2024 Off-Season Update

[Goodell]

Appreciate that.

Generally speaking to the larger group of GMs about this, as noted sometimes this happens. It's a very complex program where the system tries to select who starts and doesn't among a roster full of players with multiple position eligibility. Sometimes the human choices end up being better than the programmed one. I've tried to re-write it a couple of times without success.

As always, though, in order to ensure that teams get the right grade as we all want, even if the depth chart calculation page is off in it's grouping teams just send me a PM and I'll add them to a short-list of teams I manually check and recalculate and manually input the correct grade if needed. The sim uses that corrected grade, and there's a record of that within the game simulation box score where it shows grades that were used.

I won't be able to re-write that complicated programming before the season for that depth chart page average calculation. It may be off occasionally for some teams (usually by 0 with rounding or .1 as illustrated above) and its more likely in the secondary area where I manually check all cases of sim matchups when I notice a backup with higher grade before simming. However, as we've done for years there is a work-around for teams that have an issue with the programmed grade average if it's not exact. It's a quick communication of that to me to see if there's a problem fixable, if not to ensure we use the correct grade average for them I simply do a quick 10 second recalculation of those situations I have taken note of and the correct updated grade is used in the game simulation. Easy work-around and we'll make sure a team gets the right grade in the sim game. Thanks.

[Goodell]

it's something that needs to be discussed next off season

Definitely open to off-season rules discussions. We do those every off-season, of course, and I love that.

Generally speaking on grade averages and depth charts:

- Having teams manually adjust their depth charts in very detailed ways (like selecting their own starting inside linebacker or backup right guard, setting coach play calling preferences, etc.) has come up before over the years.

- While that may be great for a small percentage of people checking their depth charts and injury situations daily and on the site nearly 24/7, it's wildly unrealistic in the bigger picture of average user and not within the purpose of the site to be fun to play BOTH when you have a lot of free time to research backup guards but also can continue playing if you get married and have kids later or busy with work at the moment.

- There are tanking issues in giving teams control to bench strong players for bad ones. The league doesn't want teams to be able to acquire a lot of stud players but then bench them all unrealistically so they can intentionally tank and lose games. If you have good players with high grades and stats, the sim coach is going to use them and they are going to impact the game. The system limits tanking by design, and extra tools that allowed tanking or even unintentionally being outdated by accident but impacting results are counter to that.

- There are competitive balance issues if all teams had to monitor their entire roster's health and adjust every position on field every week leading to some teams having jacked up depth charts if they couldn't devote their entire life to their sim football roster that week, or if they were away on vacation or getting married. As it is now (and should be in my opinion by design) you build the roster, the sim coach via the site tools will adjust for injuries on the fly and make sure you have guys on the field on a play-by-play basis based upon the best grades and best NFL game production. It limits a teams ability to intentionally tank badly or just be really bad if they got busy in real life for a couple weeks and forgot to adjust their starting defensive tackle or whatever because they missed the story about their injury.

- We're a GM 53-man roster building game by design, not a coach play calling game. There are other games for that, and huge issues in the game simulation when pre-set coaching preferences (ex. we want to be heavy run) go against actual game data used, which can turn the results more into a guessing game than roster building focus as intended. If you guess you want to be run heavy ahead of time, but RBs got hurt with bad NFL stats that week and your QB unexpectedly goes off for a crazy real big NFL game, then you lose because you guessed you wanted to be run heavy that day so it minimizes your QB great stats that week? That's nonsense. It's not always perfect and always room to improve, but by design the coaching call decisions go primarily off working toward the actual NFL stats (meaning it'll favor your players who did the best so if you had huge rushing numbers it's more likely to work toward those in neutral situations) and shift depending upon game logic so if you're down 8 with 10 seconds left it doesn't call a run and if you're winning with just minutes left it'll try to milk the clock more.

Those are core principles of how everything was built intentionally. Certainly room for further discussions, especially in off-seasons as we always have before a new year starts, but why things are built the way they are very intentionally.

[sportznut]

Appreciate you, Troy. Thank you.

[Knighty Knight]

I don't see the issue. Your top 8 defensive players are all included in the grade, and their order, whether starter or backup, doesn't affect the calculation. Is that correct, Troy?

[sillegrant]

Quick question about Injured Reserve.

Cap hit is calculated as the highest 53 contracts but when I'm adding players to injured reserve, it's like I'm adding their entire contract and salary and paying it right then. So, I'll add someone on minimum salary to the inactive list and lose that amount ($795,000 this year) from my available cap right away. is that accurate? Am I really paying their whole contract for the year, guaranteed if I keep him? I did some research and it seems like it is a case-by-case basis but if someone goes on IR the year they reach a settlement to pay partial salary while others come back in week 4. it's pretty complex and Niche but I still wanted to ask the question. I can't afford to put people on IR on one of my teams so I'm just cutting them which sucks for me but maybe that's intentional. Maybe it has to do with how available cap is calculated?

Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!

[Goodell]

We don't have injury settlements or other complexities within this game. Maybe our version of that is you cut the player and attempt to re-sign them for less negotiating a lower salary and can then still put them on IR if eligible but at lower salary.

If you put someone on IR they don't count toward your active roster limits (meaning you can keep someone else active) but they are still under contract with you and still being paid their contract value.

So if you don't want to keep paying a player who is hurt to be on injury list, then it's advisable to cut them if they are someone you would rather not pay to keep while hurt.

[Goodell]

Like previous recent seasons when the NFL has allowed veterans on the practice squads, we will also. They can't be cut from the roster to practice squad like young players can, but they will be able to be added to practice squad through free agency if no bids on them.

That's been a vocal issue for some, and some ideas around practice squads discussed this off-season that I may not be able to fully implement as hoped, but we'll try to make that go smoother with notice for people about that so not surprised. We'll open up veterans to be able to be added to practice squads after the long weekend. Tuesday night at 9pm ET we'll turn on the ability to add a veteran without bids to your practice squad.