Out of Position Rules

I really wish we could change a CB to a saftey. Some CBs are simply not fast enough, but could play better at the strong or free saftey position. Sometimes I have a slower almost worthless TE, but they can block and would be a better FB. Some receivers dont have enough speed, but their avoid fumble and ball carrying is high so they would be more efficient RBs. I like the idea of limited changing of positions, as long as team owners actually change their official position over.

We can make a change if that's what the league wants, but one thing we will not do is have it be a thing that changes from one time period to another. Right now, I do not pay for the league admin power. I am 100% free account, so if I want to make the change, I have to buy the subscription. I am happy to do so if that's the change people really want, but I would cancel after the change is made. So changing the position rules just during draft sims won't work because that would require me to always be a subscriber, and that's not something I want to do at this time.

That's also the reason why I am interested in hearing where things are going with potential new rules being tossed about in the beta testing league. The other thing I want to avoid is paying to make the change now, but then a few weeks later they roll out the new game rules and maybe we have to change it again, so I have to pay again to change it again. Is anyone in beta? Is there an ETA on when the new changes are coming through and does anyone have insight on whether those changes would affect this issues being discussed here. That could be important info to factor in.

From the other perspective, what I gather is that some do not want to shake things up for a relatively low percentage occurrence - that is when someone's draft list runs out and the CPU autodrafts the "wrong" position for them. And presuming the list does not run out until later rounds, seems like a lot of effort to argue about a 4th round CB vs. FS as a game breaker.

Anyways happy to take this up for a vote once I get the info on the new rules incoming. Maybe the best thing is to tell those beta people that they should add "CB" and "S" in the draft preferences, instead of "DB". Can anyone pass that along to JDB?

I picked up a team in the Beta league just to mess around a little bit, since I don't think it counts against your total teams in the subscription levels. I understand norm not wanting to pay to change administrator settings constantly, so I'd vote to keep things as they are for now, at least until whenever the newest game engine gets officially released. I know a lot of owners can't draft live, but if you're able to set enough players in your manual list, you probably won't end up with any total bums.

In the actual draft class there are only very few good players for S position. Should we include CBs to be converted the number of decent players would be sufficient.

MFN Test or 1 does not count as additional league, so everybody with a free account could Join.

I'll make the suggestion to alter the draft table from DB to CB and S.

It's a pity that some users of BETA in here do not support my approach. So I'm considering to say good-bye Moguls

The other thing I will say is that I heard, and beta people can confirm, that one of the upcoming changes is that the draft pool will be increased, such that there will be more usable players, at every position, in the draft. More reasons why I want to wait and see what happens with the changes... but does anyone know the speed of changes? Like if this isn't coming for a year, then maybe we take the suggestion to change things now, and deal with again in a year.

The only draft I've done in the Beta league had 22 pages of rookies instead of the usual 12-13, so you do end up having more options to pick from. However, there are still plenty of terrible players - you won't end up drafting a round 2-3 quality player in round 7. No idea about any timetable for implementing the changes they're working on there. I'd echo ioan's suggestion to join the Beta league to get an idea of what's coming, since you can still keep a free subscription.

I certainly hope ioan will reconsider leaving Moguls - he's one of the best owners in all of MFN, and in this league. Since I've never been a league admin, I don't know how you set up position restrictions. I do know it's frustrating when you come across a 207 pound CB in the draft pool who should obviously just be converted into a safety but you can't do it. The restrictions came up to prevent people from turning LBs into CBs to lose 50 pounds and gain speed, but still play them as LBs and trick the game engine. If there's a way to restrict CBs or safeties to play only as defensive backs and NOTHING else, I'd be ok with that.

Yes, there is a way to have the restriction of only CB can be converted to safety and vice versa, but not allow changes to LB. This is a real thing we can do now if that's what people want. The counterpoint raised, when we were discussing this back long ago, was that it is too easy to just move a CB to SS. Like why would anyone care about the SS position when you can always move a CB there, and there are many more CB than SS. Pre-rules change, I don't think I ever cared about safety and I probably just used CB at safety almost all the time. If we changed the rule, I would probably go back to that. I mean, right now I have a extra quality CBs, but zero good safeties. It would make my team a lot better if I could make by CB 4/5 into starting safeties. So I'm not necessarily against changing it! But I understand that putting this limitation makes it much harder to build the roster, and some people like it harder. You can't have the "11 CBs" defense. The other thing I'd say is that if we make this change, probably will be for next season - don't want to mess up the draft/offseason for those who planned around getting safeties. Someone might have burned a higher pick on someone that was a safety than if they could have played a CB at the position. So this is a next offseason discussion.

What do you think of the idea that, on the defensive side, players can always move down one position but not up?
DT > DE
DE > LB
LB > S
S > CB
There are always a few players in the pools who are significantly better at a different position. I’ve seen some LBs who would do very well as S. This way, you can significantly expand your draft list.
In the past, almost all of my S were former LB, and half of my LB were former DE.

If I'm understanding you correctly, I'd be against it. All of these "step downs" involve the defensive players losing weight, so they'll gain speed and overpower offenses - which is exactly why the restrictions were set up in the first place. The more we talk about this, the more I'm for just leaving the restrictions exactly as they are.

Yes, the players get faster. But they’re no longer allowed to play their old position. In other words, the LB gets faster when switched to S, but can no longer play LB. Or you can have an LB play S. But then you have the weight disadvantage.
We already have this in the offense. You can change a TE to RB or WR, which makes him faster. But he can no longer play TE or RB if he’s changed to WR. It would be the same principle, just for the defense.