Welcome to the Bills Madden 18 Rebuild - not mobile friendly

[JBURGE]

The Pegula family decided to sell the team to Bill Butthole, lavatory magnate.

I will be starting this CFM week 17 of the 2017 year. I wanted to do it with updated rosters, but the only way to do that would be to start week 1, and I'd rather keep the standings and draft orders. I will however try to get similar compensation for Tyrod Taylor and Cordy Glenn. I will also force week 17 and the playoffs as they happened in real life. 

Now for the rules, as provided by our own  @MKnight82...

Cupcake roster.

- You can never have more than 10 draft picks in any given year.

- You can never have more than two 1st round picks in a single draft.  

- You're limited to 1 trade down in every draft.

- You can never trade up.  

- You can only trade 2 players per season for draft picks.  

I will be releasing the entire team in the offseason who is >70 OVR. I will decide what defense I will run based off the first draft. I am not sure I will be following the max 10 draft picks year one, because the Bills by default will have that many, but going forward I will. 

Also, I will be moving the team Toronto year 1 because I can. 

Without further ado, welcome to the Toronto BIlls

[JBURGE]

I'm not going to waste time on the playoffs as we all know what happened.

Coaching Staff

I gave decided to fire the entire coaching staff (why no coordinators). I like McDermott, but I want to run a 3-4.

New Head Coach: Todd Bowles
New Scout and Trainer: Who cares, but the scout is WR overall

Re-sign Players

Nope.

Free Agency

Since I am doing a cupcake, I am not going to sign free agents, at least year 1. I'm going to wait until after the draft to fill my roster out with free agents. This will likely change in the future. 

Just to clarify the cupcake rules, it means I can not sign a player >70 in free agency, or trade for a player >70. I can Draft whoever I want under those rules. 

Trade
Bills:		Browns
2018 3rd	for	Tyrod Taylor

Trade
Bills:		Bengals
2018 1st rd, 12 ovr	for	2018 1st rd, 21 ovr
		Cordy Glenn

Now I'm sitting with basically what the Bills IRL have for the 2018 draft.

2018 Draft Prospects

My strategy this year is truly BPA. I am not terrible concerned about a QB this year since I most definitely will be the worst team in the NFL in 2018... but if there is a QB available to me that is worth the pick, I will take him. 

Because there are a million prospects, I'm going to do my best to mention all of the ones I like. At the very least, I will talk about the ones on my draft board. I am not going to go very in depth in the first year draft for players I scouted, but I will do a mini-chat at each of my picks. I want to get this going because the 2018 season is going to be a disaster and I would like to get to the 2018 off-season fairly quickly. 

[JBURGE]

2018 Draft

Bills Picks
1.12
1.22
2.17
2.26
3.1
3.32
4.17
5.17
5.23
6.29
7.17

 

I enter the draft with this. I imagine every pick I make will be a starter since they will mostly be above 70.

Since I pick 12, and my team is terrible, and I don't have any players to trade, I will not be trading up. There is a good chance I trade down from 12 using my 1 trade down, depending on what I'm looking at. There are few elite looking players in the draft, especially art QB, so I'm feeling ok. 

I will be highlighting Cleveland's moves here because I'm interesting in if they will be able to do anything this year.

NOTE: At some point, the Buccaneers traded up to #3... I can't see what the deal was in history.  

Cleveland took a FS first overall when the best player was CLEARLY a ROLB pass rusher, Byrd. boo Cleveland. Byrd goes #2 to the Giants. The Bucs took a corner.... I didn't even like that one that much.  Cleveland took DT Gogan, who I didn't think was that great either. Skipping ahead to my pick at 12.

At 12, I don;t like the trade offers I'm being given. Nothing that includes a 1st next year with a  2nd this year, so I will check my board.

For those of you who don't know how drafting in the game works, the game gives players a talent grade and a draft position where it is estimated they will be drafted. It's divided into early, mid, and late of each round, effectively giving 21 different tiers. In my experience, players who have had positive stories or have talent grades equal or better than their draft projection will go at least 1 tier early. 

There is a CB named Shedrick Phelps who is 23 years old and has a L1 talent grade  and L1 draft tier. He has A- Press, B+ Man and B- Zone coverage. FOr those of you that play Madden, there is one of these corners every year, and they are usually really slow because of the press grade. Phelps however is the fastest corner in the class, with a 4.28 40.  There is only one other player I'm even looking at here; QB Bradley Joyce, who has A- Throw Power and Short Acc, but like I said, I'm not desperate to lose 1 year of rookie QB eligibility for a QB who will be surrounded by a terrible team.

With pick 1.12, the Bills select:

Well that was a good call. I think the most important thing to point out here is that Phelps is 83 overall, which is excellent, but he is only the 5th best player in the class? Wow..... I am going to take a peek at the other players and see if I can find anyone worth moving up from 22 for. 

The other CB I liked, Pearce Morgan (lol) went 2 picks after to me to the Packers. Ah well. The QB is still on the board, as is a TE with an E1 talent and draft tier left who I am considering at 22. 

I get to 22 and both the QB and TE are there. I like them both, but I suspect that the TE is slow development because of his fall. I like the QB, but again, don't love him. But I really do need to think of the future here, and the Saints, (who lost Drew Brees to FA), are offering me a deal too good to pass up. I imagine it's for the QB that I want.

Trade
Bills		Saints
2019 1st	for	2018 1.22
2019 2nd
2018 4th

And the Saints move up to draft a guard. Never change Madden... The Saints come up again at 27, and take a Center! hahahahaa

The Jets end up taking QB Joyce. I will make a note to check him out after. And the next pick the Broncos take the TE Simpson. 

I'm up at 2.17 and since I traded down I am stuck picking here. There are 4 guys in the 2/3 rounds here who I am coveting, one in particular. The 4 are:

HB Neal  M2

WR Quin E3

LB Dubose M3

Young L3

 I have 4 picks in the 2nd and 3rd rounds, and I am hoping to get all 4, but since I pick 3.32, chances are I miss on Young.

For those of you that have played a Madden franchise with me, you know there is a specific mold of RB I look for. @Adrenaline_Flux @biggio7. I don't want someone who isn't sub 4.35 with high elusiveness. I am going to try to buck that trend going forward, because it really limits my options and makes it obvious who my draft targets are. With that said.

With pick 2.17, the Bills select:

I clicked too fast so I missed his draft pic. Neal is a really solid pick. I'm not in love with taking a RB who I will probably have to pay big money to by the time I am competing, but I need a player to run this offense through.

With pick 2.26, the Bills select:

yoooooooooo this kid is tight, 4.31 40 and the solid skills had me thinking he would be good, but not this good. He is obviously really tiny, and so is the other WR, Young, so that probably means Young is off my board. But Quin will give me a WR1 for my "insert QBOTF" to throw to. 

 

With pick 3.1, the Bills select:

I'm not super concerned with his OVR because this is the guy I will likely user in the games I end up playing in a few years. I want fast linebackers who can still hit. This guy is a prototypical WILL, not too far off Roquon Smith. I need to get a MLB still, but this guy should build up some solid stats this year. 

Sitting at 3.32, WR Young has gone, which I expected. At this point I am going to start taking the late round guys I have scouted. Since I only started in week 17, I don't have nearly enough late boys scouted, but I will work with what I have.

With pick 3.32, the Bills select:

Really solid pick here. I like taking Guards and Centers late. 

With pick 4.17, the Bills select:

This was a shot in the dark. DT with a great combine bench, so I figured I might have a chance at a good prospect, ah well. 

With pick 4.27, the Bills select:

Whew! Lucky pick here. 6th round talent with B+ Finesse moves and nothing else. Murphy will be starting at LOLB because I like having my best rusher against the RT, and I hope he has a shot at getting a decent amount of sacks. 

With pick 5.17, the Bills select:

Another solid late OL prospect. I am the Green Bay Packers. Decent shot I move him to LT with the pass blocking attributes. 

With pick 5.23, the Bills select:

Can't ask much more from a 5th round pick. He runs fast and hits hard. Zone coverage needs work for a safety. 

With pick 6.29, the Bills select:

This is an interesting one. I am expecting to move Compton to TE since he pulled the best strength grade of the class with 25 reps. I don't suspect he will be a long term starter, but he will be a really good receiving option there. 

With pick 7.1, the Bills select:

I am taking an UDFA here because I liked his overall skill spreak with B finesse moves. Ends up working well here, getting essentially a 3rd round player in the 7th. I will be playing him at the other OLB spot.

Overall this was a really solid draft. I didn't really miss on any of the picks. Obviously it would have been nice to get a few more superstars, but I can't complain with adding 11 starters. Next up are the UDFAs, who I will be using to essentially fill out the other 42 spots on my roster. 

[Ty21]

Following buddy 

[MikeT14]

Shredrick is an awesome name. Wish he was a RB. 

[43M]

Nice setup so far.  Following.

I might be doing one of my own after the draft.  I simmed the entire 2017 season to emulate the real NFL and am now updating NFL rosters day to day as they happen, and I am going to draft for each team as they do in real life.

Good luck! 

[MKnight82]

Good looking draft.  

You already broke one of your rules though, you selected 11 players in this draft.

[JBURGE]

 

1 hour ago, MKnight82 said:

Good looking draft.  

You already broke one of your rules though, you selected 11 players in this draft.

17 hours ago, JBURGE25 said:

I will be releasing the entire team in the offseason who is >70 OVR. I will decide what defense I will run based off the first draft. I am not sure I will be following the max 10 draft picks year one, because the Bills by default will have that many, but going forward I will. 

Mentioned in OP that I may not do it year 1. I got the extra 6th from trading Tyrod because thats what the CPU offered me. I will not pick more than 10 going forward

[JBURGE]

2 hours ago, FourThreeMafia said:

Nice setup so far.  Following.

I might be doing one of my own after the draft.  I simmed the entire 2017 season to emulate the real NFL and am now updating NFL rosters day to day as they happen, and I am going to draft for each team as they do in real life.

Good luck! 

I will probably do this too. I will be doing this one pretty slowly. It is going to take forever the more detail I put into it. Still not sure how I want to approach talking about prospects, because it's not realistic to talk about 50 a year. I might have to wait until the combine and have a long combine post.

[JBURGE]

2 hours ago, MikeT14 said:

Shredrick is an awesome name. Wish he was a RB. 

It's so hard to develop corners to stars in this game, the normal hurts because it means I'll spend an entire year to make him quick. 

Shredrick is a dope RB name though for sure

[Ty21]

Sooo did cutting most of the roster put you in cap hell..? How does that work

[MKnight82]

5 minutes ago, Tyty said:

Sooo did cutting most of the roster put you in cap hell..? How does that work

Was wondering the same.

[MKnight82]

18 minutes ago, JBURGE25 said:

It's so hard to develop corners to stars in this game, the normal hurts because it means I'll spend an entire year to make him quick. 

Shredrick is a dope RB name though for sure

I wouldn't bother upgrading his development trait, it isn't worth it.  I think its like 15k or whatever, that's 15k you can upgrade his skills with.  He's already 83 OVR you can get him to 90 OVR easily without upgraded development trait.

[JBURGE]

31 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

36 minutes ago, Tyty said:

Sooo did cutting most of the roster put you in cap hell..? How does that work

Was wondering the same.

I will be cutting and then re-setting cap penalties. I'll be doing all of my rebuilding through draft and develop so it won't really matter either way

[JBURGE]

30 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

I wouldn't bother upgrading his development trait, it isn't worth it.  I think its like 15k or whatever, that's 15k you can upgrade his skills with.  He's already 83 OVR you can get him to 90 OVR easily without upgraded development trait.

I usually wait until the end of the year and if they didn't make the pro bowl I will boost it. I prefer to have the extra XP for the next few years usually