Draft Timing Solutions

[Kai]

It's obvious these drafts take forever, and I understand why. It would be very hard to get 24 strangers together all at the same time to have the draft all at once.
Would it be possible for the auto-draft function to stay on for teams that took the full hour to draft on the previous pick, until they manually turn it off themselves? because there are teams that haven't even opened the draft it seems like and we're just wasting an hour on them every time their pick comes up. Just a thought

[Kevin]

We've pondered different actions, but we think it's better to make sure that the active people have more time to plan. It's the challenge of accommodating people with a variety of preferences.

[smackawits]

Kevin...one thing that is bugging me is that as I am scouting before my pick, your site keeps booting me off and I have to sign in a multitude of times...any way to fix this so the booting takes place at a later time?

[cdcox]

Smackawits -- when you say the site is logging you off, do you mean you have to put in your name and password again? You can solve that part by clicking the "remember me" box when you log in.

If you mean that it just doesn't remember things you have previously entered, but does not require you to log in, we agree that is an issue, but we have not been able to solve it. The best solution is to refresh the page every few minutes and check to make sure what you entered got saved. I know this is a giant pain, but I have not been able to figure out the problem even after many hours of working on it.

[smackawits]

Smackawits -- when you say the site is logging you off, do you mean you have to put in your name and password again? You can solve that part by clicking the "remember me" box when you log in.

If you mean that it just doesn't remember things you have previously entered, but does not require you to log in, we agree that is an issue, but we have not been able to solve it. The best solution is to refresh the page every few minutes and check to make sure what you entered got saved. I know this is a giant pain, but I have not been able to figure out the problem even after many hours of working on it.

I started making a text copy of my draft board which I can check each time I get close to drafting.

[Kai]

An example of what I'm talking about is happening right now in my draft. This team has back to back picks. The full hour went by and a player was auto picked. We are now waiting another full hour just for someone to be auto picked again. Im saying that that team should be kept on auto pick until the manager of that team manually turns auto pick off. We could save 2 whole hours in this situation and many more hours and complete the draft in a faster more efficient manner.

[smackawits]

1/2 way there Kai....I agree with your assessment above..... but I guess we have to realize that others may have to work (I am retired) and can't get to the page...even despite their best intentions.

[smackawits]

besides...it gives you (me) more time to research.

[ktgeer]

I would agree that it's a slow process, but I kinda expected that going into it. I think it would be nice if it went a little faster, but I personally wouldn't want to miss a pick or be rushed if I was busy at the moment. I was at a conference this weekend and found the pace worked well since I wasn't able to constantly check the site. But now that I have more time it is a bit frustrating having to wait so long between picks. Anyways, at least this only happens once with the Initial draft. The rookie draft should be much fast since it's only seven rounds.

[CincyDan]

I had the exact same frustrations in my initial veterans draft, as we had many teams which were abandoned by the time the draft kicked off, so it took forever.

I think a good middle ground is the following: if a manager does not sign on to make their pick and the system auto drafts for them, the next time it is their pick the time to make a draft selection before the computer autodrafts for them is set to 15 minutes, unless the manager signs on and unchecks the autodraft button in the meantime. Decreasing this drafting time for abandoned and autodrafting teams from 1 hour to 15 minutes would significantly decrease the amount of time spent by the other managers sitting around doing nothing waiting hour after hour for the computer to make picks, while still allowing time so the draft doesn't go so fast that it's inconvenient for anyone.

[smackawits]

I find it amazing that people will abandon the team before they even start.......

[Dbillblood]

Id be happy with a tag letting me know whos on auodraft and whos going to take the full hour. Then at least i got an idea of what time i need to check on it.

[Tannhauser]

Just throwing this out there, but what if for every round a team went to auto-pick (abandoned teams, not folks who had pre-determined whom they're interested in), it'd knock 10 minutes off the team's allotted time. So, by round 6, all the "Ghost Teams" would just get immediately auto-picked, and folks who were actually engaged would still have the full 60 minutes.
I have no idea how involved that would be in coding for the engine, could be very involved.

[smackawits]

good idea Tannhauser

[Kevin]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. We're always open to improvements, so we'll talk about these things. (And I have no idea what the coding implications are either).

[Kumkilla]

No hate to you guys for putting this all together, but the fact that my brand new league is still drafting a week later is nuts. it seems like there's like 4 active players including me. I'm really excited to get everything started but this aspect is super frustrating and could be a turn off to new people before they even get going.

[smackawits]

almost there Kumkilla...almost there!

[Kumkilla]

Haha just one more to go! Guess we’ll get it in the morning lol

[smackawits]

one minute till done.....59....58....57

[TheeMasterBolt]

I actually really like the length of the draft. NFL teams take an entire year in the scouting process gathering information. We’re trying to fit that into like 1 week. That gives me about 24 hours between picks to scout my next 24 players. I’m gathering as much information as I can. I’m looking at stats on PFF, looking for articles written about the player to see if there’s been any arrests or anything like that, plus I watch film. Your taking the same exact risk as the team who actually drafted him. I don’t want to complete the draft in a day or 2. I want to take my time with it, evaluate my roster after every pick and make a decision with a ton of information gathered. There’s absolutely no rush, especially when you realize that this season will end in about 1-2 months and it goes dead for another 6 months until the new season starts

[TheeMasterBolt]

You should see my notepad. I have a single page on every player written up with PFF Grades, Stats, film notes. This has been done for about 200 players. This upcoming draft class that will be drafted in April I’ll start scouting in about a week for the next 3 months. There’s no rush in the draft. The NFL goes through 7 rounds in 3 days. It’s a long process beforehand to set up the draft board though

[Kumkilla]

I respect everyone's process but in my specific case in this brand new league as a new player, it's disheartening to see only a handful of others active throughout the draft process.