*How to Create a Good DSFL Mock Draft (Part 1 of ?)

[slate]

With a long history of point tasks that award TPE for correct predictions on the ISFL Mock Draft, there is a lot of good material and knowledge out there about how to create good mock drafts. Invested users (especially those who are part of the draft class in question itself) usually spend a lot of time throughout the season getting to know the ISFL prospects, observing their earning throughout the season, and evaluating which teams might make the best personality fits or have particular personal connections with the prospects. Between the greater degree of attention and the easily available resources like the Budget sheet for determining who is on an ISFL roster, it's also relatively easy to diagnose team needs and use that to inform mock drafts.

Almost none of these things hold true for the DSFL, and yet this season we (well, those of us not in DSFL war rooms) are in the exciting but trepidatious situation of having to create mock drafts for the first two rounds of the DSFL for TPE. DSFL mock drafts are generally done for fun by new users who are excited to see where they go in the draft and maybe don't have the requisite knowledge about the league to make an ISFL mock that will hold up to scrutiny. Other than new users, veteran users are generally divided into either those who don't care about mocking the DSFL draft, or those who are in a DSFL war room and can't post a DSFL mock draft for legal reasons. So there is a definite lack of knowledge and experience in DSFL mock drafts.

With that preamble aside, I thought as a DSFL GM myself I could provide some helpful advice on how to create a solid mock. In particular, I'm going to go over how to project what DSFL rosters will look like next season to identify specific team needs. This will hopefully be useful advice for some, and maybe even increase the average TPE that DSFL WR members get? (Please?)

Unfortunately, the DSFL does not have any one place that tells you everything you need to know in order to predict what the roster makeup of the team will look like next season, and there are also hard-to-find rules that play very important roles in determining what that will look like.

The easiest way to find a DSFL team's roster from last season is to use the tracker and look at individual teams with the DSFL dropdown on the top. Of course the DSFL TPE cap is 250 TPE, so anyone above that level already, or any S28 players above around ~200 TPE are the best starters one can hope to have at that position. Any player above 100 TPE is better than a GM bot, meaning that it's automatically a lower priority need for the team than any empty position, and any position that's only filled by players less than about 80 TPE or so or empty is a top position of need.

However, a team's roster from last season is only a vague hint as to what the roster for the next season will look like in the DSFL. The first wrinkle is callups - which players from last season are going to play for their ISFL team next season? This is sometimes difficult even for DSFL teams themselves to learn before the draft, but the best way to guess at it is to look at the ISFL budget sheet, look at what holes exist on ISFL rosters (which should be mostly up to date as most of FA/retirements/etc. have resolved by now), and seeing what high TPE senddowns are available to be called up and fill those spots. Unfortunately this kind of needs to be done by ISFL team rather than by DSFL team due to the nature of the budget sheet, but hopefully some enterprising spirit could create a mock callup list for this offseason to assist mock drafters. It will also depend somewhat on the ISFL draft, but I think with the new sim first-year callups will become more rare as a low TPE player is at a greater competitive disadvantage.

The other big issue with predicting rosters (and where I've seen a few DSFL mocks fall apart already) are the rules on DSFL eligibility. The relevant portion of the rulebook says:

5.    DSFL players retain DSFL eligibility until one of the following occurs:
    i. The player plays 16 games in the ISFL
    ii. The player is retired. When a player retires, their team retains their rights for the rest of that season.
    iii. The player exceeds 250 applied TPE. TPE can be banked beyond 250 for those remaining in the DSFL, but cannot be applied beyond this cap.
    iv. The player has existed for 3 seasons following their ISFL draft.

6.    Players that are determined to be inactive at the the time of the Ultimini lose their DSFL eligibility for the upcoming season and may not be permitted to be on their team's depth charts. Should the user return to activity, they regain their DSFL status and may be added back to the depth chart. The exception to this rule is QB players.

5(iv) and 6 are the big rules that affect DSFL rosters from season to season. This season, the 3-seasons-after-ISFL criterion will mean that any S25 players still remaining on DSFL rosters are automatically ineligible. In addition, any player who was inactive as of the Ultimini (which means their last meaningful activity on the forums occurred before February 23 8:00pm ET) will need to return to activity to be eligible to play in the DSFL next season. Generally DSFL teams have, for better or worse, gotten pretty good at getting their inactive players to at least post an activity check a season to maintain eligibility, so I would suggest assuming that any S26 or S27 inactive players have probably already gone through this process once and will become eligible before next season, while S28 players who have gone inactive during their DSFL rookie season are more of a question mark and could probably be safely assumed to stay inactive.

I hope this is helpful advice to some! Best of luck with the mock drafts, and please ask questions below if there are any other things that would be helpful to have answered to create the best mocks you can (besides leaks, obviously) and I will try my best to help out by answering them in the comments (or maybe writing more parts to this series).

[qWest]

An addendum that I'd like to note as a former DSFL GM: DSFL teams tend to have quite different philosophies in drafting than ISFL teams may have. Individual teams have their own pretty distinct draft strategies from what I've seen over the last 6 or so seasons. From that experience, here are how I generally expect teams to evaluate talent when they go on the clock:

: Favor league veterans or veterans from other sim leagues, especially recreates from users that played with the team previously.
: Tend to favor new creates or recreates with strong relationships with their War Room (AKA Austin players).
: Once a cultist, always a cultist. Norfolk also likes to find new creates with super positive attitudes.
: Once a cultist, always a cultist. Strong media active types also end up high on Tijuana's radar.

: Don't have a great read on the new management. Seem to try to prioritize "sure thing" prospects (prospects with good histories of earning and strong commitment).
: Favor new creates or recreates that are highly active in their Locker Room and/or active in media.
: Favor new creates, especially those active in their Locker Room. Usually seem to prioritize offense first.
: Favor new creates with strong relationships to others on the team (whether IRL friends or teammates from another league). Defense first mentality.

Just my two cents on that in case that can help.

[ReverendOReily]

wtf slate why weren't you writing these helpful ass guides when I was new
would you believe I didn't know what the TPE tracker was until like october of last year

Tend to favor new creates or recreates with strong relationships with their War Room (AKA Austin players).

I'll have you know I have a strong relationship with every one of you ISFL folks