When simming QBs with higher awr better than good arm?

[Robo COP]

hoopla posted in the "how's your dynasty going" thread about his simmed dynasty. I noticed his very successful 2017 season and had a thought occur to me. I wanted to see if I could get an actual discussion on this going and see if other people get similar results. Below is his quoted post and then my response to it. Let me know what you guys think.

Quote: Originally Posted by hoopla32

Decided to start a new sim-only dynasty after I got about 50 years into that last one. Decided to start at a 1-star school in a lesser conference and chose UAB. Set coach progression at slowest and I'm actually having to work to make UAB even relevant in C-USA. It's been a little more realistic in terms of progression. 2013: 5-7 2014: 6-8 (lost in C-USA Champ. Game & lost Liberty Bowl) 2015: 7-6 (lost Liberty Bowl) 2016: 5-7 2017: 13-1 (C-USA Champs & won Liberty Bowl) 2018: 4-8 2019: 9-5 (C-USA Champs & lost Liberty Bowl) So, seven years in, I have a 49-41 record, two C-USA championships, and a 1-3 bowl record.

I've noticed that with simming a lot seems to depend on the QB. If you have a good QB but a mediocre team you are much more likely to have more success compared to a good team with a mediocre team. This may be different for very run heavy teams (like 80-70% run 20-30% pass). Also I think this effect is slightly negated when you get into the top tier teams, but when you are using teams like UAB or most teams that are in an AQ conference your QBs awr seems to play a large part in the teams success. Now I am not saying that a QB with 99 awr and 50 THA will be better than a 50 awr 99 THA QB, but when the QB has good awr and a respectable arm he will outperform a QB with lower awr but a great arm. I haven't done extensive research with this but I do feel I have seen this play out.

I had this with one of my dynasties and simmed the same game a couple of times. I had two QBs that were very close in attributes in running ability and in THP. They were basically the same QB with just about the same ovr with QB 1 having like 1 ovr on QB 2. The difference between the two was QB 1 had higher THA and lower awr while QB2 had higher AWR and the worse THA. I started the season with QB 1 as the starter because he had the higher ovr and I figured it would be easier for him to increase awr throughout the season than for QB2 to get more accurate.

Well I decided to do some minor testing. I simmed game one and QB 1 had a bad game and we lost by a couple TDs. Backed out and simmed again, fairly similar results with QB 1 (better arm, worse awr) still struggling. Did this about 4 times and we maybe won one game (I don't remember who it was against but it was a team close to the same skill level as my own). QB 1 probably only had that one good game, and even then his stats were not very impressive.

On the 5th sim I did QB1 got injured very early in the game and QB 2 came in and lit it up. I found that interesting so I backed out and did sims with QB 2 in at QB. He consistently had good games and led the team to victories the majority of the time. Obviously I kept him at QB for the season and we went on to have a better than expected season and he put up some very good passing numbers.

I know this post seemed pretty long and is sort of out of place here, but your simmed dynasty made me think of it. If I were a betting man I would bet that your 13-1 season was with a fairly good QB that had high awr. He may have even been your starter for 2 years prior or so, so come his senior year he had a high awr and therefore put up a very good season and a bowl win. So it seems the key to success in a simmed dynasty is to find a high awr QB. Obviously you could accomplish this by just starting a guy from his freshman year on and his junior and senior years your team will be pretty successful since user QBs seem to gain a lot of awr throughout the season.

Am I accurate in my assumption or am I way off base?

[Robo COP]

now I know that some people may be saying "well duh!" higher awr would mean better decision making. Yes, true. However usual protocol (real life) teams are mostly looking for the gifted QB who can make all the throws. So when running a team in NCAA you would probably go by that same logic, find a guy with a great arm and develop him into a great QB. However, if simming I feel that you have to reverse that thought process. You would instead find better success with a QB with high awr without the gifted arm.

I also feel like this highlights a problem that I think both NCAA and madden share. For simmed games the higher awr team has more of an advantage, even if they are less talented. I get that it makes sense that the "smarter" team could have the advantage but I think both madden and NCAA take it too far. Now some people may say that they do not care because they play their games and therefore awr has less of an impact for them, but this still affects every CPU vs CPU game played in your dynasties.

(If you don't care about madden don't bother reading this next paragraph)
And to touch on how madden puts too much emphasis on the awr attribute; I know in regards to scouting it has in the past (I can't speak as much on this years game as I wasn't much of a fan). The easiest way to find the gems in draft classes on madden is by scouting their awr. It also comes at such a low cost that you can potentially scout every player in a drafts awr. Anyway, if you scout awr it's is easy to find out the guys that are supposed to contribute. Most B and higher awr grade players also have pretty good physical and position attributes. The games draft classes built these guys with high awr because these are the guys they WANT to be the gems in the draft. They also typically have the better progression levels. You are much more likely to find a player with a B at awr to have a quick or superstar progressions rating than you are for a D or F guy. The game WANTS these players to become the future superstars of the league so they bump up their awr to put them closer to that level right off the bat. They will be higher overalls, more likely to see the field on cpu controlled teams, and progress very well.

So overall, while I understand that awr should be important the gap between it's importance between simming games and playing games is far too great. AWR is essential when simming games, but when playing games many players disregard awr altogether as it's effects are not very noticeable during gameplay

[cusefan74]

I know I always want a QB with high awareness if I am simming games or playing coach mode. If I am playing myself, then I would rather have better accuracy because his awareness becomes irrelevant. Of course higher awareness on the whole team never hurts.

[BleedGreen710]

Yeah I am pretty sure that higher awareness has better sim results then a good arm.


The reason I think this is because Army had a 75 OVR QB with 75 throw power and 68 accuracy and 70 speed right in the Heisman race all season. His awareness was like 90 I think.

[KingV2k3]

If you run a search for "QB Sim Stats", you'll see that this has been the case for a few iterations by now, and the best explanation of the "fix" (IMHO) is Post 423:

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...a-14-a-11.html


I basically took the K-Weezy roster I was going to use and bumped the majority of the QBs AWR into the 84-88 range and it worked quite well...

[coyotedelmar]

I'll have to take a look next time I fire up the game, or at least try to pay more attention. Got a sim game with 3 teams (bad idea by the way, takes forever. Was going to do 4 and glad I didn't, wanting to scale back to 2 but not sure how to exactly). It might explain why I've had some bad luck with a team or two every now and then despite being pretty highly ranked. Agree QB matters quite a bit, had one team lose their great QB and despite not being high passing, they ended up horrible (like 5-7 for a 90+ ranked team). Usually I look for accuracy and hope their awareness is good.

Bit off-topic, but does AWR mainly effect the offense or both sides of the ball? Wondering if my lack of concern with moving players and AWR in general on the defensive side may be hurting the defense. Valued Play recognition more and block shedding (since mainly running a stop the run focus thus figured strong, big (even though I pretty much know size probably doesn't matter), and high block shedding).

[Robo COP]

I don't really know the answer to that for sure. Me personally I end up valuing awr higher on defense than play recognition. But that is because I've been playing EA football games since before play recognition was a rating. I am sure someone has tried testing which is more important before if you scour the boards for it

[wumaitianqi]

right,Yeah I am pretty sure that higher awareness has better sim results then a good arm.thanks