Early Comments

[cheo25]

It won't be the same every year. In the current 32-team format, your conference games outside your division are against opponents that finished in the same place as your team (for example, the AFC East winner plays the AFC North winner). Back in 1981, the conference games were actually somewhat random, with repeats occurring fairly often.

Both of those are somewhat, but not entirely true. There were repeats, but most of the matchups were based on the standings from the previous season.

From 1978-87:

5-TEAM DIVISIONS IN AFC/NFC
1st: Games vs. 1st- and 4th-place finishers in other two divisions, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference (out-of-conference games rotated every three years)
2nd: Games vs. 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers in other two divisions, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference
3rd: Games vs. 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers in other two divisions, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference
4th: Games vs. 1st- and 4th-place finishers in other two divisions, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference
5th: Two games vs. other fifth-place finisher, one game each vs. entire four-team AFC Central, one game each vs. fifth-place NFC finishers

4-TEAM DIVISIONS IN AFC/NFC

1st: games vs. 1st- and 4th-place finishers in other two divisions, games vs. two fifth-place finishers, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference
2nd: games vs. 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers in other two divisions, games vs. two fifth-place finishers, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference
3rd: 1st: games vs. 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers in other two divisions, games vs. two fifth-place finishers, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference
4th: games vs. 1st- and 4th-place finishers in other two divisions, games vs. two fifth-place finishers, plus games vs. top 4 finishers in one division in other conference

This was tweaked in 1988 to make the schedules tougher for the first-place teams. They went from playing fourth-place teams to one game vs. a second-place team and another vs. a third-place team. Plus, there were some other tweaks to the formula. But for the most part, scheduling was dependent on how you finished the previous season.

Starting in 2002, 14 of the 16 games have been known years in advance. Only two games are dependent on where you finish. The other eight non-division games are four against one division in your conference and four against a division in the other conference. Which division you play rotates from year to year, but even the game sites for 2009 were known in 2002 for these games.

[HeraldSports]

Okay, I'll start messing around with one this weekend. I've never done any player editing in FM, so I can't really give an estimation of time at this point because I don't know how much fine tuning it's going to take to get ratings set.

even if you don't tweak ratings, getting the transactions down would probably be the first step people would want

[Arctic Blast]

even if you don't tweak ratings, getting the transactions down would probably be the first step people would want

Well, the ratings NEED tweaking. I'll try and get transactions and player creation done this weekend, then pound on ratings next week and get contracts right.

[rlmayer32]

Seems like a major improvement so far but I still have to dive in further over the weekend of course.

[daves]

I have to agree with CatKnight on the free agency bit.

I'm currently at the beginning of the 1971 season (Week 3 to be precise) and Roger Staubach, Joe Namath and Sonny Jurgensen populate my free agency pool. Staubach is a 94 OVR and the previous season's Super Bowl winner. Namath is 80 OVR and the previous season's AFC winner. Jurgensen is a bit understandable -- the Redskins have the much better Frank Ryan and a rookie Dan Pastorini.

Then at RB, I have O.J. Simpson (98), Matt Snell (91) and Dave Hampton (80). And numerous other 80-90 rated players sitting in the free agency pool.

Not only is it odd that teams would let go of such big franchise players, it's even odder that no team has picked up any of these players.

And yes, I'd love to see a Transaction screen added.. and perhaps even a QB Comparsion screen (a feature I loved from FOF).

Historical FA pool? FA didn't really start until the mid 90's in football!

[RickArnold]

Historical FA pool? FA didn't really start until the mid 90's in football!

I realize that, but with the walls of Football Mogul 2010, there happens to be a FA pool in 1971 -- sparse as it is -- and it's populated by Pro Bowl caliber players (90+ OVR) that would make immediate impact on teams with starting players that are 60-70 OVR.

I realize it's a money thing, in retrospect, but it seems to break the game a bit if someone like Roger Staubach or O.J. Simpson are sitting out for the beginning of a season.

[russ99]

The only issue so far is that Shawne Merriman is missing from the 2009 Chargers, and the helmets art shifts (probably based on team number) when playing historical seasons. The 1978 Chargers are using the Raiders helmet. Something's wrong with that picture. FYI - The 2007/8 mods work with 2010.

Some ratings are a bit iffy, but not too far from what I expect, and I assume the mod community will take care of that in their roster updates.