Dear Bruce Irvin: Welcome to your new home as the Will LBer in the Donkey's 4-3 system...

And yes, you will get to put your hand on the ground and attack. A lot.

That's another good point. If you're decimated by injuries and you move your outside linebacker to strong safety, you might change your game plan to blitz him more and your other safety less. You can adjust.

I had some rash of injuries to my Sandbox team last season, and only had one TE left. So when I needed my jumbo formation I put a backup guard at the second TE spot and started calling more running plays and not targeting many passes in his direction. But I think he still caught a couple.

Another question/suggestion:

Will there ever be any kind of 'coaching' rankings? For instance, it's just damn tough to tell by looking at the box score whether or not my DE sealed the edge on a sweep and pushed the RB inside. It seems like there ought be some kind of way for us to know how effective some of these guys have actually been, apart from the box score.

I know that's probably something that would be a long time coming, but it would ultimately be pretty critical if we're going to consider this a completely comprehensive simulation. Without virtual eyes on the game, we'll really struggle to know how many of our more under the radar positions have played.

We've talked about doing something like that, which is more or less the player's film grade after the game. This would be useful because I really can't tell you if David Stewart should start over Todd Herreman at right tackle.

It's a lower priority right now, but it is something that we want to add. Once we start charging for the game (Leagues 1 and 2 will always be free as a reward for beta testing, by the way), this could even be a premium service or a service in a higher-end league.

can I switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4? I have casey hampton so that would better fit my defense..

Yes, when the season starts we get to select our base defense again.

Now about that 4-3 personnel you have on your roster - I'd gladly take some of them off your hands for you, particularly DTs and MLBs.

I'll make him a better offer :D. I need help across the entire front 7. And I have 3-4 DE's I can move.

The draft aside, what would also really really suck is to set up a trade with someone to trade a bunch of DE4's for another teams OLBs, etc....just to suit scheme since the position they are in has an impact, then only to have half those players re-positioned after the trade. I see players that are called one position here and another on some website about players and I'm worried about making moves just because if I would have stayed pat they might move to what I needed.

(Shrug.) It's the fog of war. Coaches and GMs get hit by surprises all the time.

So far this offseason I've added:

CB Devin McCourty
LT Donald Penn
RT Tyson Clabo
DT Michael Brockers
TE Dwayne Allen

What I have done should be considered ILLEGAL

How'd you get McCourty?

Traded Sean Smith and Zane Beadles.

Understood I suppose. I'll just avoid trying to better my team via trade in that manner I guess and just go for the hodge podge of best talent I can keep in spite of what they position is. Selecting a 3-4 vs a 4-3 doesn't really matter as much either I guess, since your 4-3 might turn itself into a 3-4 despite the coach screaming at players to get the hell back where they were supposed to be practicing in camp.

In the modern game the players run the show. "I'm not playing right tackle. I'm a left tackle." It's a shame, really.

LT Anthony Costanzo
RT Anthony Davis
DE Chandler Jones
DE Bruce Irvin
CB Rodgers-Cromartie

I like your offseason a little more than mine, but mine's pretty damn good in its own right and I've got a title in my pocket already.

It ought to be illegal for top teams to add the talent we have.

From one ball-ass GM to another...

http://img.pandawhale.com/54546-Chee...t-gif-OLQT.gif

But what did you lose to get those guys? Your p.r. department is spinning, when the truth is that Duluth is making the biggest step forward by adding Frank Gore, Ronde Barber, Gosder Cherilus, and Justin Tuck.

ive added, Sean Smith, Reggie Bush, Lavonte David, Zach Brown, Mark Barron, Robert Quinn. I think thats it.

I like those linebackers.

Thanks

Still thinking it over night trade Hampton and run 43 I'm just a 34 homer because I love using linebackers and different looks

Found what I was looking for

I may not have acquired the star power that some of yall did, but I think I did a good enough job rebuilding this team from what I inherited, I feel like I should be a playoff team now, especially with Flacco leading the charge.

HB- Was: Thom Jones, Peyton Hillis, Ryan Torain
Now: Trent Richardson, Pierre Thomas, Mike Goodson

WR:Was: Brad Smith as my 3rd WR
Now Denarious Moore

DE- Was: Vaughn Martin as starting DE
Now: Chris Clemons

OLB: Was: Jason Taylor
Now: Whitney Merciless

CB: Was: Asante Samuel, Byron Westbrook, Tyron Lewis, Keenan Lewis
Now: Asante Samuel, Tramon Williams, Tracy Porter, Byron Westbrook.

You bastard.

My CB Rashad Charmichael is Roc Carmichael. You misspelled his name and now have him in the free agent pool in League 2. League 1 might be the same.

I know that cdcox is tied up at the moment, but I'll make sure he sees this.

Thanks!

Fixed.

When does bidding begin for free agents? Also, I have been trying to plug Morris Claiborne into one of my starting cornerback positions but he doesn't show up. He's on my roster but I can't put him in the slot.

You can't do the depth chart right now until we get everything updated.

Free agency starts on June 9th, but you can't bid until all of your current players are under contract.

Ah. It looks like you've got that underway or handled.

Thanks

Looking at my cap space left vs (almost) everyone else one of two things is going on:
Either I'm using a different strategy in regard to contracts OR I have very little to no clue what the hell I'm doing

Sadly, I suspect the latter is the case.......at least I'm consistent, I'm doing it in both leagues.

I think there are multiple strategies that can be effective. A few people appear to be taking an aggressive win-now strategy where they are mortgaging the future (both in terms of salary commitments and draft picks) in order to put the best possible team on the field over the next year or two. One thing is for certain, if an owner has a lot of talent on his roster, and if many of them are on short contracts, that owner will bleed a lot of talent into future FA pools. Due to needs to sign their star players coming up on short contracts, they may also end up not being as active in future FA pools. Or maybe they manage to thread the needle and maintain key members of their overall talent and put a strong team on the field for years.

I think those who sew up their key talent early on can be really successful down the road as long as the players careers are productive throughout the length of their contracts. Ideally you'll have fewer needs down the road and an easier time filling key needs. The key risk in this strategy is if certain players fade in the latter parts of their contract you could end up with a lot of dead cap space.

I don't think anyone has a lock on a long term winning strategy at this point.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's still not a way to see how long people are signed to on potential trade partners' rosters, correct?

EDIT: Hell, I just now saw that you can see how many FA dollars people have to spend. **** me - I thought I was in pretty good shape. As it turns out, about 1/2 the league can dwarf my piddling FA budget.

Nope. Coming soon. I want to get contract lengths as transparent as possible. For now if you are doing a trade, it will be worth discussing the present contract length and I expect people to be honest until we can make it more transparent.

Same here. My team is probably more in need of a key free agent or two than most teams, but I'm probably not going to be able to afford to win any bidding wars. I guess that means I should play with an eye toward the 2014 season or so.

The big guessing game at this point is gong to be what it takes to win a bidding war. I haven't delved into the market in depth yet so I don't know the supply. Will tons of money get thrown at a few big names? Will a little money get spread across a lot of solid players? It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

Wait what where do you see how much everyone else has?

Edit: wow found it, a lot of people have tons of money left. You think about it though a lot of top players are older, so you're not going to give a tom brady a 7 year contract when he probably has 3 seasons left.

Yes.

The bidding war for Richard Sherman is going to be LEGENDARY.

I'm sooo glad I'm not going in on that. LMAO

haha I bet he goes for more then 200 easy

Double-ewe Tee Eff

How the hell do some of you have so much money left over? I'm going to be lucky to pick up the 3 guys I need to fill out my 53. Shit.

There are few big names out there, Sherman and Cruz are gonna cost top dollar.

The opening bid is going to b more than $200

If he goes for under $400 I'd b shocked

LMAOLMAO

I bet there is some crazy ****er who only wants an upgrade at CB and will go hog wild.

Here's the thing - there aren't a lot of teams with a shitload of cap space that also don't have several holes in their roster.

The teams that have that kind of cap space probably shouldn't be throwing $400 at one player. There are a bunch of good players out there.

I put together a budget that I'm going to scrap now (way more money than I thought there would be) but I had 8-10 legitimately excellent players out there. If you're after interior O-Linemen, it's a damn gold mine.

Nobody knows how much cap space anyone has.

Unless you haven't made up your mind yet or are otherwise just getting a crafty bastard, the standings page shows how much cap space you have.

So unless you're slow playing it, we all know you're sitting on $700 in cap space.

****

So....not slow playing, then.

Yes, we all know what kind of cap space you've cleared.

Free agency, 2012: Cedar Rapids, Richmond and Denver claim all the good talent. Everyone else gets shit. LMAO

LMAO

Im going my entire 444 on Sherman I will either get him or make my league pay

LMAOLMAOLMAO

This is actually more fun than the games sometimes.

I used to play online franchises in Madden and we had a hoot. A HOOT.

Offseason was the best.

Haha ya online franchise was insane sometimes.

Maybe Richmond, but the other 2 of you have 12 or 13 spots to fill with your $700-$800. I've got 3 spots to fill with my $300. Who do you think can afford to go higher on a single player?

Question.

League 1 has teams with 67,64,64 and 59 players on the rosters.

League 2 has teams with 65,64,64,63,63,61 and 60 players on the rosters.

How many days before the free agent auction are you going to require teams to cut to 53? The odds of them releasing players better than what is available is pretty good, and I'd like time to figure out who has been released. That just seems right.

Secondly, some of these teams appear to have been abandoned by their owners. Who/How is it decided which players will be cut from those teams?

That's 42 and 69 players just to get them to roster limit.
Some will be no brainer retired players, but some will have offered production in 2012, and some may still be on NFL teams. This stuff should happen prior to the free agent auction, IMO.

Third, the reason this came up is I was offered a trade from a team with 59 players on the roster. I don't think it's right that teams can be offering trades while holding more than the roster limit now that a free agent system is in place.
Nothing against the dude that offered the trade, but that is as flawed as being able to trade players without contracts now that the contract system is in place.

BTW, I'm just offering input in case it helps.

Good points all.

Technically, teams don't have to be down to 53 players until free agent bidding starts on June 9th. And now that I think about it, they don't even have to be at 53 then. They just can't bid on free agents until then. We may have to make an adjustment to that rule to get them to 53 by the start of free agency for the reason you mentioned.

We're developing a nifty automated system to handle roster cutdowns and contract signings for abandoned teams. It's not in place yet so if someone's abandoned their team I may leap into the fray on June 8th and do it for them. I need to send some reminders to teams first, though, because I'm not sure who's abandoned and who's just bidiing their time, thinking and pondering and paciing in front of their desk as they ponder their roster moves.

If they're really abandoned, I'd take on another team.

Cool. I'll inquire. My suspicion is that people are just laying low, but if anyone is having cold feet about the intense pressure and fan scrutiny of running a Sandbox team, I'll let you know.

After a little evaluation of The Sandbox, I thought I would share my findings with the group.

Named roster spots on offense = 18
Named roster spots on defense = 17 (4-3) or 16 (3-4, I assume, both my teams run 4-3)

The breakdown goes thusly:
Offense
LT
LG
C
RG
RT
QB
TE1
TE2
TE3
WR1
WR2
WR3
WR4
WR5
FB
HB1
HB2
HB3

The question is to the team owner as to how many positions to carry back ups at.
Positions with built in depth seem less necessary to carry them than solo spots.
BU Tackles can be found to cover both sides, and a G/C combo can cover one interior line issue.
BU QB seems a must, but how about BU FB? You can adjust your offense to compensate for the loss of multiple skill position players, so BUs everywhere but QB seem a luxury more than necessity.

Defense got interesting to me, seeing as we've not chosen yet for this season. Like I said, both my teams run the 43, and I think I see a distinct advantage to running the 34 in The Sandbox. I'm assuming the NT rotation isn't three deep, obviously, if it is, then it's fine. I know the 43, so I'll use that here:
RDT1
LDT1
RDT2
LDT2
RDE1
LDE1
RDE2
LDE2
WLB
MLB
SLB
RCB
LCB
FS
SS
NICK CB
DIME CB

Same thing on defense. How many BU LBs can you get away with? If you can get a combo LB, can a team carry just two BUs?
It seems it's unavoidable, you need to carry at least 6 DB, but can you adjust your nickle and dime defenses rather than carry BUs at those spots?

Figure in a punter and kicker for two more named spots and that is 37 names to plug in.

After those 37 names you put in, the question is can a street free agent perform reasonably as well as someone you commit contract dollars and years to?
That number, IMO, seems to be 3-6 justifiable BUs on offense and 2-6 on defense.
So what I've found is that a roster of 42-49 seems to be a fairly responsible number to land around for a Sandbox team.
Or is that just stupid?

Interesting analysis.

If you think you only need 42-49, then do you put more money in those guys or are your last roster spots speculative developmental guys?

Me, personally? I don't think the value is there to hold developmental guys as it stands. The burden of one whiff hurts because of the contract implications, why would I risk it repeatedly?
My money will be spent on my best players. The fewer of them I have to field, the more they all get. That's why if the 34 requires one fewer named player, I'll move to it.

Why would the 3-4 require one fewer named player?

Not stupid, but you are forgetting something.

CD has advised on on a couple of occasions that D-lineman and RBs can and will wear out with overuse.

I think you're understating the value of having several decent D-lineman you can rotate in and out. Additionally, you're welcome to try to get by with only one swing tackle if you'd like, but as someone that watched 3/5 of his line miss 1/2 the season or better last year, I'd advise against it.

I think you can get away with 48-50, but if you can get 53 quality players on your roster, you'd be well served to do so.

And if you're moving to the 3-4, I've got a nice 3-4 ILB I'd gladly send your way in Brook Reed for a MLB as I'm switching over to the 4-3 (purely personal preference).

The 43 makes use of backups at both T and E for 8 linemen and 3 LBs for a total of 11
It would appear there are only 6 linemen and 4 LBs in the 34,making 10
DBs being equal, you have to plug one less name into your Sandbox lineup if you run a 34.

That's the point I'm getting at. The Dline and RB attrition is accounted for by our naming backups at those positions. Get good T2 and E2 and good HB 2 and 3, but you can't play more than that any given week.
I hear you about Oline, two would be my bare minimum.

Rain Man or CD. As the owner of the Chula Vista squad, I am based out of Shreveport, LA.North Louisiana has been begging for a team sine the Shreveport Pirates of the CFL left, an alternative to the non Saints fan. Is relocation to Shreveport an options, and if so, can we be called the Shreveport Mudbugs or Shreve City Crawdads?

We can take care of that. Name changes are a lower priority right now, but we'll put it on the list.

Just a heads up for now, but the Pembroke Pines Patteeus are thinking about changing both the name and the official color of our fanchise to the Pembroke Pines Periwinkle Patteeus. I'll let you know if anything official is decided. Until then, no action is required.

I think the 53 man is a little much in this because you don't have the special teams only players on your roster also. I am good with it and all but I agree you wont need to use all 53 even though I will.

I've got several special teams specialists on my team. I'm going to win it all with kicks and coverage. Well, as soon as I find a kicker, that is.

I figured out what you were saying there when you broke it down to patteau.

You're essentially saying that, since D-line has a fatigue element to it but LBs don't, you're better served with only having backups at the 3 D-line positions (where they're needed) w/ no backups at the 4 LB (where they aren't) than vice versa. Essentially, the 4-3 requires 8+3 in the box (4 starters, 4 backups and 3 linebackers) whereas the 3-4 requires 6+4 (3 starters, 3 backups, 4 linebackers).

It makes some sense, though ultimately I think you can have 1 extra DE to give your 2 DEs a breather and 1 extra DT to give your 2 DTs a breather. So really, you're talking about 4+2+3 = 9 (4 starters, 1 backup DE, 1 backup DT, 3 LBers) vs. 3+2+4 = 9 (3 starters, 1 backup DE, 1 backup NT and 4 LBers).

Where I really think there's an advantage right now anyway, is that the NFL has migrated to a 3-4 league, as such, there are simply more 3-4 players available in the pool.

It's actually very much in contrast to how the real NFL works. In the real NFL, I think a team would be wise to switch to a 4-3 right now because there would be a little bit of a surplus of good 4-3 pass rushers and quicker DT that would be playing DE in a 3-4. Whereas in this league, you're punished for not playing a guy how the NFL actually played him, so the relative dearth of 4-3 teams means a shortage of 4-3 personnel and thus inflation of their value and an increase in the position 'penalties' that come by playing them out of position.

It's a little frustrating to me, but I figure this will eventually work itself out. I figure eventually attributes and skill-sets will be more important to the performance of the players than their listed position in the prior season. But that's going to take a lot of work.

Periwinkle is an underused color in professional football uniforms. That'll be a good niche for you.

I don't plan on having a 53-man roster. It's not needed.

I can get by with 47.

Here is a ranking of playing ability in Sandbox:

Decent journeyman who sees some snaps during the year > named player on an NFL roster who doesn't see snaps > street free agent

Injuries are a significant factor. Given that we will always do at least part of our free agency after the NFL season is over, we benefit from hind site. But in future years, a lot of the best FA talent will be gone by the time your starting LT gets injured in week 15 of the NFL season. I think there is some benefit to having depth built into your roster.

Two other benefits to depth:

1) Developmental players. Picks past the first 3 rounds of the rookie draft aren't likely to contribute much their first few years. But they can be damn cheap to sign for 3 or 4 years. If you hit on one player every three years that you don't have to bid for on the open market, it is going to put you ahead those who rely only on FA and the first couple of rounds of the draft to build their team. I mean seriously, lets go down the road a few more years when the initial vet acquisition draft has less influence on your roster. Let's say you go with a 47 man roster. You'll be lucky if you drafted 20 of those. Are you seriously planning on acquiring on 25+ players from FA?

2) You keep that talent off the roster of another team.

Now granted you aren't going to be able to throw 6 year contracts at players who likely won't contribute to the W-L record much in a particular year. But for a rookie a 2 to 4 year contract has a very low per-year cost, provides a built in backup, gives you a chance to stumble onto a cheap starter, and keeps your opponents from gaining access to that talent.

I don't know how the economic aspects of the game will work out better than any one else, but I think there will be value in reasonably priced back up talent even if it isn't obvious how they might contribute in a given year.

OK, so you have $107 per spot you have to fill. I have $102. Come at me, bro.

It's not that simple.

When push comes to shove, I doubt you're gonna drop $300 on a particular player.

I'm willing to do that.

Get out of my way.

I have $299 that can make sure you drop all $300 on that player....

Bidding for free agents begins tonight at 12 correct?