.

Coach Lenny "Lenwell" Boggins embarked on his journey with the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday 30th May 2020. His quest was one of playbook purity to get players ready for the NFL. Using a pro style offense and a heavy run game that wouldn't be out of place in Britball Div 2, he set out to recruit high character prototype players and make Stanford into a modern dynasty with a throwback style. This NFL UK partnership that has thrown him off the deep end could be the making of something great or much like most britball tings an unprecedented, mismanaged and embarrassing disaster. 

So, some context, no I'm not writing a novel about an imaginary college football coach. Steve and I have often played NCAA games in University, creating a narrative, a weirdly named coach and changing the landscape of college football. Our first project back then was taking the 124th ranked Akron Zips to national title glory through the immense receiver play from Tyler Blankenship and the hard nosed running from 6ft5 RB Jesse Owens. The full rebuild is fun but we fancied a different challenge. With plenty of spare time during two weeks of annual leave amid the Covid19 lockdown and having taken inspiration from @CoachDuggs, we set out to take a British coach to the states in a ridiculous scenario and throw him to the wolves in charge of a top tier division one program. I'll be writing a post or two daily about our progress which will include game results, recruiting battles and player stories. Hopefully you guys will have a read and follow along, building a support for these imaginary players as we take them through their careers.

Who is coach Boggins?

Today we will be looking at season 1 and how we have fared so far. I will talk about some of our existing players we hope will be stars for us, veteran seniors looking to go out with a bang and what recruits we have managed to target & sign for the next year. We will start with two players Boggins brought with him to the US. Knowing he would need a solid run game for his offense to even have a chance of working, he looked to solidify his offensive line and crucial TE/FB position. True freshman right guard Dan Lewis makes his way across the pond, wearing #55, he is set to become the cornerstone of our offensive line and therefore the entire offense. He is joined by project player Steve Pettiford, touted by scouts & recruiters as "overweight", "slow as molasses" and with "less get up and go than a wet Sunday morning", who appears to be a strange choice for one of Boggins' two free scholarships he has to hand out to British players. Boggins must see something in this guy, transitioning him to FB after shouts for him to move to guard. Pettiford sees himself as a TE and hopes to blossom over a four year stint at The Farm representing The Cardinal.

The Existing Roster

Cameron "Captain" Scarlett, no touchdowns though, I wonder why?

So who do the brits join on their journey to clock running, rock pounding dominance? With 2019/20 rosters loaded into the game, Stanford have a few young stars but shockingly thin at QB. With Boggins implanting his I-Form heavy offensive playbook alongside his 4-2-5 defense, some players could find themselves out of favour and others who fit the style rising up the depth chart. To compound the strange start, we found that Stanford have a freshman running back as their team captain. #20 Austin Jones is the second string RB and due to his immense talent coming out of high school, he finds himself returning kicks to try to get his touches. Scouts say he possesses "getaway from the cops speed" but Coach Boggins is unsure when seeing him at practice. At #1 on the running back depth chart is Cameron "Captain" Scarlett, a redshirt senior looking to prove he is NFL Caliber. One thing is for sure, he will get plenty of carries in this offense... perhaps too many.

Our QB situation is dire with a redshirt senior set to start and a redshirt sophomore to back him up. K.J Costello as the incumbent has superior awareness but Davis Mills has the better arm. Costello starts the season but with few pass attempts set to be called, he needs to hit his mark or else could find himself being benched for the younger Mills who has three years of eligibility remaining. At wideout we have freshman phenom Elijah Higgins in the slot and Osiris St Brown (brother of Green Bay Packer Equanimeous) at the fourth WR spot. Pettiford is battling for TE reps with Senior Colby Parkinson who's NFL dream likely ends on a practice squad so will settle for the starting fullback job.

Pettiford and Lewis leading the charge side by side on a staple HB Dive

On defense we have several young athletes who fit our scheme most notably cornerbacks Paulson Adebo and Obi Eboh coming in at a tall and rangy 6ft1 and 6ft2 respectively. The defense's main impact player is left defensive end Thomas Booker, a 6ft4 & 281 lb sophomore who started as a true frosh, anchoring the D-Line. With four strong and big d-lineman needed to make the 4-2-5 a success, his development and this years recruiting will be crucial. Lewis provides some physical and aggressive backup for the d-line, coming in as a fifth lineman on short yardage sets to cause some havoc.

Recruiting Strategy

So recruiting, where did we go? Our tactics were to target players with prototype NFL size for their position. An example of this would be finding RB's between 200 and 230 pounds with a height range of 5ft10 to 6ft. Luckily both our existing RB's fit this size which we believed would help us greatly for year one. We also decided to only recruit players interested in coming to our program and building on it's formidable tradition. We wanted to solidify our California and Texas pipeline whilst also targeting a new one in the stranded states like Alaska or a hotbed like Hawaii. We set out to recruit athletes to improve our WR and RB rooms, add depth to the O-line, find a potential gem in a thin QB class, build our strong d-line and get volume at DB to bring competition to the position. Tall rangy DB's are our target alongside smaller coverage linebackers who can act as hybrids in the defensive scheme.

After settling on a traditionally strong schedule mixing local smaller school rivals like San Jose State, traditional pairings like Army and of course the notable rivalry with Notre Dame alongside a very competitive PAC 12 slate. PAC 12 after dark is legit and with Justin Herbert and Jacob Eason playing for the two strongest teams in Oregon and Washington, this season could be a tough one.

So our main targets with recruiting were 5 star athlete Matt West - a frightening 6ft3 306 lb behemoth, 4 Star Athlete gem Tyrone Lacey, 6ft 221 lb Wayne Staley from Chico, California who comes in rated 80 overall but with a multitude of positions he can play, as well as 4 Star OLB Trumaine Thomas - an athletic freak from Florida hoping to achieve his dreams the other end of the country. In tomorrow's edition we will see the results of the recruiting battle and the games leading up to the post season.

The Season Begins

The start of something special?

Our tough schedule provided some very interesting games to test out the skills of Coach Boggins + the combination of two idiots manning the controller. A first week bye provided crucial preparation time before a brutal 8 week stint of alternating home and away games. San Jose State and Army West Point were the two out of conference games and hopefully would serve as tune up games. Whilst the first game went to plan with a 35-10 win on the back of Captain Scarlett's 176 yards and 4 TDs, the San Jose offense had several drives that was concerning for Boggins and his defensive coordinator. This was compounded with a nail biting close game with Army who's flexbone offense and brave defense held it right till the end before falling 28-21 to the Cardinal. If it wasn't for stud freshman and team captain Jones proving his talent with a ridiculous statline of 280 all purpose yards, 2 Kick Return TD's and 1 rushing TD.

Boggins and his DC confer pre-game

The conference schedule started with a home win against Arizona State before a win at Mike Leach's Washington State. Then followed an ESPN Classic game as we pipped #5 ranked Washington 27-22 with a last second 70 yard TD from Elijah Higgins being one of the few successful passes our QB's had completed to this point. A combination of incompetence from the players (both AI and Human) and an adjustment period to the scheme meant these games were closer than expected. This would manifest itself further the following week as we go down to the #16 ranked Utah Utes. Two close wins against unranked opponents followed against UCLA and Oregon State left the mood of Boggins as one of concern. This season could still be potentially as bad as a week one Uniball game in the rain and mud. A much needed bye week came, where Captain Scarlett got some much needed rest. Due to the volume of carries we had given him, the mileage was starting to show. Would there be any tread left on his tires at the end of the season? Would he make a bowl game, let alone the NFL? One thing was for sure, he was going to protect himself and invest in protective accessories, as well as get in the gym to make himself stronger and more durable. If he was to carry the team on his back in his senior season, he needs to step up to another level.

Bowl Eligible, Who's Next?

Today's update ends with 3 comfortable wins in a row against ranked Oregon, USC and Cal. The defense only conceded 14 points over the two games, shutting out USC and putting a stranglehold on ranked Oregon with a 8 minute touchdown drive to kill the game in the second half of the game. To quote a great Demon's D-Tackle "It's foot on the neck time now fellas". Boggins is now excited. He has #14 ranked heated rivals Notre Dame in his sights. A nationally televised Friday night blackout game at The Farm. A chance to put his stamp on his most hated college program, to show them how this rivalry is going to work going forward. Tune in tomorrow to find out how we do!

P.s A well known tradition in college football is to give out small helmet decal stickers to players for performances in both practice and games. These can be plays in particular like touchdowns, turnovers, yardage or other less quantitative things like being a good teammate. It's a tradition we have started using at Exeter Demons where I coach in the real world and I noticed in NCAA about 5 games in, it's a tradition the game very cleverly upholds. I noticed when looking at the back of Captain Scarlett's helmet that his stickers had increased from the week before and he had way more than any other players. A neat detail that just proves how brilliant the games in this series were and also how much they deserve to be back. The game would award stickers set to a hidden code of rules which I assume is for touchdowns and games started etc as offensive linemen have them in the game too. Just a tremendous feature that brought me unexpected joy.