2013 Sandbox Simulations League 1 Thread

[DJ's left nut]

Figured creating a new thread for the upcoming league 1 season would probably help consolidate discussion.

Teams:

Anchorage Roadkill Rabbits lostcause
Austin Armadillos noa
Cedar Rapids Angry Clam Hammers dj56dt58
Chula Vista cripplas mrroandro
Clearwater Donkeys DJsleftnut
Dallas K-Swiss Tubes Zeke
Denver Broncos Wonton prejudice (gochiefs).
Duluth Pillagers rain man
Fort Wayne Dukes jerm
Fort Worth Drifters KCChiefsman
High Point Knob Hills ChiefAshhole20
Independence Vision cdcox
Kansas City Ball Busters Kyle DeLexus
Las Vegas Lonely Strippers sfchief
Overland Park Chiefs Old Dog
Pittsburgh Tacos brorth
Portland Rhein Foster (not a cp member - contact via djsleftnut)
Provo Knuckledraggers rageeumr
Richmond Tigerhawks carlos3652
Springfield Attack bevischief
St Joseph Stetsons austinchief
Topeka Tyrannicide Allen_kccard
Ventura Highways rockchalk
Wichita Potheads Confirmed topher79

Spoiler!

Anchorage Roadkill Rabbits lostcause
Josh Gordon

Austin Armadillos noa
Lavonte David
David Wilson
Vick Ballard

Cedar Rapids Angry Clam Hammers dj56dt58
Robert Griffin III
Harrison Smith
Riley Reiff

Chula Vista cripplas mrroandro
Morris Claiborne
Shea McClellin

Clearwater Donkeys DJsleftnut
Chandler Jones
Bruce Irvin
Melvin Ingram

Dallas K-Swiss Tubes Zeke
AIDS
Ass Cancer

Denver Broncos Wonton prejudice
Michael Brockers
Dwayne Allen
Chris Givens

Duluth Pillagers rain man
Courtney Upshaw

Fort Wayne Dukes jerm
Mark Barron

Fort Worth Drifters KCChiefsman
Doug Martin
Mychal Kendricks

High Point Knob Hills ChiefAshhole20
Trent Richardson
Witney Mercilus
Kelechi Osemele

Independence Vision cdcox
Mitchell Schwartz

Kansas City Ball Busters Kyle DeLexus
Luke Kuechly
Mike Martin
Brandon Weeden

Las Vegas Lonely Strippers sfchief
Fletcher Cox
Alfonzo Dennard

Overland Park Chiefs Old Dog
Matt Kalil
Derek Wolfe

Pittsburgh Tacos brorth
Alfred Morris
Kendall Wright
AJ Jenkins

Portland Rhein Foster:
Andrew Luck
Cordy Glenn

Provo Knuckledraggers rageeumr
Justin Blackmon
Kevin Zeitler
An unemployed Nickle Corner

Richmond Tigerhawks carlos3652
Zach Brown
Tavon Wilson
Josh Robinson

Springfield Attack bevischief
Ryan Tannehill
Dre Kirkpatrick

St Joseph Stetsons austinchief
Casey Hayward
David DeCastro
Brandon Taylor

Topeka Tyrannicide Allen_kccard
Russell Wilson
Bernard Pierce

Ventura Highways rockchalk
Stephon Gilmore
Coby Fleener

Wichita Potheads Confirmed topher79
Dont'a Hightower
Some kicker. Idiot.

[brorth]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Of all the players that return punts or kicks in the NFL in a given year, only a few of them return enough kicks to have something that could be considered a large enough sample size to treat as representative. Those returners that have a sufficient number of returns, are included in the database by name, and you get the specific stats of that player. I take all of the other players who have returned a smaller number of punts or kicks and lump them together and generate statistics that represent "any old joe" on your roster that might be pressed into service returning kicks or punts. Those are the stats that are used for "free agent".

Of the players you listed, none of them returned more than 9 punts or kicks the entire year, so they're NFL team didn't exactly view them as difference makers in the return game. So the program basically determined that they were examples of "any old joe" and put one of them back there (unnamed) to return the kick/punt.

I hear you. Again, don't take this as griping, because I enjoy the whole testing experience...

Part of this roster takeover included me looking at the KR/PR situation.
I was moved by your explanation of talent that was roughly:
NFL star>guy with some stats>some named guy on a team>street free agent

If this is not the case for PR/KR, then both of those specific positions become MUCH more valuable as a commodity.

[mrroandrro]

Made some changes to my lineup, and offensive game plan. Hopefully this will help my teams performance this week. If not, this could be a painful learning experience.

[rtmike]

I have found that you have be active here to be "in the loop". Plus it seems this thread (League 1) is the most up to date. I admit, I know more about L1 than 2.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Zeke

He was already on the roster when i inherited it, he was on the Manage roster screen.. he showed available for the entire season, so I resigned him. It's not that hard to understand, DJ.

Which takes us back to where I started - updated eligibility only came online a week or two ago. You extended your punter well before that. Even when you went to the manage roster screen, you were looking at last season's eligibility. The only way to know that was by reading here, true, but that's been common knowledge.

And again, why didn't you click on the link to see if he was actually worth a damn before signing him to a three year deal? It's right there - just click it and it will take you to pro-football reference. That's what I don't understand.

Players are signed during the season in reality due to injuries and other factors forcing others out\off the roster. Again, not hard to understand. You're talking out of both sides of the mouth again.

The players that are signed in real life are street free agent caliber players. Sandbox has endeavored to create that caliber of player via the Street Free Agent tool here. I'm not talking out of both sides, I'm saying that Sandbox has built you a ready-made composite street FA and that's the kind of performance you'll get from him. The caliber of player that we presently have a slew of in FA is not signed during the regular season because, again, we have surplus talent in this league.

This makes much more sense to me as it's explained out, and if this is the intended reasoning behind the coding, then that's good. The problem is then - For a player in my situation who is brand spanking new to this. There is no repository for information. Nothing. I did not know that the season was starting until Monday when I read someone talking about the games starting then this past weekend. Hence, my surprise when FA ended. The ONLY information I have read is the few discussions I've seen on this thread and an email I got one time explaining Free Agency by Rain Man and was given the following tid-bits in the email

Always happy to help. That said, as you've noted, it is in BETA and CD had to build the entire draft/FA setup over the last several months. That occupied a lot of his time so the rest of this isn't spectacularly user friendly yet. I'm confident it will get there.

That will speak to schedules, roster freezes, gameplay mechanics and the like I'm sure.

In the interim- click on the damn hyperlink and make sure your player's actually been on a roster in the last 24 months next time.

[lostcause]

CD, are we updating eligibilities before sims tonight?

[rageeumr]

Totally screwing myself here, but I want to preserve the integrity of our virtual football league.

Gronk is showing availability for all 16 weeks, but he should be out for weeks 11-15.

[rtmike]

Originally Posted by rageeumr

Totally screwing myself here, but I want to preserve the integrity of our virtual football league.

Gronk is showing availability for all 16 weeks, but he should be out for weeks 11-15.

The world needs more of you folk.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Zeke

This makes much more sense to me as it's explained out, and if this is the intended reasoning behind the coding, then that's good. The problem is then - For a player in my situation who is brand spanking new to this. There is no repository for information. Nothing. I did not know that the season was starting until Monday when I read someone talking about the games starting then this past weekend. Hence, my surprise when FA ended. The ONLY information I have read is the few discussions I've seen on this thread and an email I got one time explaining Free Agency by Rain Man and was given the following tid-bits in the email



I was lost, and have been lost since day one on everything. I've asked here and there on here what is going on and the have been given responses which has been nice, but there is no calendar or explanation of events that I've seen. This is just the league schedule, concerning rules I've been equally clueless (like Free Agency and trades being cut off etc). Someone here said it was announced, but I didn't see any further emails or anything on the site regarding this type of stuff.. so I was ignorant and obviously continue to be so.

This is useful feedback.

I've added a calendar to the help files that shows current and upcoming events and the regular league schedule that we will be following by September.

This brings up another question: what is the best method of communicating to owners? Lately we've been using these threads as the primary communication vehicle, and they have seemed to work for about half of the users. We'll do better at keeping the help files up to date. We need to add a help file for free agency and probably another one for FAQ. But I know that most people don't bother to read help files. We can do email notification of major upcoming events, but some people don't want to be pestered by email. Once we go to a commercial scale we won't be able to have conversations about each step of the process on a league-by-league basis. We'll be using vbulletin as our main communication vehicle. We can use stickies, but no one reads those either. The reality is that this is a complex simulation and that people are going to have to read a little to know what is going on. We want to make the material available through the preferred vehicle, but in this multi-media communication age it seems ironically difficult to get a message to people.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by lostcause

CD, are we updating eligibilities before sims tonight?

Doubtful.

I'd rather update the availability just before advancing the league week and give people the maximum time to respond to the updated rosters. I'll either do that after week 2 or week 3 simulations.

[lostcause]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Doubtful.

I'd rather update the availability just before advancing the league week and give people the maximum time to respond to the updated rosters. I'll either do that after week 2 or week 3 simulations.

Cool.

Zeke, now I'm stuck in street free agent punter world with you for a couple of weeks.

[mrroandrro]

What time is kickoff tonight?

[Fansy the Famous Bard]

Originally Posted by cdcox

This brings up another question: what is the best method of communicating to owners? Lately we've been using these threads as the primary communication vehicle, and they have seemed to work for about half of the users.

The half that live on this site, yes. The rest of us, that don't want to wade through 300 pages of Claythan rubbing himself off have been left in the dark, as we don't read every page.

Originally Posted by cdcox

We'll do better at keeping the help files up to date. We need to add a help file for free agency and probably another one for FAQ. But I know that most people don't bother to read help files. We can do email notification of major upcoming events, but some people don't want to be pestered by email. Once we go to a commercial scale we won't be able to have conversations about each step of the process on a league-by-league basis. We'll be using vbulletin as our main communication vehicle. We can use stickies, but no one reads those either. The reality is that this is a complex simulation and that people are going to have to read a little to know what is going on. We want to make the material available through the preferred vehicle, but in this multi-media communication age it seems ironically difficult to get a message to people.

Just make your index page the homepage with all announcements on it.

[mrroandrro]

This is a beta test. I think everyone needs to just sit back and enjoy it for what it is. There are gonna be wrinkles that need to be ironed out. If you lose a game do to an unforeseen issue, don't get mad, look at it as an opportunity to enhance the product for future use.

[TambaBerry]

I love this game no issues except for with you know who about bidding my damn players up haha

[Hammock Parties]

Same thing happened to me.

You are not a unique snowflake.