FOF Historic Files - rev0 released

[Passacaglia]

I spot-checked a few of these info files, and it looks like they all have a salary cap of $100M and a minimum salary of $40K. If this helps any, here's my research on what the salary cap is in each year from this site

2023 2248
2022 2082
2021 1825
2020 1982
2019 1882
2018 1772
2017 1670
2016 1553
2015 1433
2014 1330
2013 1236
2012 1206
2011 1204
2010 0
2009 1230
2008 1160
2007 1090
2006 1020
2005 855
2004 806
2003 750
2002 711
2001 674
2000 622
1999 573
1998 524
1997 415
1996 408
1995 371
1994 346
1993 322
1992 300
1991 280
1990 261
1989 243
1988 226
1987 211
1986 196
1985 183
1984 170
1983 159
1982 148
1981 138
1980 128
1979 120
1978 111
1977 104
1976 97
1975 90
1974 84
1973 78
1972 73
1971 68
1970 63

I changed it so that it's in 100K increments, as the readme for the info file says it needs, instead of in millions. For years before 1994, I used a 7.34% average trend to go backward. The site says 2010 was uncapped, which is weird, but I'd imagine if you put anything in the 1200s you'd be fine. I think the league minimums should be changed, too.

Am I the only one noticing this issue here?

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by korme

I haven't taken a look thoroughly at the csv's yet - but does this mean we have the capability to make a historic coaches file as well?

Originally Posted by NawlinsFan

Yes sir.

Originally Posted by korme

That's almost equally exciting.

I'm trying my hand at creating a 1976_coaches file. So far, so...okay. I've been using ChatGPT to get a lot of this stuff, and 1976 was one year before I was born, so I'm relying on it to be correct with only minimal checking from Wikipedia, since I can't rely on my own memory at all. I've got all 28 head coaches, assigned to the teams they should be, with their birth cities and colleges. I got ChatGPT to give me position groups for them all, plus their offensive and defensive styles -- huge grains of salt here that GPT knows what it's talking about. There were lots of coaches who were balanced, and none with Erhardt-Perkins or spread, so I asked it to convert some of the balanced to those, but no idea if it put any thought into that. I also asked GPT to give me PAYSCALE numbers that I hoped would affect the coach's quality. I got good numbers -- high salaries for coaches I've heard of (Tom Landry, Don Shula, Chuck Noll) and low salaries for coaches I hadn't (Marion Campbell and Lou Holtz, who I didn't know coached in the NFL, so it works). But quality seems random, and from the text file

Coaches are randomly rated in Front Office Football Nine.

So I guess I shouldn't have bothered. This actually might have an adverse effect for all I know, where highly-paid coaches get fired and aren't in the league after a couple seasons. Something to keep an eye on.

Anyway, all the head coaches are in there, correct birth city and college, a reasonable effort to replicate coaching styles, but random quality. Drop me a PM if you want me to email it to you. I still plan to add coordinators, then analysts who will become head coaches, and maybe some unemployed future head coaches, before I look into figuring out how to host it myself.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

This actually might have an adverse effect for all I know, where highly-paid coaches get fired and aren't in the league after a couple seasons. Something to keep an eye on.

I did one sim, and the coaches I've seen fired were Lou Holtz, John Ralston, Ted Marchibroda, Jack Patera, Bart Starr, Bum Phillips, and Bud Grant. It took until 1979 for that to happen, which I like, since it kept things consistent for a while. They all found gigs as HC or coordinator somewhere else, except Patera, who ended up as an assistant. I feel fine with all that, but if anyone thinks the pay numbers are throwing things off, let me know.

[Passacaglia]

I made a change to the 28_6_16_schedule.csv file if anyone is interested. That file sets the league up to rotate 3 different schedules. However, one of those 3 schedules has all 16 games played over 18 weeks, instead of 17. That in itself is a little weird, with every team getting two bye weeks, but the 18th week was getting counted as a playoff game for record-keeping in the coach's profiles, so when I realized I could fix it, it had to go. I just took out the bad schedule, so now there's only two instead of three, but I don't think that will matter -- the schedules are based on division ranking from the previous year, so I don't think it will feel repetitive.

I'll host this with the 1976_coaches file when I'm done, but if you want to change it yourself, all you have to do is delete the rows with a "2" in the first column, then change the rows with a "3" in the first column so that they're a "2"

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I've been using these files and starting in 1976. A couple things I've noticed:

1. A lot of players seem like they are only on 1-year contracts. Maybe that's true to the time, but most players were out of contract by 1977. There were four teams that had 0 players under contract when the 1977 year began. Not necessarily a huge deal, since they have a chance to sign their out-of-contract players again before anyone else can. But I'm not sure the AI is aggressive enough to do that.

2. Most teams were way below the cap as 1977 started. Somewhat a function of the fact that so few players were under contract, but also, the amounts that players were asking for didn't seem to sync up with the salary cap. The number in the 1976_info file is 1000, and that gets the $100M cap the game has, but $100M seems like too much given what salary everyone asks for.

I'll have to take a look. The way I did the years was I looked at how long the player was on the team for. So if you're using a 1977 file and a player didn't play in 78 or were on a different team, they would have a 1 year contract. If they were on the same team until say 85 they would have a 5 year contract.

As far as the overall salaries, I had scaled it against talent. So the most talented team would have a total salary of ~100 million, but that's the most talented team ever. The salaries are then scaled by their individual rating, so a 9 overall would have a much higher salary than a 1 overall. Same with experience, a veteran would have a higher salary than a rookie. I'll have a think on how to scale the salaries better, I would agree that it's a bit low. It wasn't an issue in previous versions, but seems to be more of a deal here.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by nilodor

I'll have to take a look. The way I did the years was I looked at how long the player was on the team for. So if you're using a 1977 file and a player didn't play in 78 or were on a different team, they would have a 1 year contract. If they were on the same team until say 85 they would have a 5 year contract.

That seems like a pretty good way to handle it. I don't think it's working right, though. I think I said before that four teams have everyone hit FA at the end of the year. I don't remember them all, but Houston was one, and if you take your 1976_players file and filter on team 5, you'll see that the salaryears field is 1 for all of them. The most notable single exception I see is Joe Theismann, who hits FA at the end of the year. The one time I've simmed to 1985, it looks like they franchised him, and the next year he signed with Minnesota. I'm not sure if that all is a huge deal, since you have to expect players to be on different teams from reality, but having the four teams with no players under contract seems like it will put them in trouble. I think some easy solutions are to either a) add a year to everyone's contract, or b) put a 2-year minimum on every contract. I've created a file where I added a year to everyone's contract, and it seems like that's working well.

As far as the overall salaries, I had scaled it against talent. So the most talented team would have a total salary of ~100 million, but that's the most talented team ever. The salaries are then scaled by their individual rating, so a 9 overall would have a much higher salary than a 1 overall. Same with experience, a veteran would have a higher salary than a rookie. I'll have a think on how to scale the salaries better, I would agree that it's a bit low. It wasn't an issue in previous versions, but seems to be more of a deal here.

I think that makes sense, too. I changed salaries in my file, but really all I did was make it so the salary cap was 9.7M instead of 100M, and I scaled everyone's first year salary down so the Steelers were right at the new cap, so it's effectively the same as yours, in terms of what percent of the cap each player is taking up. Then I increased the salary aspect of future years of each contract by 10% but kept bonus the same. There's still an issue that the Giants are only spending like 50% of the cap, compared to 100% for the Steelers, but that's not far removed from what the game is doing on its own. I've finished FA in 1978 and just about to start the season, and there were plenty of good FAs available, but 6 teams still have used less than 50% of the cap, and almost everyone is under 80% of the cap. The Steelers are over, and have lost 3rd round picks due to violations in 1978 and 1979, just signed 20 players at the league minimum to fill their roster the day before training camp, and are STILL over, and the Rams are also over it, too, after losing a 3rd pick for 1979 and signing 15 players at the league minimum, so the cap is affecting some teams at least. I think it's working fine -- the Steelers have a great team, and are having to deal with the trouble of keeping it together, and the Giants don't, but have a lot of room to play with and build it up, and it will all even out over time.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I made a change to the 28_6_16_schedule.csv file if anyone is interested. That file sets the league up to rotate 3 different schedules. However, one of those 3 schedules has all 16 games played over 18 weeks, instead of 17. That in itself is a little weird, with every team getting two bye weeks, but the 18th week was getting counted as a playoff game for record-keeping in the coach's profiles, so when I realized I could fix it, it had to go. I just took out the bad schedule, so now there's only two instead of three, but I don't think that will matter -- the schedules are based on division ranking from the previous year, so I don't think it will feel repetitive.

I'll host this with the 1976_coaches file when I'm done, but if you want to change it yourself, all you have to do is delete the rows with a "2" in the first column, then change the rows with a "3" in the first column so that they're a "2"

Never mind on this -- once I got to the 3rd season, there were no games. I'd also like to eliminate bye weeks, so I'm going to see if I can redo the whole file. Not sure why the third season is not working, from everything I read, if I just have two schedules, it should rotate between those two.

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

That seems like a pretty good way to handle it. I don't think it's working right, though. I think I said before that four teams have everyone hit FA at the end of the year. I don't remember them all, but Houston was one, and if you take your 1976_players file and filter on team 5, you'll see that the salaryears field is 1 for all of them. The most notable single exception I see is Joe Theismann, who hits FA at the end of the year. The one time I've simmed to 1985, it looks like they franchised him, and the next year he signed with Minnesota. I'm not sure if that all is a huge deal, since you have to expect players to be on different teams from reality, but having the four teams with no players under contract seems like it will put them in trouble. I think some easy solutions are to either a) add a year to everyone's contract, or b) put a 2-year minimum on every contract. I've created a file where I added a year to everyone's contract, and it seems like that's working well.

Hmm, it seems to be the teams that changed their team number in the league structure file. I have a master database where each player has one line. There are a column for each season they played, with their team numbers in them. Anyways, I'll need to fix that.

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I think that makes sense, too. I changed salaries in my file, but really all I did was make it so the salary cap was 9.7M instead of 100M, and I scaled everyone's first year salary down so the Steelers were right at the new cap, so it's effectively the same as yours, in terms of what percent of the cap each player is taking up. Then I increased the salary aspect of future years of each contract by 10% but kept bonus the same. There's still an issue that the Giants are only spending like 50% of the cap, compared to 100% for the Steelers, but that's not far removed from what the game is doing on its own. I've finished FA in 1978 and just about to start the season, and there were plenty of good FAs available, but 6 teams still have used less than 50% of the cap, and almost everyone is under 80% of the cap. The Steelers are over, and have lost 3rd round picks due to violations in 1978 and 1979, just signed 20 players at the league minimum to fill their roster the day before training camp, and are STILL over, and the Rams are also over it, too, after losing a 3rd pick for 1979 and signing 15 players at the league minimum, so the cap is affecting some teams at least. I think it's working fine -- the Steelers have a great team, and are having to deal with the trouble of keeping it together, and the Giants don't, but have a lot of room to play with and build it up, and it will all even out over time.

I might scale things a bit differently. I think it's one of the 90's 49ers teams that had the most talent ever. Does the salary cap work well using realistic numbers for the year? It didn't in FOF8 because the increases were by dollar amount so the first increase basically doubled the salary cap, if FOF9 by percentage?

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by nilodor

Hmm, it seems to be the teams that changed their team number in the league structure file. I have a master database where each player has one line. There are a column for each season they played, with their team numbers in them. Anyways, I'll need to fix that.

That makes sense. I think I saw the team numbers are different in one of the league files, depending on the league format. Hopefully not too difficult of a fix.

I might scale things a bit differently. I think it's one of the 90's 49ers teams that had the most talent ever. Does the salary cap work well using realistic numbers for the year? It didn't in FOF8 because the increases were by dollar amount so the first increase basically doubled the salary cap, if FOF9 by percentage?

FOF9 is still based on dollar amount, but you can change it in the settings, and it appears you can change it as you progress through the career. I set the min at 0 and the max at 1, so I get an increase from 0 to $1M the first year, and my plan is to increase those numbers over time, keeping them at around 5-10% of the cap. That seems to work fine, but the drawback is you have to remember to change it every year. I think you'd have that issue with a $100M cap after a few years into the future anyway, because if you don't change it, your cap increase is too small.

This seems like an area where LESS customization would be preferred in the game. Just set the minimum at 5% and the maximum at 10%, and call it a day. But if the game does want to allow customization, it should let the user customize the percentages rather than the dollars.

I see what you're saying about the 90s 49ers teams, but I think given how some teams are so far below the cap, it's probably best to scale it so the team with the most talent THAT YEAR is at the cap, rather than only the most talented team ever. Maybe even a little over, so they have to get rid of some players. I mean, if the 76 Steelers are 90% as good as the 94 49ers, and the 76 Steelers are at 90% of the cap because of that, it just brings the 76 Giants down from 50% of the cap to 45% of the cap. I dunno. It's probably very subjective depending on how people want to play, and maybe it's more fitting to a pre-salary-cap NFL for a team to have a ton of talent and still not have to worry about the cap.

[Passacaglia]

Here's my 1976 coaches file.

Dropbox - 1976_coaches.csv - Simplify your life

This should have pretty much all the correct head coaches and coordinators. The only exception I could think of is that the Lions DC, Jim Carr, didn't have a wikipedia page, and since I couldn't find his birth date, city, or college immediately, I put Jerry Glanville there instead. That gave me room to put Joe Bugel in as an assistant coach. It did NOT leave me room for Bill Belichick, who was a special teams coach. I included him in the game, but as unemployed. He's by far the youngest coach in the file, at 24 years old.

Some other "exceptions" where that a lot of teams didn't have coordinators, just position coaches. In that case, I chose the coach who would soonest become a head coach or a "real" coordinator, and put him there.

If there were more assistants than I could fit that would become head coaches in the future, I took the one that would become a head coach furthest off, and put him in the game as unemployed. For example, Dallas had Tom Landry as HC, Jim Myers as OC, Ernie Stautner as DC, and Dan Reeves and Mike Ditka as assistant coaches. After adding in the HC, OC, and DC, I only had room for one assistant, so I put Reeves in that position, since he would become a head coach before Mike Ditka would. But Ditka is in as unemployed. I *think* I added an occasional assistant in the game as unemployed if he was destined to become a coordinator, but not sure.

Next, I added any coaches who would become a HC by 1985 -- most of these guys were coaching in college in 1976.

That only gets 20-25 unemployed coaches, so the game is filling a lot of people on its own. Not sure what to do about that. I'm worried about adding coaches that will become a HC in the late 80s or 90s, because I'm not sure we want a situation where they become coaches like way earlier than they should. Maybe seeing what happens to Belichick will be a good test for that -- the youngest coach that the game generates is 32, and I don't know if the fact that he's 8 years younger will make him not as good yet, or will mean that when he's 32, he's had 8 years to develop. I could add coaches that will become an OC or DC by 1985, but I'm not sure if that's all that interesting to anyone.

If anyone sees issues with the file or ways to improve it, let me know. The playstyles were mostly the result of chatting with GPT, so they're very quick and dirty. Maybe it'd be better to have more Smashmouth coaches based on the era, and how it seems when looking at it from present day, but I don't think that's accounted for at this time. I do think there's only like 1-2 spread coaches, so that should reflect the era pretty well.

[KingZal]

I really am curious to see how Belichick develops under those conditions. I haven't simulated far enough to see how coaches fare over the long run, or how much variance there is in their development, but it would be cool to see him become a head coach in the early 90's. My guess, though, is that he would become a head coach much sooner or never reach that rank at all.

[Passacaglia]

Dropbox - 1976 new schedule.zip - Simplify your life

For those interested, I created a 28_6_14 schedule file. I didn't like how the 28_6_16 file had a bye week, and as I thought of ways to improve it, I decided I also didn't like how the NFL schedules anyway. Here's the highlights of my 28_6_14:

1. I only have one preseason game. I wanted to get rid of all of them, but whenever I had none, the dates got all messed up. It's all AFC vs. NFC based on standings from the previous year. AFC East #1 plays NFC East #1, AFC Central #1 plays NFC Central #1, AFC West #1 plays NFC West #1, and so on. AFC West #5 plays NFC Central #5. One year is all AFC teams hosting, next year is all NFC teams hosting.

2. Weeks 2-14 are a round-robin within each conference. This means that teams don't play their division rivals twice in a season like usual. Division games are still important for tiebreakers and essentially a double effect on the standings, plus they're all pushed to the end as much as possible, which should make them more interesting (and strong division rivalries are at the very end). It also means there's less chance of a rematch in the Super Bowl (unless it's from Week 1).

3. Week 1 is an AFC-NFC rivalry week. Some of these rivalries make sense and seem like a lot of fun, some don't and are just created to fill the schedule.
Baltimore Colts-Washington Redskins
Philadelphia Eagles-Pittsburgh Steelers
Cleveland Browns-Detroit Lions
New England Patriots-Green Bay Packers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Miami Dolphins
St. Louis Cardinals-Kansas City Chiefs
Chicago Bears-Cincinnati Bengals
Seattle Seahawks-New Orleans Saints
New York Jets-New York Giants
Oakland Raiders-San Francisco 49ers
Buffalo Bills-Atlanta Falcons
Dallas Cowboys-Houston Oilers
Los Angeles Rams-San Diego Chargers
Minnesota Vikings-Denver Broncos

4. The rotation is pretty simple, everyone plays the same team each week, flipping home and away. I may make it so that it gets mixed up every so often, but this was kind of a pain, so it might be a while. Also, Baltimore plays 4 away games in a row, Kansas City plays 3 home games in a row, and there may be others. I tried to make it so a team never played home or away more than twice in a row, but gave up. I might try fixing that later, too. It's something that looks annoying, but probably doesn't matter in terms of FOF gameplay.

5. Only 4 teams in each conference make the playoffs -- the three division champs and one wild card. If you want the 10, it's easy to change that.

There's also a default_teams and a league_info file included. They're both needed to get the 28_6_14 schedule to work. You'll also need to edit your xxxx_info file and add 28_6_14 to the schedule field. I called the zip file a 1976 schedule, but I think you can use it any year.

Just a note -- The game crashes a lot when I use these files whenever I try to sim through a whole season with one click. I would suggest saving often and simming one day at a time using the check box on the sidebar as much as possible.

[Passacaglia]

Dropbox - 1976_players_empty_expansion.zip - Simplify your life

One more set -- I also made 1976_players and 1976_quarterbacks files where the expansion teams (Seattle and Tampa Bay) have no players. Other teams will start picking up those players in FA before you get a chance to do anything if you start as one of these teams, including the expansion team you DON'T start as, so your team will be the only empty one. You'll be really bad in 1976. This file uses the cap changes that I mentioned earlier -- it's a $9.7M cap and player salaries are adjusted accordingly, plus contracts from nilodor's file were all extended by a year. There does end up being a pretty decent FA market though, since the AI releases players to stay under the cap.

[Passacaglia]

Hey nilodor, do you have much input into how overall ratings are selected in these files? As I'm working on my dynasty starting in 1970, I'm wanting this to be more accurate without giving too much away to myself. I've been playing with your 1976 file for a while, and I've been shrugging my shoulders at weird stuff, figuring I just don't know 1976 that well. But when I look at the 1970 file, there's some weirdness.

First, the QB file. It's got no one with an overall rating of 7, 8, or 9. I can understand having no 9 -- the help file says "The player is a generational talent at his position." So sure, no 9 makes sense. I could argue that 1970 rosters have a generational talent, but since I can think of like 5 guys, I'm willing to accept that I need to calibrate what generational talent means. But if none of Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Namath get to be called a generational talent, who does? Just Tom Brady? Maybe that's the answer, and that's fine. And maybe an 8 is too high -- "The player is often the best in the league at his position." -- since technically none of them can "often" be the best. But some of them ought to be 7? Maybe all of them? Not to mention that the two 6s we actually have in the file are...Fran Tarkenton and Greg Landry. Bradshaw, Staubach, and Namath are 5, Johnny Unitas is a 2, Bart Starr is a 1. I won't quibble too much about Bart Starr since he was hurt that year, and if this is supposed to represent "Bart Starr 1970" as opposed to "Bart Starr" sure fine. But Johnny Unitas a 2? Looking up 1970 on pro football reference, I'm learning a bit more about 1970 itself. John Brodie and George Blanda were voted MVP by different orgs -- they have a 2 and 1 in the file. I'm not trying to be "my guy isn't rated the way I want so I'm mad" but it seems like the process here isn't working.

Also, all kickers are rated 0. The help file says that for FB, K, P, and LS, the highest rating that can be assigned is a 2. That's not completely true, I gave Jan Stenerud a 9, and I gave Fred Cox a 6. But it could be that when you go higher than 2, it's not meaningful -- in the one universe I loaded with it, Stenerud was an 83/89 and Cox was 83/83. This file also has a 0 for all Punters, except for Marshall Newhouse, who will have a 1 when he enters the league in 2010.

Hopefully this doesn't come off like a rant, since there's so much great work here. It just doesn't feel quite like it's usable yet, and I'm hoping we can get there. I was getting ready to hunker down and do some of this manually, but since you mentioned python, I wondered if you had any ideas to do this faster.

Thanks again!

[KingZal]

I'm happy with these player files, though some of the overall ratings are a little odd (Gronkowski a 6? Roethlisberger a 4?). I've had some weak draft classes but I'm not sure how much of that is from the file versus poor RNG/X-Factor luck.

Passacaglia, how good are those quarterbacks' other ratings in the file? I'm looking now and Roethlisberger has a low overall but high decision making and accuracy (everything else besides scrambling is -1). Anecdotally, I can tell you he's a 68 overall in one of my universes, and in another he was 44 but had a 38:10 TD:INT ratio in his rookie year. So unless he's a strange outlier, I don't think having a low overall necessarily dooms the player unless all the rest of their stats are -1.

[NawlinsFan]

I more or less look at this from the other side of the mirror. I like the randomness that the game creates with the ratings. I have had universes where a player does come out much as you would expect from a historical perspective but have also had another where that same player took a hit on their ratings. To me it adds to the replayability.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by KingZal

I really am curious to see how Belichick develops under those conditions. I haven't simulated far enough to see how coaches fare over the long run, or how much variance there is in their development, but it would be cool to see him become a head coach in the early 90's. My guess, though, is that he would become a head coach much sooner or never reach that rank at all.

I simmed ten years to see what happened to Belichick. I actually started in 1970, when he was 18. His stats went up 10 sometimes, down 10 sometimes, down 20 once, stayed the same a few times. I did this for ten years, and he ended up 10 worse overall. So it seemed like he didn't "develop" but his stats were just a random walk. Stayed unemployed the whole time. So I think you're right.

I think given that, it might not make sense to include coaches that you don't want to be employed until much in the future, unless you're okay with the weirdness of him getting hired immediately.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by KingZal

I'm happy with these player files, though some of the overall ratings are a little odd (Gronkowski a 6? Roethlisberger a 4?). I've had some weak draft classes but I'm not sure how much of that is from the file versus poor RNG/X-Factor luck.

Passacaglia, how good are those quarterbacks' other ratings in the file? I'm looking now and Roethlisberger has a low overall but high decision making and accuracy (everything else besides scrambling is -1). Anecdotally, I can tell you he's a 68 overall in one of my universes, and in another he was 44 but had a 38:10 TD:INT ratio in his rookie year. So unless he's a strange outlier, I don't think having a low overall necessarily dooms the player unless all the rest of their stats are -1.

Some categories are all -1 (touch, quality, arm strength, timing, sense rush, read defense, two minutes, improvisation), and some are filled in for most QBs (scramble, decisions, accuracy, footwork, confidence, skill speed). You could be right that overall doesn't tell the whole story. But no idea.

If you're curious about Roethlisberger, here's him in the 1970 file:

TOUCH QUALITY ARM_STRENGTH SCRAMBLE DECISIONS ACCURACY TIMING SENSE_RUSH READ_DEFENSE TWO_MINUTE FOOTWORK
-1 -1 -1 100 232 234 -1 -1 -1 -1 208

And here he is in the 2004 file:

TOUCH QUALITY ARM_STRENGTH SCRAMBLE DECISIONS ACCURACY TIMING SENSE_RUSH READ_DEFENSE TWO_MINUTE FOOTWORK
-1 -1 -1 148 118 200 -1 -1 -1 -1 136

Bad formatting, but eh. In both, his overall rating is a 4. But it seems like he should be better if you start in 1970, wait 34 years, then draft him.

[KingZal]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

But it seems like he should be better if you start in 1970, wait 34 years, then draft him.

That's pretty interesting, actually. It makes sense, since Ben was little more than a game manager his rookie year.

I did some more digging into QB stats, thinking that it'd be a similar story for Brett Favre in his rookie year. But that doesn't seem to be the case. The 1991 file doesn't account for him being a then-mediocre backup - instead, he's a 7 overall with very high accuracy (244). Of course there's no flag for "make this mediocre rookie a future all pro," so if you want a realistic progression for a great player's career you're better off giving them great stats from the start.

[Passacaglia]

Hey nilodor -- See my post two above. Do you know why players turn out differently depending on what year the file is from? I'm trying to wrap my head around why a player like Big Ben (random example) looks different in the 1970 version of your files than he does in the 2004 version.

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Hey nilodor, do you have much input into how overall ratings are selected in these files? As I'm working on my dynasty starting in 1970, I'm wanting this to be more accurate without giving too much away to myself. I've been playing with your 1976 file for a while, and I've been shrugging my shoulders at weird stuff, figuring I just don't know 1976 that well. But when I look at the 1970 file, there's some weirdness.

First, the QB file. It's got no one with an overall rating of 7, 8, or 9. I can understand having no 9 -- the help file says "The player is a generational talent at his position." So sure, no 9 makes sense. I could argue that 1970 rosters have a generational talent, but since I can think of like 5 guys, I'm willing to accept that I need to calibrate what generational talent means. But if none of Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Namath get to be called a generational talent, who does? Just Tom Brady? Maybe that's the answer, and that's fine. And maybe an 8 is too high -- "The player is often the best in the league at his position." -- since technically none of them can "often" be the best. But some of them ought to be 7? Maybe all of them? Not to mention that the two 6s we actually have in the file are...Fran Tarkenton and Greg Landry. Bradshaw, Staubach, and Namath are 5, Johnny Unitas is a 2, Bart Starr is a 1. I won't quibble too much about Bart Starr since he was hurt that year, and if this is supposed to represent "Bart Starr 1970" as opposed to "Bart Starr" sure fine. But Johnny Unitas a 2? Looking up 1970 on pro football reference, I'm learning a bit more about 1970 itself. John Brodie and George Blanda were voted MVP by different orgs -- they have a 2 and 1 in the file. I'm not trying to be "my guy isn't rated the way I want so I'm mad" but it seems like the process here isn't working.

Also, all kickers are rated 0. The help file says that for FB, K, P, and LS, the highest rating that can be assigned is a 2. That's not completely true, I gave Jan Stenerud a 9, and I gave Fred Cox a 6. But it could be that when you go higher than 2, it's not meaningful -- in the one universe I loaded with it, Stenerud was an 83/89 and Cox was 83/83. This file also has a 0 for all Punters, except for Marshall Newhouse, who will have a 1 when he enters the league in 2010.

Hopefully this doesn't come off like a rant, since there's so much great work here. It just doesn't feel quite like it's usable yet, and I'm hoping we can get there. I was getting ready to hunker down and do some of this manually, but since you mentioned python, I wondered if you had any ideas to do this faster.

Thanks again!

Ok, so rating in general. There's a post that provides more detail into how I did the ratings: FOF Historic Files: RB Ratings - Front Office Football Central
Starr's base rating is a 3, he gets adjusted down to a 1 probably by age. I'd need to take a look at that, I used to adjust qb's at a later age, I'm not sure if I maintained that in my updated code.

There's a note in the ratings file that kickers/punters should be rated a 10, 0, 1 or 2. I'm not sure why, but that's the note. So I abided it, I haven't played around with it.

When I have time I'll make a post discussing the QB ratings. I went strictly stats based, which removes my personal biases from the mix.

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Hey nilodor -- See my post two above. Do you know why players turn out differently depending on what year the file is from? I'm trying to wrap my head around why a player like Big Ben (random example) looks different in the 1970 version of your files than he does in the 2004 version.

His rating is a 4 in both files. There are no year specific adjustments to account for year. Since he is a rookie in 04 he would be subjected to the full x-factor, so that's my guess on the ratings. Maybe the draft file conversion in the game has the x-factor applied differently?

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Some categories are all -1 (touch, quality, arm strength, timing, sense rush, read defense, two minutes, improvisation), and some are filled in for most QBs (scramble, decisions, accuracy, footwork, confidence, skill speed). You could be right that overall doesn't tell the whole story. But no idea.

If you're curious about Roethlisberger, here's him in the 1970 file:



And here he is in the 2004 file:



Bad formatting, but eh. In both, his overall rating is a 4. But it seems like he should be better if you start in 1970, wait 34 years, then draft him.

Ok, I reread this. So the way I do things is that every player gets the same overall rating in each file, unless their age is above a certain threshold. Then I start to degrade things. If we focus on draft picks, in every file they need to have a value between 0 and 250. No guidance is provided on how this scales, so I've assumed it has scaled linearly. In my player file each player gets a 0-9 rating depending upon their 3 year peak performance. So Big ben is a 4 overall, with an 8 for accuracy, 4 for scrambling and 4 for avoiding interceptions. When I create the file they get that base rating time 25, so for Ben, his accuracy should be 8*25 = 200 + a little random bit. The random bit changes everytime the file is run, so he'll be slightly different depending on which file you start with.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by nilodor

Ok, so rating in general. There's a post that provides more detail into how I did the ratings: FOF Historic Files: RB Ratings - Front Office Football Central
Starr's base rating is a 3, he gets adjusted down to a 1 probably by age. I'd need to take a look at that, I used to adjust qb's at a later age, I'm not sure if I maintained that in my updated code.

There's a note in the ratings file that kickers/punters should be rated a 10, 0, 1 or 2. I'm not sure why, but that's the note. So I abided it, I haven't played around with it.

When I have time I'll make a post discussing the QB ratings. I went strictly stats based, which removes my personal biases from the mix.

Thanks for that link! I read that thread a long time ago, probably before I even had the game. I was thinking of using the AV in PFR as well, but waiting until I had a block of time to effectively see if I could get it to work during a trial period. Looks like you had the same idea, and put way more thought into it. That makes me feel a lot better about how these files are created, and makes it seem like something that would be really solid. Thanks again for all that work!

Originally Posted by nilodor

Yes, any player with a 10 overall ratin is fictional. You need roughly 100 players per team to keep the game from generating players, I just added a bit more than that. I could have optimized it, but I don't have the time right now for something that seems to work.



It's on the list, the only issue is that I don't have any control over the ratings. The other thing on the list is to generate a 22_4_14 schedule so that opens up 1961-1969. I'd want to check and see if you can have such an imbalanced league as the AFL/NFL were.


It was a bit of work, but not too bad since I've learned python since the last go around. It was a nice thing to do during my lunch hours when I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and I'm happy that other people can use it.

Also on salaries, for the file I used a cap of 100M, then I used the real NFL positional averages to set the mid ground, and then adjust them up or down based on rating and experience. So if you check a teams total salary, it lines up pretty well with it's total raw talent.

How would you feel about creating roster files that go back before 1970, even without the schedule? I had made plans to start a dynasty in 1970, but I kind of want to start it in 1966, so that what the game calls "Super Bowl I" is actually what should be Super Bowl I. My plan has been to use my own custom schedules, with 32 teams, 2 divisions in each conference. Everyone plays each the 7 other teams in their division home-and-home, plus a home-and-home with the team in the other division, same conference for a home-and-home. That's 16 games, and makes rematches very unlikely. But, I'll make a 22_4_14 schedule if that sweetens the deal and gets you to create the rosters! I'm not sure what kind of schedule I want in my dynasty yet, so I might end up using a 22 team set up anyway, if it existed. I like to create schedules where it's either impossible or unlikely to have a rematch in the playoffs or Super Bowl, but if desired, I could create a "normal" one, too. I don't see anything in the text files saying you can't have an imbalanced league like the AFL and NFL were, so I might as well try it and see. I have set it up (accidentally) so teams played different number of games, so I know that wrinkle of the AFL/NFL setup is possible.

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

How would you feel about creating roster files that go back before 1970, even without the schedule? I had made plans to start a dynasty in 1970, but I kind of want to start it in 1966, so that what the game calls "Super Bowl I" is actually what should be Super Bowl I. My plan has been to use my own custom schedules, with 32 teams, 2 divisions in each conference. Everyone plays each the 7 other teams in their division home-and-home, plus a home-and-home with the team in the other division, same conference for a home-and-home. That's 16 games, and makes rematches very unlikely. But, if it sweetens the pot for you, I'll make a 22_4_14 schedule if that sweetens the deal and gets you to create the rosters! I'm not sure what kind of schedule I want in my dynasty yet, so I might end up using a 22 team set up anyway, if it existed. I like to create schedules where it's either impossible or unlikely to have a rematch in the playoffs or Super Bowl, but if desired, I could create a "normal" one, too. I don't see anything in the text files saying you can't have an imbalanced league like the AFL and NFL were, so I might as well try it and see. I have set it up (accidentally) so teams played different number of games, so I know that wrinkle of the AFL/NFL setup is possible.

I have back to 1960 in my database, so I don't see it being a major issue. The trick would be setting up the league info, and like you said the schedules, since the league was unbalanced and you had the whole NFL/AFL thing. I'll try and run them in early june and generate a key, i.e., team 3 is Dallas Texans in 1961, etc (I just made that up, but just so you know which number is which team).

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by nilodor

I have back to 1960 in my database, so I don't see it being a major issue. The trick would be setting up the league info, and like you said the schedules, since the league was unbalanced and you had the whole NFL/AFL thing. I'll try and run them in early june and generate a key, i.e., team 3 is Dallas Texans in 1961, etc (I just made that up, but just so you know which number is which team).

Sweet. I'll look into creating the schedules and league info files for those years. A lot of expansion over that time, so it'll be interesting to see the various setups and schedules. Atlanta in 1966, New Orleans and Miami in 1967, Cincinnati in 1968. Sounds fun!

[NawlinsFan]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Sweet. I'll look into creating the schedules and league info files for those years. A lot of expansion over that time, so it'll be interesting to see the various setups and schedules. Atlanta in 1966, New Orleans and Miami in 1967, Cincinnati in 1968. Sounds fun!

I started working something like this a while back but never finished. I was using pro-football reference (Pro Football Stats, History, Scores, Standings, Playoffs, Schedule & Records | Pro-Football-Reference.com) for the schedules which seemed easy enough as yoiu just assigne the game team ID to the schedule and roll with the home and away assignments. Only thing is the game doesn't handle expansion so like earlier efforts I was trying to settle on a comfortable starting point with 32 teams and some non-historical alignments, i.e. Oilers instead of Texans, Titans still in Nashville, Colts instead of Ravens and was going to find some other old historical franchise for Indy. Never finished it though.

[Passacaglia]

You and me, man....

FOF9 -- Indiana Flyers Post-Merger - Front Office Football Central

[Passacaglia]

Here's what I have for the AFL, this doesn't seem too bad.

1961 8 teams -- home and home against everyone
1962 8 teams -- home and home against everyone
1963 8 teams -- home and home against everyone
1964 8 teams -- home and home against everyone
1965 8 teams -- home and home against everyone
1966 9 teams -- All teams faced each other at least once, and each team played six others twice (not necessarily in your division)
1967 9 teams -- All teams faced each other at least once, and each team played six others twice (not necessarily in your division)
1968 10 teams -- home-and-home in your division (8 games), 1 against the other division (5 games), and another game against someone in the other division (1 game)
1969 10 teams -- home-and-home in your division (8 games), 1 against the other division (5 games), and another game against someone in the other division (1 game)

1966 and 1967 seem a little weird, in that you play some teams a 2nd time, but some teams played teams not in their division twice, and played teams in their own division once. That feels wrong, but I can set it up that way. Thoughts?

[Passacaglia]

NFL looks weirder.

1960 13 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in their division, one interdivision game. Dallas plays one game against everyone
1961 14 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in ther division, two interdivision games. Minny and Dallas played a home-and-home
1962 14 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in ther division, two interdivision games.
1963 14 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in ther division, two interdivision games.
1964 14 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in ther division, two interdivision games.
1965 14 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in ther division, two interdivision games.
1966 15 teams -- everyone plays home-and-home in their division, one interdivision game. Atlanta plays one game against everyone
1967 16 teams -- 4 divisions, 2 conferences, home-and-home in your division (6 games), 1 against the other division in your conference (4 games), 1 game against a division in the other conference (4 games)
1968 16 teams -- 4 divisions, 2 conferences, home-and-home in your division (6 games), 1 against the other division in your conference (4 games), 1 game against a division in the other conference (4 games)
1969 16 teams -- 4 divisions, 2 conferences, home-and-home in your division (6 games), 1 against the other division in your conference (4 games), 1 game against a division in the other conference (4 games)

The NFL had a thing about making sure expansion teams got to play everyone as soon as possible (they did that in 1976 when Seattle and Tampa Bay joined, too). I can add these wrinkles to make it look more like the schedule did in that actual year, but there will be weirdness.

For a 1960 setup, when the schedule finishes its rotation and starts over, it'll look weird to be several years into a career and have Dallas suddenly playing everyone instead of home-and-home against their division. Or I can make it so that if you choose the 1960 schedule, Dallas is *always* playing one game against every team, while everyone else plays their division more often. And Dallas would stay in the West that way (they join the East in 1961).

Similar for 1961. Dallas had just joined in 1960, and Minnesota joined in 1961, so I guess they figured they'd let the two new teams play each other more that season. I can put Dallas in the East here, and have them always play Minnesota in a home-and-home against each other, even though they are different divisions, or there can be one schedule that's more like 1962-1965, and not worry about this weird one-year wrinkle.

1966 -- Same thing. Everyone else plays a normal schedule, but Atlanta gets one game against everyone. I could create it like this, and maybe if you're really into 1966, that's what you want.

1967 -- The weirdness here isn't the schedule itself, but the division structure. From wikipedia: "The Saints and the New York Giants agreed to switch divisions in 1968 and return to the 1967 alignment in 1969. This was done to allow all Eastern Conference teams to visit New York at least once over the three-year period." I suspect they already knew this was all going to blow up in 1970, since the merger was already scheduled to happen then. I think I could just make a 1968 set up with the Giants and Saints in different divisions, but I'm sure I can't make it so the teams switch divisions within one universe. I think this is one where it's best to just create one schedule and not care about whether "every Eastern Conference team gets to visit New York at least once during a three-year period"

Thoughts?

[Passacaglia]

Oh there's still the issue of unbalanced conferences. I think a different number of teams in each conference is okay, but I'm almost positive that the 1967-1969 setup of 2 divisions in the AFL and 4 divisions in the NFL is not possible. We'd probably need to have 2 divisions for the NFL like earlier in the decade.

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Oh there's still the issue of unbalanced conferences. I think a different number of teams in each conference is okay, but I'm almost positive that the 1967-1969 setup of 2 divisions in the AFL and 4 divisions in the NFL is not possible. We'd probably need to have 2 divisions for the NFL like earlier in the decade.

I think I'd ignore the expansion team plays everyone and go for the general thrust of the schedule, like you said, play more in the division, less the other division. I'm not sure if you can have unbalanced divisions by conference. I'm also not sure how the playoffs are structured. Do we have control over the playoff structure and number of teams that make it? There must be because I remember seeing a CFL inspired league structure that would only have 9 teams.

[Passacaglia]

I think you're right about the expansion team nonsense. I'll just make "normal" schedules even if it doesn't fit the structure of the actual schedule for that year. Maybe down the road I'll make "expansion-style" schedules if there's interest and there's time.

I've started down this a little. Yes, you can't have a different number of divisions n each conference. So we can't have the 1967-1969 setup exactly right. I can still set up the schedule like it's the 4-division, but in the playoffs, it would just be East vs West for the NFL Championship. We do have control over the number of teams, but like the divisions, it has to be the same for each conference. So for all of these years, a 4-team playoff, two from each conference, would be the way to go - it doesn't seem feasible for the AFL to have 4 teams in the AFL to match 4 teams in the NFL from 1967-1969.

[Passacaglia]

Okay, I'm working my way backward, starting with the 1967-1969 schedules. Preseason is weird for 1969. It takes six weeks, with some teams playing in all six weeks, and some teams playing none. There was also a game with the Jets playing the college all-stars in Chicago. Since it was in Chicago, I just made it so they were playing the Bears, who weren't playing that week. I'll keep it like this because it's real, but if anyone thinks we should just make a normal preseason, I can create that. I'm planning on making a rotation of 4 different schedules, so every 4 years the preseason will be weird in the exact same way.

[Passacaglia]

Hey nilodor, I realized you probably need these if we want your player and QB files to match the default_teams file that I set up with the 26_4_14 schedule. I don't remember why the order is the way it is, I probably just copy-and-pasted from something else and changed things as I needed to.

1 Baltimore Colts
2 Atlanta Falcons
3 Los Angeles Rams
4 Buffalo Bills
5 Dallas Cowboys
6 Chicago Bears
7 Cincinnati Bengals
8 New York Giants
9 Denver Broncos
10 Detroit Lions
11 Green Bay Packers
12 Cleveland Browns
13 Houston Oilers
14 Kansas City Chiefs
15 Miami Dolphins
16 Minnesota Vikings
17 Boston Patriots
18 New Orleans Saints
19 Philadelphia Eagles
20 New York Jets
21 Oakland Raiders
22 St. Louis Cardinals
23 Pittsburgh Steelers
24 San Diego Chargers
25 Washington Redskins
26 San Francisco 49ers

When I went backward a year, I just removed the team and bumped everyone after them up a number. So to go from 1968 to 1967, I removed the Bengals, and the Giants became 7, and so on.

I guess this is a good time to ask what people think of having the Redskins name in there. I'm kind of torn here -- I want to preserve the history, and I don't think it matters if anyone's solo FOF league has the Redskins name in it, but I'm also glad they changed it in RL, and don't want to offend anyone. I think I'll change it to Commanders in the files I'm making, and if anyone doesn't like it, they can change it to Redskins.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Okay, I'm working my way backward, starting with the 1967-1969 schedules. Preseason is weird for 1969. It takes six weeks, with some teams playing in all six weeks, and some teams playing none. There was also a game with the Jets playing the college all-stars in Chicago. Since it was in Chicago, I just made it so they were playing the Bears, who weren't playing that week. I'll keep it like this because it's real, but if anyone thinks we should just make a normal preseason, I can create that. I'm planning on making a rotation of 4 different schedules, so every 4 years the preseason will be weird in the exact same way.

I started working on 1967, and realized it's a different configuration, since it's before Cincinnati joined. So I think the 26_4_14 schedule is done enough for now, and can be used for 1968-1969. It's literally just the 1968 schedule, then the 1969 schedule, then the same two schedules with home-and-away flipped, then the 4 years repeats. It might get a little repetitive after you've played a few years with it. I'll add more configurations to fix that down the road, but I want to work on other years first, and I'm going to move on to a 25_4_14 schedule for 1967, which I'll probably just start with putting in the exact 1967 schedule and have it repeat back and forth, since that will just take a few minutes.

[Passacaglia]

The 25_4_14 schedule for 1967 is done. It's a weird schedule, so it could definitely benefit from adding a few more into the rotation. The Broncos play in the only game in Preseason Week 1 and Preseason Week 2, as well as Regular Season Week 1. The AFL took 17 weeks to play its 14 games, and the NFL managed to do it in 14 weeks. The one Week 1 Regular Season game took place while other teams were still playing the last week of Preseason -- I don't think I can replicate that, so in this schedule, there's a separate week for just that one game. Week 3 of the AFL happened at the same time as Week 1 of the NFL, and that's incorporated into this schedule. Then the AFL played two weeks before the NFL started, and one week after the NFL finished, which is in here, too. Week 17 is when the NFL would have had its semifinal round, but since I'm not using 4 divisions it's not really needed, and both leagues had their championship the same week, just like in this schedule. But until I add in more schedules to the rotation, it will at least do the job of making it feel like you're playing 1967 over and over again.

[Passacaglia]

1966 is done. It's just the actual 1966 schedule, so Atlanta plays everyone in the NFL. They're also in the East.

Here's what I have left on my list:

--Create bare-bones schedules for 1960-1965
--Create coach files for 1960-1969
--Create logos for 1960-1969
--Enhance schedules for 1960-1969

Anyone have any requests for priority? I figure bare-bones schedules should be first, so the seasons are actually playable. I have this list set for the order I think makes sense, but I'm not picky -- so if anyone's like "hey I really want logos for xxxx" or "I'd like to see an enhanced schedule for xxxx" or even "can you make a schedule file in a different way" let me know. That'll also give me a sense about whether anyone is actually interested in these files at all! Of course, a lot also depends on when nilodor finishes the player and QB files for the 60s, too.

[NawlinsFan]

Damn, guess I am going to have to break out my files and finish making helmets for the new schedules. I actually have historical logo sets made for 70-89 and will have to continue these but want to roll them as helmets also.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by NawlinsFan

Damn, guess I am going to have to break out my files and finish making helmets for the new schedules. I actually have historical logo sets made for 70-89 and will have to continue these but want to roll them as helmets also.

I was planning on taking the logos from pro football reference. The good thing about logos or helmets is that you can change them in the middle of your career, so (if you want) you can replace them each year and have them get more modern over time.

[NawlinsFan]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I was planning on taking the logos from pro football reference. The good thing about logos or helmets is that you can change them in the middle of your career, so (if you want) you can replace them each year and have them get more modern over time.

I think to begin with I will complete the historical logos to cover 60-24. After that may look into doing the helmets.

[Passacaglia]

1961-1965 are done. Since all five years have 8 teams in the AFL, and 14 teams in the AFL, I used one 5-rotation schedule. 1961 has Dallas and Minnesota playing each other twice, instead of two separate non-conference teams, and that will repeat in 1966, 1971, etc. I figure that's not a big deal to repeat every few years, and someone wanting to start in 1961 might really want it.

In 1963, the New York Titans became the New York Jets, and the Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs. I wanted to set up two copies of the same schedule, with a different set of names, so that if you play 1961 or 1962, you get the Titans and Texans, and 1963, 1964, or 1965, you get the Jets and Chiefs. The help file for league_info says "SCHEDULEID - Name of the schedule for the league structure. This is in the form x_y_z, where x is the total number of teams in the league, y is the number of divisions and z is the number of regular-season games. However, that is just a naming convention and other values could be used as long as they are consistently used for the file name of the schedule itself as well as entries in the Default Teams table." -- But I've found this not to be true.

I figured, if this is just a naming convention, I can make a schedule called 1961_1962 and one called 1963_1964_1965, and set up league_info so they have the same league structure (22 teams, 4 divisions, 14 games), and the same base year, 1961, so when you start the game in 1963, the game knows to look for the 3rd rotation. No dice, the game couldn't find those schedules. I tried giving it names with the same format, thinking I need to follow the convention, trying names like 22_61_62 so I'm fitting the x_y_z format. Still nothing. It seems like the league_info file looks at how many teams, divisions, and games you have, and will barf if your x_y_z schedule isn't named exactly according to that. Maybe I'm missing something, so I'd love it if anyone has insight here.

What I did was create a 22_4_15 schedule that's exactly the same as the 22_4_14, then I set up the 1963, 1964, and 1965 info files to point to 22_4_15, which was set up to have the Chiefs and Jets, but was also set up to have 15 games. The actual schedule is still the same, and just has 14 games, I just told league_info it would have 15. I don't see any major adverse effects so far. The only thing I see is that NFL teams who make the playoffs have schedules that look weird. It shows all their games, then shows a bye in Week 16 (appropriate, only AFL teams play Week 16), then it shows their playoff games, then it shows another row for Week 16 again, and says Bye week. I can live with that. I was a little worried it would count the first playoff game as a 15th regular season game, but the only place I've really looked at for playoff stats (head coach info), it seems to be accurately counting them as playoff games.

So I think it works, but if anyone sees any issues, or wants this done differently, let me know.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by NawlinsFan

I think to begin with I will complete the historical logos to cover 60-24. After that may look into doing the helmets.

Awesome! I'll move on to coach files instead of logos when I finish with the schedules then!

[Passacaglia]

1960 is done. The number of preseason games was crazy then, and it gets worse as I go further back. The Lions played 6 preseason games, and 12 regular season games. And the AFL teams end up playing each other 4 times a year sometimes, twice in regular season and twice in preseason. I'm also curious about this game, where 10 players on the Oilers had to wear red Texans jerseys due to theft.

https://www.gridiron-uniforms.com/GUD/controller/controller.php?action=single-weekly&game_id=1960_DLT-OIL^p2

Also, this schedule is a little weird since the AFL played 14 games, and the NFL played 12. Seems like there's no issue with it, though.

[Passacaglia]

I didn't feel like doing the coach file yet, so instead I made sure the color schemes and city names were right based on the years. It was weird seeing the city names go from being mostly suburban to the actual cities, but they were ALL in the city, to the point that it got boring. The only exception was the Vikings played in Bloomington, and the 1969 Patriots played in Chestnut Hill, and I didn't really use the Chestnut Hill location, since it didn't seem worth creating a new schedule file for, so I just kept the 1968 Boson location. The color schemes were weird in that the codes were off just a smidge from what was in there. Maybe I was using a different source. There were also some instances where I didn't feel it was worth it to create a new schedule file just to capture minor color changes, but for the most part, teams should have the colors they had in the year you start the universe (although, other than the logos genereated by the game which get replaced if you use your own logos, or the team selection screen, I'm not sure if/where this even gets used). I'll move on to coach files next.

[Passacaglia]

1960 coaches file is done! Later years should be a little easier, since a lot of the coaches will be the same, and I can just grab their info from the 1960 file. Probably dumb that a good portion of the time spent to make this was entering in the birth city and college for each coach, when that doesn't really affect gameplay. But I guess it's cool to have.

For coaching style, I just asked ChatGPT to choose a style for each coach. I'm a little worried that there's not much diversity in the results. On offense, 41 coaches were balanced, 8 were smashmouth, and 2 were Air Coryell. Maybe that's appropriate for 1960, though? For 9 coaches, ChatGPT said he was balanced, but then qualify it like "balanced, with a tendency toward physical, run-oriented offense" or "balanced, with elements of what would become the west coast offense" -- if I go with the its qualifier, I've got 32 balanced, 11 smashmouth, 4 Air Coryell, and 4 West Coast. That seems like a better spread, but if someone thinks differently, let me know.

For defense, most of the coaches were 4-3, and most of them were 4-3 Over. As I was poking around pro football reference while doing this, every team I saw was listed as having a 4-3 alignment, so it actually seems like there's too much diversity here. I think the coaches who had 3-4 alignments were younger guys who end up doing most of their coaching much later than 1960. This seems fine, as 3-4 will probably be rare, but works its way through the league over time (hopefully). Only six coaches have a 3-4 alignment, and only three of them are defensive coordinators. If the player file makes it seem dumb to have a 3-4 defensive coordinator for those teams, I'll change it.

Hey nilodor, any idea when you think you'll be able to create the player files?

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Hey nilodor, any idea when you think you'll be able to create the player files?

Was actually just looking at it. The biggest one is getting the teams right. Did you use a consistent mask like you showed here for all the years between 60 and 69? The salaries will still be geared to a 1000, which I think is a 100 million cap. I find the granularity is better with the sim engine, but you can just run a multiplier if you want something different.

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

1 Baltimore Colts
2 Atlanta Falcons
3 Los Angeles Rams
4 Buffalo Bills
5 Dallas Cowboys
6 Chicago Bears
7 Cincinnati Bengals
8 New York Giants
9 Denver Broncos
10 Detroit Lions
11 Green Bay Packers
12 Cleveland Browns
13 Houston Oilers
14 Kansas City Chiefs
15 Miami Dolphins
16 Minnesota Vikings
17 Boston Patriots
18 New Orleans Saints
19 Philadelphia Eagles
20 New York Jets
21 Oakland Raiders
22 St. Louis Cardinals
23 Pittsburgh Steelers
24 San Diego Chargers
25 Washington Redskins
26 San Francisco 49ers

[nilodor]

For example, the Dallas Texans would be 14 until 63 when they become the chiefs. The bengals don't exist in 1960, but still retain 7 for when they start playing? If you've condensed them to make your schedule, i.e., changed the team numbers, I'll need to know how that has happened for each season.

[Passacaglia]

So I worked backwards, as you can tell, from 1969 to 1960. So what happens is that when the Bengals "go away" then the Giants take their #7 spot, and everyone below them moves up one. I assumed the game would barf if I skipped over #7 (or maybe it actually did barf, I don't remember).

The Chiefs become the Texans and keep the same number as them (or vice versa), and the same thing for Titans and Jets.

If that doesn't make sense, you can email me at agage1 (I use Gmail), and I can just send you my default_teams file.

[Passacaglia]

Eh, just grabbed my personal computer. Here's the numbers, let me know if you have any questions! Note that 22_4_14 is for 1961-1962 and 22_4_15 is for 1963-1965.

26_4_14 1 Baltimore Colts BAL
26_4_14 2 Atlanta Falcons ATL
26_4_14 3 Los Angeles Rams LA
26_4_14 4 Buffalo Bills BUF
26_4_14 5 Dallas Cowboys DAL
26_4_14 6 Chicago Bears CHI
26_4_14 7 Cincinnati Bengals CIN
26_4_14 8 New York Giants NYG
26_4_14 9 Denver Broncos DEN
26_4_14 10 Detroit Lions DET
26_4_14 11 Green Bay Packers GB
26_4_14 12 Cleveland Browns CLE
26_4_14 13 Houston Oilers HOU
26_4_14 14 Kansas City Chiefs KC
26_4_14 15 Miami Dolphins MIA
26_4_14 16 Minnesota Vikings MIN
26_4_14 17 Boston Patriots BOS
26_4_14 18 New Orleans Saints NO
26_4_14 19 Philadelphia Eagles PHI
26_4_14 20 New York Jets NYJ
26_4_14 21 Oakland Raiders OAK
26_4_14 22 St. Louis Cardinals STL
26_4_14 23 Pittsburgh Steelers PIT
26_4_14 24 San Diego Chargers SD
26_4_14 25 Washington Braves WAS
26_4_14 26 San Francisco 49ers SF
25_4_14 1 Baltimore Colts BAL
25_4_14 2 Atlanta Falcons ATL
25_4_14 3 Los Angeles Rams LA
25_4_14 4 Buffalo Bills BUF
25_4_14 5 Dallas Cowboys DAL
25_4_14 6 Chicago Bears CHI
25_4_14 7 New York Giants NYG
25_4_14 8 Denver Broncos DEN
25_4_14 9 Detroit Lions DET
25_4_14 10 Green Bay Packers GB
25_4_14 11 Cleveland Browns CLE
25_4_14 12 Houston Oilers HOU
25_4_14 13 Kansas City Chiefs KC
25_4_14 14 Miami Dolphins MIA
25_4_14 15 Minnesota Vikings MIN
25_4_14 16 Boston Patriots BOS
25_4_14 17 New Orleans Saints NO
25_4_14 18 Philadelphia Eagles PHI
25_4_14 19 New York Jets NYJ
25_4_14 20 Oakland Raiders OAK
25_4_14 21 St. Louis Cardinals STL
25_4_14 22 Pittsburgh Steelers PIT
25_4_14 23 San Diego Chargers SD
25_4_14 24 Washington Braves WAS
25_4_14 25 San Francisco 49ers SF
24_4_14 1 Baltimore Colts BAL
24_4_14 2 Atlanta Falcons ATL
24_4_14 3 Los Angeles Rams LA
24_4_14 4 Buffalo Bills BUF
24_4_14 5 Dallas Cowboys COW
24_4_14 6 Chicago Bears CHI
24_4_14 7 New York Giants NYG
24_4_14 8 Denver Broncos DEN
24_4_14 9 Detroit Lions DET
24_4_14 10 Green Bay Packers GB
24_4_14 11 Cleveland Browns CLE
24_4_14 12 Houston Oilers HOU
24_4_14 13 Kansas City Chiefs KC
24_4_14 14 Miami Dolphins MIA
24_4_14 15 Minnesota Vikings MIN
24_4_14 16 Boston Patriots BOS
24_4_14 17 Philadelphia Eagles PHI
24_4_14 18 New York Jets NYJ
24_4_14 19 Oakland Raiders OAK
24_4_14 20 St. Louis Cardinals STL
24_4_14 21 Pittsburgh Steelers PIT
24_4_14 22 San Diego Chargers SD
24_4_14 23 Washington Braves WAS
24_4_14 24 San Francisco 49ers SF
22_4_14 1 Baltimore Colts BAL
22_4_14 2 Los Angeles Rams LA
22_4_14 3 Buffalo Bills BUF
22_4_14 4 Dallas Cowboys DAL
22_4_14 5 Chicago Bears CHI
22_4_14 6 New York Giants NYG
22_4_14 7 Denver Broncos DEN
22_4_14 8 Detroit Lions DET
22_4_14 9 Green Bay Packers GB
22_4_14 10 Cleveland Browns CLE
22_4_14 11 Houston Oilers HOU
22_4_14 12 Dallas Texans TEX
22_4_14 13 Minnesota Vikings MIN
22_4_14 14 Boston Patriots BOS
22_4_14 15 Philadelphia Eagles PHI
22_4_14 16 New York Titans NYT
22_4_14 17 Oakland Raiders OAK
22_4_14 18 St. Louis Cardinals STL
22_4_14 19 Pittsburgh Steelers PIT
22_4_14 20 San Diego Chargers SD
22_4_14 21 Washington Braves WAS
22_4_14 22 San Francisco 49ers SF
22_4_15 1 Baltimore Colts BAL
22_4_15 2 Los Angeles Rams LA
22_4_15 3 Buffalo Bills BUF
22_4_15 4 Dallas Cowboys DAL
22_4_15 5 Chicago Bears CHI
22_4_15 6 New York Giants NYG
22_4_15 7 Denver Broncos DEN
22_4_15 8 Detroit Lions DET
22_4_15 9 Green Bay Packers GB
22_4_15 10 Cleveland Browns CLE
22_4_15 11 Houston Oilers HOU
22_4_15 12 Kansas City Chiefs KC
22_4_15 13 Minnesota Vikings MIN
22_4_15 14 Boston Patriots BOS
22_4_15 15 Philadelphia Eagles PHI
22_4_15 16 New York Jets NYJ
22_4_15 17 Oakland Raiders OAK
22_4_15 18 St. Louis Cardinals STL
22_4_15 19 Pittsburgh Steelers PIT
22_4_15 20 San Diego Chargers SD
22_4_15 21 Washington Braves WAS
22_4_15 22 San Francisco 49ers SF
21_4_14 1 Baltimore Colts BAL
21_4_14 2 Los Angeles Rams RAM
21_4_14 3 Buffalo Bills BUF
21_4_14 4 Dallas Cowboys DAL
21_4_14 5 Chicago Bears CHI
21_4_14 6 New York Giants NYG
21_4_14 7 Denver Broncos DEN
21_4_14 8 Detroit Lions DET
21_4_14 9 Green Bay Packers GB
21_4_14 10 Cleveland Browns CLE
21_4_14 11 Houston Oilers HOU
21_4_14 12 Dallas Texans TEX
21_4_14 13 Boston Patriots BOS
21_4_14 14 Philadelphia Eagles PHI
21_4_14 15 New York Titans NYT
21_4_14 16 Oakland Raiders OAK
21_4_14 17 St. Louis Cardinals STL
21_4_14 18 Pittsburgh Steelers PIT
21_4_14 19 Los Angeles Chargers LAC
21_4_14 20 Washington Braves WAS
21_4_14 21 San Francisco 49ers SF