Prompt 6 Wrote:Write 600 words or more on something about anything in the league that interests you. It could be related to statistics, a league issue that you take seriously, or a niche part of history that doesn’t fit neatly into either of the above categories. This must be directly related to the league, so don’t wax 600 words about your team’s participation on a Werewolf server or something.
"Rebuilding" periods on a team can be interesting or anathema to different users in the league. With Austin in a bit of one this year and maybe next with a new QB, what does a rebuild actually look like? I could spend a lot of time defining what a rebuild looks like and peruse season records to count the number of times it's happened for each team, but that's a media article and one I think I've already seen written before. So instead of that, I'm going to talk about what it's been like on the team that, while hopeful, never really got things together and finished going away with the first overall pick.
The Copperheads were last in the playoffs in S33. A 4 year drought isn't the longest time to miss out conceptually, and the team was competitive in S34 despite a losing record. Statistically, the only really big change looks like the run yards production falling drastically with no 1000-yard rushers in what seems to be an attempt to take advantage of a high-TPE QB's passing ability. The leadership apparently saw that that wasn't working out, as Eight-Two retired at the end of S36, presumably to set up for a new QB to be peaking along with the renewed defense picks from S35 and S36. It's possible that the strategists on the team have still done lots of testing and scheme investigations to try and improve our winning percentage - I know I've seen groans as we lost games that testing had as in our favor. But, I definitely expected to be contending for first pick much more than a playoff spot this year.
My personal feelings about losing so often definitely led to less interest in watching the games in favor of just looking at the final score. I wouldn't say I was in despair about the season or anything, though - the team when I was drafted definitely was one of the older ones and so a need to turn over to newer players was obvious. The core of the team now is fairly active (I'd say about 7/22 inactives on a quick count, before callups/offseason processing) and a clear direction on how we'll be playoff-relevant in the next year or two. I've read articles from players on teams where it felt that the team was rebuilding forever or didn't have enough active players to compete on the TPE-earning side, leading to the actives/earners asking to get traded or selecting free agency instead of sticking with the team. I feel like we're not going to have that problem too badly (though I don't sit in on negotiations for salary to know that for sure) since the path to success looks fairly direct now. It also helps that the ASFC seems to have been the weaker conference the last couple years - 9 wins has been enough to make the playoffs every year since S33. And while I don't really expect the team to get there next year with a rookie QB and a lead RB who's pretty far from max earning, I'm not too worried.
On the day-to-day and week-to-week situation, though, I think the lack of wins combined with the number of blowout losses (6 by more than 2 scores) definitely led to less people watching the game live and interacting with the others in our locker room. There were still usually a couple people, but as compared to previous years I'd say there was definitely less live hype. I'm guessing other people were, like me, not choosing to prioritize the live watching and instead watching the VOD or the index update. If I was able to notice that as a casual member of the team, I think it's definitely something that GMs of rebuilding teams should keep an eye out for if they're concerned about keeping people interested. Thinking of ways to get people excited and engaged is nice, though I know that live watching isn't always possible with time zones and people foolishly having non-ISFL stuff to do.
So how am I rating my rebuilding experience overall? Well, I can say that I like then environment more when winning. At the same time, the ISFL shouldn't be a place where one team can always win (if nothing else, 13/14ths of the league can't win the Ultimus each year), so dealing with the cycles of rebuilding and competing is a somewhat required skill if you're planning on sticking with a team. I've definitely seen a bit of the "migrate to HON to get a ring" kind of movement going on in the last couple seasons, so it'll be interesting to see to what extent that keeps up. And to be fair, before them it was Chicago and before them it was probably someone else but I forget because it's been a few years. It does make me wonder if GMs look at to what extent a user tries to move around for success when drafting - intuitively I'd expect that grabbing someone who will remain through trouble is more valuable to the team than someone who won't. But to what extent they actually look through someone's history and try to come up with a profile, I don't know. Maybe something to think about if I ever suddenly have an extra 20 free hours per day and try to become a GM...
Draft Steal (retired S35 CB) - Profile/Update | Wiki
Troen Egghands (retired S22 DE) - Profile | Update | Wiki