How the Money landed future Hall of Famer Pillbox Punter in the 9th round – the biggest steal of the draft

It’s the inaugural season of Blitz! and the Macon Money are in the black. The Money made a ground-breaking move in the pre-season and hired an executive General Manager – a move unprecedented in league history. More_Shots was hired as GM and the team made one of the biggest steals in Blitz draft history: selecting Pillbox Punter in the ninth round.

Snagging Pillbox late in the draft, was a move that will pay huge dividends both on and off the field for the Money. A lot of people dismissed Punter and passed him up or have just passed the pick off as luck. In reality, luck had little to do with it.

The Money were actually quite high on Punter.

Prior to the draft, GM More_Shots was sent to scout quarterbacks. When he returned, he told coach Preach that Pillbox was “the best fit for the Money system” and others in the front office and among the coaches agreed.

In particular, the team loved Punter’s mental makup and tenacity skills.

“It’s not that we said we wanted to draft a muscled, lumbering quaterback that ran 6.0 [time in the] 40 [yard dash]. Those weren’t the traits we were looking for,” current GM said at a press conference prior to the season. “But we were looking for the mental makeup…I did a lot of homework on him, along with my staff, on what he offered. Watching the tape, he was the guy that would go in and lead back to victory.”

“When we looked at our roster we had 12 players and were close to our $2 million salary cap,” GM More_Shots said. “Where had to get down to what we wanted in the right places…We liked Punter a little bit. But the one thing we had with just a few chioces was options.”

In other words, the Money needed to add a quarterback to the roster, but that would mean sacrifices elsewhere on the team. “We started talking about Punter around the third round,” said Preach.” When you are drafted based on need or best player and you are waffling back and forth, you have to do things strategically.”

Other quarterbacks kept coming off the board and nobody was taking Punter.

In all, a dozen quarterbacks were drafted ahead of Punter in the Season 1 draft. “Every round, we’re looking at Punter,” More_Shots said. “When it got to the ninth round – we had the [draft] board stacked vertically [with columns moving left to right] – by the time we got to the ninth round, Punter is all the way over tot he left by himself and we said ‘what are we doing?’…everyone like Punter…so we took him.”

The result was the biggest steal in the Blitz! draft history.