2005 Draft Preparations

The 2004 - 2005 CDFL Draft begins at 9:00pm Saturday, August 20 at Yahoo Fantasy Sports. With under two weeks left until draft time, the Hayashi brass is putting together final preparations for their plans on a championship calibre team. Coach Hoeppner indicated some tendancies during a recent interview on AOL - "Hayashi has always had a strong ground game. From the days of Barry Sanders and Bo Jackson to last year's Ricky Williams and Shaun Alexander. This year Hayashi will again have many backs in camp. With running backs being a top commidity in football, drafting heavily at that position will be a goal of the Silver Dragons. This will allow us to retain a good ground game as well as trade quality players later in the year for needed players at other positions. We have already held workouts with some of the players on our charts." Trollinger would not comment on who the Silver Dragons were focusing on. The picture shows the player Hayashi is aiming for with a second or third round pick. Hayashi is not releasing any names due to the threat of fellow CDFL owners drafting them higher than anticipated in spite of Hayashi. It is believed that the Silver Dragons are going to focus on Running back during the first two rounds, then look toward wide receivers. Quality quarterbacks can be found in later rounds of the drafts, and wide receivers always are deep. Expect upwards of 6 running backs to be selected by Hayashi this year. Trollinger has breathed rumors of selecting only one kicker and one defensive team this year. Kickers are pretty interchangeable, as are defenses. It would be possible to sign a kicker or defensive team and replace them during their bye week with a new one. You won't lose much with the exchange. The only problem would lie in that this is the deepest the CDFL has ever been - 16 teams. That means there are only 2 defensive teams available for each team. If you only take 1 and someone takes 3, you are out of luck. General Manager Mark Trollinger has prepared more extensively this off season than any year previously. He definitely wants to return the Silver Dragons to the post season and challenge for the CDFL title. Should he be successful, Hayashi would become only the third two time league champions.