The Madden Files – 2015

We enter year 5 of the Minnesota/Batavia Dynasty/Franchise and I have to decide what I’m going to keep track of. I will make up to two recruits per year and follow their careers through college and the Pros, and I’ve sort of backed into following the pro careers of Heisman winners. Fortunately for me, 3 of them will not go on to the pros, so I don’t have anything to do there. They are:

2011: QB Danny Dickson of Ohio State – He didn’t get to go pro because I wasn’t aware of the exporting bug with NCAA 12. Basically, NCAA asks you if you want to export your draft class twice. If you answer yes on the first time you are screwed. Cool. For the purposes of our game, let’s pretend Son of Dick suffered a catastrophic knee injury in his bowl game.

2013: RB Derron McCray of Ohio (not State). He was an 88-overall and led the Bobcats to a good season, but just not pro material. The funniest thing is that he barely beat out a fullback (and I wish I would have written this down) who was something like an 82 but somehow had 1600 rushing yards and 22 touchdowns. For all his other years he was back to fullback duties and had stats like 7 carries for 14 yards.

2015: QB Alex James of Troy. *Spoiler Alert* Another hero college player that didn’t make it to the pros because he was an 88-overall.

So far the two Heisman winners that did go pro, QB Jonathan Miller and QB Justin Walker, both went in the second round of the draft. Miller made the Pro Bowl as a rookie but it’s been all downhill from there.

The first two recruits I made were QB Adam Franssen and WR Josh Hammond. 2015 marked their senior seasons, so we’ll be seeing them in the pros next year. Let’s start with Adam:

QB Adam Franssen did much to turn around the fortunes of the Virginia Tech Hokies. He earned a fair amount of playing time his freshman and sophomore years, and took over full time quarterbacking his junior season. He put up great numbers then, and pretty much matched them his senior season. Despite being ranked a 99-overall, he could never quite keep up with the other QBs stats-wise, and so wasn’t in any conversations about the Heisman. He did, however, win most of the time. Unfortunately for the Hokies, Franssen’s scorning of the Minnesota Golden Gophers led Coach Kelly Krebs to put VT on the schedule every of Franssen’s career. The Gophers went 4-0 against Adam, winning 14-9, 34-31 (OT), 37-15, and 28-14. The Gopher secondary was opportunistic, securing multiple interceptions against the otherwise solid signal caller. They just had his number.

A player who dominated his position in college football was wide receiver Josh Hammond. Hammond put up ridiculous numbers in college and now owns most receiving records. Not just at Alabama, but in the entire NCAA. Given that Hammond, like Franssen, passed up the opportunity to play for Minnesota, Coach Krebs put him on the schedule as well. In 2012, Alabama was ranked #3 in the country when Minnesota faced them, and they dispatched the Gophers 24-10. That’s where Alabama’s luck ended. In 2013 the Gophers took down the #2-ranked Crimson Tide 22-7. In 2014 the Gophers dominated #2 Alabama 48-29. And in Hammond’s senior season, the Crimson Tide was ranked #1 in the country out of the gates. That didn’t last as Minnesota’s kicker Ben Pershey kicked a game-winning field goal as time expired, winning 24-21. Hammond did go on to finally win the Biletnikoff Award in 2015 after being robbed of it in previous seasons. He was an All-American of some type all four seasons in college. It was a wonder he stayed all four years, but at 5’9″ 174 pounds perhaps his pro dreams aren’t as attainable. More on that in the next installment. Unfortunately for Hammond, he was never highlighted in his pre-game matchups with Minnesota.

You know who was highlighted? Halfback Jason Enright from Oregon, a school that Enright is a superfan of in real life. Or so I hear.

Enright was buried on Oregon’s depth chart his freshman year so Coach Krebs didn’t even schedule Oregon. It’s not that he “forgot.” Don’t let the paper say he “forgot.”

The Ducks have to be upset that someone reminded Krebs about the oversight. In 2014 the Gophers hosted the #14 Ducks and slaughtered them 55-7. It is one of the Gophers most lopsided victories in the Krebs era. When the Ducks came to town in 2015 they were ranked #3. Didn’t matter. Krebs exacted his revenge on both Enright and WR Jesse Garcia to the tune of 38-14.

Garcia no longer backed up Enright at running back and returned to a more traditional wide receiver role, where he posted 954 receiving yards and 9 touchdowns. Not Hammond numbers, but not bad.

Minnesota Golden Gophers

An astute observer might also note that Ben Pershey had far fewer field goals in year 2 after winning the Groza award his freshman year. That’s because Pershey was a surprise recruit. The Golden Gophers already had a top flight kicker in Erik Richardson, a Groza winner in his own right. But after Pershey sat out as a redshirt his first season, the Gophers decided to give Richardson a redshirt season as well. In 2015 both kickers were 93-overalls with 99 kick power, so Minnesota decided to platoon them. Richardson handled all first half kicks while Pershey took over in the second half. The goal is to get both kickers to the NFL, so Krebs is doing his best to develop both of them.

In 2014 the two recruits I made were CB Rob Franssen and HB Chris Roach. Chris is a big, strong guy that Adam and I know. You probably don’t know him, he goes to a different school. At any rate, he scorned Minnesota for Penn State, which is bad enough, but the Nittany Lions didn’t redshirt him and also didn’t play him for one down in the 2015 season. Rob Franssen, on the other hand, wisely chose Minnesota and became a starter as a freshman, opposite our first ever 5-star recruit, Sidney Moses. Franssen didn’t really make his mark as a corner, recording exactly zero interceptions, but he was a First Team All-American as a returner, despite dropping about 5 punts and scoring no touchdowns. He had 74 combined returns for just over 1,000 yards, so I guess the voters were impressed. Coach Krebs really wasn’t, but a lack of DB depth put him in…a corner.

Moses stepped up his game, though, as a junior, recording 7 interceptions. He developed into a 91-overall and Krebs was excited to have an incredible 1-2 punch at corner in 2016 with two 5-star recruits starting. But Moses’s success went to his head – he declared for the draft after the 2015 season and Coach Krebs couldn’t convince him to stay. With one more year of development at Minnesota, you could see Moses going in the first round. But currently the pro scouts have him rated a 5th round prospect.

Fortunately for the Gophers they will get returning senior CB Keron Day, one of my favorite players. Day is a grinder. He was in Coach Krebs’s first recruiting class (the class that was ranked #41 in the nation) and he was a 3-star corner and a 62 overall. He hit the playbook during his redshirt season and has been developing nicely since. As a junior he was an 80-overall with 99-awareness. That awareness was on display when he secured a game-clinching interception against #4 Michigan. It was his only pick of the season, but he made it count (and it was still more than Franssen, a 5-star recruit, had.) With Moses leaving for the pros, Day will move from nickel to the outside. Unless some insane development happens, he likely won’t go pro, but he is always welcome in Minnesota. Coach Krebs will probably make him the DBs coach if he wants it.

The Gophers were surprise National Champions in 2014 when they were a 78-overall team. In 2015 they were an 86-overall, so their success was much more expected. They started the season ranked #13 and made it to #1 before week 6. They would hold on to the pole position for the rest of the season. The Gophers handled most teams easily, and ironically their toughest game was against unranked Indiana, where they managed to eke out a 20-14 win. They defeated Penn State in the Big Ten Championship and handled #2 TCU 37-24 to secure their second national championship.

Defensive Tackle Darren Vaughn won the Nagurski and Lombardi awards and punter Sean Jones won the Ray Guy award in limited action.

There were several First Team All-Americans, including WR Ryan Hill, CB Sidney Moses, Returner Rob Franssen, and the aforementioned Vaughn and Jones.

Second Team All-Americans included DT Morris Hicks, MLB Josh Hunter, ROLB Matt Carter, and FS Jeremy Riley. Carter and Riley, along with Franssen, were also named to the Freshman All-American Team.

Krebs clearly has this team on the right track, and he’s even sending his first player to the NFL next season. While their recruiting class didn’t match the previous year’s class, they were still ranked #6 in the nation. Some names to look out for in the future are Tim Burgess, Wendell Baker, Andrew Williams, and Alex Wesley. They were all 5-star recruits, and were joined by a bunch of 4-star recruits as well. Could Krebs get his first Heisman winner among those candidates? Time will tell.

Batavia Colliders

Quarterback Greg McLain was a 90-overall and so demanded a multiyear, multimillion dollar deal. The Colliders did not want to pay him that much to miss half the season, as he had done the two previous years. So they gave him the franchise tag.

McLain went on to have his best year as a pro. Not only did he stay healthy all season long, but he tosse 33 touchdowns and only 9 interceptions. He also set a career mark in passing yardage.

He led the Colliders to a 15-1 record, though their only loss came to the Dingle Blow-Ins in overtime, when McLain threw a game-ending pick-6. He wasn’t resigned at the end of the season, despite winning the League MVP award in 2015.

The majority of his passing yards went to a trio of 1,000 yard receivers. Leading the way was TE Sam Hughes, who was surprisingly more productive than WR Tramell Diggs. Diggs had his worst season as a pro, but still managed to be named the NFL’s WR of the Year. The other 1,000 yard receiver was rookie second-round pick Seth Castillo out of Florida State. Though only a 69-overall, Castillo possesses 97-speed, so he proved to be a real field stretcher for the Colliders. He was named Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Running Back Perry Higgins stayed healthy all season and contributed 21 rushing touchdowns to the cause. Fan favorite Jyhe Holliday was reduced to 7 carries on the season, 2 of which he converted into touchdowns.

The defense played well as a unit. Defensive Tackle Brenden Ulm had his worst season as a pro, managing “only” 11 sacks. It was Pro Bowl worthy but well below his personal standard. Scott Tate, the second year man out of Wisconsin, took over the starting middle linebacker job and played well. He set the Colliders high water mark for tackles in a season and his high Hit Power rating injured quite a few players over the course of the season, so that was fun. Corner DeMarcus Coleman found himself back in the Pro Bowl after an 8-interception campaign. He was joined in the Pro Bowl by his teammate and Defensive Back of the Year, Sintamuel Cheeseboro, who paired 8 interceptions with 16 passes defensed.

Kicker Bo Houston was named Kicker of the Year but was not named to the Pro Bowl. In addition to making every kick in 2015, Houston took over kickoff duties and placed all 100 of them in the endzone for touchbacks. Punter Dontae Frazier, having been relieved of those duties, posted a career high in punting average.

The Colliders won their first playoff game but lost the NFC Championship Game to the Marshfield Pirates. The Pirates were then defeated by the Fransburg PFC in the Super Bowl.

In 2016 the Colliders look to replace their quarterback. It’s not likely they’ll be able to secure highly touted signal caller Adam Franssen with the 30th pick, so perhaps we’ll see some wheeling and dealing. Until next time, friends.

© 2025, Josh Hammond. All rights reserved.