09 Rules: Adjustments

[Goodell]

Currently we take individual skill position game updates and adjust them based upon your supporting cast grades versus your sim defense opponent. We need to have adjustments from those game stats to make building a defense or offensive line meaningful. The question is are our adjustments too much? I wanted to do a little more statistical evaluation here before looking closely at that, but short on research time with other projects needed before launching off-season activities.

Currently we adjust game updates for QBs like this:

Receiver Grades + OL Grades - Sim Defense Front 7 Grades - Sim Defense Secondary Grades

With a max of 15% capping adjustment to stay at least in the same ballpark as player performance where that individual ability has meaning also and not just entirely dependent upon grades of others. If a max advantage for the QB he's given an extra TD to update. If a max disadvantage given an extra pick.

For RBs, it's OL Grade versus defensive Front 7 grades for the difference in the trenches altering their yards/carry with that capped at 1 yard as some guys like Barry Sanders are great even if a horrible line and shouldn't have a 5.0 average turned into 2.0 average on line alone as it doesn't recognize individual ability.

What we've seen in Reader's Digest level of analysis is mostly great team grades leading to championships here. They only real exception is the Saints in the CFFL but I'll still contend that was primarily a short-sample situation where wouldn't win those upsets most of the time when games run over and over.

Are line and defense grades TOO strong now? Not strong enough despite the championship results the past few seasons? Just right? I think we need some mix that both:

- Isn't too strong to completely eliminate individual player greatness.

- Isn't too weak to shift focus away from building up strong fundamentals of winning championships with defense and being tough in the trenches -- also to differentiate this a bit from fantasy football. But not so much that Peyton Manning becomes the worst QB in the league if he switches teams or has a couple injuries.

This may have to be something that gets addressed more during the long months of May, June, July, and August when some time to tweak the game simulator software with different settings to see what gives the best results with more time for statistical analysis.

My default position would be no huge changes for this year, but maybe some slight tweaks and continuing to run tests and look at results to apply to future adjustment. Perhaps changing the RB cap to 1.5 yards to match up with the 15% for QB cap.

We'll be making some other changes discussed last off-season that I didn't have time to implement last year or were more complex but have talked about wanting to try again this year for better sim results:

- Adding in big plays in game updates.
- Making INT/TD ratios in-game adjustments more comprehensive.
- Adjusting game updates for better context (100 yard game against great defense better than 100 yards against crappy one, etc.) and not giving some players boosts to performance when logically shouldn't.
- Having some defensive stats so some real defensive impacts from week to week and not just on the offensive side (although to a lesser degree as a CB getting 2 picks off a horrendous backup QB in real life won't mean sim Peyton Manning throws those same picks).

And those may impact the sim results more than any adjustment formulas. It's something we'll have to just see the results as things altered and probably not change too much until more data. Just wanting a general feel if performances adjusted too much or too little. My guess is a big group in the middle but extremes on both sides.

[Goodell]

Can't get any more even with 8 votes for each (too much, too little, just right)... I guess that's a sign of things about right if split so equally.

We'll take more time in the long summer months where very little sim football activity to test game simulator adjustments.

As for going into free agency, I would advise that if any adjustment made to the game simulator based upon how important grades are that it would be MINIMAL. Perhaps moving the maximum or minimum caps around or something, but not tremendously different from how grades have impacted the sim so far. That is always a work in progress that we want to keep improving the simulated results, so make sure when making decisions to keep in mind the overall objectives of the league to improve there and make it as realistic as possible over time. Strong lines and defense are good things in reality, and have been very good things here -- even if the exact application of that in the sim code gets shifted slightly as test results analyzed. We'll always look for a balance where individual greatness is recognized in weekly updates but at the same time realistically adjusted depending upon the sim environment differences (better sim line going against a worse sim defense will be good for a QB/RB's chances for improved numbers). The amount of that adjustment could be altered with more and more analysis of the generated results as we go along. But good to know there is so much balance on conclusions there so far by GMs. Must be doing something a little right if we keep that up.