The Replacement Adjacent

By: Michael Skillman, Team X Analyst

I’m sure after you’re reading this title you’re thinking that this article has something to do with guys who can come in as replacements and help your fantasy team. You’d be wrong and if you’re looking for fantasy help, this will have very little to zero relevance. Really it has zero relevance to anything other than wasting time and possibly sparking some pointless debate. What I will be doing is referencing the 2000 classic featuring Keanu Reeves, The Replacements. I’ll be comparing the players of that team to current or recently retired players. Recently retired because it was hard to come up with player comps for some of these guys. Thinking through this, I was considering college choices, play styles, appearance, and career trajectories. It’d be awesome if we could get some conversations going on this. I’d like to hear some other choices other than mine that I probably missed. Let’s be honest, I didn’t do too much research on this. Although I did watch the movie again and went through every teams depth chart a few times. But let’s get on with it. First thing I want to talk about is that the movie was loosely based on a real team. There was a strike during the 1987 NFL season. The team in the movie (Washington Sentinels) is portraying loosely the Washington Redskins. In real life, the Washington Redskins replacement players won all 3 of their games and when their regular players got back, the Redskins ended up winning the Super Bowl that season. The Falco-Martell feud from the movie was similar to a real life feud between Doug Williams and Jay Schroeder. Alright let’s get on with the player comparisons.

Clifford Franklin, WR

In the movie Clifford Franklin is first seen working at a grocery store. Some kid steals a Twinkie and Franklin runs him down, but when he catches him, the kid throws the Twinkie he stole into the air. As Franklin tries to catch it, the Twinkie goes through his hands showing that he can’t catch, which is the joke. Extremely fast but hands like feet. My comparison for him is Ted Ginn Jr. Ginn has been one of the fastest players in the NFL since he got into the league. Not always the most reliable. When he was on the Panthers, he had some very memorable wide open drops way down the field that would have been easy TDs. He’s been quite consistent since he’s been on the Saints, but not even Ginn can outrun that stigma.

Brian Murphy, TE

Brian Murphy was described as being super talented and if it weren’t for him being deaf, he would have been a first rounder. There are several similarities here with my comp. My comp here is Jason Witten. I’ll put a picture up of Witten and David Denman, who is the actor who played Brian Murphy, there’s a striking resemblance. Reason two is that they’re both returning to football after some time off. Witten retired, but is coming back after just one season off. He tried his hand at broadcasting and let’s just say it didn’t go well. That leads us to our third similarity.  Murphy was deaf in the movie and used sign language throughout. The way Witten called games last season, you might think he has a disability of some kind.  

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Danny Bateman, LB

The first time you see him, he’s a police officer busting a bunch of criminals and just kicking the crap out of everyone. My comp for him is a recently retired player and one of my favorite linebackers of all time, Paul Posluszny. Posluszny was a tackling machine his entire career and gave everything he had all the time. He was commonly seen with a cut above his nose when playing. Bateman is no exception where every game he was bleeding from right above his nose. Unfortunately that’s where the similarities end for these two other than being blue collar type players. This was one of the hard ones to really pinpoint the right comp.  

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Walter Cochran, RB

Cochran was a former NFL player who had blown out his knee in his first game and become an ordained minister. You see some clips during the movie of him running and putting some moves on and he actually does the long stride hesitation type move that Walter Payton is most well known for. Both having the name Walter made me want to choose Payton, but that’s Sweetness, and he’s the greatest. So I couldn’t compare him to a replacement player. Bringing me to Derrius Guice. Unfortunately for Guice his career has started similar, tearing his ACL in preseason last year. I fully expect Guice to come back and have a great year. Hopefully his career doesn’t take the same turn that Cochran’s does in the movie, as he proceeds to blow his knee out again. But if you’ve seen the Redskins luck with injuries lately, you never know.  

Earl Wilkinson, Safety

Wilkinson, AKA Ray Smith, was a former NFL star now serving a prison sentence for assaulting a police officer. The governor of Maryland has allowed him to be on work release to play. Wilkinson and Bateman have a weird love/hate relationship due to Bateman being a police officer and Wilkinson being a criminal. This comp was tough because I clearly had to go after someone with some criminal history. My first thought was Darren Sharper, but quite frankly Sharper deserves to rot in hell and I’m not going to compare those two crimes to each other. I’m going to use Adam “Pacman” Jones. He’s got a laundry list of stuff he’s done over the years from assault to drugs to the Vegas shooting incident at the strip club. There’s lots of details in that case, so you can Wikipedia it if you really care. Either way Jones affected his career in a negative way and so did Earl Wilkinson.  

Nigel Gruff, Kicker

They called him “The Leg” because he could kick a soccer ball the entire length of the field. Former soccer player and addicted gambler, he gets into enormous debt with some guys who show up throughout the movie. Gruff appears out of shape and has a tendency to smoke while he’s on the field. My first and only thought for a kicker comparison to him was Matt Prater. Prater has had some off field issues with alcohol when he got a DUI in 2011, later resulting in a 4 game suspension. They have another unique similarity that makes them a better comp and that is that Prater set the record for longest field goal in 2013 with a 64 yarder to close out the first half of a game. In the movie, Gruff hits a 65 yarder to win a game. Earlier I said Prater was my first and only thought. That wasn’t exactly true. I felt like there was a place to insert a Kareem Hunt joke here, but thought maybe too soon.  

Shane Falco, QB

This is the last one I’m going to do. I didn’t have motivation to go through lineman and find comparisons. Unfortunately this one won’t be a sexy pick. It was pretty difficult actually finding a comparison. For this one I was leaning on college choice and play style a little bit as well as a hint of appearance. My comp for Shane Falco is Sam Darnold. Falco and Darnold both went to high profile football schools (Falco- Ohio State, Darnold- USC). Based on the limited football action in the movie, you can say that Falco has some questionable decision making. One of the knocks on Darnold coming out of college was his decision making and propensity to turn the ball over. Falco earned the name “Footsteps Falco” because of a horrible showing in the sugar bowl. As a RS-Freshman Darnold had a not so great showing against Ohio State where he had a QBR of 35 while throwing no TDs and a pick. Darnold was much better as a RS-Sophomore. Finally, their appearence they both have stupid hair. That last one was actually given to me by my esteemed, 2nd pick in the draft this year, colleague, Nathan Brown.

Well I hope everyone enjoys this. It was a complete waste of time and reminded me of my poor vocabulary, as well as how dang good of a movie that is. I recommend to all. 2 thumbs and a dong up.