Rich-League Officer wrote:1. We need less wonderful drafts with much wider spreads in actual and potential. I repeat, go look at those rosters.
They are all on the site.
2. We also need older players to retire a bit more. I know there is no movement for that though.
3. But if we truly want to return to some better looking stats, less star filled teams, more kids entering with somewhat inferior skills, teams that do not have amazing depth at each position and you will get more interesting results. The way it is now, all the teams are identical and that's not good. Yes it keeps things competitive but its also boring. The GM has less value these days and that's not a good thing.
I added the numbers for reference to parts of what Rich posted.
1. This is spot -on correct and I have viewed those rosters, including that of the New England team I coached in my first season here before moving the team to Washington. Our drafts have made the rosters overall, and players at each position, too similar and those trends have de-emphasized the importance of the GM role.
2. Eliminate un-retirement by any players that require dice rolls!!! We should only un-retire the players the game retires too early, the one that right now can be un-retired by just posting them on the forum. Actually have some more realistic retirement levels will clear ou t the glut of veteran players we have.
3. Keep the draft pools going more in the direction they've been going to make our players much less identical within positions. Do the potential ratings exactly as they are being done now, but substantially lower the actual ratings of the rounds 2-7 type talent by lowering their actual more progressively for the players drafted in lower rounds in the NFL draft.
Do the above for 99 percent of the rookies, and to better simulate the occasional extremely excellent rookie at a position (Like QB Joe Burrow in the NFL draft for instance), created a few super players that would have actuals and potentials 10 point higher (2 point each in 5 ratings) to create those far superior rookies, just a few per season.
Doing this, Joe Burrow would have been:
SP AC AG ST HA EN IN DI Total
actual 75 75 81 95 70 89 92 84 659
potential 81 81 83 98 71 91 94 86 683
A WR could have maxx ratings and 2 added in SP, AC, AG, HA, and EN for example.
All of these measures done in the draft pools would create more differentiation between players and make our drafts and rosters more interesting, and make the GM role more important.