As per usual with the system, everyone finds quirks and abnormalities that they can exploit. Like Paul Kariya’s strike season. (Aww… this sim is really going to hate this “year’s” players.) In its primitive form, one of the early WIS Football “cookie cutters” was the Miami Dolphins Andra Franklin. I mean someone who rushed for over 700 yards and never fatigues because this occurred in a strike shortened nine game season. Silly!
Basically,
everyone started drafting Franklin despite having zero clue who he was
(Well, when you figure that the majority of the people dropping money
on the site are younger than Bill and they all think Barry Sanders was
the greatest running back of all time and anyone who played before 1990
didn’t exist but I be babbling) Anyway, the way the simulation code was
written, folks who played a full season – whether it be 16, 14 or 9 –
stayed healthy for the entire season. But he was a BARGIN! A BARGIN
DAMMIT! So you spend a fraction on your cap on a running back and then
you drafted Johnny Unitas. Franklin would run for like 1800 yards
because no one had any money to draft a good defense. Kinda funny, considering that Franklin only played three full seasons and one of them was that 1982 season that was only 9 games long. Yes kids, the NFL had a strike BEFORE the one in scab infested 1987 season. Two strikes in five years. I am sure that hockey fans are real happy about that precedent being set. Anyway, Franklin was putting up great numbers, he racked up over 700 yards his first (and only) three seasons. His 1981 total was the most by a Dolphin rookie until Lew Alcidor… err.. the other Karim Abdul-Jabbar broke it. (Soooo many Miami running backs we could write about – Abdul-Jabbar, Mercury Morris, Tony Nathan, Jim Kiick)
Y’all can debate all you want as to if Franklin was actually a fullback or a running back. Either way he was a big old boy from the University of Nebraska – 5’10”, 225 lbs, give or take 20 or 30 lbs - who managed to not rape anyone (at least as far as I could find on google). (He was a FB with the Cornhuskers and then Miami used him as the RB and then they didn’t.) The Fins grabbed him with the last pick in the 2nd Round of the 1981 draft. Remember the 81 draft was the one that had George Rogers go #1 and Freeman McNeil #3. Of course, after than the only real “name” running back draft before Franklin (of the TEN! That were) was James Wilder – well and Marion Barber, but that was only because I follow the Jets. (Speaking of 1981 and running backs drafted., in the 5th round – Cincinnati drafted a RB out of Washington State named… wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… Samoa Samoa. How he didn’t attend Hawaii is beyond me. I am way off message now.) Yes, I know what you are all thinking – the Fins could have waited like 5 rounds, drafted Stump Mitchell and gotten at least more than three years of service but that would be another piece of writing.
Franklin found his way onto the cover of Sports Illustrated (even getting double bonus points as his cover was rerun at the end of the year), made a ENORMOUS fumble in the infamous playoff game against the Chargers and then he completely destroyed his knee and suddenly he was relying on that Nebraska education. WHOOPS!