JUST THREE MORE WEEKS,BABY!

My defense was supposedly good this year, but whatever.

At least I didn't go 15-1 and LOSE IN THE FIRST ROUND in this league.

Luckily I withstood the stupid 200 yards rushing from Cam.

Whoa. The Oklahoma City-Topeka game was dramatic. Pitted the top two quarterbacks in the NFL, Aaron Rodgers and Alex D. Smith.

Lost to a better team.

Congrats, Fort Collins - good luck going forward.

Being in the same division as Fort Collins, I'll be glad when Tom Brady retires.

Didn't change a thing from the past two weeks and magically, Golden Tate, Hixon, and Kerley decided to show up.

What in the ****.

I queued up a blitz-heavy gameplan, and evidently it was a really bad idea.

Sad, considering my offense was nearly perfect.

Great game between Rancho Cucamonga and Sioux Falls. Rancho's defense is a tough group to face.

Matt Stafford has ice water running in his veins look at this last drive to tie the game.
Pressured on almost every pass

4th Q 4:17 1st and 10 St. Louis 20 Matthew Stafford passes complete to Mike A. Williams for a gain of 7 yards.
4th Q 3:53 2nd and 3 St. Louis 27 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Josh Morgan for a gain of 10 yards.
4th Q 3:29 1st and 10 St. Louis 37 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Jeff Cumberland for a gain of 23 yards.
4th Q 2:44 1st and 10 Corona 41 Matthew Stafford passes complete to Will Johnson for a gain of 11 yards. Two minute warning.
4th Q 2:00 1st and 10 Corona 30 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Steve L. Smith for a gain of 8 yards.
4th Q 1:15 2nd and 2 Corona 22 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Mike A. Williams for a gain of 6 yards. time out St. Louis
4th Q 1:07 1st and 10 Corona 16 Matthew Stafford passes complete to Steve L. Smith for a gain of 7 yards. PENALTY. Defensive Pass Interference on Vontae Davis. 5 yards.
4th Q 0:59 1st and 10 Corona 10 Matthew Stafford sacked by Mark Barron for a loss of -7 yards. time out St. Louis
4th Q 0:51 2nd and 17 Corona 18 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Adrian L. Peterson for a gain of 1 yards. time out St. Louis
4th Q 0:43 3rd and 16 Corona 17 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Martellus Bennett for a gain of 11 yards.
4th Q 0:18 4th and 6 Corona 6 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes incomplete to Josh Morgan. PENALTY. Defensive Holding on Kenny Phillips. 3 yards.
4th Q 0:10 1st and goal Corona 3 Matthew Stafford passes incomplete to Martellus Bennett.
4th Q 0:03 2nd and goal Corona 3 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes complete to Steve L. Smith for a gain of 4 yards. Touchdown, conversion

My run game was horrific. I need some skill players in a bad bad way.

Whoa. The ending of the Corona-St. Louis game was epic. You hate to see the refs decide the outcome of a game, but it was dramatic.

BTW, in case you have email notification turned off, winners sim on Saturday.

Rancho's team is so nervous. First time in the playoffs with a new coach with a chance at a SB.

The real kicker is St Louis used a player that doesn't exist. His Mike A Williams is something that was created.
When we drafted, I selected the Tampa Bay Mike Williams. Someone in League 1 selected Seattle's Mike Williams in a later round.
CD labeled them wrong, apparently, because my guy stayed in tact. If you look at the St Louis Mike A Williams PFR profile, it's the old Chiefs TE.
The only reason I even noticed was because I was trying to track the formations used in that last drive.
4:17- 2:44: Passes to WR2, WR3, TE2 and FB? 4 pass plays in 1:33 covering 50 yards, with no time outs? I'm assuming they got out of bounds, but I don't know. Has to be at least 3 different formations, right?
My two penalties came from my nickel and dime backs.
On 1st and 10 from my 16, with 1:07 left St Louis had to be in 3WR, because that's all I play nickel against.
Then, on 4th and 6 from my 6, they are either in 4WR or 5WR spread. The incomplete pass is to WR3, but the defensive holding is on my dime.
The lack of information in regards to formations, matchups, situations, tackles and such is frustrating if you think you get to control your team.
Their QB went from 8/14 with 4:17 left to 18/26 with :03 left, and my defense went from having one neutral zone infraction at 13:02 of the 1st quarter to a PI and defensive holding on two guys that I can't understand why they were even out there.
As always, not bitching. Just feedback.

wtf, I traded for Mike Wallace thinking he is the tampa wr. Why would it be broken like that?

We're digging into the duplicate Mike Williams situation and will let you know what is going on once we get it sorted out.

Critical fourth-quarter interception in the Fort Collins-Oklahoma City game. Quite the change in fortunes.

Wow. The Rancho Cucamonga-St. Louis game had a surprise ending.

Jesus punt block for a td and a punt return wow

Well the two best teams square off in the big game. With the lucky wins my team has been getting I don't see me winning.

Losing a game on a blocked punt +return (which to my knowledge, are out of your control in regards to settings/personnel) seems a bit ridiculous but I'll gladly take the higher draft position.

Ya well I gave up a ton of yards but my defense played amazing, you had the ball for an entire quarter longer than me.

Well, when you have offensive personnel that would make the Jaguars feel proud, you tend to not produce a whole lot.

Rahim Moore is my hero.

Who's performing at halftime?

SIM! SIM! SIM!

Paging CD

Just got home. Sims a comin'

**** this game I'm pissed. Seriously how many penalties do wr actually get, and Blair Walsh missed like 15 fgs this year after missing only 3 in real life. What a bunch of BS

Wow, 13-7 win, with Brady providing 4 turnovers by himself.

9 out of 13 drives started with a pass when I have it set at 40% pass 60% rush. I had run heavy and Peterson only ran it 16 times wtf.

Tacos vs Horseteeth "Super" bowl?

lol, u mad

Ya my first and ten is set at 40% passing yet we threw the ball 9 out of 12 times.

That will happen 1.5% of the time.

Lol

You have to enjoy a defensive battle in the Sandbox bowl. Congrats to Fort Collins for managing to bottle up Adrian Peterson all day.

Ah c'mon tberry.

You had a player with almost 30 sacks with 4 games left, but want to bitch about the ending. :D

Congrats to MagicHef and Fort Collins! Incredible run.

I think he had one sack the last 5 games. I am bitching about the fact the numbers don't add up lol. I might have won if Peterson ran more then 16 times.

My 15-1 team got beat by a 9-7 team in league 1.

No one is allowed to complain about anything else in sandbox ever again.

You should stop bitching and realize that you're not the only one who had statistical bounces go against them. In fact, we all probably did. Let it go.

not in the Sandbox bowl though!!!

It's clear that Greg Hardy was slacking off and a locker room cancer at the end of the season. If you want to regain control of your team and command respect, you need to cut him right now. It'll send a message.

LMAO

Nobody talks about Corey Wootton with 21 sacks? Also losing Nick Fairley at the end killed me to.

Cough. 6 fumbles. Cough.

Thank you!

Tommy tried to give it away, but the defense wouldn't let him.

Okay, everyone. We're looking at the following as a schedule. This is all tentative, and cdcox will update it as he gets all of the pieces in place.

Early next week you'll get an option to re-sign up to two departing free agents.

You'll also get your annual infusion of free agent dollars, which I think we've set at $450. This will be used to sign rookies in the next week, but also free agents over the next several months, so spend wisely. Any dollars you're holding from last year will carry forward, but with a 50% tax.

You'll have two days to sign free agents.

At the same time (give or take a day), we'll put the rookie draft up. The universe will consist of anyone who was drafted. Any undrafted rookies can be signed in the free agency period to follow. You can put your draft board together to prepare.

Draft day will start later in the week. Are there any strong preferences for the day of week? Candidates will likely be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (September 5th through 8th), with a likely preference for Friday here at Sandbox headquarters. Unless there's a huge outcry or quiet technical problem, we'll shoot for Friday the 6th.

When the draft starts, we will have one hour per pick. cdcox is trying to set up an e-mail notification, but we would advise you to have your draft board ready and monitor frequently. If you don't make your pick and don't have a draft board ready, you will draft the highest-drafted player still on the board, even if it's a Bronco or Raider.

With 50 owners & however many coaches, scouts, front office & players' trying to make them all happy with the date/time oh well. Set the times, unless there's something to cause a bunch of no shows (like opening day), we'll deal with it.


My 2 $$ CP leagues both recently drafted & I could only make the end of 1 out of them.

I'm not much of a complainer, it could be said my BF at the time is responsible for my SCI. Oh well.

Okay, we had a big problem in league 2 with Mike Williams, that Brorth initially brought to our attention. I've straightened it out as fairly as possible. It affects Brorth's, Tamba's, and Clay's teams.

The problem came when we initially mixed up the Pro-Football Reference links on the two players playing WR in 2011 named Mike Williams.

Brorth acquired Mike Williams in the initial vet draft in 2011. Unfortunately he got the chump who played for Seattle that year and was out of the league in 2012. He had intended to draft the Tampa Bay WR.

Sometime, Clay's team Sioux Falls acquired the other Mike Williams, which in this case was the Tampa player. Clay thought he had the real deal (and he did) and traded him to St. Louis for Reggie Bush. But Clay never should have had the Tampa Bay Mike Williams, since Brorth had intended to draft this guy in the vet draft.

I've tried to set things right.

I've given the Tampa Bay Mike Williams to Brorth (Corona). My apologies for the screw up. I added a year to his contract so at least you didn't have to pay for the year he wasn't on your roster.

I've moved Reggie Bush back to the Spiders, since they lost the Tampa Bay Mike Williams and the trade was bogus.

Clay got to use Reggie Bush free for one year. I gave him the retired Mike Williams and saved him the trouble of cutting him from the team.

Sorry to all, but it is fixed now.

Seems fairish not much more you can do.

I agree.

Okay, we are good to go for the next steps.

We are gearing up for another exciting year of Sandbox Simulations. You have
an immediate important task to complete. You can sign up to two (2) of your
players whose contracts have expired to new long term contracts. Go to the manage roster page of your sandbox team, set the contract length for the player(s) you want to keep using the selector, and then click the sign all contracts button. Remember that you can only extend two players. You are required to sign them to a contract of 5 or more years. The cost of the contract can be seen in the table at the top of
manage roster page. You need to complete this task before the draft starts.
At that time, all players with zero years remaining on their contracts will
becoem free agents.

DO NOT RELEASE ANY PLAYERS AT THIS TIME UNLESS YOU ARE
SURE YOU DO NOT WANT TO RETAIN THEM THROUGH FREE AGENCY.

The other big event coming up is the 2013 rookie draft. It will start on
Friday at 6:00 PM EDT. In the mean time, you can set your draft board to get
ready for the draft.

Some additional new features:

League wide roster. You can see which players are on which teams, and the length of their contract. You can sort by contract length, any one with a 0 year contract will be a free agent, unless their owner resigns them before the draft.

Trade Block This is pretty self explanatory. Check it out.

DO NOT RELEASE ANY PLAYERS AT THIS TIME UNLESS YOU ARE
SURE YOU DO NOT WANT TO RETAIN THEM THROUGH FREE AGENCY.

An explanation:

If you leave a player with a zero year contract on your roster through free agency, once the winning bid is determined, you'll be given a chance to match it and keep the player. BUT if you release the player you'll lose that right. Just let them sit on your roster without a contract. I want to make this a little more idiot proof, but didn't have time to code anything for now.

If there's a way for me to break the system...

That's what's awesome about the internet. Just hit the back button and it never happened!

Man, I cannot figure out what to do about Vincent Brown. His contract is up and I read in various places that he's perfectly poised to have a breakout season. Then I look at the depth chart for the Chargers and he's behind Eddie Freakin' Royal. If he can't beat out Eddie Royal he's not worth a five-year contract. Unless of course he's about to have a breakout season.

I'm in the same boat. The way things are going, I'll really be counting on Titus Young to have a 'breakout' season.

Wallace Gilberry has earned himself a contract.

The LA Knights announce the signings of Eli Manning to a 5 year contract and Victor Cruz to a 6 year contract.

errrr.... uhhh.... why exactly is it saying the password I have in there (autosaved) is incorrect?

Not sure. Nothing I did on my end should cause that.

If you don't know your password you can reset it from the login page. It will send an email to do that.

Anchorage announces that FB Jed Collins is back for five years under a new contract.

We're debating whether to extend Vincent Brown, but would also consider moving him in a trade. You'll have to move fast if you want, though, because he's either going to be cut or signed long-term in the next 24 hours.

RT Adam Goldbert, G Chris Spencer, OLB Dezmon Moses, OLB Garrett McIntyre, DE Israel Idonije, CB Jacob Lacey, DE Jeremy Mincey, HB Marcus Thigpen, SLB Nate Irving, MLB Paris Lenon, DT Pernell McPhee, MLB Ray Lewis (and we're glad to get that mouth off our team), and NT Shaun Cody are all headed to free agency. If you want any of them cheap, make me an offer. No reasonable offer will be refused.

For general information, here's an example of how the system works when a player gets to a zero-year contract and is eligible for free agency.

Matt Cassel's contract is up, and he hits the zero-year mark. You opt to not give him a long-term extension (5 or more years) so he hits the free agent market.

Bidding is hot and heavy for a veteran quarterback with a playoff appearance, so the bids rapidly go from 1 to 10 to 28 points and beyond, and your division rival ends up as the high bidder at 48 points.

Looking at the contract chart on your "Manage Roster" page, you see that a 48-point contract falls in the realm of a 3-year contract for a quarterback (Tier 1 position).

You can get Matt Cassel back, but you have to give him a longer contract than he is currently being offered. The minimum cost for this is a 74-point contract, which is the minimum cost for a 4-year contract.

Alternately, if you see the bidding stalling out at 48 points and you think that's low, you can actively bid on him as well. You can bid 50 points or 55 points and get him for a three-year contract as long as you're the high bidder.

So you have three ways to keep Matt Cassel.

1. Offer him a 5, 6, or 7 year contract and keep him off the market completely. (You can only do this with two players per year, max.)

2. Wait and see how the bidding goes, and then "match" with a contract that's one year longer than the high bid.

3. Actively bid and outright win the bidding process.

We're working on a rule, henceforth called the "Matt Cassel Rule" about how to handle Item 2 above if no one bids on one of your free agents. I'll post it as an update once we've finalized it.

Little Rock announces the extensions of....Nobody.

Absolutely nobody.

The depth on this team leaves a little to be desired.

Hmmm....

Yeah, those guys intrigued me, but I couldn't bring myself to give them a five-year deal.

My team is so ****ing horrible its incredible.

.. And I work on Friday nights so I'll have to miss the draft. Would have been cool if we did it on Sunday instead. I feel like on a football board most people would have Sundays off.

OK, I see owners have 60 minutes to make their selection. I was under the impression that it would be a quick thing kind of like Fantasy drafts. I should be able to sneak away for a couple minutes in that time..

Each pick takes a while, so as long as you have your draft board set you should be able to pick who you want. And with the third pick your initial draft board doesn't even need to be that big. I bet your second pick won't come around until Saturday.

And yeah, you've got some rebuilding to do. The original owner of that team had some personal things come up and stopped drafting during the original veteran draft that stocked the teams. That happened to several people, but in the case of Lexington the dropout was quick enough that we didn't have a backup plan to draft for him. So they missed a bunch of high picks. You will be a hero in Lexington as you rebuild that team, and again, if another team comes open I can switch you out and make that a league-owned team for a while, too.

Dang it. I forgot that I traded away my first round choice. But Charles Johnson was too tempting for me to pass up.

No Geno Smith for you.

I'm just hoping that Luke Joeckel is still available at 31.

OK, that makes sense. I was honestly looking at the roster and wondering how in ball's name one could be so devoid of talent.

Luckily, the guy knocked the OL, TE and QB out of the park. I'm in desperate need of WRs and a RB, though.

The defense is in MUCH worse shape. The only legitimate starter I have on that side is Stephon Gilmore and last I heard he was banged up. I guess the plus on that situation is that it's basically a clean slate. I can make my own choice between 3-4 and 4-3 without having to actually move anyone. I just wish I had a cornerstone or two in place.. Ah well, time to get to work.

Also for the new guys in league 2, if you miss a pick you get the highest remaining unpicked player from the NFL draft. In some cases that could be a punishment (for example if the guy didn't make the opening day roster).

The Oklahoma City Outlaws agreed to 5-year contracts with P Adam Podlesh and SS Reggie Nelson.

They also announce that they have the dumbest name in the world, and the owner would like to know what forms he has to sign to move the team the **** out of Oklahoma City

Oh, and one more thing...

How are the simulations run, exactly? Like, does a player have to have a good year in the real NFL to be good in the simulations?

I ask because Antoine Winfield is still on my roster and currently doesn't have a team. He's still a not terrible CB who's not playing for very much money. I'd like to keep him around on the roster, but not if the simulation will read his presence as worthless. That won't win me games.

I was wondering the same. My offensive line is pretty solid outside of LT. Currently I have Marshall Newhouse who is listed as a LT on the simulation but is a RT in real life; and although Baluga went down again this season, I just read an article the other day that the Packers are going to go with the rookie Bhaktari or whatever the **** his name is at LT.

So basically, if Newhouse starts at RT for the season but I have him starting at LT will his production be affected in anyway?

I'd also like to know in case I decide to draft Winston or Joekel to play LT since they're both apparently starting at RT for the time being..