Welcome to the Next Generation of Fantasy Football

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2008 Football User Manual and Guide

Version 3.2 | Last Updated: July 28, 2008 | ©2005-2008 Fantasy Sports Reality Inc.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome

Gamedayritual Overview

Welcome to gamedayritual, where Fantasy Football is taken to the next level.  From very beginning of your gamedayritual experience you are going to realize that this is the most realistic, most challenging and most exciting fantasy sports game you have ever played.

This game differentiates itself from other fantasy football games by attempting to draw close analogies to as many aspects on running a football franchise as possible.  You have to be the owner and build a stadium, manage attendance and track expenses.  You have to be the GM and sign your players on an open, competitive market; manage contracts and negotiate trades.  You also have to be the head coach and set your depth charts, set up offensive and defensive schemes, manage your halfback playing time, and plan your blitzing.

All this is done on a weekly, head-to-head basis against opponents in your own league based on real-life statistics.  This is not a simulator. This is the next-generation of fantasy football.

The Franchise: Getting It All Started
Before you put a product on the field you need to create the infrastructure necessary to support the franchise.  In gamedayritual you must start your tenure as owner of the club by building your team's stadium and creating its brand.  Make sure that your stadium works with the plan you have for the club as the home field's attributes will actually have an effect on how your club performs! In addition, you will have to keep a keen eye on attendance: the truest indicator on how your team is really doing.

The Free Agency Blitz: Building a Winner
You'll begin your gamedayritual experience as every major league team does in the off-season -- by surveying the free agent marketplace.  Build your club by spending wisely in the fast-paced auction-based Free Agency Blitz or " FAB ".  You'll be able to contend for rookies, marquee blue chippers, pitching staff aces and aging former stars with a combination of cash and contract years to try and entice them over to your side.  Unlike the traditional pick-a-day fantasy football draft process, the FAB is a truly dynamic marketplace where you, the players and the other teams are constantly interacting. 

The Clubhouse: Playing your Opponent
Once the FAB closes its time for your on-field coaching skills to take over.   You set your depth charts for weekly games that pit your team head-to-head against a different league opponent each week.

Beyond having to set your starting roster of offensive players and defensive players, you're responsible for setting a depth chart at each position so that backups may play in case of injury; basic offensive and defensive schemes from which your team operates; and a playbook which dictates the formation mix your team uses during the match-up. You also have control of running back management (to maximize drive effectiveness); the blitz rate of your defense and must take into consideration weather and field conditions.

The Front Office: The Deal Making
Through the regular season your front office will need to react to injuries, replace underperformers, and build for the future.  Following the FAB you can continue to acquire free agents on the open market.  You can also cut multi-player trades allowing you to deal both players and cash to get what you need.  But don't give away too much for too little; it's a long season.  

 

Signup

In order to get started with gamedayritual you need to follow the registration process on the gamedayritual front page.  During the registration process you will have several options of the type of purchase you wish to make.  These are described below:

Purchase a New Membership:  At gamedayritual you can purchase a Gold Membership that lets you create unlimited teams for a given sport for a given season, or a Platinum Membership that allows for unlimited teams in all gamedayritual sports for one year. All membership teams are Standard teams (see below), and are free from advertising in the main pages.

Create a New Team:   This will allow you to create a new individual team.  You will subsequently be able to join a public league, a private league, join a pre-paid league or create your own league for other teams to join.  This is also the option that you want to select if a friend has already created a pre-paid league and you wish to join for free.  This is the most common option for new gamedayritual users. All teams include the information rich tools panels, as well as access to the Assistant GM feature, which, when the regular season rolls around, suggests trades and free agents to you as well as providing other analysis.

Create a New Pre-Paid League:   This will let you purchase an entire new pre-paid league for you and your league-mates.  The rest of your league will then be able to join for free.

Activate a Returning Team:   This will allow you to select, purchase and activate an individual team that you owned last season.  This team will be placed in the same league that it was in last season.  Please note that your league from last season does not fill you may dissolve this team and re-apply your credit to purchase another team.  This is the most common option for returning gamedayritual users.

Claim an Orphaned Team:   This will allow you to select, purchase and activate a team that was abandoned by their owner after playing last season.  Each orphaned team is in a league that was operating last season.  You can peruse a list of classified teams, or enter team, league, and password information obtained from a friendly commissioner to claim a team privately.

Activate a Returning League: If you ran a pre-paid league last year, this will let you re-purchase your entire league from last season for you and your league-mates.  The rest of your league's owners will then be able to re-join for free.

 

Quick Start

Note: This quick start section is intended for new teams joining or creating new leagues. Returning teams will have already completed many of these requirements.

When you log in for the first time you will be brought to your league's "Page One".  This is like the front page of the sports section were you can, at a quick glance, get all the information that you need about the goings-on around your league.

Use the navigation bar at the top to go to Free Agency Blitz / Team Planner.  You will quickly get very familiar with this page as it is the primary interface for the FAB process.  Here is where you search for players, make and change bids, monitor negotiations, and start building your winner.

Before the FAB starts there are a few things that you need to do. The links below will let you jump to the necessary sections for a quick start:

Tools Pane
On the right hand side of the Clubhouse and Front Office interfaces there is a tab to enter the Tools Pane.  Here there is a summary of quick reference information about the regular season as it is progressing.  This allows you to have valuable and oft-used information at your fingertips without having to advance between screens.

Help Pane
On the right hand side of the Clubhouse and Front Office interfaces there is a tab to enter the Help Pane.  Here there is a summary of quick reference information about how to interface with the system, how to conduct certain activities and what certain symbols and colors mean.

Joining, Creating or Setting Up a League

There are several ways to join a league.  You can do this by either joining an existing league that is not yet full or by creating a league in which you will become the "commissioner". There are three types of leagues that you can join: Public Leagues, Private Leagues, Classifieds Leagues.  You can find these options via the "Teams" page in the "My Account" section (note: if the league that you joined was a new and pre-paid, then you have been automatically added to the league).

Joining an Existing League

There are the three routes to joining a newly-forming league (you may also create a new league -- see next section)

Join Public League

A public league is a appropriate when you want gamedayritual to automatically insert you into a certain format of league with a group of other users that also want to play that specific format.  In a public league you are not able to ensure that your friends are in the same league and are not ensured of the exact start time of the FAB at the moment that you sign up.

You can select from 8-team and 12-team public league formats.  Public leagues start about 48 hours after the addition of the last team in the league and the start time is optimized such that FAB free agent signings occur during the daytime hours in North America .

Join Private League

A private league is appropriate when you have a group of owners that wish to play together in the same league.  To join a private league you must get the League Name and Password from the league creator (or "commissioner") and enter it exactly as provided in the join private league interface.

Check Classifieds

There are often cases when an individual owner will want to create a league that is based on a certain theme, geography, interest, fan group, experience level, etc.   There also may be cases where a league is partially full and is looking for additional owners.  To find these leagues you go to the Classifieds.

You can leave any league until it is full, at which time your FAB is enabled, and the league is set.

Creating a Private League

To create a private league for a group of owners (who will pay for their own teams) click on "Create League". This will build a new league around the team you have selected with default settings. Once created, head to the myaccout/leagues page where you can edit your newly-created league by clicking the [Edit] button.

[EDIT]

To set up a new league click on the "Edit" button on the Leagues page.   On the following pop-up you will see options below. Be sure to put some thought into your league's initial settings if you are a Commissioner.  While you can change most of them before the FAB it is important to have them planned out.

To improve performance, we employ FAB Metering. This means only so many FABs may be run simultaneously on a given day. The % capacity for a given day is visible on the FAB date selection calendar. If a day is at capacity you may not schedule a FAB that runs through it, unless more than half of that league's users have Gold or Platinum Memberships. Getting signed up early or rounding up other Members will ensure you can complete your FAB by the start of the NFL season.

[DIVS]

Additionally, by clicking on the "Divs" button on the Leagues page the commissioner can align and realign divisions how they wish.  Once the regular season starts divisions cannot be realigned.

[INVITE]

By clicking on the "Invite" button a commissioner can invite new owners to the league via email.  Embedded in the email will be the league name and password, providing a new user all the information they need to join.

[EMAIL]

By clicking on the "Email" button a commissioner can send an email message to each of the existing users in the league.

 

Returning League Managment

For leagues that played last season there are some additional options that the commissioner should consider. 

Note: returning public leagues from last season essentially turn into private leagues for subsequent years.  The first user who reactivates their team will be the commissioner and will be responsible for setting up the FAB .  If this user wishes to assign this role to another owner in the league they may do this through the League editor once others have joined.

Commissioners in returning leagues will also see a [GMs]  button, which allows for the editing of owners. There are a few ways in wish you might want to modify your league that will require owner managment:

Contraction: This can be handy if there are a couple team owners that are not returning this season and you wish to have their teams dissolved and their players added into the free agent pool.  Note that teams may only be removed from leagues in pairs and that this action cannot be reversed.  It is a good idea to ensure that an owner is not returning before dissolving their team.

New Ownership:   A commissioner may also remove an owner from their team, but keep the team intact.  This is valuable if there is only one owner that is not returning and as such the team cannot be removed.  The team may then be "bought" as an "orphan" by another external owner. This can be done either by private invitation or via the Orphan Team Classifieds.

Private Invitation:   This allows the commissioner, via the GMs interface on the Leagues page, to invite a new owner to acquire the orphan team via email.  Embedded in the email will be the team name and password, providing a new owner all the information they need to make the acquisition.

Orphan Team Classifieds: this allows the commissioner, via the GMs interface on the Leagues page, to publicly market the orphan team.  Included in this interface is the opportunity to write a description about the team and the league.

Expansion:   A league may be on the upswing and additional owners wish to join.  This can be accommodated in the format section of league editor after clicking the [Edit] button.  Note that for schedule balancing purposes teams can only be added in pairs.

Realignment: By clicking on the [Divs] button on the Leagues page the commissioner can align and realign divisions how they wish.  Once the regular season starts divisions cannot be realigned.

Firesale:  In the league editor a returning league commissioner has the option of enabling Firesales.  This means that any returning team has the option, at their own discretion, to completely wipe clear their roster and their financial ledger.  All players from their team will be removed, as will all contractual obligations.  Essentially the team is starting from scratch.  This option is handy for teams that are simply overly hamstrung by bad contracts from the previous season, or acquirers of orphan teams that wish to start their team with a clean slate. Once the Firesale option is turned on by a commissioner it cannot be turned off until next season. A team can activate a Firesale from the Contracts page.  This is a very destructive activity so please use this function with care.

Contract Extensions: For returning leagues only there is an option to allow teams to extend any contract that:

  1. was acquried prior to the league's first regular season GDR game
  2. is expiring
  3. is not already an extended contract
  4. was not reclaimed by the same team off of waivers at any point during the season
This action is done from the frontoffice/contracts page and can only be executed prior to the start of the league's FAB. You may offer up to a certain total number of extension years, and up to a maximum length per player - these are league settings.  You will be able to view their contract demands on the Contracts page and make a determination whether they are worth the investment or not. The extension, if multi-year, is not renegotiated in subsequent years – it is a contract for the duration specified at the amount specified.

Enabling Transactions: Returning leagues may not begin pre-FAB transactions (ie contract extensions, waivers, trades) until every team in the league has been reactivated. At this time the commissioner may enable transactions from the [Edit] pop-up. Once transactions are enabled, certain settings including league size, contract extensions and firesales cannot be modified since owners have now begun to make decisions based on the rule set.

For leagues that are not full by the time the football regular season is nearing, gamedayritual will upon request merge partially filled leagues together to create complete leagues so that their owners can complete a full FAB before the second week of the season starts.

FAB - Free Agency Blitz

So, what exactly have you signed yourself up for?

The first major activity that you undertake as an owner/GM in gamedayritual is participating in a Free Agency Blitz, or "FAB ". A normal speed FAB will take your league about 6 days to complete -- somewhat analogous to your common online "slow-live-draft".  There are also 11-day (slow) and 1-day (turbo) versions as well (the latter for adrenaline junkies only). Returning leagues can shorten these times by reducing the number of rounds.

Your goal in the FAB is to accumulate a team of 25-30 players that will represent the core of your fantasy team during the regular season.  You have both a 45-man Starting Roster and 8-man Inactive List available to you during the regular season so even after the FAB you would ordinarily be wheeling, dealing and prospect-drafting to fill up your team.  Having said this, we recommend that you leave a little salary cap room for the players that you will accumulate after the FAB .

The User Guide goes into detail as to the head-to-head scoring, strategy and tactics employed during the regular season and it is highly recommended that you read it in detail.  The best way to summarize things though: pretend that you are a real-NFL GM and field manager.  A high-flying passing offense? An "own-the-clock" heavy running and defensive style?  These elements and others all affect your scoring and head-to-head match-ups during the season.  Also, this is a "dynasty league", meaning if you sign a guy for two-years, you've got him next season too!

In the FAB itself you have $100 million, 50 contract years and 3 no-trade clauses (PBs) in which to spend.  These limits apply to FAB signings only, however - and any trades, waiver claims, prospect signings or post-FAB signings count against a single limit of $110M and are not subject to contract year or PB limits.

The FAB is essentially an auction process where you offer contracts to players, they provide you feedback on your offers, and you decide whether to make another offer or offers.  It is a dynamic process as you, and other teams, make offers to players until they select the best one and sign.  Throughout this process you will be receiving feedback on how good your offer is, how other bids are shaping up, how many more offers the player will accept from you, etc.

The FAB works in "waves" (or "rounds") -- each FAB has 5 waves (returning leagues may shorten this), each a total of 24 hours long (in the 6-day version).  In each wave every team has the option to specify up to 6 players that are "On the Market" and can be offered contracts.  As the players from one wave sign and a new set of players are simultaneously added for a second wave.  That is, just after each player signs, a new player comes on the market.  This way there is always an active market of 6-times-the-league-size (ie 60 for a ten-team league) to negotiate with (except for at the beggining of the first wave and the end of the last wave).

So which players are On the Market?  You decide this as a league.  You take turns making "First Offers" to players until you each have made 6 First Offers to 6 unique players.  This First Offer is essentially like announcing to the press that you are offering a certain player a contract and them subsequently responding "I am now On the Market".  Your league will be making, in turns, a First Offer to a new player at fixed intervals from the beginning of each wave.  (note: you do not actually have to make an offer each time it is your turn - see Autobid). You can see a schedule of events on the FAB/leagueprogress page.

You do not need to be present at your computer when your turn comes up. All you need to do is "queue" players that you would like to introduce On the Market.  This is called the "First Offer Queue".  When it is your turn to make a First Offer and put a player On the Market, the system will take the top eligible, available player in your First Offer Queue and make him the offer that you have prescribed.

Just a couple of notes if you are going to be away:

Also, please note that you can change an offer to a player at any time before he is On the Market without penalty.  Once he is On the Market, however, you can only change it a limited number of times based on the feedback that you receive.  Also, lowering or rescinding an offer when a player is On the Market, or making a late offer to a player, will be perceived negatively and will lower your GM Rating.

Build Your Stadium


Before you can start signing players you need to have your “stadium deal” in place. Don’t worry, one thing that we left out is the red tape of cutting a deal with the City, getting the land and finding the guaranteed loans. In gamedayritual you’ve got the cash, but you still have to decide how and where you are going to spend it.

This is your first opportunity to think about the type of team that you are going to build. Are you going to focus on your ground bashing running game on a frozen windy tundra in December (and let your opponent’s fragile quarterbacks freeze?) Or are you going to build a dome stadium on turf and let your receivers and defensive backs run the show? It is all up to you but you have to think it out first before you embark on acquiring players.

To build your stadium you must go to your Stadium page. You can do this either by clicking on the link on the alert in your FAB Tools Panel or by selecting Stadium in the “The Franchise” drop down menu.

Once you are in the Stadium page you will see the following:



This is a sample stadium -- you will have an average stadium loaded that you can keep, you can pick a real NFL pre-set stadium, or, preferably, create to your liking.

Change the Stadium Parameters such as the Name, Capacity, Surface, Roof, and Weather. All of these (with the exception of the name and capacity) will have effects on your (and your opponent’s) offensive statistics.

The statistics affected by your stadium passing yards, passing TDs, rushing yards, rushing TDs and Field Goals.

Note that you will be provided a weather report during the week before each game and you, as head coach, should consider personnel and formation decisions based on it. Also, as the season progresses into December the temperature will drop. The amount of this drop (from Week 1 to Week 17) is determined by the “Seasonal Change” factor. The average temperature is your expected Week 8 temperature.

Press “Redraw/Recalculate” to see the effects that your changes will have on the stadium’s Statistical Factors (set as the expected values for mid-season).



Generally the factors that you can adjust when building your stadium have the following effects:

Surface: Turf increases offense, grass decreases offense.
Roof: Domes increase offense, outdoor stadiums decrease offense (with the exception of rushing, which is relatively unaffected)
Precipitation: Rain increases rushing offense, and decreases passing and kicking offense.
Wind: Wind decreases all offensive categories, especially touchdowns and passing yardage.
Temperature: Low temperatures lower passing and rushing offense. Kicking, however, is improved in very high and very low temperatures (as teams generally fail to make TDs in these extreme conditions and end up kicking often).

If you need any help on this section (or any other section) in figuring out what things mean or what they do you can always click on the Help tab in the Tool Panel on the right. The Help tab will always have information specific to the page that you are currently viewing.

Once you have created a stadium that you like you must save it by pressing “Save This Stadium”. You can still change the Stadium’s attributes at any time before the FAB if you wish by returning to this page via “The Franchise” drop down menu. Once the FAB has started, however, your Stadium is locked and cannot be changed until next season.

First Offers and the First Offer Queue



So how do you add a player to your FOQ? The first thing that you need to do is search for a player in the Player Database in the Team Planner. This is a pop-up window that can be accessed by pressing “Launch Player DB” at the top of the Team Planner page. Make sure that you allow pop-ups when you are playing gamedayritual -- many key functionalities depend on it. You can search several different ways: by name, by position, by team, by fantasy points, by which scheme they fit best in etc. There are many different ways that you can implement a search or sort for a particular player.



In this example we did a search/sort for all HBs that were “idle” (i.e. not yet signed or On-The-Market) and pressed “Go”. Up came the top 10 players (based on last season’s fantasy points) that met those criteria. You can sort by various other criteria by clicking on the column headers.

We wish to add L. Tomlinson and M. Barber to our FOQ. To do this we clicked on the checkbox on the right side of each of their lines and press the “Add” button at the bottom. They will both be added to our HB queue (you can now see this on the main screen of the Team Planner).

Click on the header on the HB queue to bring up a pop-up with the details of the offers to all players at that position.



With Tomlinson and Barber now added to our HB queue we must indicate that we would like to make a First Offer to one of them, adding him to our FOQ. Again, this means that when it is our team’s turn to add a player On the Market, and one of them is at the top of our list, he will be offered a contract. In addition, if any other team introduces him On the Market a bid will automatically be submitted to him from our team.

First, click on the checkbox on the left of L. Tomlinson. This adds him to the FOQ (you will be given a warning to this effect, click OK). Now we must amend the offer as the default is his minimum acceptable bid and generally this will not be considered very competitive. In this example we are going to initially offer Alexander $9.0M per year, 2 year contract with a “performance bonus”. Click “Save”.

He has now been added to the FOQ and will show up on your Team Planner under the HB queue.



Note that he has a checkmark beside his name. This means that he is in our FOQ though he is not yet On the Market (no team has made a First Offer to him yet). Once his is On the Market that bar will turn green and start to “tick” down, indicating that he is approaching a decision to accept a contract.

The “Max: 2” means that the system will only allow active offers from our team on two half backs at any one time. This is to prevent a team from accidentally overextending itself and acquiring too many players at one position. If you would like to increase this number click on the “HB” text to open the queue and change the “Max to Pursue at This Time” value.

Now, search for and add more players in this same manner until you have 10-20 players that you would like to pursue in positional queues and added to your FOQ.

Next, lets set the order that we would like to pursue these players. To do this click on the First Offer Queue tab.

Here you see a list of players with checkmarks beside their names. If you would like to “track” a player but not make a First Offer on them, you can uncheck their name.



Once you have a group of players that you do want to make First Offers to you can reorder them any way that you wish. You can do this by dragging-and-dropping them, or by using the “move up” and “move down” buttons. Make sure, however, that after you have made any changes that you press the “Save” button.

Now you have your First Offer Queue set up and you are ready for you FAB to start. During the FAB you should keep a keen eye on your FOQ to make sure that it does not run low (or empty --- as this will result in the system using Auto-Bid to select a player for you to bid upon).

If you find that a player is “greyed out” in the FOQ it means that there are other player(s) ahead of him in that positional queue in the Team Planner AND you have “Max to Pursue” set in that queue to too low of value (if you wish that player to be bid upon). This means that if the greyed player moves to the top of your First Offer Queue he will not be injected. In addition, if another team places him On the Market you will not automatically bid on him.

If you want the system to bid on multiple players in the same position queue at the same time then you will need to set your Max to Pursue in that queue to a higher number. Be careful though… this is a safety mechanism to prevent you from accidentally offering contracts to too many players at the same position at the same time.

An alternative is: if the player(s) in that position queue that are above the player that is greyed out are not yet On the Market, you can move them below the currently greyed (ineligible) player by moving them down in your First Offer Queue (in the First Offer Queue page).

The Team Planner


There are 25 queues that are represented graphically in the Team Planner. They are: QB, HB, FB, TE1, TE2, WR1, WR2, WR3, WR4, OL, DL1, DL2, DL3, DL4, LB1, LB2, LB3, LB4, DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4, KR, PK, and P. You may also add additional queues if you wish (called Open queues) in order to plan your team. Any player at any position eligibility may be mixed and matched in the Open queues.



Once a player is in one of your positional queues he will also show up in your FOQ. From the FOQ you can order players based on your preference on how you want them introduced to the market.

Players On The Market


When a player goes On The Market, or “OTM”, they will remain there for 24 hours (depending on your league settings), and at the end of that period they will sign with one of the teams in the league. The only way that a player won’t sign with a team is if all his offers are rescinded by all of the clubs in the league. If that player comes back OTM again, all teams may bid on him that previously did not rescind an offer on that player.

When a player is OTM you may still bid on that player at any time during the 24 hour period. Anytime you bid on a player, you will receive feedback from him indicating the perceived quality of your bid relative to others that he has received. By default, however, you will not know what other teams have bid on that player or how much they bid (although some of that information my become available if your GM Rating grows --- to be explained later)

The way that a player provides you feedback on your bid is via a colour “bid quality” classification system in the Team Planner. In addition to the bid quality classification, there is only a number provided indicating the number of additional bids the player is willing to accept from you.

The number of additional bids a player is willing to accept is defined by the bid quality of your First Offer on a player. In other words, it is a good idea to start off with a decent bid offer in order to receive the right to continue negotiating. If your First Offer is insulting (i.e. low compared to other offers that he has received) he may decide that he will not accept further offers from you.

The bid quality classifications fit into three categories: red, yellow, and green. The meanings of these bids are as follows:

Color
Meaning
Additional Bids
After First Bid

Red
Your bid is near the bottom end of bids for this player, and will need to be raised to compete with other bids.
1 or 0

Yellow
Your bid is very competitive with best bid and may, in fact, be the best current bid, but not in the clear.
1

Green
Your bid is currently the top bid for a given player by a healthy margin
2


The status of the bids that you have on all players is visible to you on your Team Planner page, represented by the color of the box to the left of the player’s name in the graphical position queue.



In this example, the offers made by this team to Graham and Crumpler are very competitive with the best bid and may, in fact, be the best current bid. In addition, this team has one more opportunity to change their bid for each player. The recent offer Gates received is near the bottom end of bids and as such he is no longer willing to solicit any new offers from this team.

To make a bid on a player they must be in one of your positional queues. Once they are in a position queue, use the interface at the top of the Team Planner page to activate the queue. From there you can see his minimum acceptable required annual salary, the amount of time before he comes off the market and some abbreviated statistics. Here you can edit and submit a bid to that player.

You can also mouse over players in the mini-queues in your Team Planner page - if you have a bid on them you can get Insider Info. The higher your GM Rating, the more detailed the information will be. (note: tie-breakers are not displayed in the insider info)

At any point while a player is OTM (but before their blackout period if that optin is being used), you may lower your bid or even rescind your offer. If you do so, however, your GM rating will take a hit, impeding your future ability to do business in the league.

You can offer any amount of money and years to any number of players during the FAB up to 150% of your available remaining salary cap space. The system will make sure that no more than $100M in cash and 50 contract years are eventually accepted (signed) by your team’s players. How much of your “allowed” $150M in cash that you have available to you after existing allocations to signed players, players with offers On The Market, and players in your First Offer Queue is found in the Tools section under “Allocated”. Once you are at $150M you cannot make any new offers until a player signs, you lower or rescind an offer or remove a player from your First Offer Queue.

It is important to try to exhibit some spending “self control”. Just like in real football, gamedayritual GMs can sometimes wildly overspend and get themselves into situations where they are barely able to field a team due to salary cap constraints. You have been warned!

Contracts


The contracts that you offer players include both a dollar amount per season, a number of contract years and incentives (a performance bonus).

In every contract there is a guaranteed component (a signing bonus) and a non-guaranteed component. These two components are not shown separately in negotiations – they are inferred as part of the mechanics of a standard contract offer and in all cases the signing bonus is 50% of the total annual contract amount.

If you release a player mid-way through his contract he will continue to earn the 50% guaranteed portion of his deal throughout the life of the contract (which will continue to count against your team’s salary cap), while your team will be relieved of the remainder of the non-guaranteed portion of the contract from its salary cap.

Keep in mind that gamedayritual is generally a legacy-based, multi-year experience. Players that you sign this season for more than one year will be on your roster at the beginning of next season as well.

The maximum contract that you can offer a player is usually but not always $20M per year. Some marquee players have higher maximums proportional to their Minimum Salary. All contracts are offered in $0.5M per year increments. The maximum length of contract you are allowed to offer is three years.

Each player in the league will have a published minimum bid that they are willing to entertain. This is the lowest annual amount that you can offer a player, and is based on his past production and age.

Each player will evaluate the offer made to him in their own way. Generally, the more experiences a player is the more he is going to value a long-term, multi-year contract offer. The less experienced a player is, the more he is going to prefer an offer that is rich and shorter in term. Essentially young players that are approaching their prime years will be looking to avoid getter locked up in a long term deal unless there is a lot of money attached. Older players are often looking to sign the last deal of their careers and want as much security that they can get.

By default your bids are not visible to any of the other team in the league, and none of the other team’s bids are visible to you. This may not remain the case if you or your opponents develop a high GM Rating and get access to enhanced Insider Information.

Performance Bonuses



During the FAB you are allowed to sign up to three players with performance bonus based contracts. A performance bonus clause improves the perceived value of your offer by 10% for every year in the contract’s duration (e.g. a 3-year contract offer with a performance bonus is considered by a player to be worth 30% more than the same contract offer without a performance bonus).

If a player exceeds his previous season’s gross Fantasy Points total then his performance bonus “kicks in” and the performance bonus status of his contract will extend to next season as well (assuming it is a multi-year contract). Performance bonuses have no effect of a team’s salary cap or core financials.

There is no limit on the number of players that a team may have carrying performance bonuses during the regular season.

You can also mouse over players in the mini-queues in your Team Planner page - if you have a bid on them you can get Insider Info.  The higher your GM Rating, the more detailed the information will be (effects are cumulative):

GM Rating

Additional Insider Information

0 to 50

No Insider Information

50 to 70

Knowledge of number of teams in negotiations

70 to 80

Knowledge of which teams in negotiations

80 to 90

Knowledge of which team made the most recent bid.

90 to 100

Knowledge of ranking of each team in negotiations and who has the best current bid.

100

Knowledge of the best offer's annual cash amount.

At any point while a player is OTM, you may lower your bid or even rescind your offer.  If you do so, however, your GM rating will take a hit, impeding your future ability to do business in the league.

To see all players that are OTM at any given time you can refer to the On The Market tab in the FAB section or click on the "Show all Un-Queued Players On the Market" box in the Team Planner.

You can offer as many contract to as many players as you wish during the FAB .  However, you can only make offers up to 150% of your available remaining cash salary cap space - the system will ensure this.  Once you are at 150% you cannot make any new offers until a player signs, you lower or rescind an offer or remove a player from your First Offer Queue.  This "Allocation" calculation is derived from the cash that you have available minus existing commitments to signed players, players with offers On The Market, and players in your First Offer Queue - as well as any cash from trades.

You can offer any number of contract years and any number of no-trade clauses during the FAB.  Having said this, if you end up making an offer to a unique player and you do not have the resources remaining to fulfill that offer (i.e. you are out of contract years or PB clauses) then the offer will be rescinded at the moment of signing, regardless of whether you have the high bid or not. As such, it is important that when you are running low on contract years or no-trade clauses that you do not have any individual offers issued that will extend you beyond what you can afford.

It is important to try to exhibit some spending "self control".  Just like in real football, gamedayritual GMs can sometimes wildly overspend sometimes and get themselves into situations where they are barely able to field a team with $100M.  You have been warned!

GM Rating

GM rating is a measure of your reputation around the virtual league you are playing in. GM rating can affect your offer's perceived value to up to +/-10%, but you do not need to be regarded as a nice GM to win.

All offers are considered by the players as "binding".  You may choose to reduce or even rescind an offer, but it will not help your reputation around the league and with the players.  A bad rep means it may be tougher to do business with future free agents on the open market, but, that may be better then ending up with an asset you don't want to pay for!

Another way to hurt your GM rating is to make your offer to a player after they have been On The Market for a substantial period of time.  Players don't appreciate GMs that sit on the sidelines waiting for bargains to develop!

Your GM rating can be boosted based on the First Offers you make.  So making competitive, genuine offers will give your team a considerable advantage.

Actions that will Raise Your GM Rating

A strong First Offer to a player that results in a "green-2"

+2 points

A competitive First Offer to a player that results in a "yellow-1"

+1 point

Signing a player

+2 points

 

Actions that will Lower Your GM Rating

Issuing any late offer on a Player (e.g. last 10% of his availability period On the Market)

-1 to -10 points

Rescinding an Offer on a Player

-3 points if red

-6 points if yellow

-9 points if green

Lowering an Offer to a Player

-1 for every million in value (E3YV) 

(up to -15)

Failing to sign a player you have an offer out to at sign-time

-1 point

Waiving a player

 -3 points
 

Your GM rating will be displayed to you on a scale from 0 to 100.  All new GMs start with a 50 rating and can climb or drop from there.  Returning GMs start with a rating between 40 and 60 depending on their GM Rating at the end of last season.  You can see the actions that you took that affected your GM Rating by clicking on its display in the Tools panel.  Keep a keen eye on what you are doing that can affect your GM Rating!

Keep in mind that if you intend to rescind an offer to a player that you make sure that you refresh your screen before doing so.  It is possible that another team could have rescinded their offer since your last refresh, resulting in a status change in your negotiations and changing the penalty for your rescinded offer.

Your GM rating is a reflection of your reputation around the league as an honest broker, and someone who stays true to their word, not a GM that just "wins" free agents or can manipulate the system.  A solid GM rating reflects a GM who plays hard, but treats the other owners and the game with respect.  A weaker GM rating means you're probably willing to deal out a few below the belt blows, and overextend yourself financially --- a kind of strategy that will generally catch up with you in the later waves.

Signings

The contracts that you offer players include both a dollar amount per season, a number of contract years and possibly incentives (a performance bonus, or "PB").  Note that you can only sign three players to performance bonus during the FAB so make sure that you use them wisely.

Keep in mind that gamedayritual is a generally a legacy-based, multi-year experience.  Players that you sign this season for more than one year will be on your roster at the beginning of next season as well.

The maximum dollar amount that you can offer a player is proportional to their MinSal but tops out at $30M per year, and all contracts are offered in $0.5M per year increments.  The maximum length of contract you are allowed to offer is three years (your board of directors will not allow you to offer more).

Each player in the league will have a published minimum bid that they are willing to entertain.  This is the lowest annual amount that you can offer a player, and is based wholly on his past production.

Each player will evaluate the offer made to him in their own way. Generally, the older a player is the more he is going to value a long-term, multi-year contract offer.  The younger a player is, the more he is going to prefer an offer that is rich and shorter in term.  Essentially young players that are approaching their prime years will be looking to avoid getter locked up in a long term deal unless there is a lot of money attached.  Older players are often looking to sign the last deal of their careers and want as much security that they can get.

A performance bonus clause can improve the perceived value of your bid by 10%-30%, depending on how long the contract offer is for (ie +10% for each year).

Note that if a player that you signed retires in "real-life" he will sit on your roster for the duration of his contract and will continue to collect a salary.  You can, however, release him and only be on the hook for 50% of his remaining salary.  As such, it can be dangerous to offer aging veterans long term contracts.

By default your bids are not visible to any of the other team in the league, and none of the other team's bids are visible to you.  This may not remain the case if you or your opponents develop a high GM Rating and get access to enhanced Insider Information.

Players evaluate all contracts over three years – even if you only offer one year. They do this by estimating what they would make in the remaining years. The total value of a contract to a player when GM Rating and age are taken into account is referred to as the Expected 3-Year Value (or E3YV). You can explore the relationships of the various factors using the Bid Calculator links in the detailed queue views off of the TeamPlanner.

The Countdown to Signing
You can track when a player is going to sign a number of ways.  First of all you reference the "On The Market" page to see players come off the market one by one.  Second, if you have the player in a queue you can go to the detailed queue view to see exactly when he plans to sign.

Additionally (and perhaps most conveniently) there is a green bar behind the player's name on the graphical position queues on the Team Planner page.  As the bar ticks down the player is approaching signing.

This bar will eventually turn black in leagues that have enabled a blackout period. With this setting, a player randomly enters a deliberation period where no further bid modifications are possible somewhere between 75% of their total time on the market and 100%.

A Player is Signed
Once a player is signed by your team the box beside his name turns green and an "S" appears.  In addition, the background behind his name is green on the graphical interface.

If you were bidding on a player and had him in your queue and he is signed by another team his name turns red and an "X" appears. In addition, the background behind his name is red on the graphical interface.  At this point you may elect to delete the player from your queue in the detailed view of the Team Planner in order the clean up the view (however this will delete your bidding history with him in the League Progress page).

Auto-Bid

Given that not all people can be at their computers all the time, an Auto-Bid mechanism has been built into gamedayritual so that your First Offer Queue (FOQ) will auto-populate if it becomes empty. This way if you are absent for a wave of the FAB you can set up a set of rules of what positions you would like to pursue and what bidding strategy you would like used.

The Auto-Bid system is only activated when there are no eligible players remaining you FOQ.  It is a good idea that before the FAB you set up the Auto-Bid system to your preference as users are often caught off-guard when their FOQs run empty.

The first and most important aspect of the Auto-Bid mechanism is to set whether you want the system to just put a player On the Market and make no offer, or put a player On the Market and tender an offer.  This is a very important distinction.  When you are out of resources near the end of a FAB (be it salary cap space, contract years and/or PB clauses) it is best to have your Auto-Bid set to the first setting.  This way you can let your FOQ run empty and when it is your team's turn to make a First Offer it will do so, but your team will not be obligated to make an offer.

The second setting is the default and used throughout the FAB as a "backup" should you be away from your computer long enough to let your FOQ run empty.

The next step of setting up the Auto-Bid is selecting your bidding strategy.  Here you decide whether all players that you would like to have Auto-Bid (and subsequently used in your FOQ) to be of the same value (constant), a large variation in value (exponential), or somewhere in between (linear, quadratic).  If you select constant, all of the remaining cash and contract year that you have available will be spread equally to the remainder of your bids and the system will determine what players you can afford with that strategy.  If you select exponential, most of your remaining cash and contract years will be focussed towards a few, elite players and the rest will be distributed to much cheaper, lower tier players.  Play around with the settings and watch how the Auto-Bid queue adapts to your changes.

In addition to selecting how funds are distributed between offers, you must also choose how large you want your offers to be relative to the player's minimum asking price.  Selecting a high value (for example, 120%) will likely guarantee signing these players but might be a waste of money in same cases.  Selecting a low value (for example, 30%) will likely not be enough to win the bidding wars that will likely ensue for the players you introduce to the market.

You must also make a provision for how much money you want the system to "hold back" for the after the FAB .  If you were to leave the Auto-Bid system running unchecked independently it would make sure that all of your money was spent, right down to the last free agent you sign! Remember that after the FAB your team will receive an additional $10 million in salary cap space, as well as have no further limits on gross contract years or no-trade clauses.

Next you must indicate to the system which positions you want to be pursuing with highest priority.  If you feel that there is a specific position scarcity in the market that you want the Auto-Bid system to address while you are absent, put that position at the top of the position rankings.  The position rankings will essentially define who you are bidding on next.

Again, the Auto-Bid system is a handy "backup" for teams that inadvertently let their FOQ run empty or when a team GM simply knows that they will not be able to access a computer or the internet for a period during the FAB.

Regular Season

Once you have completed the Free Agency Blitz it is time to fine tune your roster and get ready for the regular season.  Most teams coming out of the FAB will have acquired around 25 to 30 players --- enough to field a team but still with room to grow.

Once you finish the FAB you will be allowed to spend an additional $10M on top of the cash you have remaining from the FAB to acquire the remainder of your team via free agent signings and trades.  In total you will have $110M in financial resources to work with during the season.  You are not limited in the number of contract years or no-trade clauses you can carry during the regular season.

Position Eligibility

Players are only eligible to play the position that they are listed in the gamedayritual Player Database and this position will not change throughout the season. For example, a player that plays both LB and DB (or WR and DB) in the NFL will only be eligible for one of those positions in gamedayritual for the given season. Each off-season these positions will be re-evaluated, and it is buyer-beware in the event that you spend big dough on a player who’s official position changes the following season.

There are two exceptions to this:
  1. KR - Players are only additionally eligible at KR if they have returned at least one punt or kickoff during the present or previous seasons. These players may also play their “regular” positions (such as DB, WR, etc) for your team. Scoring for each position is separate, but due to the nature of the stats we receive – fumbles are counted once in each position used – so if your KR is also an NFL WR, and that player fumbles as a WR – the player will be charged with a fumble when used at WR and also at KR.
  2. HB/FB – Players designated by gamedayritual as HB and FB may play at HB. Only players designated as FB may play FB. A given player may not play both positions in the same week. Players at FB only receive points at FB in a given week if they are NOT the leading rusher (by number of carries) for their NFL team that week.

Rosters


In gamedayritual there are two primary rosters: a 45-man Starting Roster and an 8-man Inactive List; as well an Injured Reserve. You can move players between these rosters in the Front Office section --- but be careful --- there are limits on how and when you are allowed to move players.

Note that you do not have to fill your Starting Roster completely at any time. If you have enough healthy players to field a full depth chart at each position your team is considered “active”. Only when you do not have enough players on your roster to do this, and it is in this state for an extended period of time, can your team be potentially flagged by the system as “dead”. Owners of dead teams may be notified that their team is being under-managed and that action needs to be taken. If no action is taken for a period of time the team can be taken over and managed by a new owner in order to maintain its competitiveness for the rest of the league’s owners.

In should be noted that you can, in fact, field a complete Starting Roster and depth charts with as few a 20 players, depending on the formation mix that you call from your team’s Playbook.

To view a complete breakdown of the roster statuses of every player that you have on your team (as well as outstanding payments that may still need to be made to players no longer on your team) go to the Contract tab of the Front Office section.

The Starting Roster (45-man)


This roster consists of your active team. These players were likely acquired during the FAB and can be placed in your depth charts at any time. If you completed the FAB with less than 45 players (which is almost absolutely certain) you will likely be spending the days after your FAB assembling the remainder of your starting roster through trades and free agent signings.

The Inactive List (8-man)


This roster consists of players that may be injured or simply do not fit on your Starting Roster. A player, once set to the Inactive List, must remain there for at lease one full match-up (i.e. cannot be added to the Depth Charts for their team’s next match-up). After this they may return to their team’s Starting Roster.

Injury Reserve


The special status is reserved for players that have sustained serious injuries and are not expected to return for the rest of the season. Once a player is added to Injury Reserve they cannot be reactivated to play another game for the remainder of the season. This status only has value for players that have multi-year contracts.

Transactions


For most weeks of the season, there will be one transaction deadline, set for the start of the first games on Sunday (usually 1PM ET). However, some weeks of the season there will be games played on Thursdays and Saturdays. When this occurs, there will be 2 separate transaction deadlines.

If a trade is accepted before the deadline of a one-deadline week, but completed afterward, the players will contribute to the scores of their original teams in the current game. If a trade is completed in-between the deadlines of a two-deadline week, the players involved will not be elgible for either team that week.

Strategy elements (schemes, formations, RB management, blitzing, etc.) are due with the earliest deadline each week.

Free Agents


You can sign available free agents at any time after your FAB. In gamedayritual, any player that is in the player database and not on a team roster or on waivers is available to be signed. Generally this includes any player that has played at least one NFL game in the past two years, including the current year. Players that have not played an NFL game are not available as free agents until they play their first game.

To make an offer on a Free Agent (after the FAB) you can do so by going to the Players tab of the Front Office section. Here you can search and sort for eligible free agents using all the same players database functions as in the Team Planner tab of the Free Agency Blitz section. Once you find the player that you wish to pursue click the “Offer” button next to their name.

This will take you to the Player Activity tab of the Front Office section. Here your player will be listed at the bottom of all currently “On the Market” players (i.e. all players that teams in your league are currently attempting to acquire via free agency).

Once an offer has been submitted, the player will be On The Market (OTM) for your league's prescibed Transaction Duration. This duration is visible in your Personnel tool. During that time any other teams in your league can make offers to that player as well and you can change or even rescind your offer. You can use the Player Activity tab of the Front Office section to make or change offers to players that you or other teams have placed On the Market.

All the same mechanics as the FAB apply to free agent bidding and acquisition during the regular season. The green, yellow, red offer feedback system is in place; GM Rating is affected positively by making good initial offers and is affected negatively by rescinding, lowering or making late offers, et c. The key difference is that multi-year and performance bonus based contracts cannot be offered.

Note that if you plan on playing a player in the up-coming match-up you will need to make an offer to him at least 48-hours before the transaction deadline for that match-up for him to join your team in time. In addition you will also have to make sure that he is “assigned” a roster position from the “pending assignments” state once he does sign with your team (i.e. he will not be automatically added to your starting roster and be assigned a position in your depth charts).

Free agents are only paid for the period that they are on your team. For example, if you sign a player after 20% of the season is completed (for example, after week 5) to a $5.0M/1YR contract, you will only have to pay him $4.0M for the period that they are on your team (assuming he remains on your team for the rest of the season). To make this easier to understand, in the Main tab of the Tools Panel in the Front office section you are shown a “$/Y Equiv value”. This shows you, based on the amount of salary cap space your team has remaining and the number of weeks remaining in the season, how much “annualized salary” you can afford. In the example above: if after 20% of the season you have $4.0M in salary cap space available you can essentially afford a player with a $5M/1YR contract and as such the $/Y Equiv. value will show $5.0M.



All bidding for free agents done during the season is done on an annualized basis, i.e. all offers that you make to free agents are values based on “if the player was on your team for a full season”. As explained above, however, if the player is acquired halfway through the season you only own him half of his annual salary. Bidding is done based on annualized salaries to keep the use of fractional contract offer amounts in the interface to a minimum.

Waivers


A player is placed on waivers for one of two reasons: (1) to give them their outright release from your team; or (2) he was pending assignment, no action was taken by the owner within the time required and no space was available for him on the Starting or Inactive Rosters.

You can claim a waived player by another team by going to the Player Activity tab in the Front Office section. You may submit and remove your claims an unlimited number of times -- all that matters is if the claim is standing at the moment the player comes off of waivers. A team may waive and reclaim their own player, but in doing so will lose the right to offer that player a contract extension.

A player is on waivers for the league's Transaction Duration. During that period any team may act to claim that player as long as they are willing to move them to their Starting Roster immediately after the successful claim. Until a league has played 4 games in a given season, waiver claim priority is given to the team with the least recent waiver claim, and then by the smallest FAB payroll. After 4 games have been tallied for a league, waiver claim priority is given to the team that is lowest in the standings (across all divisions) at the start of the week. If two or more teams acting are tied in the standings, the team with the lowest Fantasy Points total (FPs) claims the player. If there is a tie in FPs, the team with the lowest budget gets the player.

If a team waives a player and he is claimed, that player’s full remaining contract (including the remaining pro-rated guaranteed component) is transferred to the claiming team. If a team waives a player and he is not claimed, the waived team is still responsible to pay 50% of that player’s contract (the guaranteed signing bonus) for the remainder of its duration (the current season and all future season that may be part of the contract). This “buyout” amount is paid on a distributed basis over the life of the contract.

Trades


Trades can be accepted up until the trading deadline of Nov 30 of the given year at 11:59PM ET. Trades can be proposed or accepted via the Trades tab in the Front Office section. Here you will see trades that are pending league review and acceptance; trades that have been proposed to your team by another owner in your league; trades that you have proposed and have yet to be accepted by the involved teams in your league; and the Trade Builder interface.

Trades can include any number of players as well as cash. If a player is traded, the acquiring team is responsible for the remainder of his contract while the trading team is responsible for the amount already paid to that player.

Trading cash can be handy to address the cost of acquiring a player that may have a substantial contract. In effect this can be considered the trading team “picking up a portion” of his contract while he plays on his new team. Cash is not annually pro-rated though -- it essentially increases the gross salary cap of the receiving team by the amount of the cash transferred (and, conversely, lowers the gross salary cap of the offering team).

Also note that there is a Team Card functionality that will give you the opportunity to look at the rosters and contracts of any team in your league in one single view when looking to create a trade offer. Note that this is a pop-up window so if you have a pop-up blocker running you are holding down CTRL when clicking. You can also view all rosters in your league on one page simultaneously by going to the Rosters tab in the League Home section.

A trade, once accepted by all teams involved, takes the league Transaction Time to “clear”. In that time the rest of the league has an opportunity to vote on the trade. A vote to veto a trade should only be made by an owner if they feel that the trade may have been collusive in nature and is a clear violation of the gamedayritual Fair Play policy. If a trade receives a veto vote from over half of the non-trade participating teams in the league in the voting period, the trade is then considered vetoed and is not approved or consummated. Even if a trade reaches a number of votes that would guarantee it would be permitted or rejected – the trade will always require the full to be processed. This is to optimize fair play (every one should have a vote – even if it would not change the outcome) and to “gate” the number of would-be insalubrious trades that are proposed and accepted by collusive parties.

If there is ever dispute between trading parties or non-trading parties involving a vetoed trade or the prospect of collusion then the gamedayritual staff may allow feedback from the involved parties and make a binding decision. All decisions made by gamedayritual are final and cannot be appealed.

Trade Block You may add any of your players to your Trade Block at any time by checking off their TB checkbox on the contracts page. This has no consequence other than to signal to your league that this is a player you are interested in trading. A partial list of these player will appear in the tools, and the full list can be found on the frontoffice/trades page.

Scoring


gamedayritual uses a head-to-head fantasy points style for scoring. This basic methodology, however, has been modified to capture the strategy elements built into the game.

Basic Scoring


The basic scoring system for gamedayritual is as follows:

Offense

Stat
FP

TD – rushing
6

TD – receiving
6

TD – passing
6

15 yards – rushing (rounded down)
1

15 yards – receiving (rounded down)
1

30 yards – passing (rounded down)
1

Completion – passing
1

Incomplete – passing
-1

Carry – FB (start game as FB, round down)
0.5

Fumbles Lost
-3

Interception
-3

TD – rushing (OL team)
2

First Down – rushing (OL team)
0.5

30 yards – rushing (OL team, round down)
1

Completion – passing (OL team)
0.5

Incomplete – passing (OL team)
-0.5

Sack – passing (OL team)
-2


Defense

Stat
FP

Tackle
1

Interception
3

Pass Deflection
1

Sack
3

TD – defensive
6

Forced Fumble
3

Safety
2


Special Teams

Stat
FP

50 yards – kick returning (rounded down)
1

TD – kick returning or punting
6

Fumbles Lost
-3

Field Goal
3

15 Field Goal distance premium (yards beyond 30, rounded down)
1

Extra Points Kicked
1

50 yards (gross, rounded down) – punting
1

Long punt (over 60 yards gross) – punting
1

Punt put opp’n inside 20 yard line – punting
2

Punt forces a touchback – punting
1

Punt is returned for a TD -- punting
-6



Note that offensive players do get points for defensive stats (such as tackles) and that defensive players do get points for offensive stats (such as fumbles lost). The headers provided are for organizational purposes only.

The team that accumulates the most fantasy points (basic plus bonuses and strategy adjustments) during a weekly head-to-head match-up wins the game. If there is a tie at the end of a weekly match-up, the home team wins.

Strategy


Where gamedayritual differentiates itself is in the leverage of strategy elements beyond the simple setting of rosters to determine the outcome of head-to-head match-ups.

The strategy elements in gamedayritual are:
  1. The Depth Chart – At gamedayritual - you don't just set a starter and forget it. You are also able to sepcify backups, in order, should your top players be unable to take the field.
  2. The Playbook – The decision as to what proportion to play each formation on Offense and defense, and the resulting fantasy point adjustments based on how well the an opponent’s defense matched-up against a given Offense.
  3. Schemes – Each team will operate out of a base offensive and a base defensive scheme. Bonus Fantasy Points are awarded on offense and defense to those statistics that reflect the spirit of the scheme in the three formations that are ‘native’ to that scheme.
  4. Blitzing – Each week, one may specify an aggression factor with respect to blitzing. Teams are rewarded when they choose to blitz aggressively and in real life their defensive players produce high sack totals, and their opponents’ QB gets sacked an above average amount.
  5. Stadiums – These are adjustments based on three factors: Surface, Roof, and Weather. The weather factor has three sub-components: Wind, Precipitation, and Temperature. Sloppy field boost running games and hermetically-sealed domes boost passing attacks.
  6. RB Management – A head coach can run his RB workhorse into the ground or spell him with a competent RB backup so that he finishes the game at full strength.
These are discussed in more detail below:

The Depth Chart


gamedayritual is unique in that instead of having to set static positions for each player on your team’s Starting Roster, you instead set a Depth Chart. The key value of this is that if a player does not play their NFL game due to injury or for other reasons, the next player in the depth chart at their position takes over their role. In turn, all subsequent players in the depth chart move up one slot.
Note: because a game in which a player steps on the field but accrues no stats whatsoever is indistinguishable to our stat provider from a game where the player truly sat out, all "no-stat" players will be replaced equally.
You are will set a depth chart for each of the following 12 positions:

1. Quarterback (QB),
2. Halfback (HB),
3. Fullback (FB),
4. Tight End (TE),
5. Wide Receiver (WR),
6. Offensive Line (OL),
7. Defensive Lineman (DL),
8. Linebacker (LB),
9. Defensive Back (DB),
10. Kick Returner (KR),
11. Place Kicker (PK), and
12. Punter (P)

Each position requires unique individual players to be listed in their depth chart, with the exception of Offensive Line, which is a “team” based position (i.e. you receive Fantasy Points for the stats accumulated by the specific NFL team whom you have the Offensive Line) and Kick Returner, which can be a player that also exists in the depth chart of another position.

A player at the top of their positional depth chart is assigned the number 1, and rankings descend from there. For example, a Wide Receiver at the top of the WR depth chart is termed “WR1”. The next Wide Receiver is termed “WR2” and so on, through to “WR6”.

In two-deadline weeks - players in early games will have their positions frozen in-between deadlines but still could move up the chart if others fail to play.

Your team’s Depth Chart can be set in The Field section of the game.

The Playbook


Which players get to play and how deep you will go into a position’s depth is determined by the formation mix that you choose for a particular match-up. This is where your prowess as a head coach is really going to be tested.

As an introduction, there are 11 Offensive and Defensive formations from which you, as head coach, can choose to mix and match for a particular match-up. Each formation requires a different subset of your depth charts, there are no limits in how many formations you may use in a match-up, and each offensive formation has a defensive counterpart designed to neutralize it. Although this may seem a little complicated, it is all organised in an intuitive interface in the Strategy tab.

It should be noted that Special Teams do not use formations – all three positions (KR, PK, and P) always play.



Before a match-up starts, you must select what percentage of time one wants to run each formation in 10% blocks. As you can see above, this particular team has selected a mix of Split Backs (10%), Pro Slot (40%), Spread (20%) and Shot Gun (30%) offensive formations to use in their upcoming match-up. There is also an analogous interface to set defensive formations on the same page.

What does this mean? Well, formations dictate which players will play and in what proportion. Consider the chart below:




Offensive Formation
Positions

Defensive Formation
Positions

Bias

QB
OL
HB
FB
WR
TE

DL
LB
DB

R
P

Jumbo
1
1
1
1
1
2

Goal Line
5
3
3

10
0

Strong I
1
1
1
1
2
1

5-3
5
3
3

9
1

Single Back
1
1
1
0
2
2

5-2
5
2
4

8
2

I-Formation
1
1
1
1
2
1

4-6
4
3
4

7
3

Weak I
1
1
1
1
2
1

4-4
4
4
3

6
4

Split Backs
1
1
1
1
2
1

4-3
4
3
4

5
5

Pro Slot
1
1
1
1
3
0

3-5
3
5
3

4
6

Spread
1
1
1
0
3
1

3-4
3
4
4

3
7

Shotgun
1
1
1
0
3
1

Nickel
4
2
5

2
8

Stretch
1
1
1
0
4
0

Dime
4
1
6

1
9

Empty Backfield
1
1
0
0
4
1

Quarter
3
1
7

0
10


Therefore, for a Pro Slot offensive formation (which has a 4:6 run to pass bias) you are accumulating Fantasy Points from your QB, OL, HB, FB, WR1, WR2, and WR3 (Note that the 3-5 defensive formation is designed to neutralize the Pro Slot offensive formation. More on this later.)

Remember that Pro Slot will only be used 40% of the time in this example and that that the other formations selected will have their own mix of positions used as well. By inspecting this chart you can see that with the current mix of formations that this team’s QB, OL, HB, WR1 and WR2 is used in every play. Other positions (FB, WR3 and TE) are used in proportions less than 100%. No other offensive positions (WR4, TE2) are used in the selected mix of formations

Fantasy Points are calculated for every formation as if it were run 100% of the time and then multiplied by its relative proportion of. Consider the example above in the following calculation:

Formation
FP (initial)
percentage
FP (total)

Split Backs
50
10%
5.0

Pro Slot
60
40%
24.0

Spread
75
20%
15.0

Shot Gun
90
30%
27.0

Total FP:
71.0


With the mix of formations used, this team accumulated 71.0 Fantasy Points from its offense in this game. The exact same methodology is applied to calculate the effect of formations on defensive Fantasy Points.

Note that Fantasy Points are accumulated and calculated in increments on 10ths of a point.

As eluded to earlier, there is more to the playbook than simply setting the offensive and defensive positional mixes through formation selection. A head coach must also carefully take into consideration their opponent’s likely playbook construction and how the offenses and defenses match-up against each other.


Stopping Power
The closer a defensive playbook is on the run to pass bias spectrum to their opponent’s offensive playbook, the greater the “Stopping Power” factor the defense is rewarded. In the most extreme case, where a defensive formation distribution has been perfectly matched against on offensive formation distribution, a Stopping Power factor of -33% can be applied to an offense’s accumulated Fantasy Points. Even a slight deviation from a perfectly matched defense causes the Stopping Power factor to drop dramatically (i.e. the calculation is non-linear). An average Stopping Power factor is around -10% to -15%.

A team’s “Defensive Efficiency” (explained in the Schemes section below) is also used in the Stopping Power calculation.

Schemes


The foundation of gamedayritual’s football offensive strategy is the head coach’s choice of an offensive and defensive scheme.

As head coach you must select only one offensive scheme and only one defensive scheme for a given week. There are five offensive and five defensive schemes that GMs may choose from.

Offensive Schemes
Defensive Schemes

1. Power Running
2. Classic Running
3. Balanced Attack
4. West Coast
5. Fun ‘n’ Gun
1. 5-3
2. 4-6
3. 4-3
4. 3-4
5. Dime


Each of these schemes have a subset of three native formations (as found in The Playbook). While playing out of these formations, bonuses are awarded for stats that reflect the spirit of the scheme. Native formations for each scheme are shown below:

Offensive Schemes

Bias
Formation
Positions
Power Run
Classic Run
Balance Attack
West Coast
Fun 'n' Gun

R
P
RB
WR
TE

10
0
Jumbo
2
1
2
X




9
1
Strong I
2
2
1
X




8
2
Single Back
1
2
2
X
X



7
3
I-Formation
2
2
1

X



6
4
Weak I
2
2
1

X
X


5
5
Split Backs
2
2
1


X


4
6
ProSlot
2
3
0


X
X

3
7
Single Back
1
3
1



X

2
8
Shotgun
1
3
1



X
X

1
9
Stretch
1
4
0




X