JDB has done a tremendous job in creating this game without question it is the best simulation game ever. He is always trying to improve things with it and is very much open to suggestions. With that being said what about the thought of creating about a 4 or 5 player developmental program. With something like that you can keep players on your team and develop them in your system, you may have a player with certain skills you like but they get caught in the numbers game and you have to release them, it could be somewhat like a practice squad.

This has been suggested alot and pops up every year or so and JDB has said its not worth the time and effort...basically

Yup....thats what he said

Direct quote from the creator from a thread in 2015....in bold


By jdavidbakr - Site Admin

5/20/2015 7:08 am

Gustoon wrote:

Problem is I can still play him, but as you have said it increases his serious injury likelihood and can contribute towards retirement, so the only sensible option is to deactivate that player.
I wish we could have a practice squad of say 4-6 players that we could dip into to alleviate this problem.



The only problem with this is that in the NFL, the practice squad is little more than a group of free agents who get to practice with your team. In order to move one to the active roster, you still have to cut someone on the active roster. In fact, any team can sign a player from any other team's practice squad to their own active roster, so there's not even any guarantee that you'll get to keep your practice squad players. For our purposes here, the only benefit to having a practice squad would be that they would have a better understanding of your playbook - and since they're actually practicing the other team's playbook they wouldn't even be learning your own - other than that, it's no different than grabbing someone from the free agent pool. I personally think that benefit is not worth the extra work you would have to put in to maintain the practice squad.

The bigger issue that I have is that UDFAs that make a camp don't get the late round bonus to VOL. Only drafted players do. All player's VOL should be reset after the draft so that UDFAs are actually valuable.

The developer isn't really wrong on this point.

Why not have an option when creating a new league to reduce the salary cap by 20%? As far as I can see we have way to much cap to work with as it is. A reduction would mean the FA pool would have a significant number of average+ players at all times. It makes rookie contracts more meaningful as well as draft picks. It adds more value to every player on the trade block as the receiving GM will have a player without a bonus attached, it also adds value to having expendable cap space to make those trades while being able to take the dead money hit. You can't stack all 85 rated players for their entire career. You can't accumulate 25+ draft picks every season.. and on and on we go.

Seriously why not? It doesn't affect any current leagues, it would be an option for new leagues. I can't imagine this costing any significant amount of resources to implement.

Same reason injuries are lower too. As an arcade style here is on purpose as if a general user would be disappointed to lose a star player to a career ending injury.

Rookie contracts are low for the 1st rounders but high for third rounders? The renegotiated contracts are way to easy to maintain...the players should garner much more as if they were FAs, but it is based off the last years top contracts. So , stuff has been tweaked to make it harder but still to easy.

The nfl makes you use all the cap with the 89 % rule we don’t have that either which add to large caps. The older the league i s the easier the cap is to manage ... well unless you send out max contracts for FAs that slip through due to the lack of an owner or just plain mismanagement or of bonuses

Up until this last covid influenced season, all practice squad players in the NFL were still free agents available to be signed by any team anyway. This last season some practice squad players could be protected under the new CBA. I think the game programmer has bigger fish to fry at the moment..