2012 Season Update

[Goodell]

About practice squad matchings.... remember that guys on the practice squads are free agents not under contract by anyone. You can match an offer for one of your p-squad guys, but ONLY if you make room on the 53 man roster for them (meaning the team has less than or equal to 52 players on roster).

I'll manually move those guys matched to teams with that opening, but also about done with automating that and having it show up on your team roster to match or not. The system will also not let teams match unless there is a roster opening and cap space for the player being matched.

[Goodell]

Practice squad matchings are now automated. If someone signs a player from your practice squad the system sets a deadline that is one week from the signing, and puts an alert on your team roster page asking you to match or not. It only lets you match if you have a roster spot for the player and cap space. Let me know if any questions, but this should make practice squad signings easier throughout the season.

[Goodell]

The NFL starts their regular season this Wednesday 9/5.

All sim teams need to cut down to 53 players by the start of the NFL regular season on the night of 9/5. Teams that have under 53 players will also see empty spot charges on their roster now, as always during the regular season, so every team is paying for 53 bodies fairly.

All teams also need to always be under the cap.

If a team hasn't signed their 1st or 2nd rounders by the start of the NFL season and have cap space to do so, I'll sign those players for them.

Update your depth chart with the link on your team roster page.

I am working on a roster and salary cap "cop" script that will check the rosters and keep dibs on days over cap or roster limits. This will be kind of an informal aid for now for me and send reminders, but might turn into something more next season where we'd have some verified data related to infractions and could assess penalties related to loss of draft picks or free agency bids/day, etc. to give more teeth to keeping teams within the rules more frequently. Not a rule change on the fly, though, but will be something to think about for enforcement toward future season rules. My busy-ness sometimes leads to more teams staying outside the rules longer, and aiming to automate that enforcement more within the system ahead just FYI.

We may also have some polls on another rule change for next season related to draft signings. Maybe some of that was me being away for a bit more than usual this off-season, but we've have an increase of unrealistic behaviors and 7th round holdouts, etc. that I'd think needs to potentially be adjusted for more realism on pick signings ahread. Thinking perhaps me signing all 3rd to 7th rounders automatically at the start of training camp no matter a team's salary cap, and then having teams sign 1st and 2nd rounders as they clear cap space to do so. Lots of creativity toward avoiding signing bonuses this year or waiting to the end of camp before deciding to keep a pick or not, etc. which is somewhat understandable that teams would push limits, but just gets unrealistic as teams go in those directions that we probably need to get back to how things are done in NFL with picks signed at the start of camp across the league.

[RebelFan]

Just noticed the new practice squad matching feature commish. That's a nice new touch!

[larry linke]

I am one of the guilty parties regarding draft picks signing late. If I am correct, in the NFL, only the top 53 salaries count towards the salary cap. Some of us like to juggle 65 to 70 players in the off season (right Chicago) which is realistic but becomes a balancing act with the salary cap. If you are going to sign the draft picks before camp, can you consider adjusting the salary cap rules to mirror the NFL also.

I have two suspended players (dam that Will Smith, for the second year in a row) and (Virgil Green). Are we going to get a prompt to remove them from our roster like last year?

Lastly, I have five unrated free agents on my roster. E J Henderson's 88 rating is easy to find on the internet, but I have been unable to find a complete list. To have the unrated free agents in 2011 one way and to arbitrarily change the rules in 2012 without warning is unfair. Chicago (AFFL) has already looked up the ratings for some of us. If you could contact another GM who you know who has access to the ratings, whose ratings agree with the numbers supplied by Chicago, that would solve the problem.

Larry
Minnesota AFFL

[Goodell]

Just noticed the new practice squad matching feature commish. That's a nice new touch!

Thanks. Hopefully that ends up being a good thing for GMs and myself without the manual processes and time tracking involved, and also should alert teams to a practice squad signing where they might have missed it before.

[Ben C.]

Lastly, I have five unrated free agents on my roster. E J Henderson's 88 rating is easy to find on the internet, but I have been unable to find a complete list. To have the unrated free agents in 2011 one way and to arbitrarily change the rules in 2012 without warning is unfair. Chicago (AFFL) has already looked up the ratings for some of us. If you could contact another GM who you know who has access to the ratings, whose ratings agree with the numbers supplied by Chicago, that would solve the problem.

Larry
Minnesota AFFL

I find it extremely hard to believe that EJ Henderson's rating would be 88. This is precisely why we need to have documentation. It's not "arbitrarily changing the rules." We've always relied upon the data being published somewhere on the internet, and you run the risk of free agents not having a rating.

[Goodell]

I added some new IR players from NFL.com/transactions today and will also try to add in the suspensions today.

About free agency grades, people posted published lists in the past and we used them. Nobody's posted that info this year yet, and as mentioned we've not done just going by one guy's word (no offense to any one guy, but have to have more backing that up in publically available data). I haven't looked very hard for free agency grades with some of the other changes getting ready for the season, but will start to look more and if others find resources they're welcome to pass along as people have in the past.

If there are several resources all backing up an NFL free agent grade, that would seem to be fairly reliable and something we could use for sim teams to make decisions. If that player is on an NFL roster in reality (just wasn't given a grade initially for some reason) he'll likely have a real update from EA Sports as soon as before week 1, though, that we'd use the updated info of course. If that player isn't on any NFL team in reality, we can use that multiple-referenced free agency grade for the start of the season. If the player remains without a job in the NFL, that grade would be slashed way down after week 4, though, as we've always done.

I'm hoping we'll get a madden grade update going into week 1, and I'll use that info (which hopefully covers most players without scores but on rosters now). I'll also attempt to go over the lists sent and posted about this topic and apply those researched free agency grades for now until a further update or week 4. Either way, those grades would be very temporary.

About draft signing rules, yeah we'll definitely have to have a larger discussion about that and possibly making off-season roster accounting changes, etc. that has come up before. More than your situation of fitting everyone under the cap, most concerned about teams drafting players and not having to pay them a cent until after they see if they make an NFL team or not, despite NFL teams having to pay SB at contract signing before camps. The more and more creativity toward our draft, the more unrealistic our league gets and it seems like that's really on the rise this year and something to think about adjusting ahead to keep the integrity of the draft and overall league realism. Definitely might have to be other rules adjusted for that, but wanted to throw out that as something to think about toward future rules changes as we wrap up this year's training camp with increased irregularities. Don't blame teams for trying to be creative within the rules, but might have to look at the rules to stem some of that and keep things within the realistic intentions. It shouldn't be that some teams have to pay their draft picks and other teams don't, and we especially don't want to reward or place incentives on behaving unrealistically but instead create an environment of fairness for all and with as much realism as possible for the NFL GM team building process.

[Zapotek]

Hi Commish,

Loving the quick updates on injuries etc! Do you have any particular timeline in mind for adding Josh Gordon to the teams that won him in the supp draft?

Thanks,

Zapo

[Zapotek]

Got him. Thanks!