Saturday, January 10th
Post Season Protocol

By Ross Mather
FWL.org.uk

So Mr Rookie GM, what happens now that we hit the off-season? Well now we can all try to influence our roster in our never-ending search for the FWL Bowl. This little guide should hopefully guide you through the main stages to ensure that you don't get caught out.

There are Four Steps to the Whole Process:
End of Season Roster Adjustments
Retirements
The Draft
Training Camp
And then, with any luck on to the FWL Bowl.

End of Season Roster Adjustments
After the FWL Bowl, your roster must be brought back to the regulation 53 players by bringing all the players you have back from Injured Reserve. From this point onwards trading is permitted again.

Retirements
After the roster alteration, Paul presses the "Start New Season" button and then some players will retire and each player will advance one year in league experience. Trading is still permitted, and at some time the Draft List will be made public on the website.

The Draft
The Draft is currently done on the basis of lists. You can specify lists based on name or else on position and a summation of several attributes. You can specify a single order or you can base it on a round by round basis. Examples for a Draft List for a team drafting third:

Round 1:
DE Andre Carter
C Jeremy Newberry
WR Tai Streets

As the team is drafting third you need to specify at least 3 players in case the first two teams pick your selected players.

Four round two you need to specify a list of 19 players not on your original list to ensure that you get the player you want. Alternatively you can swap over to the alternative method of picking players by specifying a position and a number of skills, thus:

Round 2: QB: SP, AG, ST

This will select the Wide Receiver available with the best cumulative SP, AC and HA.
Example of above: 2 best QBs in the draft at selection time:
Name Pos YR SP AC AG ST HA EN IN DI
Jobson, Mark QB R 50 74 63 78 68 39 45 48
Hickman, Larry QB R 72 48 37 78 58 29 58 62
Repeat as often as necessary for the remainder of the draft.

The draft is split into two drafting periods, Round 1 to 4 and then round 5 to 8. These lists are submitted separately, the second list only after the first part of the draft has been completed.

As a note: The Commissioner needs to conduct drafts by hand for the first type of list, but it can be done automatically for Draft List 2. Obviously Draft List 2 works best for Paul as he has least work to do.

Paul will include in the Draft several positive and negative sleepers - players who after the draft will have their attributes amended, and one player chosen beforehand will holdout through camp, and therefore not benefit from this.

After the Draft, draftees must be signed, when doing this the roster must not be larger than its 53 players. There is however a protected list that allows three players to be kept through camp, but not actually participate. The ratings for these players will not be amended during camp. So when camp starts you can have maximum 3 protected players and 53 players on the roster.

A holdout player does not count against either of these lists.

Training Camp
Training Camp is the time when players train to improve their skills. Unlike the real world there are no roster cuts during or after camp, just the reintegration of the protected list after camp.

At camp each of the position groups has 100 points to allocate to their various skills to try and improve them. The Position Groups are:
Quarterback
Running Back
Receivers
Offensive Line
Defensive Line
Linebackers
Defensive Backs
Kickers

When allocating to skills it is advisable to give each skill at least 5 points to ensure that current values are maintained. No skill may be trained for more than 30 points. Thus 5 points for each of 8 skills is 40 points leaving 60 disposable to disperse, not more than 25 extra points per skill to round out your training camp.

When the training camp is run the players skill ratings are affected by training camp and then we are almost ready for the next season. The only thing that remains to happen is to reintegrate your protected list into your main roster before the week one games are played.

Any player not activated from the protected list before the week one games is deemed to be a free agent and may be signed by any club at any time.

The holdout player will miss the first two games of the season, but must then be signed after week 2 or else he becomes a free agent for anybody to sign.