If you promise a player a guaranteed starting spot and 25 minutes of playing time, but he averages just 23 because his stamina is a notch too low and you didn't account for that when making the promise, will he get angry or is 23 close enough as long as he's starting?

Generally speaking 23 minutes per game would be just fine but it's not that black at white. The rule of thumb many coaches use is if you hit 80% of your promises the player will be happy. That said, some players have higher built-in thresholds for what % of promises you have to hit and if those thresholds aren't hit you risk them transferring (had a guy transfer after he only started 25/26 games-but note, this is NOT the norm).

On your depth chart tab, scroll down and set the guy to come out when "tired" or "very tired"-that'll keep him in the game longer. I'd recommend doing this earlier in the season and then as his stamina improves you can back off of these settings.

You want to keep him at or above the 25mpg as much as possible early in the season. Once you fall behind on your promises the player's WE will drop and it'll take more work to make him happy again. If the player is upset you'll get an email (and the accompanying WE drop). The ONLY way to be know if the player is happy again is to get a 2nd email. A recovered WE does NOT mean he's happy again. If you don't get the "I'm happy again" email you risk the player transferring after the season.

Promises only matter for the 26 regular season games. It's long been thought the CT can help you recover broken promises but you won't be penalized for not meeting promises in the CT.

Thank you, this helps clarify my thinking

For press, particularly FB/press, I’ll even run minutes instead of fatigue.

As for the promise, don’t over stress it unless they complain.

Relating to this subject, can someone remind me/us, if a player fouls out does that "game" get removed from their mpg calculation? I feel like that's been mentioned in the past.

Posted by jweatherman on 12/18/2023 4:06:00 PM (view original):
Relating to this subject, can someone remind me/us, if a player fouls out does that "game" get removed from their mpg calculation? I feel like that's been mentioned in the past.

Kind of. If I recall, that's true only after the player has complained about playing time. Early season foul outs count. Someone can correct me if I have this wrong though. I haven't tested it.

Posted by upsetcity on 12/17/2023 6:48:00 PM (view original):
For press, particularly FB/press, I’ll even run minutes instead of fatigue.

As for the promise, don’t over stress it unless they complain.

When I used to have a FB/P team in a strong conference, I would often schedule a few easier sims early season with the primary purpose of having some "safe" games early where I could "pad" minutes. But instead of using minutes, I would stick with fatigue and have those players set to "foul trouble only". I would NOT set those freshman to "leave in longer" (I typically don't do that until they are upperclassmen anyway) so they rarely did foul out early or have exceptionally low minute games. A few times they would stick around 18-20, but I could usually count on at least upper 20s, and often get some 35+ games. Early on, that's a huge boost in this situation. Get them into conference play averaging 27-28, then cruise. The big thing is staying up above it past the first 12 games or so, when they start complaining (I never remember when exactly they start complaining). You don't want to be below, flirting with their floor, that's when you get those weird outlier situations sometimes, I think. Most guys are fine at around 85%, yeah, but it's not really about any final %. Frontload the minutes against a couple selected easy opponents, and then don't worry about it.

Well he's complaining. He's averaging 20 min a game in this manner. All settings were "tired" except for as noted.

Exhibition 1 22 minutes
Exhibition 2 27 minutes
Game 1 27 minutes
Game 2 18 minutes fouled out
Game 3 21 minutes fouled out
Game 4 21 minutes used 28-34 minute setting
Game 5 11 minutes returned to using "tired" after this
Game 6 19 minutes fouled out
Game 7 27 minutes
Game 8 16 minutes fouled out

during this time his stamina has increased from 60 to 65.


Not sure what i can do other than keep playing him when tired. I tried using the minutes setting instead of fatigue but it made no difference i could see and the disastrous 11 minute Game was with that setting. There was no mention of injury and he didn't foul out.

I avoid the 25 minute promise for that reason

Yeah, I'm never doing that again.

In this morning's game he got 30 minutes, boosting his average up to 22 and restoring his lost point of Work Ethic. But there was no
email, so I assume he is still angry.

He got another 30 minutes in the afternoon game. Stamina has increased to 66 and is still blue, so
more progress is possible.

I found a few issues with promising 25 minutes - foul trouble knocking the player out of the game and as you noted the fatigue drop which hurts performance. I try to load up minutes against SIMs when able, and back off against better teams. I found using target minutes is necessary to get the 25 min goal, as the fatigue setting just don't play enough minutes. I did not adjust the foul settings, but I think 'leave in longer' is probably necessary to maximize minutes played. I would suggest if the game looks easily winnable, us max minutes (he'll probably still foul out) and then you may be able to create some margin for other games.

He got 28 and 26 minutes in the most recent games, is up to 22.8 overall, and his work ethic is now one point higher than it was at the beginning of the season and now two points higher than when I got the complaint email. Still no email of being happy but seems to be trending in the right direction.