Your Chance To Participate In A New Football Phenomenon (Sandbox Simulations)

[Rain Man]

I apologize if the mods think this is soliciting, and I guess it is, but at the same time it's beta testing a new product developed by long-time planeteers, and it's free.

cdcox and I have been developing a new football game for the thoughtful fan, where players build franchises and compete against each other. A description is below.

If you're interested, we're offering the game for free in Year 1 to Chiefsplanet members, with the goal of both giving the system a dry run and also hooking you like Phillip Morris. You can go to www.sandboxsimulations.com to sign up, and use the access code 6Lanier3.

Here's the overview:

Build and manage a full 53-player roster over multiple seasons, as an offseason activity to give you year-round football

Select your personnel to match your offensive and defensive scheme. Every position matters – even your blocking tight end.

Realistic and accurate simulations of league games based on head-to-head matchups against other teams in your league.


This is essentially a new concept in fantasy football that attempts to simulate as closely as possible the management of a real NFL franchise over a multi-year period. Unlike regular fantasy football, every position on the offense and defense contributes to your success or failure. On special teams, the punter, kicker, and kick returners matter.

In Sandbox Football you will build a team – an entire 53-man football team – via an initial draft, and will maintain it year after year in annual rookie drafts, trading periods, and free agency. You compete against teams in your league. In the first year of the game, before the start of the NFL season, you will build your roster by drafting veterans and rookies through separate drafts, and through trades with other teams in the league. Your roster is frozen at the beginning of the NFL season. During the real regular NFL season, you can focus on your traditional fantasy games and perhaps keep on eye on your Sandbox roster as our statistical models build the data on player performances. At the end of the regular NFL season, the Sandbox season begins. There will be 16 games in the season. In real time, the season will run about 8 weeks (2 alternate reality games per week).

Game outcomes will be simulated based on the performance of individual players during the just-completed NFL regular season. The simulations, developed by a PhD statistical expert, estimate how individual players will perform in the context of your alternate reality team competing head-to-head against other teams in the league and with the specific team that you have built. The simulations will consider the offensive and defensive schemes that you select. So you can build your roster to support a power running game or a high-flying passing attack. You can run a 3-4 or 4-3 base defense. You can run nickel formations or four-wide receiver sets. You can rotate your DL to keep them fresh.

The game is more about building a team than playing video games. So this isn't Madden, but you will have the ability to tweak your game plan to take the best advantage of your roster and the weaknesses of your opponent. Injuries are a factor in the game. If a player is unavailable during weeks 3 through 6 in the NFL, he is also unavailable during the same weeks in the alternate reality season. So roster depth matters. The game simulations are based on the most advanced statistics and the latest research regarding what matters in winning an NFL game. But, the outcomes of the games have a random component, just like real NFL games.

The calendar for the alternate reality league year will look something like this:
• Jan to Mid March: Alternate Reality regular season and playoffs.
• Mid-March to the beginning of NFL season: Roster building through trades, veteran draft (first year), free agent drafts (2nd year and beyond), and rookie draft.
• Beginning of NFL season to end of regular NFL season: Alternate reality league is dormant, but the NFL players are generating their performance stats for the up-coming AR league.
• Rinse and repeat.

Copyright Sandbox Simulations, all rights reserved.

We're still finalizing the cost structure, but this won't be an expensive game to play at all. It might range from a few bucks a year to $50 per year, depending on a few factors.

Year 1 will require a couple of days of drafting with rather high intensity, but we've got it set up where you can put your draft list together and do customized and automated drafting if you like.

So...go! Now! Time to get ready for the draft!

[cdcox]

Important stuff

You can set your roster for week 8. Games will simulate on Tuesday night.

If the formatting looks off, try clearing your browser cache.

Information stuff

You won't notice much different about the site. The changes are:

1) The injury data base has been updated. About 50 players are affected.
2) *HOPEFULLY* the site will work well for Old Dog.
3) I ended up turning off all tabs to the left of Game Planning for the time being.

Geek stuff and rants

I was a day behind my intended schedule of getting the site ready for week 8.

My gosh, strict HTML 4.01 is a pain. Spent pretty much all weekend getting most of my pages in compliance. This is what I am hoping will help Old Dog's problem. I was pretty loose with my HTML up to now (not even in compliance transitional) and I think that was causing the weird stuff. It needed to be done anyway, but I had no idea what a huge task that would be.

CBS Sports can die in a fire. I used their injury reserve list as part of the information I used to build the injury database at the beginning of the season. As far as I can tell, they were completely random about when they listed a player and when they didn't. It's as if the web geek would enter a name in their table when they heard about a player going on IR on the radio. I ended up finding a list of transactions on NFL.com. Ended up spending about 5 hours manually updating my injury database.

So just a ton of work that didn't add any fun stuff to the site.

[noa]

I know you've got a ton on your agenda, but I just want to toss this suggestion out there for a future ambition. It would be great if the page where you set your lineup contained links to each player's game logs. As is, I check the logs in another tab by searching each player. Streamlining by just allowing us to click through would make it even easier. Thanks for doing all this. It's awesome.

[brorth]

I've been out because of fireworks season, but back on now. I'll update my weekly stats for tracking.
I did notice that at least two of my IR players still show active on my roster. Terrell Thomas and Rashad Carmichael are both still available, I've not tried playing them.
Also, Derek Sherrod shows having played in five, started zero, but I have him available all 16 weeks.

[lostcause]

Player availibility on my team that is incorrect:

Marvin Austin, should have been on IR in preseason available all season long.

Jon Beason, listed as available during the firest 5 weeks, was put on IR in preseason.

Trent Williams suspension for steroids isn't reflected in his availibility later in the season.

[topher79]

Week 8:

29 carries 266 yards 3 TDs

Darren Sproles. Man.

[cdcox]

Two more weeks of Matt Schaub and three more weeks of Fred Jackson. I would have liked to have seen how a healthy version of this team would have done in the playoffs. Right now it feels great to be 7-1, but it is kind of an empty feeling.

[Rain Man]

Oh, hey. I just noticed. Kickoffs are supposed to be from the 35 yard line with the rule change last year. I think we're kicking off from the 30.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Oh, hey. I just noticed. Kickoffs are supposed to be from the 35 yard line with the rule change last year. I think we're kicking off from the 30.

We're kicking from the 35. What makes you think we're kicking from the 30?

[cdcox]

Okay, I see. Something is messed up, cause I intended to kick from the 35.

[cdcox]

Ok, kickoffs are fixed.

[Rain Man]

Very minor issue with onside kick yard marking.

Anchorage
4th Q 2:34 4th and -11 Little Rock -1 Onside kick failed, recovered by the receiving team on 53 yardline.
4th Q 2:26 1st and 10 Little Rock 47 LeSean McCoy rushes for -2 yards. time out Little Rock

[Rain Man]

From a sim standpoint, should Columbia have gone for 2 here? It's still relatively early in the game, so I'm asking for opinions. I'm not sure.


Corona
2nd Q 5:17 1st and 10 Corona 10 Matthew Stafford passes incomplete to Rob Gronkowski.
2nd Q 5:10 2nd and 10 Corona 10 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes incomplete, dropped by Dustin Keller.
2nd Q 5:03 3rd and 10 Corona 10 Matt Forte rushes for 8 yards.
2nd Q 4:21 4th and 2 Corona 18 Michael Koenen punts 34 yards, returned for 52 yards by Joshua Cribbs
Corona 14, Columbia 6

Columbia
2nd Q 4:09 1st and goal Corona half yardline Pierre Thomas rushes for -1 yards.
2nd Q 3:27 2nd and goal Corona 1 Ryan Fitzpatrick (pressured) scrambles for 3 yards. Touchdown, conversion
Corona 14, Columbia 13

[Rain Man]

Looking good as usual. I find this a lot of fun.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

From a sim standpoint, should Columbia have gone for 2 here? It's still relatively early in the game, so I'm asking for opinions. I'm not sure.


Corona
2nd Q 5:17 1st and 10 Corona 10 Matthew Stafford passes incomplete to Rob Gronkowski.
2nd Q 5:10 2nd and 10 Corona 10 Matthew Stafford (pressured) passes incomplete, dropped by Dustin Keller.
2nd Q 5:03 3rd and 10 Corona 10 Matt Forte rushes for 8 yards.
2nd Q 4:21 4th and 2 Corona 18 Michael Koenen punts 34 yards, returned for 52 yards by Joshua Cribbs
Corona 14, Columbia 6

Columbia
2nd Q 4:09 1st and goal Corona half yardline Pierre Thomas rushes for -1 yards.
2nd Q 3:27 2nd and goal Corona 1 Ryan Fitzpatrick (pressured) scrambles for 3 yards. Touchdown, conversion
Corona 14, Columbia 13

I use Dick Vermeil's chart, but only in the second half. What do people think, do you want your coach to start chasing points in the first half?

Onside kick yardline thing also fixed.

[Branden Albert's Huge Balls]

Sweet, I won even though I forgot to adjust my percentages. Should be interesting to see if my 65/35 pass/run ratio paid off this week.