Here's my issue. I'm simply not going to play a star type player who is injured. If his injury is going to last 8 weeks, I'm not going to play him for 8 weeks. He is MORE liable to become injured worse if he already is playing with an injury... why would I take that chance? So I'm 8 weeks without a player at his position. If others start getting hurt, what do I do? I carry 10 offensive linemen on my team... what do I do if 6 have injuries? There has to be some type of choice we, as GM of our team, can make about putting a guy up for the season to heal up.
Yes, I could release an injured backup and pick up another player of similar quality... but why should I reduce my team's chemistry? And, by chemistry, I mean I have these players who know the plays we like to use very well... why would I drop one for a guy who is going to reduce the effectiveness of our playbook because he isn't as knowledgeable of the plays?
Overall, my issue really is strategic choices within the game are being taken away from me, thus reducing the role of strategy in the game just a little bit. Keep removing little pieces of strategy, and the game is stale very quickly. Another example is the contracts... when bidding on FAs, using the slider is more luck than anything, I guess, because I have seen players take a very slightly higher offer, and I have to guess that one team's slider went to a slightly different number than the other teams... we should be able to input not only the salary EACH year, but also the total bonus money as well. I have a very specific strategy in dealing with salaries and the cap that I can't employ because of the current system... taking away a possible advantage I have over others.
In general, I think the idea of any strategy game should be to add strategy elements rather than taking them away. So, creating a system where all the choices available are completely up to the player, rather than minimalizing or completely removing those strategy elements, will make the game better every time.
If you go back and look at most of my suggestions, you'll see that this is my focus... adding a way to give the full input to the player, not making it generic. Like defensive playcalling.. the way it is now is, IMO, very poor. Frankly, I had a team in one league run all 3WR or better formations. Because the way the defense works, this gives a very serious advantage to the offense. The defense gets less plays, and they have to be broken down into covering the various formations on offense... if you can focus your offense in a specific 2 or 3 formations, you reduce the defense's plays for a very few plays, which you can then take advantage of. This really makes for a lopsided game as far as strategy goes, as the offense truly has a huge advantage if you can see it then take advantage of it. There are some other things you can take advantage of offensively because of the way in which the defensive playcalling is set up. If you don't believe me, look at most of my leagues, and you'll see my team is the leading scoring team in the league, or, at worst, top 3. It's because I'm defensive minded, and I can see the flaws in the defensive playcalling system and take advantage of those flaws.
And, rambling rant over for now... that's all another issue. Getting back to IR... simply, if I want to put a guy in IR who is injured, I should be able to. It's not like I'm saving one guy so I can jump in and grab some big time guy on the FA market in the middle of the season... If that were the case, I'd just drop a player to pick him up. Not generally much in players available to improve your team once the season starts. So there aren't really any hidden advantages in doing this. If you like, you could limit the IR to no more than 3 players. The way the injury system works, the only way a team would be in a situation where they needed to IR more than 3 players is if they keep overplaying their injured players.
