A slight refinement is necessary here. If the player is injured all of 2012, this answer is correct. However, a second string G or QB that never sees the field, will play slightly better than a street free agent. The assumption is that the if someone makes an NFL roster as a second stringer their ability is greater than that of a street free agent. So that might be an additional reason to keep a player who did not play in 2012.

Seems like it would make sense to put him in the pool of draftable rookies. I'll do that tonight.

Just going to go over my roster real quick.

Green - set
Blue - could be better, but solid group
Brown - needs improvement
Red - I'm ****ed

OFFENSE

QB - Tom Brady- set here, but may look to take a guy in the draft for the future. Dumped Boller.

RB - Reggie Bush, Ahmad Bradshaw - both had good seasons in 2012 so I'm excited about what they can do. Released Ricky Williams.

FB - Owen Marecic - This guy didn't play much at all last year, and probably needs replaced. I'll keep him around just in case I feel like not playing with a fullback this year.

WR - Torrey Smith, Roddy White, Kenny Britt, Santonio Holmes, Brandon Banks, Anthony Armstrong - bad season for Santonio, but the other three should give me a fairly solid group. It'll be nice to see Britt playing this year. The other two guys are scrubs but I'll keep them around for kick returns and depth.

TE - Delanie Walker - I'm in bad shape here and I released Kellen Winslow, who currently isn't even on an NFL team. Definitely need to grab someone in the draft.

LT - Donald Penn, J'Marcus Webb, Jason Peters - Penn solidifies this position. Webb is a decent backup who may end up playing RT for me if I can't find one. I'll keep Peters around to see if he recovers this season.

LG - Evan Mathis - Mathis was the top G in football last season.[/B]

C - Lyle Sendlein, Brad Meester - Sendlein was injury prone and had a poor season. Brad Meester started every game and was god awful. I'm up shit creek here, give me a paddle that can snap the ball.

RG - Josh Sitton - It's nice to have Sitton back for another All-Pro level season.

RT - Jeremy Bridges, Brandon Keith - Kareem McKenzie's broke dick has been released. Bridges and Keith didn't play in 2012 so I'm ****ed. I need a RT. Perhaps I could flip Zane Beadles for one? Anyone?


Analysis: I'm in good shape apart from C and RT.


DEFENSE

DE - Charlies Johnson, Julius Peppers, Andre Carter, Sam Acho - I'm good here. Prepare for another year of tons of pressure from my defense, sandbox.

DT - Barry Cofield, Antonio Garay, Antonio Dixon - Cofield had a strong season, but Garay only gives me half a year and Dixon just 3 games. I'll need to add a body.

MLB - D'Qwell Jackson, EJ Henderson - Jackson was pretty bad and Henderson didn't play. I'll keep Henderson around just in case he signs with someone, but this looks bad.

OLB - Michael Boley, Thomas Davis, Dontay Moch - Fine here with my starters, and glad to see Davis back on his feet after missing almost all of last season. Need depth. Gonna keep Moch around for at least one more year as he's young.

CB - Devin McCourty, Josh Wilson, Captain Munnerlyn, DJ Moore, Michael Huff - Sean Smith is gone forever, hahaha! With the trade for Devin McCourty, I feel much better about this group.

FS - Dwight Lowery, Ronde Barber - I'm set here, as both players had good seasons. Please note that Barber switched to safety for his 2012 season, so please make that change in the database.

SS - Quinten Mikell, Husain Abdullah - Mikell had a huge bounce back year in 2012 and played all 16 games, so I'm happy with that. I'll keep Abdullah on the roster in case he does well in 2013. He didn't play in 2012.


Analysis: I really need a decent starter at MLB and another DT.


Team needs: C, RT, MLB, DT, K

Ideally I can flip a high pick for a C before the draft. I can get a kicker in free agency.

Following the same code, here are the Duluth Pillagers.

QB - Phillip Rivers, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bruce Gradkowski

I was better off when Rivers was good and Fitzpatrick was promising, but whatever. It's not a terrible roster group. Anyone want Fitzpatrick as a one-year starter?

HB - Frank Gore, Leon Washington, Rashard Mendenhall, Tim Hightower, Maurice Morris

Sure, I gave up my 1st round pick for a 29 year-old running back, but this is my year, and I turned a weakness into a strength. Gore will shoulder the load and Washington will be around on third down.

FB - Jerome Felton, Spencer Larsen

Felton was a pro bowler this year. Good shape.

Randall Cobb, Desean Jackson, Hakeem Nicks, Harry Douglas, Eddie Royal

Jackson and Nicks had off years, but lo and behold, a new star has arisen from our ranks.

TE - Greg Olsen, Rob Housler

They're not the biggest stars, but they will actually do quite nicely.

LT - Jordan Gross

He's all I need.

G - Alex Boone, Stephen Peterman, Jason Pinkson, Vince Manuwai

Two strong starters, and Pinkston is there for depth.

C - Ryan Kalil, Kyle Cook

Now, this is a problem. These guys were supposed to be good, and they both missed much of the season. I need help here.

RT - Gosder Cherilus, Jeremy Trueblood, Ryan Harris, Lydon Murtha

Picked up Cherilus in a trade to strengthen this spot. I'm happy.

K - Nick Folk

Should do fine.

P - Brian Moorman

Should do fine.

FS - Chris Prosinski, Jim Leonhard, Reggie Smith

Need help here bad.

SS - William Moore, Bob Sanders

Moore is fine. Sanders is fictional.

CB - Corey Webster, Javier Arenas, Rashean Mathis, Andre Goodman

Um, little help? Webster is solid at one corner, but this once-strong unit fell apart this year.

OLB - Shaun Phillips, Jameel McClain

No depth, but my starters are fine. I wouldn't mind upgrading McClain and Phillips is on his way down.

[COLOR="rgb(65, 105, 225)"]MLB - Demeco Ryans, Bruce Carter, Pat Angerer
[/COLOR]
I like my depth and hope Carter can take the job. Willing to trade Ryans for the right price.

DE - Elvis Dumervil, Justin Tuck, Adrian Clayborn, Da'Quan Bowers, Daryl Tapp, Dave Tollefson, Eric Moore.

In the long run, I really like this group. In the short run, they were savaged by injuries so much that I had to trade for Tuck to plug the dyke. I'm happy, though.

DT - Kevin Williams, Kyle Williams, Corey Williams, Peria Jerry, Terrell McClain

I like my version of the Williams Wall.

**** it, why not.
High Point Knob Hills:

QB: Flacco, Daniel, Dixon, Brunnel
Flacco should be able to take advantage of the weapons this year
HB: Thomas, Goodson, Torain, Graham
I forsee alot of screens in my future
FB: Peyton Hillis
The only way this bitch stays on my roster
TE: Clark, Scheffler
I plan on upgrading this position in the draft
WR: Wayne, Maclin, Moore, Baldwin, Smith
Solid corp that I think Flacco can take advantage of.
OT: Staley, Clabo, Clary, Carpenter
Solid
OG: Iupati, Kemoeatu, Gibson, Green, Hangartner
I'll be fine for now
OC: Pouncey
Need to get one in the later rounds to develop
DE: Clemons, Smith, Starks, Martin, Wooton
I can live with this for now
DT: Ratliff, Okoye, Casey
Mehhhhhhhhhh
OLB-Williams, Taylor, Studebaker, Anderson, Watson, Diles
Ughhhhhh
ILB-Willis, Woodyard,Hayes
I think I'll be fine here for now
CB- Samuel, Porter, Westbrook, M. Lewis, Powers, Lewis
I plan on drafting another one pretty high
SS: Sean Jones
Draft
FS:Jenkins, Elam, Jarrett, Grimm
I don't even know what to think here...

Want to trade up for the #6 pick in league 1? I'm looking to aquire some more draft picks for the Chula Vista squad. Holler at me or make an offer before the draft kicks off.

I had already done something similar in my depth chart file, so I'll just share it.

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/778/sandboxdepth.jpg

Oooh, pretty.

Okay everyone, we're getting ready to start. Keep your league-specific discussions in the dedicated thread for your league instead of in this thread, so we don't have any confusion between the leagues.

As a note, I may reserve the right to intervene as an administrator if I see someone missing picks. In that case I'll give them one of the top three picks still eligible from the NFL draft.

I assume we'll get an email when we're on the clock? And what are the hours that the draft is running? I saw some discussion, but never saw a definite answer.

I wish there were buttons to move folks up and down on your individual draft boards. It seem like that was there for the initial draft, unless I'm mis-remembering.

Click and drag. It's a whole new world as cdcox learns new programming tools.

Assume that we'll go till 6, but I'll get an answer from cdcox. He has the throttle on this.

We don't have an e-mail notification system up and running yet (at least not that I know of). In the first round I'll be monitoring and will try to send courtesy pms, but it depends on how long my work meetings last.

Just going to go over my roster real quick.

Green - set
Blue - could be better, but solid group
Brown - needs improvement
Red - I'm ****ed


Offense:

QB - Mick Vick and Ricky Stanzi - Not really good, only 10 games out of Vick in 2012.

RB - Brian Leonard, Daniel Thomas, Javon Ringer. Ugh

FB - Nadda

WR - Arrelius Benn, David Gettis, Emmanuel Sanders, Mike Wallace, Plexico Burress, Terrance Copper. Not great, but I have something to work with at least.

TE - Ben Watson, Brent Celek, Dan Gronkowski. Enough to go with.

LT - Alex Barron, Jared Gaither - Crap

LG - Zane Beadles

C - Casey Weigmann, Davis Bass - Need to replace Casey

RG - Still need another few guards.

RT - Adam Goldberg, Bryan Baluga, Michael Oher. Best unit on O, would trade one of them but Golberg and Baluga both missed time in 2012, maybe next season.

Analysis - Holy crap. Pretty much need everything but a RT.




Defense

DE - Jerrel Powe and Ziggy Hood for DE3, Jerry Hughes for DE4. Good unit, maybe move Hughes for another DE3

DT - Alen Branch, Nick Fairey, Terrance Cody. Good unit, but not if I am running 3-4 I think...guessing they can serve as NT in 3-4 too.

MLB/ILB/SLB - Joe Mays. Didn't play much in 2012. AJ Hawk at ILB. Kamerion Wimbley, ok too, guess he would fit on inside best as well

OLB - Anthony Spencer, Larry English. Need another good one

CB - Carlos Rogers, Cedric Griffin, Chirs Rucker, Sean Smith, Eric Wright. Have one started and a couple of thosed that played. Need to upgrade.

FS - Ahmad Black, Ed Reed. Best position

SS - Jordan Banineaux, LeRon Landry, Travis Daniels. Good here too.

Analysis - Could use some work, but offense is a steaming pile of crap in comparison.


Team needs: G, HB, LT, QB, FB, K

Wanted to make a lot of moves trade-wise using the #3 to move down and then back up and have some players gained in the process, talks dried up with the owners I was working with. Will see how rookie/vet draft goes and keep plugging.

Just FYI, I got an email.

Wow, we're good.

Straight up bullshit. I move Matt Kalil to the top of my draft board and put autopick on and it gives me Trent Richardson! WTF! Tacos!

We're restarting the draft on Monday. I'll fix it over the weekend and test it better this time.

I forgot to turn on the auto-notification for all users before we started. Fail on multiple fronts.

Oh you want Kalil, do you? You might want to consider trading up to #10 now that I have that information :titus:

I wasn't really pissed, BTW. You're the ****ing man either way for being able to create this!

I don't remember all the problems on the last draft... We are beta testers still.

Or #6 even

Sean Smith is on the trading block along with Zane Beadles, BTW.

Denver Broncos!

I wonder in the future if a mix of 4-3 and 3-4 would be possible

Instead of the option between the two just throw it all up let us pick based on opponent's
Personnel

Thanks for fixing the bugs, guys. I can't move anyone from the rookie pool to my draft board right now, so hopefully you can enable that so I can set my draft board again before restarting the draft.

Uncheck autopick.

Done

Everything is ready to go. All updated and tested.

Anyone interested in pick #20?

Looking to trade down.

What's on on table?

I dunno. If you want pick #20 make an offer. Looking to pick up multiple picks. Maybe a high 2nd + 3rd. Would also consider a decent player.

Do we have anymore details on what free agency will look like, as it might effect rookie draft strategy

Yeah it would be nice if a list of free agents was available.

This
and I'm still not clear how we use our money
Do we bid on players or draft position ?

It's going to be pretty straightforward for the 2012 system. We'll put a list of available players out there and will have open bidding. If you put in a bid and it's not beaten in a particular amount of time (72 hours as a current proposal), the player will be yours.

There'll be a slight twist on that after this season, but that's the system.

So, no chance of a list?

Give me another week (roughly) and I'll have the list of players for free agency. I'm guessing that there will be a few gems, but not a lot of depth on that list. Things will get more interesting in for free agency in January.

Tiebreaker? Long-term ramifications?

Because I'd be stunned if there weren't a number of teams that simply blow out the bid scale on Victor Cruz.

I presume you can't bid the same dollar twice, right? So I guess that's one way to keep folks from throwing everything at Cruz; if they lose, they've tied up their bid money and can't win on anyone else.

Thanks for explanation gentleman.

Is it an open bid system, where everyone knows how much each team has bid on said player, or is it more of a silent auction deal, where you put up your max bid, not knowing how much everyone else put up?

Those $1300 salary points have to be used to sign all of your other players too. The bigger the contract you give to a player, the longer the contract. If your star comes up in free agency, you have to top all bid offers to keep him. So strong teams are going to have a lot of their salary points tied up in guys already on the roster. You're going to have to evaluate Victor Cruz in relation to the value of all other players.

Open bid. You'll know what the high bid is and who made it. The going, going, gone period will last 72 hours to give people a chance to bid on a player they want.

Oh, and in league 2, the previous owner of the Los Angeles Knights was savy/lucky enough to draft him. He's not even on the market.

Ah...so at some point our own players end up FA eligible, eh?

Well shit...I'll have to actually pay for Aaron Rodgers some day. That makes me a sad panda...

How do you know if any of your players are FA eligible?

When we introduce the system, you will assign contract terms to your current players, with time periods ranging from 1 to 7 years. As you draft rookies you will do the same for them, but in both cases you'll only have a finite amount of cash, which means that you can't just sign everyone to a long term contract.

Our goal is to make a free agent system that's easy to use, so when you sign free agents their contract length will be based on the amount of money that you bid for them. If you sign a guy cheap (i.e., he's not in demand), it'll be a one-year contract. If you win a massive bidding war for a big star and pay through the nose, he'll have a seven-year contract. The beauty of this system will be that once guys are signed you won't have to worry about their salary costs, and you'll never have to cut someone for salary cap reasons. If you want to cut a guy before his contract is up, that's fine. It just means that you wasted a little money signing him.

For $1000 of your salary points, you will be able to tie him up until the ripe old age of 35.

Man, someone was a genius. I wonder who.

I don't keep track of who owned what team when, but I know that this one guy was making picks for a bunch of teams in league 2.

T minus 3 hours til the draft! Get them picks in early and often! Keep a PFF tab open!

Wrong thread

CDCOX, for some reason, I can't access my team on my mobile. I get to the main page of the site and hit the draft tab, then rookie draft, and then it says "an error was encountered" and "there is no such team". It does this whenever I hit any of the other tabs also. I work graveyard as an RN and knew that I may not be available so I turned on the autodraft and set my draft board in case I couldn't draft at my turn. But I haven't been able to access my team or the site to see if it was my turn or who I drafted and what not. Not really a big deal, but any help would be appreciated because I do most of the legwork on my phone.

go to:

http://sandboxsimulations.com/index.php

and it should get you back to your team.

There are still some bad gremlins in the draft code so I decided to pull the plug until I can get them fixed. Hopefully we can preserve most of what we already have done.

I'll dig into it tonight, but it may be a couple of days before we are back up.

Thanks, it worked.

I realize you are likely fully aware of this, but it seems to be tied to the Autopick. My recollection is that Austinchief's DeCastro pick was immediate, and the past issues seemed to be related to autopick as well.

I've got the code that controls the logic of the draft picks rewritten. Works like a champ. I need to check the integrity of the databases and do a few more things before we restart.

See the league threads for specifics about rolling back the picks.

The draft will cease to move forward for absent owners between the hours of midnight to 8:00 AM EDT.

Let's plan on restarting at 8:00 PM EDT on Thursday evening. That should give me enough time to do the things I need to do and for you to reload your draftboards.

Are we starting the draft over entirely, or just from the point we left off?

Point we left off.

A tiny item I'd like to point out: When you use the search function on the draft page, every character you type (or character you delete) causes the left column to grow. After a search or 2, the page becomes unusable. Refresh fixes it, but I just thought I would point it out. Seems to happen in FF and Chrome. Haven't tried anything else.

It happens in IE as well.

Okay, I'm stoked about starting back up again. Plus, I don't have Michael Crabtree on my team.

Has there been any thought of a IR or practice squad being added?

One other question - is there a simple player/roster search?

Any time I'm thinking about going after someone, especially a defensive player, I feel like I have to go through every potential trade partner and search for the player. There's been a surprising number of times where I couldn't go to the defensive stats list page and find a guy I wanted.

An IR may not be a bad idea once we get free agency going. Need to think about that some more in terms of game mechanics, coding complexity, priority, and the like.

A searchable league roster is a good idea. Not an immediate priority, though.

Can one of you in the know talk a little more about players playing out of position when it is a similar position like NT/DT/DE3 or DE4/OLB?

Trying to figure out some draft or FA needs and it is hard to tell on some of those because I don't know if my great DT will be just as great playing the nose in 3-4, or at the very least really darn close to the same level. I know a guy like Powe on my roster can play NT even though he is listed as DE3....I know you mentioned positions like that can be petitioned to be changed, but would it even matter that much?

Same things for ILB/WLB/SLB/MLB

Here is what I sent in reply to a PM to another owner asking a similar question:

Rain Man and I really don't want to tell too much what is going on behind the curtain because people will start gaming the system.

The player's natural position is going to be considered what he played in a given year, even if the player had demonstrated that he could play other positions in past years. Part of the reason for that is that performance is context specific. Certain positions generate more favorable stats than other similar positions just due to responsibilities and match ups. You can also imagine the chaos if we started considering these kinds of position changes on a case-by-case situation. If we denied a request for good reason, someone would get ticked off if we had approved another seemingly similar case. So we consider the natural position to be the one the player played the most in during a given NFL season, and we consider his performance in the context of that position. If you move someone around, there will be an effect -- sometimes large and sometimes small--, and you're just going to have to trust that we've made those adjustments in a realistic and reasonable way. So our advice as always is to just play the game the way you think it should be played without worrying about how we've designed the game. When unrealistic aspects of the simulation are brought to our attention, we make modifications to make it more realistic.

Hope this sheds some light.

It's not my intent to be vague on this, but the bottom line is that you should think about it just like you would in the NFL. If you move Mike DeVito from a 3-4 DE to NT, what'll happen? Well, he'll probably get pushed around more, but could probably do it. He's better at his natural position, but he can make the shift. A really top-notch 3-4 DE like Justin Smith might be better than your run of the mill nose tackle because he's just more talented. However, he's still going to be better himself playing his natural position.

So the bottom line is that a talented guy moving to a similar position is still going to be pretty darn good, though he's always better at his natural position. On the other hand, a talented guy moving to a dissimilar position is likely going to be blasted. DeMarcus Ware is a great 3-4 OLB and would likely be a very, very good 4-3 DE or even 4-3 OLB. But if you move him to a 4-3 DT position he's probably going to be a liability against the run and perhaps even the pass since that position doesn't suit his strengths.

cdcox beat me to the answer.

Oh, and note that you don't have to petition for a formal change to use a guy at a different position. If Week 14 comes up and you have no WRs at all due to injuries and you need to use Dontari Poe at WR, go right ahead. Just recognize that he's going to have problems getting open.

No you don't. :)

Rain Man, I think we can scratch patteeu off of the list for VP of public relations.

I guess this is part of what I am struggling with. Played in a given year according to what? Is seems silly, but for some of these guys it is hard as hell to figure out what they play on a given year. Ranking will lump DTs and NTs up together, the pro football reference links for a play might say they are lde/dt or blank, or something else. I had one player that was listed as DE in his potion, but the pro footabll reference showed him as a SAM.

I get what you are saying, but I don't want to get 95% out of two players just because I thought one was considered a NT and the other a DE3 and for whatever reason they were the other way around. Is there something of a creed we can follow to say what position a player is really considered to be?

[scratch, scratch, scratch]

We'll provide that information, note that it would be helpful to provide it as early as possible for drafting and free agency.

We're in a weird catch-up year this year, but as I think about it, going forward we won't know until after the draft and free agency, either.

The calendar will be something like this.

End the previous Sandbox season in March or thereabouts.

Draft rookies in May (or after the NFL draft, whenever it is).

Sign free agents throughout the NFL season, at which point players may be moving around in terms of position.

At the end of the NFL season, we build our databases and feed it into the model, at which point we know the stated position of each player - but that's after everyone has built out their team.

Dumervil had his best year as a 3-4 OLB, but played in 2012 as a 4-3 DE. Does he still get devalued when moved to a 3-4 OLB?

Yeah. Otherwise we have to start making individual judgment calls on each player, which gets cumbersome. We recognize it's a limitation, but at the same time players tend to move to similar positions and our downgrades for moving to a similar position are mild.

How mild are we talking? What about a small 4-3 DE moving to a primarily rushing 4-3 SLB?

EDIT: Maybe let me explain more. Said DE turned SLB will be blitzing basically all the time. Let's assume he never drops into coverage. Will his pass rush skills be diminished in this setup? How badly? I just want to know if I should rethink my defense while I still have a chance to pick up pieces in the draft.

Nacho Cheese Dorito to Cool Ranch Dorito. Not Spicy Chipotle Dorito to Cool Ranch Dorito.

It's hard to answer that exactly, but we do make distinctions to the level you're talking about, and also for various elements of the switch (i.e., run stopping, pass coverage, pass rushing, etc.). Seriously, the best I can say is to use your intuition about the interchangeability of positions.

Ok. Since he won't really be covering at all, I'm guessing the overall drop will not be severe. Thanks.

And again, we're not intentionally trying to be obtuse, but we want people to think of the game more as football and less as a statistical exercise to maximize their odds. Football coaches have to make these same judgments during the course of a season - Branden Albert is injured, so do I put Stephenson in or do I move Fisher to the left and put Stephenson on the right?

I have a good example of what we're trying to avoid. Many years ago, I was in a league that played Strat-O-Matic baseball. It was a cool game, but it was baseball, which is pretty simple statistically and the game system was transparent.

Well, I had two shortstops, Cal Ripken, Jr., and a journeyman for the Twins named Al Newman. Newman was a career .226 hitter with 1 home run in eight years. Ripken was clearly the better player, but in one type of matchup (something like clutch situations against right-handed pitchers) Newman was actually better.

I did my math and figured that out, so when that situation arose, Ripken was out of there and Newman took over at shortstop. One of the guys in my league was a baseball purist and he would get furious at me when I would do that. My response was always, "I did the math."

But the bottom line is that I wasn't really playing the game in a manner suitable to baseball. I was manipulating the game system. What we don't want in this game is for someone to discover that some offensive tackle (John Tait?) got the ball once on a lateral and gained 28 yards, so you can move him to running back and he'll be Godzilla.

I'm not saying that anyone in our leagues would do that, but we all know each other and are reasonable people. Once we go commercial with the game, we'll certainly have people willing to do that, so we have to prevent it from happening, both via the game system design and via our management of the game.