Processed: ORL/CAL trade

[Hell Atlantic]

4) One look at your roster and you see an old team going nowhere.

ok, now you're clearly an idiot. congratulations. how do you look at this team and think it's "old"? HAHAHAHA

*i got one of the top 3 QBs in the game in Colella - 8 year vet
*one of the top young WRs in the game in Nathan Mullin - 2 years
*my Center and 2 Guards range from 9 to 11 year vets
*aquired one of the top young franchise CBs in Duane Edwards - 4 yrs
*2 of the top 3 DEs in the league in Gilpin and Otey - 10 and 9 yrs respectively
*oh yeah, someone you might remember - the top young QB in the game in Ike Jordan - 4 yrs
*WR Grady Gomez is rated top 3 - 9 yrs.

how do you say this team is going nowhere? it's about to blow up. you keep sitting by your phone and wait for a team to call you up to trade you a stud impact player for the pieces of shit you want to give up.

you think anyone wants Lenny Romano? HAHAHAHAHA that's your idea of being a GM and making moves - putting up your 12 yr WR on the block? yeah, i'm sure he's gonna catch another 14 td's. my team is the 5th youngest in the league, that's how much you know about this league.

[JesterBlaze]

yawn

go to your room and learn to gameplan little dummer boy

[Hell Atlantic]

that sound you heard was your window of opportunity slamming shut.

[MrBigglesworth]

ok, now you're clearly an idiot. congratulations. how do you look at this team and think it's "old"?

I think he meant that, when you look at your roster, only 3 of your starters are in their 7th year or less. I would wager that that is the worst ratio of any team. What that means is that most of your team is on the downswing of their career. There is a much higher chance that most of your players will take ratings hits or play worse this year than they did last year. 5 of your players younger than their 8th year are likely to finish with future ratings over 50. Your team is listed among the youngest because you have a number of 15/25 rookie scrubs on the roster. And you are unlikely to improve on any of those numbers in the draft (with only a 5th and 7th this year).

The proof is in the pudding, and whether its a good idea or not to have an old team thrown together in a year or two I guess remains to be seen. But there is no questioning that you have an old team.

[Warhammer]

how much of an impact do you really think cohesion plays in the grand scheme of things? i'm willing to wager it has no more than a 10%, *maybe* 15% affect on the outcome of a game. what you're saying is "i rather keep my good young DE and not trade for your stud veteran DE cuz it'll ruin my cohesion". if your young, 50ish rated DE could equal the output of my high 70ish Joe Otey then don't you think your average DE would be rated higher? you have no DE that currently is rated as high as Otey.

Uh, you realize that Hartford had the #30 rated roster at the end of the year last year, right? That same team that beat a number of teams that have top rosters in the league. Also, I wouldn't go off on Jester too much, what was the score in last year's game? 42-15?

the point of this game is to win a championship. if you want to play "collect young players and keep them for a long time so the cohesion increases" then you play that game and if you somehow are able to get to the Imperial Bowl again you'll lose it a second time because of inferior talent. the Patriots went to the AC Championship game last year. you think they stuck with their young corps of average receivers or did they go out and get an impact player (Moss)? you're either one player away from winning it all the 2nd time around or you're content to let other teams get better.

If you're talking about the difference between a strong affinity/cohesion 30/30 player and a 65/65 player cancer, you're right, I take the 65/65. However, if it is between a 55/55 great chemistry guy and a 65/65 guy, I take the 55/55 guy.

Quite honestly, the only thing I fear with how you are building the team is that when your talent retires, you are going to have a few awfully lean years. I hate to see someone bail on a team because of that, not saying you will, but it is a concern that I have.

[Hell Atlantic]

the team is in win-now mode, this season, and the next 3 seasons. after 2012 which is when we project most of our older veteran players to no longer be on the team we will resume using our draft picks. when you're in win-now mode you don't sacrifice today at the expense of what may be 3 years from now.

i've been keeping a closer eye on chemistry this season than normal, so i'm not looking to get bit by that too hard.

there will come a time when i'll need to have an eye on the future, that time isn't now. and i'm careful not to trade away 1st round picks too far in advance.

[Hell Atlantic]

since when is having x amount of players "under 7 years experience" the line that separates the old teams from the new? i didn't get that memo. anything under 10 year is what i consider a team in it's prime. since most rookies don't fully develop until their 4th year (if that), you're really talking about - in your book - a team that has a 3 year window of players consider young but in their prime. that's being silly.

California/Fresno franchise has spent a lot of time in the bottom of the league. now it's our turn. if you can find a way to assemble a championship calibre team based on players 5 years experienced or less, you do it. otherwise, one way is how i've done it.

and in a salary cap league, which is what football is, there is no way to keep the same nucleus of 20+ guys their whole career. not gonna happen. so as much as you might like to act like a small market baseball team and draft your nucleus and keep all of them forever that isn't a viable way to run a pro football team. in a OOTP league without a salary cap, yes, a team like the Yankees can afford to keep the same team for a long time. not in FOF.

[Suicane]

One thing to consider, similar to Skydogs points about the draft, is that in 2k7 a players career arc is vastly different from what it was in 2k4. I don't have exact numbers, but playing over 50 sp seasons has shown me that players start to decline alot sooner than they did in 2k4.

[Warhammer]

since when is having x amount of players "under 7 years experience" the line that separates the old teams from the new? i didn't get that memo. anything under 10 year is what i consider a team in it's prime. since most rookies don't fully develop until their 4th year (if that), you're really talking about - in your book - a team that has a 3 year window of players consider young but in their prime. that's being silly.

5-10 is 5 years...

Not arguing that though. I think that you need to be very careful in bringing in players. How many players that have high ratings actually live up to them?

It's very risky just bringing in players with the best ratings. Look at ct over at IHOF. He won with largely homegrown talent. Now that the talent has gotten older and moved on he has had a much more difficult road to hoe.

California/Fresno franchise has spent a lot of time in the bottom of the league. now it's our turn. if you can find a way to assemble a championship calibre team based on players 5 years experienced or less, you do it. otherwise, one way is how i've done it.

and in a salary cap league, which is what football is, there is no way to keep the same nucleus of 20+ guys their whole career. not gonna happen. so as much as you might like to act like a small market baseball team and draft your nucleus and keep all of them forever that isn't a viable way to run a pro football team. in a OOTP league without a salary cap, yes, a team like the Yankees can afford to keep the same team for a long time. not in FOF.

You're right. You've done it one way. A way that is dangerous because of the personalities involved, etc. I do disagree with you that it is impossible to hold a nucleus of 20+ guys together. I've actually done it the last 3 or so years. I've tweaked a bit, but the offensive line was the same, the WRs saw the most turnover, the DL and LB changed a bit, but the OL, RB, QB, and DBs have been constant over the last three years. I actually wish we had one more year under 2k4 because I think I had a good system for team development under that based upon system players.

The problem is, getting those players. I was able to get those players here because they have been available. In IHOF, it has been significantly less effective due to cap issues (initially) and then just not having great talent in FA. With little talent on the team and hardly any high draft pics, I wasn't able to do much until the last two years.

[Hell Atlantic]

there is no risk bringing in established vets. there is all risk playing the "draft a stud and hope he doesn't bust" game. ask Dakota how they feel about JJ Johnson.

when you do it my way, you have a finite window of opportunity. when you do it the other way (try to build through the draft) you may not even get that window if the players don't develop. you should know - Dutch from IHOF is the laughing joke of drafts do to his (non)success in drafting.

[MrBigglesworth]

since when is having x amount of players "under 7 years experience" the line that separates the old teams from the new? i didn't get that memo. anything under 10 year is what i consider a team in it's prime. since most rookies don't fully develop until their 4th year (if that), you're really talking about - in your book - a team that has a 3 year window of players consider young but in their prime. that's being silly.

Under 7 years exp was just a random point that I chose, but it doesn't change the fact that your team is old. That doesn't equate to 'bad', but it does mean that they are old.

California/Fresno franchise has spent a lot of time in the bottom of the league. now it's our turn. if you can find a way to assemble a championship calibre team based on players 5 years experienced or less, you do it. otherwise, one way is how i've done it.

I think we should wait at least until your team wins a WC spot, if not a division, to start calling it 'championship calibre', but I didn't say you needed all players with less than 5 years experience to win. Hartford definitely didn't have that. They had a fairly old team (that had been together a while) with some younger stars. However, since they were old last year, they had a number of retirements and a number of their players will take ratings hits this season. I think it's fair to say that the odds are with Hartford being a little worse this season than last season (though they could still have a major draft). Last off-season, Deason, Eddington, Lundquist, Theobald, Ingraham, Smith, and Ellis all dropped at least a little.

so as much as you might like to act like a small market baseball team and draft your nucleus and keep all of them forever that isn't a viable way to run a pro football team.

That's the general strategy of the Patriots and the Eagles, two fairly successful teams over the past half dozen years. Paying twice as much as anyone else offers for an old player coming off his worst professional season is what Dan Snyder does.

[Warhammer]

I think we should wait at least until your team wins a WC spot, if not a division, to start calling it 'championship calibre', but I didn't say you needed all players with less than 5 years experience to win. Hartford definitely didn't have that. They had a fairly old team (that had been together a while) with some younger stars. However, since they were old last year, they had a number of retirements and a number of their players will take ratings hits this season. I think it's fair to say that the odds are with Hartford being a little worse this season than last season (though they could still have a major draft). Last off-season, Deason, Eddington, Lundquist, Theobald, Ingraham, Smith, and Ellis all dropped at least a little.

Aside from LT and NT, I'm not going to be as affected by the losses as it appears (although they will hurt). Heck, we played without Tan for 4 or 5 games last year. But, you're right, last year we were old. But, you figure that our average age is going to come down quite a bit, we lost at least 5 players with more than 15 years exp. Most of our starters last year had fewer than 10 years of exp.

Still, I was quite worried that we were going to take some ratings hits heading into last year. This year we'll take some, but our biggest bugaboo is going to be the changes to the engine that make our system players marginal.