The playoffs should be expanded up to the fourth team spot and not have a first round bye week. Many around the upper levels of the league consider this to be “dumb” or “stupid” since “half the league will be in the playoffs.” Consider this, the sim is not perfect and will never be perfect. The way of determining tiebreakers sometimes is not always the best method for every situation and sometimes can leave the third team and fourth team in a conference in a bit of a pickle that does not allow for the best teams to be in the playoffs. The best example of a season where four teams should have been playing for the playoffs is in the S24 ASFC where all of the top four teams were faced with a 9-7 record with only the conference records dividing the teams for those spots. One could argue that that is plenty of separation needed for determining the best teams, but as stated before the sim is not perfect. Sometimes your team slips to the fourth spot in a four way tie through some bad luck on the sims many failures that allow for some of the dumbest decisions to be made by teams no matter how hard they try to send the best chances. The fact that 2% of games can have a quarterback throw five interceptions at random should be enough to have a failsafe for the playoffs regardless. If the fourth team does not win, then that is fine but you cannot say “they don’t deserve to play” unless they prove it. I am aware not every fourth team spot is the same as the S24 Arizona Outlaws, but we need to have a better playoff system to account for teams like them.
There are many things that can be argued for or against for this Point Task. Why the Otters would dominate the ASFC, why the Yeti should dominate the NSFC, so on and so forth. We all know these reasons, and we all know what is entitled for these teams. What we don’t know, and is kind of a sleeper pick right now, is that Chicago is going to win the NSFC. Beside the fact that the Butchers have the great Griff Oberwald on the team (joking, while I am on the team, my player is stuck behind quite a few other great wide receivers) They are the team with the most updates per week. If you look at the tracker, the Butchers are #1 in TOTAL TPE in the league. The Butchers have a great head on their shoulders in both Bayley and Muford, and the defense looked more its part then it has for a long time. The Defense held the Yeti Offense to 6 total points, granted it was in Chicago, but still. The Butchers have done all they can both offensively and defensively, and will continue to improve. Also, side note, having Von Hayes more to Defensive End is probably one of the most underrated moves of the century, that Defensive Line in theory should eat teams up. (Only Theory because the sim is potato-adjacent).
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In light of recent discussions that I've seen around both PT Passes and the league economy at large, I believe it's time for me to reassert my greatest wish for a change to the league that would affect both of these things. That change would be to make PT Passes publicly available for purchase by any and all players in the league. This would allow any user to spend league money in exchange for passes on a weekly or seasonal basis. The idea behind this is to give players more and more options for how and when they engage with the league and put in the work to improve their players. This certainly seems to be a growing prerogative for league leadership after the change from posting prediction threads directly after the preceding games to posting all of the week's prediction threads at the beginning of the week, and this kind of flexibility is a priority I think we should all be embracing. As it stands, PTs reward a task-focused mentality, with most players simply completing their PTs with the least effort possible, but offering the ability to purchase PT passes allows for more creative and involved mentalities to be rewarded equally. All-in, putting the cost of the PT pass at ~$20mil would require much more effort per season when looking at pure word count to word count comparisons, but this would allow for more creativity and flexibility with the content, style, medium, and schedule that users can operate in. I believe this change would be absolutely positive for the player experience and the economy of the league.
I think it's pretty much done and dusted at this point that the Minnesota Grey Ducks will be winning the DSFL this season. We have an absolute STUD quarterback who slangs that ball. His mustard is so spicy it'll make your eyes water. Our offensive line is full of absolute monsters. They swallow up incoming linemen like they're an all you can eat buffet. And our defense? The defense has so many sacks you'll need one hundred pounds of potatoes to fill them up. Not to mention the Ducks are getting so many interceptions Jameis Winston is getting Vietnam flashbacks whenever he hears quacking. We can pound the turf and run the ball down the throat of anyone we want or we can throw that ball through the sky like a plane coming in for a smooth landing. Our receivers are so good at catching the ball that their gloves are inspected for super glue after every match and our running backs are getting tested for PEDs before and after each game but those tests all come back negative. This is the result of pure bred American muscle and high octane play. The coach whips these boys up into such a frenzy we come onto the field frothing at the mouth ready to dominate anything that gets in our way.
Preface: I have zero sim experience and this is based solely on outside observations. Genuinely do not care enough about this to complain under normal circumstances and just want to complete the point task. Thank you.
Now in terms of intricate statistics this may end up a bit light, however in terms of simple comparisons I can say that I think we could use at least a minor archetype overhaul. Even if only in the form of an archetype simplification as I feel like there are certain positions where we have an unnecessary division. This will focus on defense which is where my player Magnus plays and where I have more experience in general from having observed that side more closely during my time in the league.
Starting with the defensive tackle position I feel like the Balanced and Run Stuffer archetypes could be merged into one. The Nose Tackle being the only defensive position capable of maxing strength fits the Run Stuffer description, and this would mean defensive tackle archetypes cover strength, balance, and speed. However the big reason for this is while their initial expenditures are mildly different; their only stat cap difference is Balanced being able to go five points higher on hands.
Going into defensive end the discovery that the Speed Rusher and Balanced archetypes have the same speed cap raised an eyebrow for me. (Note: Height and weight caps for defensive line are all pretty similar so not going to go into that, although I do think Nose Tackles could justifiably get a few extra pounds due to personal bias.) Once again though there is a matter of two positions essentially fulfilling the same role with the caps for the Power Rusher and Run Stopper only being different by a five point hands advantage for the Power Rusher. So once again I think a simple strength, balance, and speed option list would cover everything people reasonably want to make for the league.
Admittedly outside of the defensive line my knowledge level drops off considerably, but I do still think there are areas that could be addressed based on my knowledge of attribute value. Given defense deems strength and speed to be key the fact that only three of the five linebacker archetypes have 170 total between the two, and that the other two only get 165 raises an eyebrow. Using a quick and easy check there are only two active Coverage linebackers making use of archetype caps, and no active Run Stopper linebackers making use of archetype caps. That suggests to me that at the least the Run Stopper could either be done away with, or be made more appealing to the public.
Cornerback I will admit works well from what I have seen of tests. You have the All-Around that is arguably the strong archetype with higher strength and tackling caps. The Zone archetype that makes use of a slightly higher hands attribute to get more takeaways. Along with Man-to-Man which is the speed archetype. One could argue that there could be a bit more distinction made between the three, but overall I feel this is the best of the defensive archetypes as it stands.
Safety sees a similar oddity as others earlier with the All-Around and Playmaker archetypes being quite similar, although unlike the defensive line positions the five points of hands may actually have a distinct difference on how the two handle as far as the sim is concerned. They also have the Center Fielder to cover speedy types and the Run Support to cover strong types. Also to nicely fill the free safety and strong safety designations.
Now to summarize this all means I think defensive tackle and defensive end could both be broken down to three archetypes a piece. Linebackers could afford a boost or reduction of archetypes to accommodate their two less popular selections. Each cornerback archetype has at least four representatives making use of their unique caps which makes them well balanced in my book. Honestly safety is in a similar boat as they also have at least four representatives making use of the unique caps of each archetype.