12-31-2020, 02:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-02-2021, 07:29 AM by Asked Madden.)
Rebuilding a franchise is HARD.
There are so many variables that come into play – individual training, salary cap, game strategy, and of course, a healthy dose of luck. As a lifelong fan of the Cincinnati Bengals and Reds, I have been watching rebuild after rebuild attempt throughout my 24 years of life so far. We have come close so many times to making that breakthrough, and ultimately failed when it mattered most. What I have seen in successful teams is that a combination of building a solid foundation – a supportive locker room, wise contract and other spending, solid coaching and game plan – with a push at just the right time – signing a couple free agents at positions of need, making a key strategic adjustment, and having guts to make the big play when its needed – are what seem to add up to a complete rebuild of a team and culture.
In the ISFL landscape, there are a few variables that are simplified when it comes to completing a rebuild. Unlike the MLB, for example, we all are operating under the same salary cap and therefore have a rather level playing field. Additionally, we are blessed with a perfect bill of health in this league, having gone now 26 seasons and counting without a single injury occurring – what a remarkable occurrence! Adding to this the smaller roster sizes to manage compared to particularly NFL and MLB rosters, one would think that a rebuild should, hypothetically, be possible in a relatively short amount of time.
While the true sign of a complete rebuild is winning playoff games and championships, for the sake of this study, I considered a rebuild to begin with a losing season and to be completed when a team amassed a winning regular season record. Below, I have listed all of the rebuilds in the history of our league, including starting and ending seasons, starting and ending records, and the number of seasons it took to complete the rebuild.
The Rebuilds:
Season 1 (4-10) -> Season 2 (8-6) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 1 (4-10) -> Season 4 (9-5) – San Jose SaberCats. 3 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 2 (5-9) -> Season 3 (8-5-1) – Philadelphia Liberty. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 2 (3-11) -> Season 5 (1-13) and then retired from the league – Las Vegas Legion. N/A – Never Rebuilt.
Season 3 (3-11) -> Season 9 (8-6) – Colorado Yeti. 6 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 6 (2-11-1) -> Season 8 (9-5) – New Orleans Second Line. 2 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 7 (5-9) -> Season 12 (10-4) – San Jose SaberCats. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 7 (5-9) -> Season 16 (7-6) – Arizona Outlaws. 9 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 9 (4-10) -> Season 13 (8-6) – Philadelphia Liberty. 4 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 11 (4-10) -> Season 16 (10-3) – Yellowknife Wraiths. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 12 (4-10) -> Season 19 (8-5) – New Orleans Second Line. 7 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 12 (6-8) -> Season 13 (8-6) – Colorado Yeti. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 13 (4-10) -> Season 14 (11-3) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 14 (4-10) -> Season 19 (8-5) – Colorado Yeti. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 16 (0-13) -> Season 20 (8-5) – Austin Copperheads. 4 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 17 (5-8) -> Season 23 (9-7) – Philadelphia Liberty. 6 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 17 (6-7) -> Season 22 (8-5) – San Jose SaberCats. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 18 (5-8) -> Season 26 (8-6*) – Chicago Butchers. 8 Seasons to rebuild*. (Projected winning season this year)
Season 18 (6-7) -> Season 19 (8-5) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 19 (5-8) -> Season 20 (7-6) – Arizona Outlaws. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 20 (6-7) -> Season 21 (9-4) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 21 (3-10) -> Season 24 (9-7) – Arizona Outlaws. 3 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 22 (3-10) -> Season 26+ (5-9*) – Baltimore Hawks. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 22 (6-7) -> Season 24 (12-4) – Sarasota Sailfish. 2 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 22 (4-9) -> Season 26+ (2-12*) – Honolulu Hahalua. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 23 (5-11) -> Season 24 (9-7) – San Jose SaberCats. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 24 (3-13) -> Season 26+ (4-10*) – Philadelphia Liberty. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 24 (6-10) -> Season 26 (11-3*) – Yellowknife Wraiths. 2 Seasons to rebuild. (Clinched winning record S26)
Season 24 (7-9) -> Season 26 (9-5*) – Austin Copperheads. 2 Seasons to rebuild. (Clinched winning record S26)
Season 25 (3-13) -> Season 26+ (5-9*) – Berlin Fire Salamanders. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 25 (4-12) -> Season 26 (8-6*) – New York Silverbacks. 1 Season to rebuild*. (Projected winning season this year)
Season 25 (7-9) -> Season 26 (8-6*) – New Orleans Second Line. 1 Season to rebuild*. (Projected winning season this year)
All in all, there have been 27 successful rebuilds in the history of this league so far (5 of these are projections, as Chicago, Yellowknife, Austin, New York, and New Orleans aim to be successfully rebuilt at the end of this season, with many having already clinched winning records). 4 rebuilds are projected to continue through this year in Baltimore, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Berlin. In the history of our league, we have seen rebuilds take anywhere from 1 to 9 seasons, most commonly taking only a single year (10 times) but also having taken two years (4 times), three years (2 times), four years (2 times), five years (4 times), six years (2 times), seven years (1 time), eight years (1 time), and nine years (1 time). Over this stretch, the average length of a rebuild has been 3.26 seasons long.
Some notably long rebuilds include the 6 season efforts by Colorado (Season 3 – Season 9) and Philadelphia (Season 17 – Season 23), the 7 season rebuild by New Orleans (Season 12 – Season 19), the 8 season stretch that is hopefully about to be broken by Chicago (Season 18 – Season 26), and finally the marathon run by Arizona for 9 seasons (Season 7 – Season 16). Sorry if I’m bringing up bad memories for any of you here! One other notable fact that I’m sure would be brought up in the comments if not mentioned in this piece is that the Orange County Otters are absent from this report. The reason for this is that they are the only team never to have had a losing season – with a .500 season of 7-7 in season 10 being the worst finish in franchise history, they have never had to go through the rebuilding process. Kudos to the managers and players in Orange County – also, we hate you just a little bit for it.
So what makes for a successful rebuild? The true answer here is that in any rebuild there are a great number of immeasurable factors which I cannot lay out in this report. There are the hours spent sim testing to try and find new strategies, strengths and weaknesses to employ in upcoming matches. There is the absolute necessity for some luck and blessing given by the simulation itself. There are thoughts and prayers and voodoo dolls and rabbit’s feet which I’m sure all play their own parts in whose rebuilding efforts come to fruition each season. However, I wanted to take the chance to see if a few measurable statistics line up with rebuilding success.
I’ve always been told that in the game of football, it is all about controlling the line of scrimmage and that the icing on the cake is the play of your quarterback. So, while I have been unable to find a way to track TPE year to year, I am digging into the yearly player builds to estimate their ability to affect the outcome each season. First, I want to investigate the impact of having more and better human offensive linemen. Second, I want to look into the impact of more and better human defensive linemen. Finally, I want to see the impact of the level of quarterback play for rebuilding teams. At the time of writing this paragraph, I have no idea how that research is going to go or what the outcomes will be, so the rest of this article may very well flop, but we’ll find out together!
Here is my report: Rebuilding Report
Let's dig in! This went way better than I thought that it would! There seem to be some very real correlations to be found in looking at the quarterbacks, offensive, and defensive lines as teams rebuild their rosters and become competitive once more. Each position brings its own data and insights, so I will attempt to interpret the numbers below position by position. Please add your own conclusions and insights to the comments so that I can find out more things that I missed here!
First, let’s take a look at the offensive line. Strategically building the offensive line tends to be something that is seen as a luxury in this league, so it was not terribly surprising to see it as the least addressed of the three positions examined. I also must admit that this was by far the most difficult to evaluate which players were human and which were bots – kudos to you GMs for some seriously creative names over the years, you made my life really hard! But my best guesses are included in this report as to how many of these players were human users and tracking their progress as players. What I found was that the quality of the offensive linemen was not nearly as important to a rebuild as the quantity of offensive lineman users. Seven of the rebuilding teams (26%) added to their number of offensive linemen in the season that they completed their rebuild, while only two teams (7%) had a decrease in offensive linemen users in their season of successful rebuild. The quality of these linemen, as I stated previously, seems to be much less important, as 9 teams had an increase in both overall and average offensive line ratings, yet 6 and 7 teams had a decrease in overall and average offensive line ratings respectively, leading to a much less statistically relevant insight regarding quality of offensive linemen.
This finding supported one of my personal hypotheses regarding the offensive line. Bringing in users on the offensive line does not do a ton for the quality of one’s protection compared to the bots available for purchase, but it does a huge deal for the salary cap of that team. The $5-8 million used on each lineman bot can instead be allocated for a high-end free agent or to attract multiple new teammates to strengthen the roster top to bottom. Thus an offensive line draft pick, while it may seem like a luxury for a rebuilding team, may just allow them to free up enough money to get a further developed free agent player rather than draft one who is going to spend the next couple season developing into a serviceable player. It is a risk, but this strategy can be the catalyst that finally gets a rebuilding team over the hump.
Next to look at is the most commonly thought of option when it comes to rebuilding your team: gib Patrick Mahomes! Quarterback play is undeniably vital to success, particularly in the modern ISFL where most starting quarterbacks have ratings in the high 90s to 100, so many rebuilds begin because of a quarterback retiring without a fully developed heir ready to take over the reins for the team. For this reason, it is unsurprising to see that 16 out of the 27 (59%) completed rebuilds had a quarterback on the rise at the time of their breakthrough season. Of the 11 other teams to rebuild, 8 of them already had a quarterback at a 100 rating at least one year previous to their success, so 89% of successful rebuilds featured a quarterback who was either maxed out or on the rise at the time of completing the turnaround. This is not particularly surprising to me, but is certainly worth noting as without a highly rated quarterback, it is extremely difficult to get over the hump. Looking to avoid a rebuild? Make sure to always have your next quarterback plan in place well before your current quarterback washes up – if you can have a quarterback in the high 90s ready to go, it will work wonders in avoiding the rebuild that comes with a low level quarterback starting in the ISFL.
Finally, the defensive line deserves a good, hard look. An investigation into the changes of the defensive line in years that led to a successful rebuild showed me that of the three positions examined, this one – not even quarterback – was the most important to a successful rebuild. The important piece to note here is that what matters for the defensive line is the exact opposite of the offensive line, which emphasized quantity over quality in the rebuilding mode. For the defensive line, it is emphatically quality which is important over and above quantity. In successful rebuilds, only 9 teams added to their number of defensive linemen, while 6 teams actually shrunk their unit, yet in almost every single rebuild, the average rating of the defensive linemen increased, meaning that each contributing lineman was stronger, even if the number of linemen was smaller. While the cumulative rating may have shrunk or grown depending on the number of linemen retained, the average rating of defensive linemen increased on 24 of 27 successful rebuilds, good for 89% of these teams. While this matches the number of teams with a 100 rated or improving quarterback, many of those teams had a 100 rated and/or improving quarterback for multiple seasons before their breakthrough, when their defensive line finally developed into a full force. This is far and away the most dependable indicator of success among rebuilding teams.
So, your team is rebuilding – or heading there soon – what do you do? As I mentioned at the top of this article, building a productive GM team, a positive locker room, and sound simulation strategy are all vital to success in the ISFL. You need to be a place where people want to play or you’ll never build up a good roster. But when you’re looking at your roster, you have a few options. 1) Draft a couple of offensive linemen to try and free up cap space to retain great players or pursue free agents to plug in as a catalyst for success – this is the least common strategy, but given the right situation has proven to work multiple times. 2) Go all in on a hall of fame quarterback, either developing a young gun (start NOW) or switching a veteran to take over as play caller, to try and make the right decisions with a roster missing some key pieces (see: Tom Brady, Peyton Manning). Or, and I cannot emphasize this enough, 3) Try and make an absolute BRICK WALL on the defensive line. The simulation is friendly to teams who can get sacks and stop the run; do this and you will minimize the role of simulation luck and maximize your chance for success here and now. History says that this works, and that in fact it is almost always necessary to dig out of that losing streak.
I have thoroughly enjoyed putting this together, and feel that I understand our league better as a result of it. I hope that some of you will have enjoyed this as well, as I - a player with absolutely no experience running a team or even simulation test - have clearly shown you how to fix your team's problems. May you have better luck than the city of Cincinnati as you pursue greatness in the ISFL
(Note for graders: the excel link took several hours of work to put together and while it doesn’t add words to this piece’s length, I hope it can count for something! Thank you!!)
There are so many variables that come into play – individual training, salary cap, game strategy, and of course, a healthy dose of luck. As a lifelong fan of the Cincinnati Bengals and Reds, I have been watching rebuild after rebuild attempt throughout my 24 years of life so far. We have come close so many times to making that breakthrough, and ultimately failed when it mattered most. What I have seen in successful teams is that a combination of building a solid foundation – a supportive locker room, wise contract and other spending, solid coaching and game plan – with a push at just the right time – signing a couple free agents at positions of need, making a key strategic adjustment, and having guts to make the big play when its needed – are what seem to add up to a complete rebuild of a team and culture.
In the ISFL landscape, there are a few variables that are simplified when it comes to completing a rebuild. Unlike the MLB, for example, we all are operating under the same salary cap and therefore have a rather level playing field. Additionally, we are blessed with a perfect bill of health in this league, having gone now 26 seasons and counting without a single injury occurring – what a remarkable occurrence! Adding to this the smaller roster sizes to manage compared to particularly NFL and MLB rosters, one would think that a rebuild should, hypothetically, be possible in a relatively short amount of time.
While the true sign of a complete rebuild is winning playoff games and championships, for the sake of this study, I considered a rebuild to begin with a losing season and to be completed when a team amassed a winning regular season record. Below, I have listed all of the rebuilds in the history of our league, including starting and ending seasons, starting and ending records, and the number of seasons it took to complete the rebuild.
The Rebuilds:
Season 1 (4-10) -> Season 2 (8-6) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 1 (4-10) -> Season 4 (9-5) – San Jose SaberCats. 3 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 2 (5-9) -> Season 3 (8-5-1) – Philadelphia Liberty. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 2 (3-11) -> Season 5 (1-13) and then retired from the league – Las Vegas Legion. N/A – Never Rebuilt.
Season 3 (3-11) -> Season 9 (8-6) – Colorado Yeti. 6 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 6 (2-11-1) -> Season 8 (9-5) – New Orleans Second Line. 2 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 7 (5-9) -> Season 12 (10-4) – San Jose SaberCats. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 7 (5-9) -> Season 16 (7-6) – Arizona Outlaws. 9 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 9 (4-10) -> Season 13 (8-6) – Philadelphia Liberty. 4 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 11 (4-10) -> Season 16 (10-3) – Yellowknife Wraiths. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 12 (4-10) -> Season 19 (8-5) – New Orleans Second Line. 7 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 12 (6-8) -> Season 13 (8-6) – Colorado Yeti. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 13 (4-10) -> Season 14 (11-3) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 14 (4-10) -> Season 19 (8-5) – Colorado Yeti. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 16 (0-13) -> Season 20 (8-5) – Austin Copperheads. 4 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 17 (5-8) -> Season 23 (9-7) – Philadelphia Liberty. 6 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 17 (6-7) -> Season 22 (8-5) – San Jose SaberCats. 5 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 18 (5-8) -> Season 26 (8-6*) – Chicago Butchers. 8 Seasons to rebuild*. (Projected winning season this year)
Season 18 (6-7) -> Season 19 (8-5) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 19 (5-8) -> Season 20 (7-6) – Arizona Outlaws. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 20 (6-7) -> Season 21 (9-4) – Baltimore Hawks. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 21 (3-10) -> Season 24 (9-7) – Arizona Outlaws. 3 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 22 (3-10) -> Season 26+ (5-9*) – Baltimore Hawks. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 22 (6-7) -> Season 24 (12-4) – Sarasota Sailfish. 2 Seasons to rebuild.
Season 22 (4-9) -> Season 26+ (2-12*) – Honolulu Hahalua. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 23 (5-11) -> Season 24 (9-7) – San Jose SaberCats. 1 Season to rebuild.
Season 24 (3-13) -> Season 26+ (4-10*) – Philadelphia Liberty. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 24 (6-10) -> Season 26 (11-3*) – Yellowknife Wraiths. 2 Seasons to rebuild. (Clinched winning record S26)
Season 24 (7-9) -> Season 26 (9-5*) – Austin Copperheads. 2 Seasons to rebuild. (Clinched winning record S26)
Season 25 (3-13) -> Season 26+ (5-9*) – Berlin Fire Salamanders. N/A – Has not yet rebuilt successfully. (Clinched losing record S26)
Season 25 (4-12) -> Season 26 (8-6*) – New York Silverbacks. 1 Season to rebuild*. (Projected winning season this year)
Season 25 (7-9) -> Season 26 (8-6*) – New Orleans Second Line. 1 Season to rebuild*. (Projected winning season this year)
All in all, there have been 27 successful rebuilds in the history of this league so far (5 of these are projections, as Chicago, Yellowknife, Austin, New York, and New Orleans aim to be successfully rebuilt at the end of this season, with many having already clinched winning records). 4 rebuilds are projected to continue through this year in Baltimore, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Berlin. In the history of our league, we have seen rebuilds take anywhere from 1 to 9 seasons, most commonly taking only a single year (10 times) but also having taken two years (4 times), three years (2 times), four years (2 times), five years (4 times), six years (2 times), seven years (1 time), eight years (1 time), and nine years (1 time). Over this stretch, the average length of a rebuild has been 3.26 seasons long.
Some notably long rebuilds include the 6 season efforts by Colorado (Season 3 – Season 9) and Philadelphia (Season 17 – Season 23), the 7 season rebuild by New Orleans (Season 12 – Season 19), the 8 season stretch that is hopefully about to be broken by Chicago (Season 18 – Season 26), and finally the marathon run by Arizona for 9 seasons (Season 7 – Season 16). Sorry if I’m bringing up bad memories for any of you here! One other notable fact that I’m sure would be brought up in the comments if not mentioned in this piece is that the Orange County Otters are absent from this report. The reason for this is that they are the only team never to have had a losing season – with a .500 season of 7-7 in season 10 being the worst finish in franchise history, they have never had to go through the rebuilding process. Kudos to the managers and players in Orange County – also, we hate you just a little bit for it.
So what makes for a successful rebuild? The true answer here is that in any rebuild there are a great number of immeasurable factors which I cannot lay out in this report. There are the hours spent sim testing to try and find new strategies, strengths and weaknesses to employ in upcoming matches. There is the absolute necessity for some luck and blessing given by the simulation itself. There are thoughts and prayers and voodoo dolls and rabbit’s feet which I’m sure all play their own parts in whose rebuilding efforts come to fruition each season. However, I wanted to take the chance to see if a few measurable statistics line up with rebuilding success.
I’ve always been told that in the game of football, it is all about controlling the line of scrimmage and that the icing on the cake is the play of your quarterback. So, while I have been unable to find a way to track TPE year to year, I am digging into the yearly player builds to estimate their ability to affect the outcome each season. First, I want to investigate the impact of having more and better human offensive linemen. Second, I want to look into the impact of more and better human defensive linemen. Finally, I want to see the impact of the level of quarterback play for rebuilding teams. At the time of writing this paragraph, I have no idea how that research is going to go or what the outcomes will be, so the rest of this article may very well flop, but we’ll find out together!
Here is my report: Rebuilding Report
Let's dig in! This went way better than I thought that it would! There seem to be some very real correlations to be found in looking at the quarterbacks, offensive, and defensive lines as teams rebuild their rosters and become competitive once more. Each position brings its own data and insights, so I will attempt to interpret the numbers below position by position. Please add your own conclusions and insights to the comments so that I can find out more things that I missed here!
First, let’s take a look at the offensive line. Strategically building the offensive line tends to be something that is seen as a luxury in this league, so it was not terribly surprising to see it as the least addressed of the three positions examined. I also must admit that this was by far the most difficult to evaluate which players were human and which were bots – kudos to you GMs for some seriously creative names over the years, you made my life really hard! But my best guesses are included in this report as to how many of these players were human users and tracking their progress as players. What I found was that the quality of the offensive linemen was not nearly as important to a rebuild as the quantity of offensive lineman users. Seven of the rebuilding teams (26%) added to their number of offensive linemen in the season that they completed their rebuild, while only two teams (7%) had a decrease in offensive linemen users in their season of successful rebuild. The quality of these linemen, as I stated previously, seems to be much less important, as 9 teams had an increase in both overall and average offensive line ratings, yet 6 and 7 teams had a decrease in overall and average offensive line ratings respectively, leading to a much less statistically relevant insight regarding quality of offensive linemen.
This finding supported one of my personal hypotheses regarding the offensive line. Bringing in users on the offensive line does not do a ton for the quality of one’s protection compared to the bots available for purchase, but it does a huge deal for the salary cap of that team. The $5-8 million used on each lineman bot can instead be allocated for a high-end free agent or to attract multiple new teammates to strengthen the roster top to bottom. Thus an offensive line draft pick, while it may seem like a luxury for a rebuilding team, may just allow them to free up enough money to get a further developed free agent player rather than draft one who is going to spend the next couple season developing into a serviceable player. It is a risk, but this strategy can be the catalyst that finally gets a rebuilding team over the hump.
Next to look at is the most commonly thought of option when it comes to rebuilding your team: gib Patrick Mahomes! Quarterback play is undeniably vital to success, particularly in the modern ISFL where most starting quarterbacks have ratings in the high 90s to 100, so many rebuilds begin because of a quarterback retiring without a fully developed heir ready to take over the reins for the team. For this reason, it is unsurprising to see that 16 out of the 27 (59%) completed rebuilds had a quarterback on the rise at the time of their breakthrough season. Of the 11 other teams to rebuild, 8 of them already had a quarterback at a 100 rating at least one year previous to their success, so 89% of successful rebuilds featured a quarterback who was either maxed out or on the rise at the time of completing the turnaround. This is not particularly surprising to me, but is certainly worth noting as without a highly rated quarterback, it is extremely difficult to get over the hump. Looking to avoid a rebuild? Make sure to always have your next quarterback plan in place well before your current quarterback washes up – if you can have a quarterback in the high 90s ready to go, it will work wonders in avoiding the rebuild that comes with a low level quarterback starting in the ISFL.
Finally, the defensive line deserves a good, hard look. An investigation into the changes of the defensive line in years that led to a successful rebuild showed me that of the three positions examined, this one – not even quarterback – was the most important to a successful rebuild. The important piece to note here is that what matters for the defensive line is the exact opposite of the offensive line, which emphasized quantity over quality in the rebuilding mode. For the defensive line, it is emphatically quality which is important over and above quantity. In successful rebuilds, only 9 teams added to their number of defensive linemen, while 6 teams actually shrunk their unit, yet in almost every single rebuild, the average rating of the defensive linemen increased, meaning that each contributing lineman was stronger, even if the number of linemen was smaller. While the cumulative rating may have shrunk or grown depending on the number of linemen retained, the average rating of defensive linemen increased on 24 of 27 successful rebuilds, good for 89% of these teams. While this matches the number of teams with a 100 rated or improving quarterback, many of those teams had a 100 rated and/or improving quarterback for multiple seasons before their breakthrough, when their defensive line finally developed into a full force. This is far and away the most dependable indicator of success among rebuilding teams.
So, your team is rebuilding – or heading there soon – what do you do? As I mentioned at the top of this article, building a productive GM team, a positive locker room, and sound simulation strategy are all vital to success in the ISFL. You need to be a place where people want to play or you’ll never build up a good roster. But when you’re looking at your roster, you have a few options. 1) Draft a couple of offensive linemen to try and free up cap space to retain great players or pursue free agents to plug in as a catalyst for success – this is the least common strategy, but given the right situation has proven to work multiple times. 2) Go all in on a hall of fame quarterback, either developing a young gun (start NOW) or switching a veteran to take over as play caller, to try and make the right decisions with a roster missing some key pieces (see: Tom Brady, Peyton Manning). Or, and I cannot emphasize this enough, 3) Try and make an absolute BRICK WALL on the defensive line. The simulation is friendly to teams who can get sacks and stop the run; do this and you will minimize the role of simulation luck and maximize your chance for success here and now. History says that this works, and that in fact it is almost always necessary to dig out of that losing streak.
I have thoroughly enjoyed putting this together, and feel that I understand our league better as a result of it. I hope that some of you will have enjoyed this as well, as I - a player with absolutely no experience running a team or even simulation test - have clearly shown you how to fix your team's problems. May you have better luck than the city of Cincinnati as you pursue greatness in the ISFL
(Note for graders: the excel link took several hours of work to put together and while it doesn’t add words to this piece’s length, I hope it can count for something! Thank you!!)