I’ve been mulling this one round in my head for a while now. I think it would be a good feature and owners would have interest in seeing their players rewarded for a good season by playing in a Pro Bowl type fixture. I’ll do my best to lay out everything that I’ve had cross my mind, but by no means would this be the finished article so any/all feedback is welcome.

Purpose

* As an owner, watch some of your players take part in an All-Star game with other players who have excelled during the season from each conference.
* Reward owners who manage to achieve the #1 seed in each conference.
* Potentially open up an avenue for deeper contract negotiations (if this is something that is planned) with Pro-Bowl selection incentives/bonuses in contracts.

Timing

Could take place at any stage, really. Before the Championship or after. My thought is before, and all players are eligible, including those in the Championship Game. I think this one is easily adjustable.

Injuries

Should be disabled, if that is possible. In any real game of this sort, the potential for injury is there but often heavily reduced due to effort levels. Whilst it would be no fun to watch dots “jogging” around, it would be bad for players to incur injuries in a game they can’t opt out of, especially if the game is before the Championship Final. I think the ability to remove injuries would be critical to any game of this type.

Managers/Control

The two sides are controlled by the owner who achieves the #1 seed in each conference during the regular season. This control is optional, some owners may have no interest in a game of this sort. As such, there should always be a default game plan and depth chart should an owner choose not to edit the defaults. The default game plan could be pass heavy, run heavy or balanced, depending on the type of game required, or could be random. The depth chart could be populated using overall rating, or the ranked “score” each player has achieved in order to be selected to the game in the first instance.

There could be a line added to each owners profile that says “Number of Pro Bowls: #” and as in real life, controlling a Pro-Bowl team is a prestige thing related to regular season achievements.

Selection

There are two ways to do this. The first is a radio box poll for each of the 32 owners in the league that can be completed once the regular season has finished. You cannot vote for your own players and a pre-set number of players are selected for each position. These votes are the totalled up to give a roster for each conference.

Due to the potentially flippant voting (or lack of voting) in the system above, it could be that a weighted scoring system is required for each player using their statistics for the season. Whilst far from the finished article, each position score would take the following into account:

QB
Yards, TDs, INTs, Rating.

RB
Yards, Average, TDs, Fumbles

WR/TE
Receptions, Drops, TDs

OT/OG/C
Plays, Sacks Allowed, Penalties.
As an aside on this one, the above would only take pass blocking into effect. I think that this isn’t a complete reflection, but does then beg the question of how to include run blocking. Pancakes aren’t recorded, but it could be that a team’s rushing rank within the league is factored into the calculation as a modifier. Not an exact science, but it’s just an idea. O-Line is perhaps the hardest position to analyse.

DT/DE
Tackles, Sacks, Missed Tackles, Fumbles Forced, Fumbles Recovered, INTs

LB
Tackles, Sacks, Missed Tackles, Fumbles Forced, Fumbles Recovered, INTs, Thrown At, Catches Allowed.

CB/SS/FS
Tackles, Sacks, Missed Tackles, Fumbles Forced, Fumbles Recovered, INTs, Thrown At, Catches Allowed.

K
FG%, XP%, FG Attempted.

P
Yards, Average, In 20

K Return
KR Average, KR TD

P Return
PR Average, PR TD

Now, the weights of the above are both open for interpretation and also position specific. For example, the LB and secondary positions have the same stats to consider, but you would probably say the coverage stats should be more important for DBs, and the tackle stats more important for the LBs. Not that these are absolute terms, you still want a LB who can cover and a DB who can tackle, but weighting is the key.

It would be critical for there to be minimum qualifying amounts for each position so you can’t have say, 1 QB who came into a game, went 5/5 for 140 yards and 2 TDs and 2 crazy drives and is selected to a Pro Bowl. The minimum qualifiers for each position could probably be created by looking at the averages across a few different leagues.

The number of plays is worth considering. Should it play a role? If Player A plays 500 downs in a season and achieves X in a statistic, are they better or worse than Player B who plays 1,000 downs and achieves X x2? Not saying I have the answer, just something to consider.

At this stage I haven’t in any way tried to map these weighting formulas out, they were just swirling around in my head. I think they would be reasonably easy to achieve though, but would be totally subjective to what people/owners think are the most important for a given position.

It could be that a mix of the two methods (voting and stats) are used, or just one or the other. I think that like owners, each dot should get a line on their profile for the number of Pro Bowls they have been selected for.

So that covers reason, timing, injuries, coaches, players. Anything I’m missing? I’ve had lots of things go in and out of my head so I maybe did think of something that I’ve now forgotten to write down!

Big +1 here but we have to make sure we hammer the details out properly. I'll come back to this later to see if I have anything to add.

One thing I will say is that this game should be played on Sundays so the sim isn't set back and we have something to look forward to on Sundays every once in a while.

+1

The game should be run with no injuries.

Lose a player for the long term due to this? No chance.

Completely agree.