A modest O-line proposal

[caltroit_red_flames]

And what happens when Bjorn gets drafted by a team with a need a season or two early, yet nobody needs Oline until we have over 350 TPE?

Well according to TC we still come up because of the weight advantage but I guess we'll see. I'd hope we get our fair rub, won't know for another season but if we don't I say we riot

[Quigonginger]

(Oops double post)

[Quigonginger]

Well according to TC we still come up because of the weight advantage but I guess we'll see. I'd hope we get our fair rub, won't know for another season but if we don't I say we riot

Enter (S15) - Brave Ulysses - OL

TC stated we bring an advantage with weight alone if we're BOTH AT 350 TPE. Dude has been kicking around on Luchadores and updated as recently as late May....no call up. There's a dude from S13 on the team. Never got his call up. Any other position, other than the glamorous and competitive QBs, have to kick around this long?

[run_CMC]

you'd be much better off putting your best guy at LT or RT. Just like how you don't want a 1200 TPE kicker (sorry @run_CMC) or a 1200 TPE blocking back.

Maybe there are ways to adjust for all those positions. We took a pretty good stab at it way back when and I have since hung up the cleats on that role. I think we accomplished a lot but it also caused so many problems and headaches with all those archetype overhauls and custom playbook modifications to get where we are today that I'm not sure the juice would be worth the squeeze to do it all over again.

He’s not wrong. Few things in this sim are ideal. But with the sim you’d think GMs would use a revolving door of IA <200 TPE kickers, but it’s all about sample size. I have almost a record high career yards per punt b/c my sample size was larger than an IA kicker who does great one year, shitty the next. Smart GMs will draft and sign user OL if they have the draft capital. Also for anybody saying it’s not fair OL draft stock drops just for being OL - that’s how the world works. Some positions (kicker, blocking back, QB most seasons) are just less desirable.

Also, every time somebody says “I want a fair rub” I take this less seriously lmao

[BWIII]

Enter (S15) - Brave Ulysses - OL

TC stated we bring an advantage with weight alone if we're BOTH AT 350 TPE. Dude has been kicking around on Luchadores and updated as recently as late May....no call up. There's a dude from S13 on the team. Never got his call up. Any other position, other than the glamorous and competitive QBs, have to kick around this long?

The S13 guy you mentioned has only 143 TPE and we actually did call him up and he played 13 of 14 allowed games in the NSFL, but we really only used him as a FB in the power playbook because in expansive testing at 143 TPE he just wasn't good enough. I begged that dude to be active, even gave him links to the claim threads for his unclaimed TPE (like 70 something) and told him we'd start him if he got active........he did not, instead you can see him regularly playing WoW and is pretty unresponsive when trying to talk to him. Trust me, I was trying hard to get him to be an active OL, instead he followed the route of all the others before him.

[Quigonginger]

He’s not wrong. Few things in this sim are ideal. But with the sim you’d think GMs would use a revolving door of IA <200 TPE kickers, but it’s all about sample size. I have almost a record high career yards per punt b/c my sample size was larger than an IA kicker who does great one year, shitty the next. Smart GMs will draft and sign user OL if they have the draft capital. Also for anybody saying it’s not fair OL draft stock drops just for being OL - that’s how the world works. Some positions (kicker, blocking back, QB most seasons) are just less desirable.

Also, every time somebody says “I want a fair rub” I take this less seriously lmao

Most IRL pro teams don't even use a FB, and QBs are cutthroat competitive, super important, and only 1 on a field with no substituting for endurance like others making them beyond compare as well. Most of them IRL have to switch positions to get a look in the draft. But a starting Left Tackle is often going to command the second highest pay on a team if he's good. Saying "that's life" is true in a literal sense, until you get to linemen who are the inverse of their IRL counterparts.

Place kickers are binary so you want to invest as little as possible to get your 3 points. Punters are also going to have scaling problems when they hit a point where you just can't punt any better. This reflects IRL football teams perfectly and see teams jettison kickers for cap space because risking the occasional 3 pts is very worth it.

Every team needs a human QB, human WRs, human TEs....if there is no penalty for not having a single OL when there's huge penalties to not keeping those full, then OL faces a problem no other position does. That's the crux of it. The GMs know there is profoundly more value in most other spots because if those go unfilled, they're going to be forced to scrape the barrel. They HAVE to play someone. Players know it when retiring and creating.

[Daybe]

But a starting Left Tackle is often going to command the second highest pay on a team if he's good.

https://overthecap.com/position/left-tackle/

https://overthecap.com/position/traditional-linebacker/
https://overthecap.com/position/wide-receiver/
https://overthecap.com/position/defensive-line/

I counted 21 total players who are making more AAV than the most paid left tackle, not including QB.

I find it funny that this is being brought up in the current state of OL where we have literally what? one? two? who's sustained activity over the past twelve seasons or so.

I'm all for offensive linemen, but making teams use them is just dumb. As timeconsumer and many other sim wizards will attest, using bot offensive linemen over human offensive linemen is a disadvantage enough. Everyone knows that some positions will be valued over others. Such is life. Teams in real life don't evaluate tight ends and running backs to the same standard as they do edge rushers and quarterbacks, believe it or not.

[Quigonginger]

https://overthecap.com/position/left-tackle/

https://overthecap.com/position/traditional-linebacker/
https://overthecap.com/position/wide-receiver/
https://overthecap.com/position/defensive-line/

I counted 21 total players who are making more AAV than the most paid left tackle, not including QB.

I find it funny that this is being brought up in the current state of OL where we have literally what? one? two? who's sustained activity over the past twelve seasons or so.

I'm all for offensive linemen, but making teams use them is just dumb. As timeconsumer and many other sim wizards will attest, using bot offensive linemen over human offensive linemen is a disadvantage enough. Everyone knows that some positions will be valued over others. Such is life. Teams in real life don't evaluate tight ends and running backs to the same standard as they do edge rushers and quarterbacks, believe it or not.

Man I was speaking broadly like they say in The Broadside first you pay your mortgage, then you pay your home insurance. LT is a critical position for keeping a QB alive and they do get paid well as a position.

Second of all, I don't wanna make a TE. I get other people want to play it but that doesn't appeal to me. Why not just have back up bots for every position? It messes with the labor market and value assigned to the position just having the one like that.

Third, if a team has an opening at RB (or literally any non-OL position) they are going to prioritize it. They HAVE to draft a RB. If they don't then they're gonna be looking at 150 TPE dudes and getting wrecked. There's no 350 bot to fall back on so they can get that WR they actually want and deal with the RB problem later. The draft stock is so low for OL that GMs literally laugh about it.

Lastly, there are 10 that just got made. We'll be kicking around DSFL long after our peers get called up. The drawbacks for not taking us are so much lower than any other role that it forces OL to kick around in DSFL longer, burn out, or change positions (sometimes pressured by the drafting team to switch to TE) at higher rates or avoid it completely. We're not competing with aging superstars. We're competing with an unending legion of competant-but-not-great bots. If we say things will be changing in 3-5 seasons, the position will absolutely grow. Phase it out slowly, like gradually regress one bot and teams will temporarily put a premium on OL until they all are used to having one and players see value in making them. "Nobody plays this because it sucks" is a poor reason to make it keep sucking.

[Daybe]

Man I was speaking broadly like they say in The Broadside first you pay your mortgage, then you pay your home insurance. LT is a critical position for keeping a QB alive and they do get paid well as a position.

Second of all, I don't wanna make a TE. I get other people want to play it but that doesn't appeal to me. Why not just have back up bots for every position? It messes with the labor market and value assigned to the position just having the one like that.

Third, if a team has an opening at RB (or literally any non-OL position) they are going to prioritize it. They HAVE to draft a RB. If they don't then they're gonna be looking at 150 TPE dudes and getting wrecked. There's no 350 bot to fall back on so they can get that WR they actually want and deal with the RB problem later. The draft stock is so low for OL that GMs literally laugh about it.

Lastly, there are 10 that just got made. We'll be kicking around DSFL long after our peers get called up. The drawbacks for not taking us are so much lower than any other role that it forces OL to kick around in DSFL longer, burn out, or change positions (sometimes pressured by the drafting team to switch to TE) at higher rates or avoid it completely. We're not competing with aging superstars. We're competing with an unending legion of competant-but-not-great bots. If we say things will be changing in 3-5 seasons, the position will absolutely grow. Phase it out slowly, like gradually regress one bot and teams will temporarily put a premium on OL until they all are used to having one and players see value in making them.  "Nobody plays this because it sucks" is a poor reason to make it keep sucking.

First off, the blindside is generally an outdated theory as teams have adopted different methods for offensive line building. A lot of teams have tried to build from the inside out recently, and the majority of dominant edge rushers play left end and face the right tackle. But that’s not really on topic.

No one says you have to play tight end. Excluding offensive line, we have ten other positions to choose from. All of them have been able to sustain levels of activity to the point where we don’t need bots at all and this is not a discussion ever.

No team has to draft said player or fill x hole in the offseason. And they can fall back on lower TPE inactives. Just this season a team won the Ultimus using a 500 TPE WR and two 150 TPE WRs. GMs get creative. The vast majority of the players who get taken right away, especially at wide receiver as you mentioned, aren’t gonna make a big impact right away, since the best teams usually carry around 2-3 600 TPE+ WRs.

Disagree big time. If you earn at a max level you’ll be in the NSFL the year after your draft season, tops. That also goes for every other position in the NSFL, besides special quarterback cases. Most offensive line bots are 350-550 TPE, and plenty of S16 players are already there.

The reason why OL stock is so low is not because there needs to be a rule change or the existing rules are unfavorable to them. It’s because we, as GMs, haven’t actually seen an offensive line been successful in the league since we moved to bots. Forcing every team to build a certain way won’t change the fact that you’re not good enough for NSFL GMs to willingly carry you on their team.

[Sweetwater]

A ton of this convo seems to be coming from people who weren't around for the beginning of the league. I was.

In the first 3 drafts combined, there were over 40 OL creates.
By the end of S3, there were all of 2 or 3 active OL members.

With an IA rate of over 90%, OL just wasn't seen as a reliable position.

The reason OL bots were even created in the first place was that people who created OL were the most likely to go IA. And, this wasn't because people forced them out of the position, in fact it was almost the opposite. Angus Winchester was well known for being one of the most effective OL members there was in the league. OL creates wanted to be like him. However, they found that because the sim makes absolutely no sense, having similar stats wouldn't necessarily give them similar outcomes, and they slowly disappeared.

As a member of the HO that implemented OL bots in the first place, I can assure you this was not a process taken lightly. Hours and hours of testing went into place to see just how we would implement it while still allowing active users to be more effective than bots.

The reason you see all bots in the league isn't due to some systemic bias against OL players, it's because nobody has stayed active long enough to become a viable player in the position.

In my opinion, forcing GMs to draft specific players is absolutely insane. Right now, if you wanted to field an entire team of safeties you could. You wouldnt have a very effective defense, but you could do it. There is a reason DL guys get drafted early: they can contribute at lower TPE levels. Short of having OL players get a 200ish TPE bump at the start, and therefore making them be viable in the nsfl almost immediately (therefore bypassing every other position who needs some time in the lower league to build up their player), our very clear warning that OL is a very tough position to succeed in is more than enough.

We already have a significant shortage of CBs due to the fact that most GMs are more than happy to plug and play safeties at the position. LBs seem to be heading that way as well.

So my point is: why buff a position that has done historically poorly, even at the wild west that was the beginning of the league, when we have other positions that are also starting to have less and less relevance?