The average length of an NFL career is 2.5 years. Shouldn't players in MFN age more quickly on average or otherwise retire sooner. Most MFN rosters are filled with players who have more than 5 years of experience on average. Some considerably more.

That average includes practice squad players who get promoted and any player who ever played just 1 real game, which is a much larger player pool than what's available to us. There are many things about MFN that do not mimic real NFL, like suspensions for performance enhancing drugs, arrests, holdouts, onside kick success percentage, etc. It's a long list.

Sampling of 2020 NFL rosters per NFL.com (including development squads):

Jacksonville Jags - 14 players over 5 years; 0 over 10 (YOUNGEST TEAM)

LA Rams - 7 players over 5 years; 2 over 10

SD Chargers - 13 players over 5 years; 2 over 10

GB Packers - 14 players over 5 years; 3 over 10

Pittsburgh Steelers - 17 over 5 years; 6 over 10

Atlanta Falcons - 16 over 5 years; 7 over 10 (OLDEST TEAM)

To be sure, there are many real life factors which are not reflected in MFN. However, many, if not most, MFN rosters have at least 24 - 30 players with over 5 years of experience and between 6-12 players with over 10 years of experience. This has little or nothing to do with the real life factors which are not reflected in MFN.

Longevity of careers in MFN also places less of a premium on making good draft picks and/or developing young free agent players because of a larger pool of veteran free agents to fill out rosters.

A historic look at the average ages (and rank) of each team on the 53-man cutdown day:

Team 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016
Jaguars 24.9 (1) 25.6 (8) 25.5 (5) 25.6 (7) 25.4 (4)
Dolphins 25.0 (2) 25.2 (1) 26.5 (26) 26.6 (29) 26.2 (20)
Rams 25.1 (3) 25.6 (10) 25.5 (4) 25.1 (2) 25 (1)
Browns 25.4 (4) 25.4 (3) 25.3 (2) 24.2 (1) 25.1 (2)
Packers 25.5 (5) 25.5 (5) 25.7 (10) 25.7 (11) 25.4 (3)
Vikings 25.5 (6) 25.5 (6) 25.5 (6) 26.1 (20) 26.6 (31)
Broncos 25.6 (7) 25.7 (11) 26 (17) 26 (16) 25.5 (5)
Chargers 25.6 (8) 25.8 (15) 25.8 (14) 25.7 (8) 25.7 (9)
Giants 25.7 (9) 26.0 (18) 26.1 (21) 25.7 (9) 26 (14)
Colts 25.7 (10) 25.6 (7) 25.6 (8) 25.6 (5) 26.5 (29)
Raiders 25.8 (11) 25.6 (9) 27.4 (32) 26.1 (19) 26 (13)
Cowboys 25.8 (12) 26.3 (24) 25.4 (3) 26.1 (17) 26 (12)
Panthers 25.8 (13) 26.3 (25) 26.8 (29) 26.8 (31) 26.5 (30)
Wash 25.8 (14) 26.1 (20) 26.2 (23) 25.9 (15) 26.4 (25)
Bengals 25.9 (15) 25.7 (13) 25.2 (1) 25.5 (3) 26.3 (23)
Chiefs 25.9 (16) 25.9 (16) 25.8 (13) 25.9 (14) 25.5 (6)
Steelers 26.0 (17) 25.7 (14) 25.9 (16) 26.1 (18) 26.3 (24)
Jets 26.0 (18) 26.5 (30) 26 (19) 25.6 (6) 26.2 (21)
Eagles 26.0 (19) 26.6 (31) 25.7 (11) 26.4 (23) 26.5 (28)
Ravens 26.1 (20) 25.9 (17) 26 (18) 26.4 (25) 26.4 (27)
Texans 26.1 (21) 26.0 (19) 25.6 (7) 25.5 (4) 26.2 (19)
Lions 26.1 (22) 26.2 (23) 26.6 (27) 25.8 (12) 26.1 (18)
Bills 26.1 (23) 26.3 (26) 26.7 (28) 26.7 (30) 26.3 (22)
Cardinals 26.1 (24) 26.4 (27) 26.5 (25) 27.3 (32) 26.1 (17)
Seahawks 26.2 (25) 25.5 (4) 25.7 (9) 25.8 (13) 25.6 (7)
Bucs 26.3 (26) 25.4 (2) 26.1 (22) 26.2 (21) 25.7 (8)
Patriots 26.4 (27) 27.0 (32) 26.8 (30) 26.5 (26) 26.1 (15)
Titans 26.5 (28) 26.5 (29) 26.1 (20) 26.5 (27) 25.9 (11)
49ers 26.6 (29) 25.7 (12) 25.8 (15) 25.7 (10) 26.1 (16)
Saints 26.7 (30) 26.2 (21) 26.3 (24) 26.5 (28) 26.4 (26)
Bears 26.7 (31) 26.2 (22) 25.7 (12) 26.3 (22) 25.9 (10)
Falcons 26.9 (32) 26.5 (28) 26.9 (31) 26.4 (24) 27.1 (32)

The difference between the youngest and oldest might not seem to great, i.e., about 2 years in age. But multiply that by 53 an the difference in team experience is 100 season. Enough to probably make a difference if all other factors are equal.

(Sorry about the table being screwed up. Hopefully, you get the gist of it.)

I’m barely starting my first regular season in this sim, so I don’t have a feel for the year to year progression yet, but I can key a couple differences between this league and nfl. First off, the free agent pool does not appear to force younger players into retirement if they don’t make it onto teams right away. That or free agents in general get cut and sit there for multiple seasons before they ultimately retire. It also seems that it takes more than 2 or 3 years for a draft pick to mature let alone peak on the progression. In real nfl, that average career takes a big hit from the 30 extra guys on every roster in training camp that never see the light of day. Combine that with every other reason somebody doesn’t make it past their rookie contract and your end up with 3 years. But those that do manage to become starters and get that key 2nd contract to extend their careers do tend to last more like 6-10 years in the league. And obviously the best of the best extend into that second decade. It is one thing to look at all 53 guys give or take, but it’s that 20 or so core guys at the top of the depth chart that are likely to be beyond the 3-4 year rookie contract. And every year those guys manage to fight off younger (cheaper) challengers for their position, or they don’t. It’s not like they all suddenly couldn’t play anymore, but most likely a combination of losing a step, upsetting a coach or other wise getting in trouble, or costing too much cap while blocking someone else’s development that ultimately gets them out the door.

It’s the not for long league for a reason. There’s always a “what have you done for me lately” aspect to judging wether a veteran player keeps a spot, or hands the keys over to someone new.

For whatever reasons, 25-33% of the average NFL team roster has more than 5 years of experience and about 10% of the average NFL team roster has more than 10 years of experience. This is far different from the roster makeup of most MFN teams. As jdavidbaker strives to make the simulation as realistic as possible, he might want to consider this fact and tweak the game engine accordingly. That's my only point.

Young players sometimes retire early because they are at best "on the bubble" and need to get on with their lives. Older players sometime retire because they lose their edge physically/mentally or succumb to cumulative injuries incurred through out their playing careers. Whatever the reason, not enough of that is reflected in MFN and you end up with a free agency pool which consists of players who will never be signed or step foot on the imaginary MFN field.

In my league (Paydirt Football League), there is a free agent with 17 years of experience who hasn't been on a roster for the last 5 seasons. There's another who's listed as having 16 years of experience and hasn't been on a roster for the last 15 years. Players like that (and there are quite a few) should have retired and been removed from the list of free agents. And so on, until you get to a free agent list which has only players who either were recently cut, e.g., cut within the last season or two, or last played college ball just a couple of seasons ago. At that point, roster age should decrease and be more realistic.

The "average" NFL career is so short not because players retire so young, it's because there are a lot of players not good enough to have longer careers.

I would bet there isn't a high percentage of players "retiring" in less than 5 years simply because they don't want to play anymore.

It seems u guys are hung up on my use of the word retire. That free agent you mention that has hung around unemployed for 15 years is exactly the point. You call it a bubble, or simply not making it, those are the bodies that need to go away. Otherwise, the simulator keeps progressing them and suddenly some team “accidentally” signs them to a mfn roster with supposedly over 5 years experience when really it’s the first time their rating rose to the top of the “bubble”

Ultimately I think we are all saying the same thing, just in different ways. I don’t enough to criticize the simulation, but at first glance it seems some of this “progression” is a little slow and does not force us as managers to move on to younger players as quickly as the actual nfl does.