What are the pros and cons of using the optimize button on the depth chart?

I had never tried it before, but just from my tests on my 4 teams: its actually not a total disaster...

Pros: it's really fast... and if you are starting from scratch and aren't confident in your ability to set a depth chart it can be a good starting place. Make sure to set your positions before trying it (for reasons outlined below)

Cons: it sticks WAY too closely to the listed positions - so if the only SF on your roster is a walk-on, it will say to start that walk-on instead of shifting a PF over to SF. It also assumes a really shallow rotation. It will put the same guy as 2nd on the depth chart at 2 or 3 positions. That leads to a 7 man rotation, which might not suit your team depending on your scheme & tempo.

It works well on my Chadron State team where i have 7 clear players and each fit their position well. It doesn't work well on my Grinnell team where i have mismatched positions and a deep roster. The only glaring issue I found is that for some reason, it wants Kung, clearly a PG, as 4th on the C rotation.

Posted by benrudy on 4/25/2017 4:42:00 PM (view original):
I had never tried it before, but just from my tests on my 4 teams: its actually not a total disaster...

Pros: it's really fast... and if you are starting from scratch and aren't confident in your ability to set a depth chart it can be a good starting place. Make sure to set your positions before trying it (for reasons outlined below)

Cons: it sticks WAY too closely to the listed positions - so if the only SF on your roster is a walk-on, it will say to start that walk-on instead of shifting a PF over to SF. It also assumes a really shallow rotation. It will put the same guy as 2nd on the depth chart at 2 or 3 positions. That leads to a 7 man rotation, which might not suit your team depending on your scheme & tempo.

It works well on my Chadron State team where i have 7 clear players and each fit their position well. It doesn't work well on my Grinnell team where i have mismatched positions and a deep roster. The only glaring issue I found is that for some reason, it wants Kung, clearly a PG, as 4th on the C rotation.

This all being said, I would not suggest using it except for as a starting place. I find it's important to have a vision for how each rotation works for your team
If you have 5 scorers and 5 defenders, you dont want to put all 5 scorers on the 1st line and all 5 defenders on the 2nd line.
If you play a 2-3 zone, your SF-SG position allocation is really important with how the defenses are averaged
If you play man to man, matching a stud defender up with their best scorer can give you a huge advantage
I don't think the optimizer takes any of these things into account

As rednu said in the practice plan thread, I'd only use "optimize" as a tool to get you started if you don't want to start from scratch. Chances are optimize isn't going to build your team the way you want it to look. But it might give you a decent idea of where certain players belong.

To my understanding, I think "optimize" is more effective if you fool around with the player roles feature as well as if you move players around based on what position you see them playing. If you have a relatively imbalanced team because of position labels (say 2 PG's, 1 SG, 5 SF's, 3 PF's, 1 C) it's going to give you wonky results.

Thanks for all the info. I think I spend to much time second guessing myself.

I remember trying it in Beta and thinking how terrible it was. You are MUCH better doing it yourself.