Presented by a meaningless 16th game (I'm going to be the #2 seed win or lose), I made most of my starters inactive to avoid injury. I left about 32 players active, but didn't alter my depth chart, assuming the AI would skip past the #1 player at a position since they were inactive, and start the #2 etc. You know what they say about assumptions.....

Watching the game this morning, it appears the AI took a lot of my inactive starters and made them active anyway. I have 45 active players according to my depth chart.

1) The AI made my QB1 active, despite the fact I had QB2 and QB3 active. Why would I have to have 3 QBs active? I haven't all season. Every game I have QB1 and QB2 active, and bench QB3. Why the change now? Fortunately, my QB1 came out of the game unscathed.

2) Both my RB1 and RB2 remained inactive. I was able to play with my RB3 and my FB as RB4.

3) My TE1 was made active again, my TE2 was left inactive. I'd left TE3 active anyway as the only TE. TE1 ended up playing 91 snaps, also fortunate to remain uninjured.

4) I made WR1, WR2 and WR3 inactive. This left 3 WRs active. I was happy for the AI to fill in WR4 and WR5 as needed if the gameplan called these formations. Bearing in mind I still have a TE and 2 RBs that could fill these 2 slots, I don't see an issue.

5) The AI made my WR1 active, but left WR2 and WR3 inactive. My WR1 played 31 snaps, and now has an injured hand and is out for 4 weeks. THIS IS LITERALLY THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I WANTED TO HAPPEN. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty annoyed about this one.

7) Several other starters played the whole game, including my RT, LT, C, LDE, RDE, DT, CB1, WLB, SLB, MLB, SS and FS.

8) My starting LT picked up a knock, hopefully that will be gone by the Divisional game. WR1 is most likely out for a while. 94 OVR LDE is Questionable for 7 weeks. Starting WLB also has a knock that should clear up. In short though, I've got a 90+ WR who is out, and a 90+ DE who is now questionable.

Questions:

*I'm going to guess the sim engine has position minimums that have to be adhered to before the game will start?

*I suppose the AI just makes the inactive players at the top of each depth chart active until this issue isn't a problem any more?

*Why do I have 45 players active now and not 46? Is 45 ok but 44 or less isn't? Why not 46?

*Why can't I be trusted as an owner to know what is best for my roster, depth chart and game plan? I appreciate there needs to be some steps to stop people from intentionally tanking or trying to break the game, but as an active owner trying to enjoy the game, this one has done me over.

Solutions:

*Can there be some kind of pop up on screen when your depth chart doesn't meet the criteria the sim engine requires? That way an owner can take action rather than having it forced upon them? This may be in place but I've never seen it. Perhaps because I made the depth chart changes immediately before the game and not during the midweek phase. Would this have made a difference?

*Could there be a counter next to each position that states how many of a certain position the sim engine needs active in order to avoid enforced changes?

*Is there a magic potion I can give to my WR1 and LDE so they aren't injured any more? :)

Not going to lie, pretty frustrated but still enjoying the game and see the potential reasons this happened. I was highly unlikely to win a title this season, but I wouldn't imagine my chances of winning have increased after seeing my two best players get crocked when they should have had their feet up!

Keep up the good work JDB, sorry to come across like a bit of a rant. I, like so many others, very much appreciate the work that you do!

When you activate/deactivate players you'll see red numbers below the graph in your depth chart page if you are outside of the minimums. You must have at least 45 and not more than 53 players active on a regular season game day, if you have fewer or more than that the AI will adjust it for you.

JDB, I think you meant not more than 46 active, right? With a roster limit of 53?

Also FYI that 45 active shows as red in the UI. if you intend red to show a problem but 45 is okay, the red shouldn't start until 44.

nfl breakdown, which is what JDB goes by i think, is:
regular season - 53 man roster
game day - 45 players dress + 1 emergency QB dresses

he just makes it a 45 player minimum and gives us the 46th player without having to designate him as an emergency QB for a maximum of 46 players

There is actually a 1-player grace on the active players, you are correct that 45 shows red but the AI will not touch it unless it's less than 45.

No magic healing potion for my WR then? :)

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Draft position and playoff position of the other teams isn't really his concern. He should only have to worry about his team. It's the same thing in the NFL, teams rest their starters when they have nothing left to play for and that affects other teams. Those teams counting on other teams to win in order to make the playoffs should have taken care of their own business. I'm in the same league and wanted to rest my starters as well and the same happened to me. If my important players get hurt in a game that means nothing to my team that hurts my chances in the playoffs.

No problem, we're all just having a chat, no offence taken here so don't worry :)

I think if anything, showing the intention to correctly manage your team and take appropriate steps to ensure your own success is better for a league's integrity than just plugging your team in for 16 games and seeing what happens. I have as much an obligation to the other teams who made the playoffs to be as strong as possible as I do to any team affected by the result of my 16th game. I'd personally say I have more of a lean towards the strength of the playoffs, but that is just me.

I was confident the team that I intended to put out there would still have been strong enough to win. As it was, bar about 2 players, my strongest team went out there and won 51-9. Again, you could probably argue the point about how worthwhile 40+ point blowouts are to a league, but that's a little off topic.

Worst case scenario, someone stumbles across this thread and avoids the same issue. One other person did exactly the same thing as me judging by the responses, so hopefully it helps. After all, the Depth Chart screen says a max of 46. Nowhere in that screen does it state a minimum.

Still, no harm in your opinion. Learning curve for me, just another thing I've found out.

I think that it is sensible that we are forced to go with at least 45 guys. It certainly should be a bit clearer from the depth chart page though.