Tanking

[TylerW]

Now, this may seem odd to a lot of you given my team's record in the AFFL the last 2 seasons but I noticed something after the Week 15 sims.

If a team has a perfectly capable starting QB, should they be forced to play him if they're already eliminated from the playoffs or do we let them run their team however they want and let them start a 3rd string guy who barely has a rating?

Personally, I think a team should be forced to start the best possible roster as possible unless they have 2 legit guys capable of putting up starter worthy numbers. I don't think it's fair to the teams that really have awful rosters and no major position players that once eliminated a team sits their top players for no reason.

[tino38]

I noticed it's happening in the DFFL too

[Goodell]

With so many teams and if we're going to ever expand, I need those types of checks (if we're going to have any) to be automated.

At one time in past off-seasons talked about possibly having a mechanism to bench a set starting QB for the backup at halftime under certain conditions such as team losing by more than a score and backup having a higher grade or stats. The thinking there beyond tanking would also be giving a little boost to a team if they forgot to put a previously hurt starting QB back into their depth chart or if his injury situation was questionable and not sure if he was going to start, etc.

We already have something that helps with trying to bench star RBs, for example, where we pull in the top stat for RB and WRs who aren't on the depth chart already. They may have a limited role as the RB3 or WR5, but if the guys designated as starters ahead of them have few stats then their bigger stats will lead to them getting plenty of action even if not started in the depth chart. For WRs one of their biggest input is the grade and no way to bench that calculation.

If I recall allowing some kind of benching of starting QB at halftime was supported before in some discussions on that but wasn't ever able to build that fully into the game yet. It wouldn't be complete over-rule of depth charts, but a way for the game simulator to get the best players into action as circumstances dictate (such as if losing and QB playing badly to replace the QB during the game).

[whteshark]

Now, this may seem odd to a lot of you given my team's record in the AFFL the last 2 seasons but I noticed something after the Week 15 sims.

If a team has a perfectly capable starting QB, should they be forced to play him if they're already eliminated from the playoffs or do we let them run their team however they want and let them start a 3rd string guy who barely has a rating?

Personally, I think a team should be forced to start the best possible roster as possible unless they have 2 legit guys capable of putting up starter worthy numbers. I don't think it's fair to the teams that really have awful rosters and no major position players that once eliminated a team sits their top players for no reason.

We discussed tanking in the off season pretty extensively. One of the ideas was setting a minimum number of wins over a three year period to motivate GM's to field some kind of team, instead of stockpiling draft picks and tanking year in and year out. Maybe it' something that should be reviewed.

[Goodell]

Now, this may seem odd to a lot of you given my team's record in the AFFL the last 2 seasons but I noticed something after the Week 15 sims.

If a team has a perfectly capable starting QB, should they be forced to play him if they're already eliminated from the playoffs or do we let them run their team however they want and let them start a 3rd string guy who barely has a rating?

Personally, I think a team should be forced to start the best possible roster as possible unless they have 2 legit guys capable of putting up starter worthy numbers. I don't think it's fair to the teams that really have awful rosters and no major position players that once eliminated a team sits their top players for no reason.

We discussed tanking in the off season pretty extensively. One of the ideas was setting a minimum number of wins over a three year period to motivate GM's to field some kind of team, instead of stockpiling draft picks and tanking year in and year out. Maybe it' something that should be reviewed.

Yeah, the firing of GM definitely gets talked about and I'm sure will again this off-season.

I have to figure out what I'll do with the leagues and where they'll go, especially as other things change throughout my career and other projects come up, etc.

Ideally, I'll keep working the systems to make fully automated and really easy to keep adding leagues and more and more players. That'll probably lead to increase of some guys who maybe should be fired with more and more new players added we don't know as well yet and maybe not successful at this. So might make some sense to build something in the systems to deal with that. But on the other hand, as expansion becomes more possible one of the reasons I'd put some time toward that goal would be so that expansion would come for new players on a small fee basis perhaps. And in that case, perhaps not as willing to fire guys if they are putting their own hard earned money into playing (whether they are good or not).

So stuff to think about ahead as we grow. Or perhaps decide not to grow but I turn more stuff over to others and focus on other things and it's just friendly games here run by our selves ahead. Ideally, though, the hope when started was to eventually grow into a bigger system that had more players and more leagues and became at least self-sustaining if not something more.

The approach I took with those firing discussions, of which there are a lot of people passionately FOR and also some passionately AGAINST, was that might be best for not if it applied to certain designated leagues only. Where people could be promoted into higher leagues when openings happened by proving themselves in other leagues, but also where players could be kicked out of the highest leagues for under performance to create openings for the guys deserving chances. So it would apply only to some leagues in my mind ideally. And if eventually having a lot of leagues and a lot of new players, I probably would like to see some more automated mechanisms probably within the sim that keeps things honest and less manipulatable to extremes by forcing the better players onto the field as we already do bringing in guys off the depth charts already. That would prevent some tanking concerns from benchings, but not sure there's really a good way to prevent bad rosters entirely especially if we expand and more people come paying to play. But I'm not sure that's horrible or unrealistic either, as the NFL has the Raiders too. Stuff like that happens in reality also.

[TylerW]

Now, this may seem odd to a lot of you given my team's record in the AFFL the last 2 seasons but I noticed something after the Week 15 sims.

If a team has a perfectly capable starting QB, should they be forced to play him if they're already eliminated from the playoffs or do we let them run their team however they want and let them start a 3rd string guy who barely has a rating?

Personally, I think a team should be forced to start the best possible roster as possible unless they have 2 legit guys capable of putting up starter worthy numbers. I don't think it's fair to the teams that really have awful rosters and no major position players that once eliminated a team sits their top players for no reason.

We discussed tanking in the off season pretty extensively. One of the ideas was setting a minimum number of wins over a three year period to motivate GM's to field some kind of team, instead of stockpiling draft picks and tanking year in and year out. Maybe it' something that should be reviewed.

Yeah, for sure. I remember this big discussion. I just think that sometimes teams don't attempt to tank and still struggle to find wins so those GMs are doing nothing wrong. It benefited me this week in the CFFL but I just think it's pretty ridiculous when a GM arguably one of the most effective 2nd half QBs this year in place of a scrub.

And thanks for the in depth responses, as always Troy!

[vikingfan]

The penalty for such moves is that their pick is moved to the end of the round. I don't know what the examples we are talking about, but if Kelly Stouffer is staring in place of Drew Brees, then its an automatic penalty.

With so many teams and if we're going to ever expand, I need those types of checks (if we're going to have any) to be automated.

At one time in past off-seasons talked about possibly having a mechanism to bench a set starting QB for the backup at halftime under certain conditions such as team losing by more than a score and backup having a higher grade or stats. The thinking there beyond tanking would also be giving a little boost to a team if they forgot to put a previously hurt starting QB back into their depth chart or if his injury situation was questionable and not sure if he was going to start, etc.

We already have something that helps with trying to bench star RBs, for example, where we pull in the top stat for RB and WRs who aren't on the depth chart already. They may have a limited role as the RB3 or WR5, but if the guys designated as starters ahead of them have few stats then their bigger stats will lead to them getting plenty of action even if not started in the depth chart. For WRs one of their biggest input is the grade and no way to bench that calculation.

If I recall allowing some kind of benching of starting QB at halftime was supported before in some discussions on that but wasn't ever able to build that fully into the game yet. It wouldn't be complete over-rule of depth charts, but a way for the game simulator to get the best players into action as circumstances dictate (such as if losing and QB playing badly to replace the QB during the game).

[vikingfan]

I think we need a cleanup of the free agent list to remove the retired and deceased players. As well as the TJ Houshmanzaheh's and Willie McGinnest's of the world. Favre shouldn't be allowed to play as he is not even playing. Lucky that team has no picks.

The penalty for such moves is that their pick is moved to the end of the round. I don't know what the examples we are talking about, but if Kelly Stouffer is staring in place of Drew Brees, then its an automatic penalty.

With so many teams and if we're going to ever expand, I need those types of checks (if we're going to have any) to be automated.

At one time in past off-seasons talked about possibly having a mechanism to bench a set starting QB for the backup at halftime under certain conditions such as team losing by more than a score and backup having a higher grade or stats. The thinking there beyond tanking would also be giving a little boost to a team if they forgot to put a previously hurt starting QB back into their depth chart or if his injury situation was questionable and not sure if he was going to start, etc.

We already have something that helps with trying to bench star RBs, for example, where we pull in the top stat for RB and WRs who aren't on the depth chart already. They may have a limited role as the RB3 or WR5, but if the guys designated as starters ahead of them have few stats then their bigger stats will lead to them getting plenty of action even if not started in the depth chart. For WRs one of their biggest input is the grade and no way to bench that calculation.

If I recall allowing some kind of benching of starting QB at halftime was supported before in some discussions on that but wasn't ever able to build that fully into the game yet. It wouldn't be complete over-rule of depth charts, but a way for the game simulator to get the best players into action as circumstances dictate (such as if losing and QB playing badly to replace the QB during the game).

[Goodell]

It's a matter of time right now. Will someday put a whole lot of hours into pouring over the data, but right now barely able to find time to run games higher priority. On my list prior to free agency. Ideally will have some way of anyone being able to make a suggested change of player status into the system that I can just double-check quickly and change.

The game simulator doesn't care about the name for guys like Favre. If no grade, player gets the same mediocre default update no matter the name.

[Ben C.]

Favre shouldn't be allowed to play as he is not even playing. Lucky that team has no picks.

Favre is playing because Rodgers is out and the backups I had to start the season ended up being replaced by Matt Flynn on the Packers. Since the choice was between either the default update with Scott Tolzien or the default update with Brett Favre, I decided to have some fun and pretend that Favre came out of retirement. I'm pretty sure you'll agree that it's not out of the question that he'd decide to do that. And it's certainly not about "tanking" in this case. My team is treading water until Rodgers returns in Week 17.