charlie813brown wrote:Maybe my big hope would be more time between real draft and our draft. I had like three days to analyze where players went, then three days to draft them. That was a lot crammed into one week. Why the rush?
Not necessarily a need to rush. Choices presented from a wide range of start dates into mid-May start. That choice received 3x more votes than any other potential start date, though.
When later at times in the past, it's probably been due to needing time for me to get things ready. The aim adding more draft-related interactive content is to eventually pull more serious draft fans into things and build up more players that demonstrate good knowledge, so I imagine into the future I'll be trying to have that stuff going while the draft is underway so we'll likely be ready to go as soon as the draft is over. Not that we'd necessarily need to, but most of the times I ask those questions the vast majority want to get started sooner than later such as this case.
For me personally, I don't do a ton of draft research all year myself. It's great that people do, and fans who follow the draft closely should love playing here. I used to be more into that, which lead to creating the league, but I think teams can draft pretty decently even without that becoming a full-time job. I watch some college. Generally keep up with who the high first round types might be in popular discussion. But for the most part find can do pretty decent draft watching the actual NFL Draft and ongoing player discussion. I only had late picks, so paid more attention to discussion about later round guys. Just jot down a couple names or update draft queue when a name pops up of interest. Day after the draft, lots of content posted online about reaches and steals and guys people couldn't believe went undrafted, along with increasingly lots of coverage about the undrafted free agency frenzy right after the draft. As my pick approaches, narrow it down to a couple guys in the queue (based upon names of most interest and/or positions I want to target) and try to research those couple of guys to get a gut feel for who I want to pick of those when I'm on the clock. Usually spend about half the time on the clock deciding between 2 players and seeing if anyone sends in a trade proposal, then pick.
I want the league to appeal to a broad range of players, from the hyper involved super fan who spends as much free time as possible following the sport they love to those who want to play but can't devote a ton of time to it always but still want to play out their team building sports fantasies. I think either could do a decent draft here, and sometimes with the draft (and NCAA March Madness) sometimes the best pickers aren't always the ones who over-analyze every detail. But there's also something to be said about the most knowledgeable and most prepared making their own good luck. I actually want to further integrate some of the league drafts with some of the interactive draft games to make it easier for everyone (including those without a ton of free time) to learn about their picks and have strong choices from as many teams as we can overall.
We probably won't find the perfect mix that will be best for everyone for speed or timing. We've tried a couple different variations over the years and will just have to keep getting feedback on what most want. Because I'm on the edge of my seat at times during the draft having to watch fairly close to be able to react if a problem comes up, I'm always a bit relieved when the drafts are over. So quicker is probably better for me, but as we strengthen up the scripts to have fewer problems hopefully that won't be as much of a concern and I can just let things run without needing to correct the odd situation or two that sometimes pop up.
We'll put a poll up here pretty soon with some of the ideas while it's fresh in our minds versus asking again 10 months from now. Thanks for feedback and suggestions.
One thing about that is website navigation and communication are a lot slower than if I was on a comp.
