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The following predictions are the results of 10,000 simulations of the 2019 NFL season using Football Mogul 20. Every play of every game is simulated using NFL rules for the 2019 season, as are injuries and trades. 
4 Comments
The Bad News
Unfortunately, Football Mogul doesn't yet have the automatic expansion feature found in Baseball Mogul. The NFL's messy history of franchise movement, expansion and contraction makes it harder to implement this for football than for baseball — so I'm still working out the bugs. This means if you start a new game in 1961, the season schedules will be correct until you get to 1966 (when the NFL added the Falcons and the AFL added the Dolphins). On the bright side, if you add the Falcons and Dolphins at the start of 1966 (using the League Editor) the game will load the correct the schedule. Football Mogul 20 adds historical rosters and league configurations from 1951 to 1969 (in addition to the seasons from 1970 through 2019 that were already included). Here's a screenshot from my most recent test, using the actual schedule from the 1959 season. As they did in real life, the Baltimore Colts finished 9-3, earning a spot in the NFL Title Game against the New York Giants.  You can see that the Giants are favored by 2.5 points to win the championship. In real life, the underdog Colts beat New York 31-16 with a stellar 4th quarter performance by Johnny Unitas. 
The most annoying part of Football Mogul is when you go to draft a player and you don't have enough cash to sign him. You often have to trade away picks for cash, just to limp through all 7 rounds of the draft. In addition to being annoying, the cash requirements aren't a realistic portrayal of today's NFL.
Football Mogul 20 eliminates these constraints, letting you focus entirely on football operations and staying under the salary cap. If you have a draft pick, the game ensures you always have enough money to sign him. If you liked the old way of doing things, you can go into the Options Dialog and change from "General Manager Mode" back to "Owner Mode" (see below). General Manager Mode: The default game mode, putting you in the role of General Manager, controlling football operations while the "owner" manages all revenues and ensures you have the funds to build a team. In this mode, the only limit on your personnel budget is the league salary cap. Owner Mode: Gives control over the financial operations of your franchise, requiring you to set ticket prices and manage expenditures in order to maintain positive cash flow. In Owner Mode, you are required to maintain a positive level of cash in order to draft players, sign free agents and extend contracts.
"Chris V." recently wrote the following review for Baseball Mogul 2019: My biggest complaint is the historical rosters having players you’ve never heard of having all these high ratings. For example, I just started a 1989 season for the Dodgers and there is a catcher named Homar Rojas. His ratings in commish mode are as follows: contact 77, power 81, gap power 90, eye 69, speed 67, arm 89, range 77, fielding 66, bunting 80, health 83. There are many more examples like that. It almost feels like the programmers are sneaking their names in here and making themselves really good. Make them save that for their own create a player game. That ruins the game for me so for that, I give 2 stars. My response:
Chris, Thanks for the detailed review. Homar Rojas was a real prospect with the Dodgers, making it to Triple-A but never reaching the majors. '80' is the major league average, so a player that is rated as 72/77 (like Rojas) is probably a borderline major leaguer. However, I do agree that his ratings may be higher than his minor league record warrants, so I'll take another look at the algorithm that projects major league performance from minor league stats. For the record, I didn't sneak any players into the game with my name and "really good ratings". Starting with Baseball Mogul 2019, all players in any new game should be real historical players. If you want to check if a player is real or fictional, click on their name in the Scouting Report. If the player is real, this will take you to their page at Baseball-Reference.com. Also, you can click 'Download Player Photos' in Advanced Options (on the Tools Menu). After doing this, the Scouting Report for many historical players will include their real-life photo. Clay |
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