M23 Reboot – Dan’s Proposal

Hours after the infamous NYE update from EA, I attempted to garner up support to restore the old file to the best of our ability. Of course a 100% restoration was completely impractical, so I always envisioned significant compromise in the process. Unfortunately, the dissenters had their way, and we were left with a joyless reboot where everyone misses their old teams and are forced to compete with “Mickey Mouse” fantasy rosters with no sense of identity.

Here were my main reasons to mock back the league:

1. Preservation of divisions and rivalries. When the teams and divisions are revealed on lottery night (the best day of the BL cycle), it’s well understood that we are riding out these divisions for the next calendar year. You develop a competitive bond with your division mates over the course of seven seasons, and to break that up after two never felt right to me.
2. Continuity of the Lore. As the self-described Chief Archivist of BL, this one is likely nearer to my heart than others. But one thing I love about the progression of the CFM cycle is how the story is ever-changing. The games, the trades, the signings, the drafts, and others are all important and every member of the league, regardless of skill, has a hand in the story of the league. Breaking up the lore mid cycle, especially leaving most of our dear AI players left for dead, eliminates a significant subset of our enjoyment.
3. Let’s finish what we built. This is related to point 2, but this in particular is the most important to most users. We’ve all spent hours upon hours building our teams according to our vision. When the league bricked, it felt like we just were getting started, having more than half a cycle ahead of us. We all miss our teams and want them back, so when I proposed a way to bring back some normalcy to what we had, it was disappointing to see some of our most passionate “GMs” push back on the idea.

Here I will address some of the main concerns regarding a mock back:

1. It wouldn’t be the same. True. Nothing will ever be the same. But it’s my view that we’d have a far less severe of an enthusiasm drop if we brought back our old teams, even restoring a select few of our favorites.
2. It’s too much work. This I never understood. I’m not going to name names, but there are a handful of people that will DM all 31 users every offseason and strike a conversation looking for a deal. The work required to restore, especially only a partial one, pales in comparison to the work you put in over months. And just a little work in the short term could have paid huge dividends in the long term, as users would stay committed to what they built. Hell, the phone conversations I had with Austin just for the Mac Jones trade would probably exceed the length of work to restore my portion.
3. I just want to play. This one I definitely understand the most, as we were starved of the game for so long during those trying days. But I would point out that while we chose a path of least resistance to get the league in motion, choosing that path took considerable amount of time. Even with a sloppily done reboot (“sloppy” by design, for efficiency), we were playing games a full week after the dreaded NYE press release. I did some napkin calculations that day and estimated we could get games played as soon as 1/5 if we banded together, without much work per person per day.

My Reboot Proposal:

• You would rejoin as your original team.
• We sim two seasons on a new file so we are at the start of S3.
• You will protect 10 players from your old team (including both IRL and AI players). I
  • IRL players will be restored to proper dev, abilities, physicals, and contract. More attributes could be restored for a certain number of players, but dev and abilities will take precedence.
  • AI players would require more care as they would be made from scratch.
• Protected AI players will replace the top AI players on your new team, sorted by dev then overall.
• Whatever is left on your team outside of protections from yourself and others will be the team you play with.

Pretty simple, and would not take a lot of work on an individual basis, just some spreadsheet work and guidance from leadership. It’s not perfect, and there are more concerns like future draft picks, cap penalties, and other factors that would be addressed if necessary. But that is the main essence of what I wanted.

Example:

I simmed two seasons on a new file (using preseason rosters) to show you how my team would look. A few volunteers gave me their ten players and will feature them on future posts.

My protections (AI players in blue).

Obviously I like to build through the draft, and I don’t have many good IRL player acquisitions or dev, so my protections are loaded with AI. Other users may see no incentive to bring back AI as their teams were loaded with IRL talent (note that I will have to replace all of my good AI players on the new file with these guys).

In this alternate reality, here’s the team I’m rolling with:

A couple notes on the team:

• Alex sent me his hypothetical protections today that did not include Trent Brown or Mike Onwenu, who he acquired in the original league. Keeping them certainly beefed up my OL.
• I’m assuming that Kook protects Hunter Henry. If not, then he is a SS dev on this file, which is nice break to have.
• I’m assuming Bos doesn’t protect Peppers or Dugger. Dugger had star dev on the old file, but here is superstar which is pretty cool.