2024 RULES: Injuries

[Goodell]

Let's start off-season rules discussions off with a very hot topic (at least in some leagues) that had some end-of-the-season and playoff implications. As always, we follow through with the rules in place at the time (that had been discussed multiple times over the years in various off-seasons) but are open to further discussions for rule changes ahead.

Our injury rules related to some of the situations in question are:
- Every week we download and import the NFL.com official injury report for the week.
- Every week we follow official NFL transaction logs for players added to various injury lists and mark them likewise here.
- Players not in the NFL playoffs but in sim playoffs get one injury level bump at the start of the sim playoffs and one before the Super Bowl. Those are the only times we bump player injury status in playoffs beyond what's in the weekly NFL injury report.
- If a player is doubtful, they're deemed to be 75% (grade marked down, averages marked down).
- If a player is questionable, they are deemed to be 85% (grade and average marked down).

Why these are our current rules? We decidedly don't want to be subjective where I or someone gets to make up what we think someone's injury status should be or what it might be in different situations (like if they played for a good team wouldn't be on IR, etc.). Things were very murky at times when we started the league years ago with some subjectivity there, and decided it was best and most efficient to rely entirely upon the data the NFL puts out 100% without arguments over health or subjective calls that may favor one team over another, etc. Just totally objective, totally from NFL data everyone has access to seeing. We also can't reasonably monitor thousands of players individually and treat them on a case-by-case basis efficiently charting if they were on injury list but still played, etc., so we treat all the same based upon status. We also don't have special rules for one week of the season (like the last week) because healthy players sitting the bench isn't a one week situation for us, every week throughout the year there are sim teams starting players who aren't starting in reality and our game simulator is built around that with default updates that adjust for better grades getting better updates if didn't have stats but not hurt. We also don't think a player is only 100% or 0%, but that if they are hurt and even still play often their impact might be more limited with less snaps at times or not as effective as when 100%. But we certainly can't make individual calls on so many individual player situations every week, and for efficiency really need rules related to injuries that make sense generally even if not always perfect for every situation.

I'm in some baseball sim leagues where injuries are mostly randomly generated. I know sometimes sim teams here can get unlucky with official injury reports (like the Patriots one year were told they were too secretive about injuries so instead put tons of guys on the injury report) and how they can impact us, but I'd say it's at least objective and better than randomly generated and based upon actual NFL data and transactions in generally, even if we don't have the resources to evaluate each situation individually on the fly and have to have broader injury rules that apply to all situations for efficiency.

This year there were some drama around some teams benching players in week 18, particularly because some NFL teams treated that situation differently on NFL injury reports which drastically impacts us as we import that every week. The Ravens, for example, marked their QB as "out" on the injury report, where a team like the Rams for example also benched their QB but didn't mark him as officially "out" on that injury report.

That was a new situation for us (at least that I recall), so we'll re-examine the rules there going forward. One suggestion is if the official NFL.com injury report also includes a note about a coach's decision or not-injury related out in those cases that we wouldn't upload those injury designations and just the ones with actual injuries.

Some other suggestions were that we should get rid of injury impacts on grades/averages altogether. If they play they're 100%, if no zero. Or maybe take another look at the math for those to lessen grade impact.

I'm going to throw a lot of injury-related options into this poll to get some injury feedback going and sense some general feelings toward potential injury adjustments ahead (if any). Please reply with your own thoughts on best ways to better incorporate injuries into the game simulator, but also keep in mind the workload involved in some of the options and their impact on weekly league efficiency.

[JonC]

A lot of these options are somewhat inter-related for me:

If we aren't going to upload injury status for coach's decision, then I don't think we need to have special week 18 rules for example.

For point C, this to me is really decided by how much work it is for you, Troy. If it's a giant pain to bump all the injuries for eliminated real life players, we should leave it alone in my opinion.

[Sharkbait]

As a team that was impacted heavily by how we do injuries, (Lamar and CMC were out week 18 but miraculously recovered for the playoffs after their bye week) obviously we need to change.

The easiest solution, regular season and playoffs should be treated separately. Keep regular season injuries the same, no changes.

In playoffs, reset injuries for completely and ONLY go by injury reports submitted during the playoffs. It would remove the coaches decisions randomness that occurs from week 18. Let the teams that made the playoffs in our leagues play with their players in the SIM. Only exception would be if they were on IR in regular season, then they remain on IR.

[BRFLBears]

I feel very passionately about two rule changes.

The first ... "Players should either be 100% if play and 0% if don't with no downgrades, all 100% in playoffs unless on IR or miss NFL game." ... My two cents: Either a player plays in real life, or doesn't. Injury reports aren't science. They are often used by coaches as strategy to misdirect the other team. How many players have been "questionable" come in and have an amazing game? Spoiler alert: a lot. I think lowering a player based on an injury report is an unnecessary disadvantage (or advantage if you're playing a team with a star penalized) and not entirely reflective of real life results.

The second ... "Have special rules for week 18 only for benched players and use season averages in just those select cases." ... if you've been impacted by this, you'd voted to change it. If you haven't, you don't understand the pain this causes. Personally? I got fucked right out of a playoff spot thanks to CMC and Kyren Williams being sat in Week 18. "Injured" they said. Bullshit. Lost a close game and missed the playoffs. I'm sure I'm not alone. Common sense applies here. Again, major disadvantage/advantage based on gamesmanship of coaches or just simple rest. I feel passionately that in these instances, averages are used.

[larry linke]

I feel that if a player plays in real life we shouldn't downgrade his performance. The downgrades are arbitrary but the coach feels that playing the guy is better than what the back up would do. Another wrinkle to this would be how many plays he plays with consideration given to positions that rotate.

As for week 18 if a GM can document that MCC or another player is being rested for playoff purposes I feel the GM should get the averages. If the opposing GM can document that the reason the player isnt playing is injury related he can present that.

Second (A). Maybe I dont understand what a coaches decision is. I would assume it is a punitive action and a coaches decision is the same thing as a suspension with pay. If a coach doesn't play someone because he was late or blew off a team meeting he shouldnt play for us.

Larry

[sportznut]

If the player plays the game, he shouldn't be downgraded. That in itself, is subjective. We don't know how hurt these players are. Fact is later in the year, most of the players are banged up. Some are severely limited, yet when the game starts, often times the best players still tend to play the best. They might be hobbled the entire week, but on game day, they're ready to go.

Besides, someone could be doubtful b/c they have the flu, while another guy has a broken leg. Not all guys on the injury reports are created equal.

[Goodell]

CONCLUSION: Per popular support, we'll make some fairly significant changes regarding injuries this upcoming season.

We won't pay any attention to doubtful or questionable injury designations or downgrade those grades or averages as we have most years since we started in 2007. We'll just pay attention to OUT designations on the official NFL.com injury report. That'll be the default, and we'll see about how we monitor/implement that exactly as to what's "out" if it's just the injury report designation or personal observation or some resource to upload because I sure as heck don't feel like monitoring individual backup lineman if they played or not personally one-by-one every week, and I'm not for different treatment for different players. But generally speaking, one way or another we'll have guys either "out" or 100% only with no other injury designations.

I hate special rules for one week only of the season, and I'm not going to apply it all year checking if a healthy guy benched in week 5 for someone else should be treated similarly so it's only a one-week thing, but willing to go along with slight democracy here on the week 18 controversy. Just for week 18 (and not any other week no matter if a real team starts benching healthy guys in other weeks of the season for rest or slight health matters or clinches super early and benches guys in week 16)... just for week 18 and just for players not on the injury report for actual injuries we'll treat those cases for skill position players like a bye week and I'll calculate individual averages on a case-by-case basis for that.

[Royce R]

Awesome