The following was posted on another thread. As pointed out in the last paragraph, is this something we should address during our next offseason?:

"You can only gain max speed by losing weight. 1 piont of speed around every 7 pounds lost.

If you draft a WR with 97 speed at 185 pounds and make him a RB, he will gain weight and approach 217 pounds (standard weight for RB). Thats 32 pounds divided by 7 which equals 4.57. Putting him at around 92 speed at RB.

If you draft a 86 speed TE at 265 pounds and convert him to RB, he will lose weight to approach 217 pounds which equals 48 pounds. That's 48/7= 6.85, so he will gain 7 speed on his max and end up around 93 max speed.

Of course, you can do what all the experts are doing and make everyone, RB/FB/TE a WR so they all lose weight and win that way but its frowned upon by most but the owners that do it win and don't seem to care if it seems wrong to the majority."

Please understand that this operates the same way on defense.

GM's turn DT/DE/LB into CB to maximize speed through weight loss.

I'm not sure I am understanding the proposal. I thought this is why we implemented the rule with only certain positions playing in certain places on the field. Is the proposal that we further restrict it so WR can't play RB?

CBs already can't play DL because they have to be 267 lbs or more. Just looking for clarification

Yes, the logic applies to defense also. However, you can't use anyone but a defensive lineman on the defensive line.

Quite a few teams load up on WR and play them in the backfield. Potentially they can play TE as well. This speeds up the offenses' capabilities - at the cost of lighter weights when that is important.

I threw it out there for the community to weigh in on the issue if they have an opinion about whether we need limit this tactic. (For the record, I am not pushing to do anything about it. Nor do I think most GMs do either. But the is some negative sentiment in other leagues about the prevalent use of the tactic.)

There is a reason why so many GMs are converting TEs to a lighter position (my preferred is FB after trying both FB and HB) is because they are at a weight disadvantage against defenders.

The dirtiest, worst kept secret in MFN is how "coverage" actually works. All "coverage" means is how close a player is to another player. That means as long as a defender stays "close" to another player there is a good chance that defender will knock the ball down.

But what does "close" mean. It only means physical proximity. That means most coverage is still SP vs SP rolls. [You could theoretically go to a league and sign a bunch of 90+ SP WRs from FA and do just as well in the cover game as signing other players.]

So what about about all those "coverage" skills?

M2M > Only gets rolled when a WR "makes a cut". This used to be what prevented you from getting burned by slant routes. But that is hideously broken in 4.5. So what this skill really does is help a defender track a player out of the backfield.

Zone > Determines how quickly a defender recognizes an offensive play coming into their zone. Rolled against a QB's Lookoff skill to see if the defender moves from position.

B&R > Slows WRs down. (This is the TL/DR, but it's the ultimate effect.) Rolled against B&R Avoid.

What this all means for TEs is that a 257# player will always have a disadvantage in the cover game. LBs are between 237-245#, which gives them a max speed of 1-3 points higher than a TE plus the innate bonus to acceleration that they get from being lighter. DBs at 191-202# have a 7-10 point higher max speed and a much higher innate bonus to acceleration.

This is why TEs only catch 45-60% of their targets. Repeat that. This is why TEs only catch 45-60% of their targets.

This is only one position obviously, but it's the one that I have the most problem with when folks complain about overrides and position swapping. The only reason that you should have a 257# TE is because you are using him as a blocker only.

All of this is to say that I support this proposal, but would suggest these conditions:

* Allow TEs to be FBs. This puts them at par with most LBs.
* Allow TEs to be overriden in the 014. There are no running plays out of these sets and TEs end up being covered by a DB most of the time.

I'll explain why the "no WRs in the backfield" argument is silly too. That explanation gets into how SP works on an exponential curve and why you should never play an LB that is < 75-80 SP if that LB is going to cover a backfield player ever.

Sethrick wrote:

"All of this is to say that I support this proposal, but would suggest these conditions:

* Allow TEs to be FBs. This puts them at par with most LBs.
* Allow TEs to be overriden in the 014. There are no running plays out of these sets and TEs end up being covered by a DB most of the time."

Our rules currently permit the TE, FB, WR and RB positions to be inserted as a TE through overrides.

Our rules currently allow a TE to be inserted as a FB through overrides.

Thanks for the input, Seth. Looking forward to your remarks about using WRs at the RB position.

I posted something similar in the Rules Debate thread some time ago.

I think new position restrictions would be a good addition for the league. It'd make roster construction way harder, good TE/RB's would be way more valuable...

Not disagreeing with you, just wondering how difficult how these changes could be in an already active league with many team's rosters full of players that wouldn't meet the new rules.

Starting a new league with these requirements would be much easier to manage.

If the league approved. we could agree to start the new rule in a season or two (or more) down the road and give everyone a chance to adjust their rosters. If someone appreciates speed more than the other attributes (breaking tackle, for instance), he could convert one or more WRs to RB at training camp. And off we go. Just an idea.