Hello all this is Nat " The Ignorant Southerner" Wright and this is my thoughts on the strategy expansion teams should be using to win as soon as next season and definitely not pandering to get them to draft me before round 20. First off I do want to say, hi I exist I am part of Tijuana and was drafted #260 in the DSFL draft. Many of you may not know about me because I am not on the regular discord and am only on the Tijuana discord but I am here and do exist and I thought I'd share some of my tips for expansion GM's as well as have a little thought experiment. A DISCLAIMER: I am far from knowledgeable on the exact specifics of this draft and how it works so this will not be as much about players and picks and who to choose and more about the general strategy these teams should be using when constructing their team to have the most chance to win so these are my starting principles and it is important that they are done in order and it will be obvious why later
Good cop section
1. Do Your Research
Now this is easy for me to say being a nice lazy armchair simulation football GM but it really is obvious and important to have a complete understanding of not only the draft class coming in but also of each other team and how they operate with each other and how they work as a unit. Being an expansion GM is probably the hardest job in the NSFL (except for being GM of Chicago apparently) but you can attach a legacy to yourself by putting the time in and doing the research to make sure you are ahead of your competition.
2. Communicate with other GMs
Again this should be obvious but could be overlooked by some people. I really like what was done by trading the first pick in the regular draft to Austin. Any expansion team should not be hunting for star power at the expense of consistent depth and being open to trades of picks for players and high picks for more picks is incredibly important. There is no way that expansion teams can have the immense star power of teams that have had the privilege of being around for a long time and developing home grown talent but what they can have is deep consistent depth across the board and depend on that to win games. This is even more important this season with the wealth of talented prospects in the draft coming up, so the expansion teams need to TRADE DOWN. This draft there is probably merit in trading the number one overall for multiple selections as late as round 7 and higher picks in later drafts. For instance if i had the first overall pick i would gladly trade it for 3-5 picks in rounds 3-8 and a round 1-2 pick next draft(or if trading with Chicago just offer them a sandwich in exchange for their entire draft) because you can find good active helpful locker room talent that late this year and they get the star they want. But at the end of the day make things happen and DO NOT be afraid to pull of some risky bold moves to try to get an edge.
3. Work Hard
This is slightly tied into research but also encompasses a lot of other things like making sure you have a good organized Discord server and that you are active and communicative in it. Making sure you go the extra mile when working around the forum and discord not being overly judgmental but still being able to share what you think will help and hurt in different situations (A reason why young somewhat immature me will not be a GM anytime soon ex. Meming on Chicago in every section). Showing your professionalism and work ethic everywhere will make people want to join and work hard for your team
3b. Reach out to the incoming class
As a new GM these new draftees are going to be the backbone of your franchise for a long long time and since you traded down and got as many mid round picks as you could you better be reaching out to those players and trying to get them on board. In my opinion the best way to do this is to show and demonstrate your dedication to the team and your dedication to winning now and show them what steps you are taking to win and develop your roster for this season and beyond so they are confident in the stability and structure of your locker room. (basically don't be like Chicago GMs) If you can prove to these new draftees that you are really ready and gunning to win Ultimus titles and you aren't afraid of bold choices and hard work to get there any player would love to join that locker room and you will be able to get the most out of your players. However you can't do this if you don't talk to people in the forums and discord and show them so go out and show them your hard work.
If you run or are on a non expansion team this is where the article stops and I hope you can learn how to peacefully and mutually helpfully work together to brighten the league for all of us and to promote a wonderful game with no animosity except for friendly memeing on the good luck and have a wonderful draft
Bad Cop Section
Now for the good stuff. Don't get me wrong the stuff up there is important but this is where the bulk of your competitive edge will come from is how well you can exicute this next and final step which is
4. HATE DRAFT
So remember you are a GM now and all the other GM's are enemies and you have no regard for them so you need to hate draft them during the expansion draft now with only 12 picks per team iirc you can only hate draft 4 teams but such is life. So at this point you might be confused as to why you would be hate drafting and what it accomplishes so let me put it into perspective. As a team you want to win games and to do that you need to be better than you're opponent obviously so you might think you want to make you're team the best it can be which is kinda true but not perfect. For instance if I was to play Basketball against Giannis Antetokounmpo I would get my ass beat no matter how much I worked hard and tried to improve myself, so this is where hate drafting comes in. Hate drafting would be like sawing Giannis Antetokounmpo's legs off for a couple hours instead of training at basketball so sine he got worse even though I'm not as good I still would win. Now hate drafting is never employed enough but is so useful, I first learned about it playing cube draft in Magic the Gathering that by taking archetype defining cards away from people their decks were way worse and mine was a little worse than if i chose the best card for my deck. Now you might say "that's a genius idea but how do we do it in the NSFL?" Simple you make them have no/few players at a target position so they have to pick people up there in the regular draft. Since you now have a good core group for that position you wont be fighting them for draft choices and they have to scramble in the regular draft so they can field a complete good team and not have 50TPE S bots that get burned every play. and now you might say "Sure that might work in theory but how could you do it in practice" To that I say I can give a simple strategy on how to hate draft versus a team hypothetically.... now which team to choose....... maybe the since I've already made sure they won't draft me how much worse can it get
5. Mock Hate Draft
so the first step is figuring out who they might protect since I'm lazy and don't know anything I will "borrow" from Pmoney's expansion draft protections to inform my draft choices so the predicted protections are below with their player's position.
QB Rose Jenkins (interim GM)
RB Farley Hank
DT Thorian Skarsgard
WR Sean O’leary
LB Mike Hockhertz
S Jack Rambo
RB Ryan Leaf Jr
also since they are S21 rookies
WR Jerome Davis and
TE Osiris Firestorm-Fjord
are protected
so 2 important positions that I don't see protected are CB and DE and most of the protections are on the offensive side of the ball so defense might be a good place to poach what Defensive players Chicago has left and their TPE
Stevie Vassallo - DE
TPE: 302
Xerxes Ridley - CB
TPE: 573
Beat - S
TPE: 272
Johnson Harding - DT
TPE: 308
Trae Bacon - DT
TPE: 159
anyone before season 15 is probably too old to be part of a developing team anyways so we won't count them.
So the obvious first pick to hate draft would be Xerxes Ridley - CB who is a decent enough TPE player despite a suspicious amount of activity recently. Since that handicaps their CB position immensely it might force them to respond by protecting Spencer Castle - CB (S13!) to not have to jam CB in the regular draft. The other options for Chicago are to protect Beat who is a more active player but doesn't help with the CB problem right away, Stevie Vassallo - DE to not have to feel pressured to get a good DE early next draft or Johnson Harding - DT to protect a good developing DT. Either way our second hate draft pick is obviously whichever of Beat and Harding that is not protected to get a passable starter for now and hopefully good starter in the future with their activity and force Chicago to go fill that gap that the player we pick left. If Chicago instead protects Spencer Castle - CB as a stopgap we can get Beat or Harding and Vassallo to make them look hard at CB and DE in the next draft while we would be a step ahead. In this best case scenario we would look to other teams to get another good CB and DE so we can effectively ignore those positions early in the draft so we eliminate Chicago as an effective opponent in the draft and set ourselves up for success. It just so happens that Sarasota's first two picks in Pmoney's draft would be a CB and DE so assuming that happens we could sped pick 5 on a TE and spend picks 8 and 9 getting Ridley and Vassallo which would set us up perfectly to execute this strategy and crush our competition in the regular draft while not putting us at all behind in our goals of development.
That is just an example of how effective hate drafting can be even against a team that was able to protect most of their high value players by cutting at their weak positions we can disrupt their team and if they move to protect their weaknesses they give up better prospects overall like Leaf or O'Leary which any team would love to have.
6. Conclusion
Being an expansion GM is hard, I've changed my mind it might be harder then being GM of Chicago (unless Chicago gets hate drafted) but regardless this little thought experiment has been fun and hopefully the expansion teams will be helped by this article to understand how to move forward to gain a wonderful franchise and a good team now and later and maybe they can use hate drafting to not only get a little better but to spice the draft up this is Nat "The Ignorant Southerner" Wright signing off for now thanks for reading
TLDR: haha meme also more importantly expansion teams need to work hard and draft well and that means HATE DRAFTING so they can have a good expansion draft and a better regular draft
2,071 words according to word counter online
Good cop section
1. Do Your Research
Now this is easy for me to say being a nice lazy armchair simulation football GM but it really is obvious and important to have a complete understanding of not only the draft class coming in but also of each other team and how they operate with each other and how they work as a unit. Being an expansion GM is probably the hardest job in the NSFL (except for being GM of Chicago apparently) but you can attach a legacy to yourself by putting the time in and doing the research to make sure you are ahead of your competition.
2. Communicate with other GMs
Again this should be obvious but could be overlooked by some people. I really like what was done by trading the first pick in the regular draft to Austin. Any expansion team should not be hunting for star power at the expense of consistent depth and being open to trades of picks for players and high picks for more picks is incredibly important. There is no way that expansion teams can have the immense star power of teams that have had the privilege of being around for a long time and developing home grown talent but what they can have is deep consistent depth across the board and depend on that to win games. This is even more important this season with the wealth of talented prospects in the draft coming up, so the expansion teams need to TRADE DOWN. This draft there is probably merit in trading the number one overall for multiple selections as late as round 7 and higher picks in later drafts. For instance if i had the first overall pick i would gladly trade it for 3-5 picks in rounds 3-8 and a round 1-2 pick next draft(or if trading with Chicago just offer them a sandwich in exchange for their entire draft) because you can find good active helpful locker room talent that late this year and they get the star they want. But at the end of the day make things happen and DO NOT be afraid to pull of some risky bold moves to try to get an edge.
3. Work Hard
This is slightly tied into research but also encompasses a lot of other things like making sure you have a good organized Discord server and that you are active and communicative in it. Making sure you go the extra mile when working around the forum and discord not being overly judgmental but still being able to share what you think will help and hurt in different situations (A reason why young somewhat immature me will not be a GM anytime soon ex. Meming on Chicago in every section). Showing your professionalism and work ethic everywhere will make people want to join and work hard for your team
3b. Reach out to the incoming class
As a new GM these new draftees are going to be the backbone of your franchise for a long long time and since you traded down and got as many mid round picks as you could you better be reaching out to those players and trying to get them on board. In my opinion the best way to do this is to show and demonstrate your dedication to the team and your dedication to winning now and show them what steps you are taking to win and develop your roster for this season and beyond so they are confident in the stability and structure of your locker room. (basically don't be like Chicago GMs) If you can prove to these new draftees that you are really ready and gunning to win Ultimus titles and you aren't afraid of bold choices and hard work to get there any player would love to join that locker room and you will be able to get the most out of your players. However you can't do this if you don't talk to people in the forums and discord and show them so go out and show them your hard work.
If you run or are on a non expansion team this is where the article stops and I hope you can learn how to peacefully and mutually helpfully work together to brighten the league for all of us and to promote a wonderful game with no animosity except for friendly memeing on the good luck and have a wonderful draft
Bad Cop Section
Now for the good stuff. Don't get me wrong the stuff up there is important but this is where the bulk of your competitive edge will come from is how well you can exicute this next and final step which is
4. HATE DRAFT
So remember you are a GM now and all the other GM's are enemies and you have no regard for them so you need to hate draft them during the expansion draft now with only 12 picks per team iirc you can only hate draft 4 teams but such is life. So at this point you might be confused as to why you would be hate drafting and what it accomplishes so let me put it into perspective. As a team you want to win games and to do that you need to be better than you're opponent obviously so you might think you want to make you're team the best it can be which is kinda true but not perfect. For instance if I was to play Basketball against Giannis Antetokounmpo I would get my ass beat no matter how much I worked hard and tried to improve myself, so this is where hate drafting comes in. Hate drafting would be like sawing Giannis Antetokounmpo's legs off for a couple hours instead of training at basketball so sine he got worse even though I'm not as good I still would win. Now hate drafting is never employed enough but is so useful, I first learned about it playing cube draft in Magic the Gathering that by taking archetype defining cards away from people their decks were way worse and mine was a little worse than if i chose the best card for my deck. Now you might say "that's a genius idea but how do we do it in the NSFL?" Simple you make them have no/few players at a target position so they have to pick people up there in the regular draft. Since you now have a good core group for that position you wont be fighting them for draft choices and they have to scramble in the regular draft so they can field a complete good team and not have 50TPE S bots that get burned every play. and now you might say "Sure that might work in theory but how could you do it in practice" To that I say I can give a simple strategy on how to hate draft versus a team hypothetically.... now which team to choose....... maybe the since I've already made sure they won't draft me how much worse can it get
5. Mock Hate Draft
so the first step is figuring out who they might protect since I'm lazy and don't know anything I will "borrow" from Pmoney's expansion draft protections to inform my draft choices so the predicted protections are below with their player's position.
QB Rose Jenkins (interim GM)
RB Farley Hank
DT Thorian Skarsgard
WR Sean O’leary
LB Mike Hockhertz
S Jack Rambo
RB Ryan Leaf Jr
also since they are S21 rookies
WR Jerome Davis and
TE Osiris Firestorm-Fjord
are protected
so 2 important positions that I don't see protected are CB and DE and most of the protections are on the offensive side of the ball so defense might be a good place to poach what Defensive players Chicago has left and their TPE
Stevie Vassallo - DE
TPE: 302
Xerxes Ridley - CB
TPE: 573
Beat - S
TPE: 272
Johnson Harding - DT
TPE: 308
Trae Bacon - DT
TPE: 159
anyone before season 15 is probably too old to be part of a developing team anyways so we won't count them.
So the obvious first pick to hate draft would be Xerxes Ridley - CB who is a decent enough TPE player despite a suspicious amount of activity recently. Since that handicaps their CB position immensely it might force them to respond by protecting Spencer Castle - CB (S13!) to not have to jam CB in the regular draft. The other options for Chicago are to protect Beat who is a more active player but doesn't help with the CB problem right away, Stevie Vassallo - DE to not have to feel pressured to get a good DE early next draft or Johnson Harding - DT to protect a good developing DT. Either way our second hate draft pick is obviously whichever of Beat and Harding that is not protected to get a passable starter for now and hopefully good starter in the future with their activity and force Chicago to go fill that gap that the player we pick left. If Chicago instead protects Spencer Castle - CB as a stopgap we can get Beat or Harding and Vassallo to make them look hard at CB and DE in the next draft while we would be a step ahead. In this best case scenario we would look to other teams to get another good CB and DE so we can effectively ignore those positions early in the draft so we eliminate Chicago as an effective opponent in the draft and set ourselves up for success. It just so happens that Sarasota's first two picks in Pmoney's draft would be a CB and DE so assuming that happens we could sped pick 5 on a TE and spend picks 8 and 9 getting Ridley and Vassallo which would set us up perfectly to execute this strategy and crush our competition in the regular draft while not putting us at all behind in our goals of development.
That is just an example of how effective hate drafting can be even against a team that was able to protect most of their high value players by cutting at their weak positions we can disrupt their team and if they move to protect their weaknesses they give up better prospects overall like Leaf or O'Leary which any team would love to have.
6. Conclusion
Being an expansion GM is hard, I've changed my mind it might be harder then being GM of Chicago (unless Chicago gets hate drafted) but regardless this little thought experiment has been fun and hopefully the expansion teams will be helped by this article to understand how to move forward to gain a wonderful franchise and a good team now and later and maybe they can use hate drafting to not only get a little better but to spice the draft up this is Nat "The Ignorant Southerner" Wright signing off for now thanks for reading
TLDR: haha meme also more importantly expansion teams need to work hard and draft well and that means HATE DRAFTING so they can have a good expansion draft and a better regular draft
2,071 words according to word counter online