League Start Date + Roster File

I plan to start the league close to the start of the regular season.  This allows us about a week to make sure no major bugs are out there that will cripple the league if it starts too soon.

Rosters are typically day 1 rosters that we use, then we do two rounds of free agency drafting to spread the wealth among players.  The issue that provides is with the new amazing practice squads.  In the test league alone I already found myself scouring for my guys I wanted on my practice squad to sign to my active roster.  I think we'll just have to start with the pre-season roster, sim the preseason to week 4, make sure everyone has their roster cut down, and their practice squad set.

I was missing WRs, TEs, RBs, LBs, and DBs that I wanted to keep/develop on the test league using the updated roster. Not a smooth start to the year.  But mighty fun and addictive to search through who has what developmental guys available to steal.

In week 4 of preseason, we could then still do the "Free Agency Draft" where everyone can sign a player or two to their roster so that one opportunistic user can jump in and sign all the top guys they want.

I was thinking of this time frame: 
--> Launch the full roster file on Sunday, September 4th.
--> Everyone must have their roster down to 53 players (and 10 Practice Squad players) by Monday, September 5th.
--> Do a Free Agency draft on September 6th via the forum.  Then start the league once everyone has signed their player(s).

Would that work for everyone?

Works for me. That is Labor Day weekend, though, so there may be people out of town.

Actually, one thought about rosters: If we use the pre-season 75-man roster, will the player ratings be whatever they were back during training camp? If that's the case, I might rather have the updated player ratings than extra dudes that are fighting to be the 53rd guy on the roster.

Just a thought -- I dunno if that's even an issue. Maybe the 75-man has updated ratings for everyone.

If we were using the stock pre-season rosters, I don't think the rosters will have ratings adjustments made, which sucks.  I could always look for a custom pre-season roster to use.

If we went stock rosters, I was kicking around the idea of each user getting 1-5 protected players. And then letting those players receive ratings boosts if EA updated them greatly. (eg. Dak Prescott will probably explode shortly).

This is uncharted territory.

I hear the first patch and roster update is coming around week 1. I think we should probably wait till then to avoid any bugs/issues down the road

mission8 wrote:I hear the first patch and roster update is coming around week 1. I think we should probably wait till then to avoid any bugs/issues down the road

Agreed

It works better for me to wait another few days or the following weekend because I have a wild overtime stretch coming up but I'll survive with whatever is best for the league

the_EDJ wrote:(eg. Dak Prescott will probably explode shortly).

This is literally 90 percent of why I brought it up lol

mission8 wrote:I hear the first patch ... is coming around week 1. 

Hopefully this addresses the Challenge Bug.  I've seen it affecting others on Ops Sports and I know its happened to me in about 85% of my online games.  The system will automatically and randomly challenge a play which results in a loss of a timeout (without me requesting a play challenge).  It happens outside of the last two minutes of the half so the CPU shouldn't be calling  for a challenge for me.  It really affects your end of half planning.

Id rather wait for patch myself...

I'm all for holding off and waiting until things are right as well

As EDJ mentioned, the first major patch is out.  The real NFL teams have to trim their rosters to 53 by this weekend so I would expect a roster update to reflect that by early next week the latest (you would think).  Nice. I guess I need to work on these playbooks now, lol.

SB Nation has an updating list of players getting cut.  There's some fairly big, recent draft picks showing up, as well as other veteran players that usually stick on rosters and produce.

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As far as a roster file goes, I think we start with the EA Official week 1 roster, or find a quality custom roster that has all real NFL moves taken into account.

Free Agent Signings - Waiver wire system as in the past. 2 rounds, weakest team overall ratings get dibs first.
Practice Squad - No limit on stealing players since you're forced to keep the player on your active roster.  Unlimited Practice Squad signings on players 65 overall and under. Any player 66 and up is limited to 2 practice squad assignments per week (from the Free Agent pool).

the_EDJ wrote:Practice Squad - Unlimited Practice Squad signings on players 65 overall and under. Any player 66 and up is limited to 2 practice squad assignments per week (from the Free Agent pool).

Just to clarify, do you mean you can only have 2 players on your Practice Squad rated 66+ OVR at a time or do you mean we are limited to only signing 2 players to your Practice Squad rated 66+ OVR in a given week?

Steel Pitt wrote:

the_EDJ wrote:Practice Squad - Unlimited Practice Squad signings on players 65 overall and under. Any player 66 and up is limited to 2 practice squad assignments per week (from the Free Agent pool).

Just to clarify, do you mean you can only have 2 players on your Practice Squad rated 66+ OVR at a time or do you mean we are limited to only signing 2 players to your Practice Squad rated 66+ OVR in a given week?

Definitely just in a given week.  To start the franchise is all.

As long as I get our German Wunderkid WR we drafted and Sammy Bradford, I'll be set.

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Where are we with an estimated start date??

Hellmrixxx wrote:Where are we with an estimated start date??

Plan on getting the last few FA picks Saturday. Then advance to week 4 of preseason so that we can do Practice Squads.  Sunday/Monday would be the opening of week 1.

Just noticed (as PocketPass pointed out) it looks like the roster file was uploaded with pre-existing injuries turned ON.  A good number of players are listed with season long injuries.  Not every team is affected but it may be worth checking your injury report to see if any players you were expecting to use are available (especially if they have real life injuries).

Seems kind of shitty to use preexisting injuries since it doesn't have all the injuries or account for any suspensions. So basically penalizing the unlucky few, me being one of them.

Speaking of the roster file, every roster I have seen has Norman 92 mcv and 97 zcv except this one which drops him to 87 ovr 87 man 92 zone

mission8 wrote:Speaking of the roster file, every roster I have seen has Norman 92 mcv and 97 zcv except this one which drops him to 87 ovr 87 man 92 zone

Great thing to point out. Everyone else double check your rosters as well.

I used SimulationOS Madden roster.  As I was searching for a day 1 roster to user, they had every transaction caught up to September 5th.  Then I moved a few free agent signings on the 6th before uploading it.  I didn't double check their forum thread before uploading it though, and on the 5th, one of the roster creators had done some "minor" ratings tweaks in their own words based off ourlads.com.

Norman got destroyed for being overrated (and they may not have been wrong. heh heh). I restored Norman back to his stock ratings. He'd been dropped a bit anyway since EA is lowering his ratings already.

Let me know of any egregious ratings changes the OS file made.  You can use the EA Sports website to see original roster rankings, or download the excel file when comparing players. 
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This also brings up a good chance to discuss the commissioner's powers in Franchise Mode this year. Since I can edit player ratings, you'll notice that the Transaction Log clearly states if I edit any player. It does the same for other users, but you guys should not have ratings access like I do. But it will still show if you change a player's position, or edit their gear/number/etc.