Status

[Goodell]

Sorry for the delays this season, particularly in the playoffs. Grades and injuries updated, and plan on simming the last games of the season tomorrow. Then we'll launch into a quick rules discussion toward changes for next year before starting to get our data ready for a new league season with our free agency slated probably late March or early April. We'll do a GM check-in soon and start looking at potential replacements.

When I started this league 8 years ago, I knew it couldn't run like most of the baseball sim leagues I was in. No way was I going to be able to update spreadsheets manually for every transaction for years. I knew as my family grew and life got busier that I needed to have things setup to run as smoothly as possible without a ton of manual labor. I also set it up for players who perhaps joined initially while in college or single with a lot of free time, but eventually would have other priorities. Wanted something that could work for both the people with a lot of time with a lot to do here, as well as something that could let those with increasingly busy lives still enjoy playing on a somewhat equal playing field where missing something every now and then wasn't too penalized (if you miss a draft pick because at a family outing all day, you still get the highest available undrafted player).

Some parts of the site did that essentially from the start with our automated roster management systems, automated draft, free agency bidding systems, etc. Other parts, such as data collection for simming games and especially the playoffs when things get more complex remain very labor intensive.

Because our playoffs involve multi-game averages with option of using real games, and require me to keep meticulous records on every player on every sim playoff team across all leagues to keep track of what game to use for each player each time, it's something I really don't look forward to. It's not terribly time consuming once I'm in it, but requires complete focus and totally paying attention to every little detail as every player is entered for both teams one-by-one. So easy to make a mistake with a manually entered number or wrong multi-game number used or injury level not factored in, etc. Some might be using real playoff game stats, some might be using their 2nd multi-game average, others perhaps on the same team their first multi-game average if they had a real game used the past round. Some have their numbers reduced by 25% if injured. And each player is loaded into a multi-game average speadsheet one-by-one for every team in the playoffs so that every unique player has his multi-game schedule average calculated. That's 21 total different QBs, 75 different RBs, 103 unique WRs, 47 TEs, 24 punters, 26 kickers, and 60 some returners. That's over 350 unique football players with their stat fields loaded one at a time by hand just to create the spreadsheet I'll use, then once I sim the games each player in the depth charts has their multi-game average for that particular week put in manually again to the program (about 20 minutes to input everything for each single playoff game). It's easier in the regular season because Player X has his game stats for week 1 that are used by all teams across all leagues and can be loaded into the system and applied to all teams/leagues universally, where in the playoffs Player X has a different average update that changes depending upon how many playoff games his sim team from a particular league has played (and how many times his real playoff game update used) so I have to manually put it in for each unique playoff situation checking a multi-game average spreadsheet for him to see what his update is for this league, this team, this round for this game (and then for all of his teammates individually).

I think the playoffs probably have dragged a bit the last few seasons, in part because it's a lot and something I sometimes dread and can't really tackle it until I can find a time to completely devote myself to it for several hours to knock it out.

I hope to not ever have to stop the league because it's too much work. I love playing and I know others do also.

But realize I probably need to change a few things to minimize delays and keep the leagues strong. I'll have some of my thoughts in rule change polls ahead this week, but some of them might involve simplifying the playoff stat process to take better advantage of all the stat loading done during the regular season. I'll look again into game stat feed services, but may also take on some game stat and injury/suspension update helpers if a better way not found.

I realize the delays when they happen aren't good for the leagues overall (although sometimes they are for my sanity!) and I'll be making another attempt to improve that in the system/process updates ahead. Thanks for your patience and for another great season of simulated football.

[Jared A]

No worries! You do a great job!

[tino38]

No worries! You do a great job!

I 2nd this Troy, you do a great job! Not sure how others would feel around the fangm family but we could put it to a vote to just use season averages in the playoffs instead of the option for real life stats.

[chiefbrody]

I for one have no problems or issues with a little waiting between sims and off season activities and what not. Fantastic league.

[Ben C.]

I can completely understand the delays, though I would like to see us find a way to make it less work for you. If that means everyone uses season averages in the playoffs, so be it. That almost always seems to be the case anyway.

At the very least, always remember that there are about 50 guys ready to help out whenever you need it.

[Jared A]

If season averages makes life easier, let's just do that! It doesn't seem to be a big deal. I think we're all in agreement that whatever makes it easier for Troy. We need to figure out a way that this league isn't such a burden on him... or else we might end up losing it. (which NONE of us want!)

[Jared A]

Also, I will add that I'd be happy to be the one to compile all the league averages for offensive players. December/January are slow time periods for me, and it wouldn't be a big deal for me to put them together every year.

[Goodell]

Thanks for the responses/support. I still have to think through some of the ways that will make things work best.

About playoff averages specifically, I'm thinking I'll make a poll with a couple of options soon for next year. We have to upload week-by-week game data into the system for our regular season. Last year I tried to make the playoff stats easier by thinking I would use that already loaded data and have those averages generated by the system itself without a new round of stat gathering just for the playoffs. I even created a field on the uploaded database table to mark which updates were bye week averages, so that those wouldn't be factored for end of the season averages. The problem I ran into with that was the smaller role or injured players and not being able to calculate everyone's average just using already uploaded data.

A player might play all 16 games, but maybe he's a backup TE and doesn't appear in the game box scores we upload each week. Maybe he was only in there uploaded for two weeks all season (when starters hurt and he stepped up an caught a few passes or something). If I just rely upon the uploaded regular season box scores, it would say he played in 2 games because we uploaded box scores which he was in just two times. In actuality, if I grab the end of year stats for his average, it would say 16 games for his 8 catches (.5 catches a game) but using the already uploaded box score quicker way it would give him 8 catches over 2 games uploaded (4 catch per game average). So that's a big difference there, and I had to go back to the drawing board of ignoring all the seasonal data uploaded and just grabbing end of year totals for players individually.

What I'd like to do is have the playoff stats take care of themselves based entirely upon all the data uploaded every week. To do that, I have'll have to mark bye-week averages so those aren't factored (which I already was planning to do), and have to decide which method of total games to use for the average calculation:

- Total weekly updates in the system from the regular season (stars in the box score each week would have 16 total weekly updates, but injured or backup players would have less times they appeared in weekly box scores even if they played in all the games if they didn't register a catch/run/attempt).

- OR have every playoff average based upon 16 games for everyone. We used to do our averages for playoffs that way anyway I believe years ago. That mostly hurts star players who miss time. If a star RB misses 4 games (suspension, injury whatever) it doesn't hurt his playoff update average because we take his total divided by games played (1000 / 12), but if we divided everybody's totals by 16 equally then players who miss time would see their playoff averages go down a bit.

I think we could still keep multi-game averages (assuming I can write script to calculate that before it sims using regular season data) and possibly still allow people to choose real game or not (if I can also build that into the process), but I would need it to be more script based than it is now and using the computer to do what it's good for and do the math and calculations itself using the data it already has without me having to put a whole new set of data together come playoffs or track every individual myself.

[larry linke]

I agree with the previous posts and appreciate all you do.

Larry
Minnesota AFFL

[Nathan S.]

Whatever is easiest for you works for me.

I greatly appreciate all you do for these leagues and will try and help where I can if it makes things easier for you.