2022 RULES: Suggestions

[Goodell]

There were some things I wanted to get done last off-season, but that all got side-tracked as the whole site had to be moved to another server and the core programming upgraded from old scripts. Now that we're all upgraded and through the season, I hope to get back to some of the things that came up in last year's rule suggestion topics.

- Game simulation review and enhancement. Although we make little tweaks every year, the core of the game simulation is the same as it's been for more than a decade. There's some new thinking in the NFL these days (like more aggressive on 4th down, etc.) that we need to inject into things, as well as just reviewing that every play on a play-by-play basis is doing as intended and removing as many issues as we can. Also hoping to look into ways to possibly watch the sim games as they unfold if people wish kind of like watching a gamecast online.

- GM of the Year points (based upon staying within cap/limits, rewarded for having players increasing in grade, rewarded for low round draft picks and undrafted players making NFL rosters, trade winning/fairness, etc.) or other ways to play to win beyond the scoreboard especially if rebuilding.

- Automated trade objection flagging.

- Review free agency bid scores/requirements/minimums/maximums/values of one bid versus another.

- Automate the system to run games itself for me instead of me doing each one manually for hours across 5 leagues.

- Looking at 5th year options and how they relate to LTCs.

- Looking at additional LTC options (could choose to not rip up current deal but add to end of it).

- Additional contract restructuring options, perhaps converting salary to signing bonus or other things NFL teams do (without getting overly complex).

- Way to efficiently add a psquad player to your roster on short notice for injuries at minimum deal if no other contract offers.

- Cleaning up free agency pool (removing retired).

- Cleaning up positional eligibility. May need a couple people really interested in that willing to go over a spreadsheet on that and provide their suggested updates and rationale for why a player eligible for tackle and guard (mostly because they were a tackle in college when drafted and initially listed that way but exclusively a guard now) should just be a guard now, etc. Also looking at some of the more hybrid players and how we can best handle those like players who are both linebacker and safeties at times and how we account for them between two different area grades.

- Perhaps removing some of the complexity around TEs where we currently have all the best TEs being TEWRs going toward the receiver grades and some of the lower rated blocking TEs who can count toward OL grades if they help. Just making everyone regular TE going toward receiver grades, or designating pure blocking TEs who should go toward OL as TEFBs or allowing all TEs to count partially toward both receiver and OL grades in some way (75% toward receiver, 25% toward OL), etc.

Anyway, kind of a long list but as I mentioned some carry-over from discussions last year that circumstances didn't allow me to further explore as we struggled to just get the site up and running again after some problems. But hopefully more time this off-season to get some enhancements done.

What kinds of things would you like to see done this off-season to enhance play here? Any rule change suggestions?

[bpboguta1483]

When it comes to the NFL Draft maybe we can have a mobile platform like slack (I use that for my job) to communicate with owners regarding draft day trades. Just my own experience but you try to propose a trade to another owner and they don't respond, and I know all of us have a lot of things going on in life, just thought I would throw that out there.

[Knighty Knight]

I think this is an excellent summary of changes that need to happen and I look forward to discussion.

One minor update that I would add: STL, SD, OAK should be changed to LA and LV on the website. The colors could be updated for STL/LA helmet too.

[bpboguta1483]

Another thought, is the possibility of doing reserve/future contracts maybe not this off season but 2023 like the NFL does? I know we get unlimited bids on players who are part of a teams practice squad, just a dose of adding an additional reality.

[RyanM]

I'd like us to consider either forcing the use of RL playoff stats for players in the playoffs OR making teams commit before their players play in the RL playoff games if they want to use those stats. There's absolutely no downside to the current method of playoff stats. It should have the possibility of working both ways.

[chiefbrody]

When it comes to the NFL Draft maybe we can have a mobile platform like slack (I use that for my job) to communicate with owners regarding draft day trades. Just my own experience but you try to propose a trade to another owner and they don't respond, and I know all of us have a lot of things going on in life, just thought I would throw that out there.

Having the draft start on a Thursday killed activity, at least in the AFFL I believe. We are most likely an older age range than the other leagues and the Saturday start had always brought lots of trades and discussion but this past draft was crickets. It would be cool if each league could have their own draft start date but that may be a programming nightmare. And if AFFL voted to start on a Thursday then I guess I am way off.

[larry linke]

I really really wish we did a round a day. It seems almost virtually impossible to trade with the tight time constraints.

Did I mention I really wish

Larry

[Goodell]

I'd like us to consider either forcing the use of RL playoff stats for players in the playoffs OR making teams commit before their players play in the RL playoff games if they want to use those stats. There's absolutely no downside to the current method of playoff stats. It should have the possibility of working both ways.

There's a massive downside, though, for injury. A couple teams really got smashed by that this sim season as key players were put on injury lists and marked down to doubtful or questionable and pushed down their grades.

That's the both ways, at least as conceived. I had a couple of teams contact me about why they were facing such a disadvantage of injuries for having playoff players. So we have some big disadvantages with injuries so add an advantages of stats. Not that it always has to be that way, and I think playoff stat choices will change if I get to finish automating the games because we can't have different decisions on playoff stats in different leagues if the system is running the games as it needs only one set of stats, but that's why we have advantages for playoff players to go along with massive injury risk huge disadvantage.

[JonC]

I’d like to see a minimum games played in order to use averages, especially for QB, in the playoffs. We’ve seen more than one team take advantage of that the last two years and create really unrealistic DC for their teams. For example, QB must have made 4 starts or you choose real life vs. default average for QB.

You mentioned it obliquely above, but the ability to move from our own PS to active during the regular season would GREATLY enhance the value of the PS for me, personally. Right now I basically use it as a reserve/future contract storage area.

[bpboguta1483]

Jon C good point made about the ability of moving a player up from PS to active nothing like 9:30 in the morning and finding out a key player will be out. Now how many do we allow? 1 player, 2 players? Plus protecting 3 players like the NFL does, but will that change now that covid is at least somewhat under control, and as long as that doesn't put more of a burden as more work will be needed to accomplish this.