In my final pre season game, I like to remove my established vets from the depth chart or place my starters right to the back and then turn the pull starters setting to never so that my back ups are the only guys getting game time unless an injury occurs and I need a veteran to step in.

However, in my game, a number of my starters saw the field and I'm not sure why. For example, my 1st string QB left the game with 10 minutes to go in the 2nd quarter and he didn't return. In the game log, there was no mention of an injury. There were some other players that I noticed but I can explain most of those (starters were still on the ST depth chart for example, but I did see them on the field during offence/defence), but the QB was the most puzzling.

Which then led me to think it could be the max fatigue before pulling players setting, and perhaps that is why my guys were being rotated? My setting for that at the moment is 45. Is that good/bad? Could it be higher/lower? Secondly, could that be why my players were off the field so frequently? There weren't many sustained drives against my defence, but my 2nd string safeties seemed to be on a fair amount.

Help appreciated on the explanation, and the fatigue setting!

The only way that I have to make sure my starters don't play in a preseason game is to make them inactive.

As far as fatigue, I played last preseason with my fatigue set to 25 and played starters for 2 quarters. I didn't have any major injuries so I'll probably do it again.

Is 45 a reasonable setting to use during the regular season?

I've had mixed results with fatigue rates under 50 in the regular season. What I've see is that the DBs fatigue much faster than my opponents WRs when my fatigue rates are lower than 50.

I am pretty sure if your depth chart is deep your starters would not come back in. And 45 is 5 points from average as where a level of 60 still might not risk much injury. Really it is all how you play. For my last pre season game I sit any injury and pull the starters after the first quarter with a fatigue setting of like 40 to prevent injuries . But if there are postion battles going on, especially at QB I might pull the starters after the half and raise the fatigue to ensure starters are playing with him. I seen some guys play at 85 fatigue. ...I do not know the threshold mine is 65.

Why with benching set to never would my #1 QB get sat down though? It can't be fatigue as he never returned?

Great advice on the fatigue setting though, thanks people