What's the fairest way to build a franchise

[dabearzfan]

I'm building a cupcake team & want to place limitations on myself to keep everything fair & build a team like a NFL expansion team would. Here are my limitations below. Please lemme know if you think any are unrealistic or unfair & list some of your own. Thanks

- Sim the first season, then sim at least 6 games a year from there on.
- Allowed to sign one 90+ & one 76+ free agent a year. All other free agents have to be 75 or below.
- The only trades involving players are from the players listed on the team's trading block.
- Limited to one trade per year. except for year one when you can have two.
- The only trades involving draft picks are to trade a player for a pick straight up -or- to trade down in the draft.
- Once you sign a player to a contract you can extend their contract but cannot change it to no signing bonus so you can cut them.
- Players must play out their contract or be cut & take the loss.
- No cheesy trading like trading for great rookies on other teams, trading or swapping for bad teams draft picks in week 5 or any other cheese moves like that.

Whatcha think?? Got your own??

[baseballtr7]

- Allowed to sign one 90+ & one 76+ free agent a year. All other free agents have to be 75 or below.


thats alittle unrealistic. if they're out there,and u can afford it, go get em

[henrey713]

ok u take this to seriously.

[ROUGEMAESTRO]

I think its cool. I normally take it a step farther. I dont sign any players unless they are madden generated; period. Thats a challenge, at least until the MG players are able to go up for free agency, restricted or unrestricted. That forces me to think about needs, alot, a scout my arse off. Luckily the draft classes are stronger in this years version. But I think what you are doing is very fair.

[crisco]

ok u take this to seriously.


Or maybe he thinks it's fun to play the franchise closer to real life rather than swapping 1sts with the worst team in the league.

:rolleyes:

I do pretty close to what you do dbf. I do allow myself to bid on whatever free agent is available as long as it fills a legitimate need.

I rarely trade though. If there is a player I really HAVE to have at the top of the draft, I'll give up a lot to get him. If a player is whining about wanting out, I'll put him on the trading block to get the best offer I can.

[dabearzfan]

Thanks for all the good feedback. Anyone else out there got anything???

[isaiah01]

Do everything you are currently doing EXCEPT the free agents. Sign the player if you have the cap room and need him.

Play it on All-Madden level. :eek:

[Oshow]

Personally, I play every game with 6min. quarters, except the playoffs, where I usually knock it down to 2min. quarters to get to the off-season quicker. Play the game however you like.
Also, I only go after free agents if I have the need. I usually don't have to unless I need to fill a roster spot. I would much rather fill a need through the draft. I think it's a lot more fun that way.
I rarely trade players unless there is a 95+ speed back out there that I have to have. You can't teach speed!!!!! :D

[vglegs]

One of the easiest ways to limit yourself would be to make the Salary Cap stuff more realistic, by:

1) When signing a guy, give him what he asks for, or only allow yourself to lower it to a certain point (i.e. must have all green bars filled, or all but one, etc).

and/or

2) Make up your own salary cap. Personally, I only allow myself 66% of the current cap...

I am doing a Browns chise now that I am just trying to act like a "normal" real-life NFL team. I lower some contracts a bit, others I pay full. I rarely sign big name free agents, I treat the guys I consider to be the heart of the team well by keeping them til they retire, etc.

I also only play 3 or 4 regular season games (at 8 minute quarters without accel clock), and I won't play the wild-card weekend game. I also sometimes sim other playoff games when I don't want to bother...

[Nobody Special]

Hey there! IIRC, you started a similar thread last year.

Some of my personal favorite additional limitations, some more related to realism than others:

Finish every game you start, and no save/reloads, whether to void a bad training camp drill or to avoid a key injury. Corollary: no peeking ahead to the post season draft or free agent markets to inform your decisions about who to sign and who to cut loose.

Establish limiting rules for training camp drill improvements. Mine are: no drills for players with over 3 years in the league, and no drills above rookie (IOW, max improvement = 3 pts). You shouldn’t be able to use training camp to build monster players. At least, I never recall hearing anyone credit training camp drills with turning Payton Manning into, well, Payton Manning.

No signing FA rookies that were drafted/cut by other teams in the first five rounds. This is a new one for me since last year. It seems to me that the AI tends to refuse to sign its high draft picks more this year (maybe because MGDs were so bad last year, I just didn’t pay attention, but I don’t think that’s it). I always see at least one, and often more than one, first round draft pick in the FA pool, because his team cut him without signing him. When was the last time that happened IRL? Since the draft got limited to seven rounds, most teams sign all their picks and make their cuts in camp. The round 5 cut off is probably still too high, but there aren’t enough undrafted FAs in the game, so I keep sixth and seventh rounders on the table.

No playbook shopping. Real life owners have to buy the coach’s playbook and the coach as a package. So should you.

Personally, when I cupcake, I limit myself to MGD players only, as part of the cupcake challenge. That’s totally unrealistic, just as are your self-imposed limits on free agents. We live in a real world of NFL free agency that’s so free that the last time they did expansion, an expansion team took all of two seasons to get to playoff caliber. I prefer the unrealism of a throwback to the days of Tampa Bay expansion, when restrictions on player movement guaranteed that an expansion franchise would be talent starved for years. Working at scrounging and building talent is the cake in cupcaking.