Shortpass Offense - a public FOF game plan file, with testing results

[Ben E Lou]

In concert with Quik's defensive game plan, I'm putting an offensive game plan out there that is open to public use, comment, criticism, and input, designed for a team with personnel conducive to short passing. If you use this and make successful modifications, I'd ask that you share those with the community. I'd LOVE to get some discussion going as to what works and why it works in this plan.

THE PERSONNEL
I hand-drafted the test team specifically to build it for running and short passing, and the ability to do little else. Here's the QB's player card, for example:



As you can see, he knows all the formations, can throw the short ball well, and is accurate (which is said to help with YAC). The WRs all are 70 or better at Getting Downfield, but 20 or less at Big-Play Receiving. No WR is rated above 52/52.

In general, to run this offense successfully you need players good at:
QB: short passing, screen passing, accuracy
RB: running skills, Getting Downfield
TE/WRs: Getting Downfield
OL: run-blocking skills. Pass blocking probably isn't as important with short passing and a QB who is good at sensing the rush.

THE PLAN AND PHILOSOPHY



Generally, the idea is to keep it conservative and balanced, with running and short passing, although on first and 10 and second and short, we'll throw a decent number of passes of modest distance just to keep the defense honest, and to help avoid familiar messages and flipped switches. The thinking on second and short is that the team can trust the running/short passing game to get three yards on 3rd down most of the time, so why not throw it a little longer then. Although, as will be shown in the next screen, "longer" can be very relative.


RUN DIRECTIONS: Just keeping it very balanced here.
SHORT PASSING DISTANCES: For this particular team, the QB is not very good at screen passes. So, even though the RB and FB are both good pass-catchers, I'd rather get it to them a little more upfield where it appears the QB's Short rating comes into play. Additionally, the thinking is that on 3rd down and 4-7, I'd prefer to load up on what this team does best in the passing game: short passing. In order to do that, though, I want to make sure the passes are going far enough down the field to give us a shot at the first down. With this plan, the great majority of the 3rd and 4-7 passes (which is where one would expect to spend a good chunk of the third down plays with this plan) will be within 2-3 yards of, or past, the first down marker.
LONG PASSING DISTANCES: Simple here. The QB can't throw it too far down the field well, and the receivers can't make big plays well, so I'm keeping a heavy majority of even the Long passes (which aren't used that often to begin with) under 20 yards.
PASS BLOCK PERCENTAGES: With the bulk of the passes being short, I let my backs and TE release more often in this plan. I'd vary this, though, with a QB with bad Sense Rush.

For the adjustments and formations screens, I just used Rex.


THE RESULTS
(15 seasons with each plan)
With this plan: 9.63 wins, 96.5 QB Rating, 4.26ypc, 7.60ypa, 334.95ypg, 21.53ppg, 45.58% third down conversions

With Rex offense, identical defense: 8.27 wins, 87.1 QB Rating, 4.08ypc, 7.12ypa, 323.21ypg, 19.85ppg, 41.79% third down conversions

DOWNLOAD THE GAME PLAN HERE


Thoughts? Let me stress again that I'd LOVE to get some discussion going as to what works and why it works in this plan.

[Sgran]

Just a question about the attributes of your receivers. I gather from the help file that getting downfield is an attribute you want for deep passing. I assumed that you want this paired with speed for deep attacks. For short passing I would think you'd want agility and courage. I also thought that big-play receiving was big if you want yards after the catch, which is probably valuable in a short passing attack.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Sgran

Just a question about the attributes of your receivers. I gather from the help file that getting downfield is an attribute you want for deep passing. I assumed that you want this paired with speed for deep attacks. For short passing I would think you'd want agility and courage. I also thought that big-play receiving was big if you want yards after the catch, which is probably valuable in a short passing attack.

No, you've got that backwards, actually. Check this thread for details, but the csv.txt makes it clear that Getting Downfield-->YAC and Big-Play Receiving-->catching the deep ball.

[Hammer]

I like the plan. I think it would work well against people who just press recommend. On 2nd down your rushing more against the pass D's (2nd 8-10)and passing against the run D's (2nd 1-5).

The only thing I would question is whether its necessary to cut back to only 10% short passing on 1st and 10. I understand you need to avoid the familiar messages, but its almost against the philosophy. 2nd and 5's ought to be what this offense strives for?

Easy to say, but without testing take that for what its worth. Maybe if you pushed it any higher you start getting familiar messages. They only way round that would be to reduce the 60% on 5-8.

[Sgran]

Why a roll-out passer and not a short passer?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Hammer

I like the plan. I think it would work well against people who just press recommend. On 2nd down your rushing more against the pass D's (2nd 8-10)and passing against the run D's (2nd 1-5).

The only thing I would question is whether its necessary to cut back to only 10% short passing on 1st and 10. I understand you need to avoid the familiar messages, but its almost against the philosophy. 2nd and 5's ought to be what this offense strives for?

Easy to say, but without testing take that for what its worth. Maybe if you pushed it any higher you start getting familiar messages. They only way round that would be to reduce the 60% on 5-8.

The thinking here isn't *just* about the familiar messages. I fully admit that I haven't observed or tested it to that level of detail. (I can generally get a good feel for that sort of thing from reading 20 or so game logs using the game plan.) A lot of the reasoning here is based on the fact that the Long passes aren't very long, and that since I've got two more downs to make the first, why not? Combined with the distances being used here, only around 8% of the first down plays should result in passes longer than 18 yards.

I just ran a quick season (so take this with that caveat) and glanced through the stats and box scores, and a few observations are worth noting...

• We were first in the league (by over a yard) in short passing average yards per attempt, despite throwing the most short passes in the league.
• We threw the fewest medium passes in the league, but had the highest completion percentage on medium passes (67.8%).
• Despite our horrid ratings in long passing, we were in the middle of the pack in terms of completion percentage and yards per attempt on long balls.
• In looking through the box scores, we tended to do much better on Long passes in games we won than in games we lost. There's an obvious chicken-egg thing here, but from examination of well over a hundred game logs in 6.0e, I feel confident that this is because we threw more Long passes when behind, and the defenses were ready for it.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Sgran

Why a roll-out passer and not a short passer?

I've yet to find any indication that the QB style does anything significant besides what formations he learns first--and I'd say that it's quite possible that it does nothing whatsoever besides that. Therfore, with a QB who knows all the formations he's going to learn, I completely ignore that bit of information. (And I don't take it into much consideration, if any, with QBs who don't know them all, either.) Also, my so-called short passing QB in MP being the all-time league leader in both yards per completion and QB rating has done a bit to dissuade me from thinking otherwise. If it matters, it certainly doesn't matter very much.

[timmynausea]

This should be a great thread. The first question that comes to mind for me - What was the difference in YAC?

Also, I think with an offense like this one of the primary goals is to consistently get yourself into better 3rd down situations. First, because it's a dink and dunk, high percentage offense by design, and second, and perhaps more importantly, because you don't have the personnel to convert 3rd and long situations. So I saw that the gameplan yielded about a 4% improvement in 3rd down conversions, but I am curious as to how much better this offense is as far as YTG vs. the Rex offense.

Thinking about the YTG angle does make me wonder, like Hammer, how well the 10% short passing and 32% long on 1st and 10 fits the overall philosophy.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by timmynausea

This should be a great thread. The first question that comes to mind for me - What was the difference in YAC?

I didn't track that, but from what I've seen in 60e, YAC is higher with more short passing, so I'm pretty much certain that it would be higher with this game plan than with Coach Rex.

Also, I think with an offense like this one of the primary goals is to consistently get yourself into better 3rd down situations. First, because it's a dink and dunk, high percentage offense by design, and second, and perhaps more importantly, because you don't have the personnel to convert 3rd and long situations. So I saw that the gameplan yielded about a 4% improvement in 3rd down conversions, but I am curious as to how much better this offense is as far as YTG vs. the Rex offense.

Thinking about the YTG angle does make me wonder, like Hammer, how well the 10% short passing and 32% long on 1st and 10 fits the overall philosophy.

I didn't track YTG, but from running a quick couple of seasons, the team seems to be good, but nothing special, either, at that stat. In both cases, it was in the better half of the league, but not the best four or five teams, either.

As far as stretching the field a bit more on first and ten, the thinking there is that it helps keep the defense a bit more honest in those situations. If I change those numbers to, say, 58-32-10, it results in throwing by FAR the fewest medium and long passes in the league. My fear in MP would be that doing such a thing would render my running game pretty much null and void, because of all the 1-deep defensive setups I'd end up facing.

[QuikSand]

Thanks for posting... interesting results.

Hopefully this will avoid the morass that my freakshow defense "testing discussion" ran into. Looks good on that front so far.

[Toddiec]

I have been running this in one of my SP leagues but I did change one thing. I thought that if the QB is very good at the short passes, why keep the long pass distances (19-26 yds) still set at 20%? I tinkered this down to be 40-50-5-4-1 to really play to the strengths of my QB (very similar to the one above, only mine has average medium passing skills). I may adjust it to 50-40-5-4-1 if I see a large amount of picks or something like that.

Anyway, the only disadvantage I can think of to this is reducing the items the Defense looks out for, thus increasing the dreaded familiar messages. I wonder, though, if as long as you keep the formations varied, does the yardage length of the pass really play into that as much? In my past seasons, I have always noticed that the familiar messages would crop up when I reduced the number of formations I used, but not so much when I varied target yardage. In my opinion the advantage of not throwing deep 20% of the time you pass it long when your QB is well below the average on it would outweigh the reduced variation you throw at the defense.

I will run some seasons and test my theory out, but just some food for thought.

Thanks to both of you guys for posting these gameplans. Good stuff.

[Mike7273]

The Game Plan file is gone.

[Ben E Lou]

This is ancient. The link is in a 6.0e folder, so any results I posted here are pretty much completely void. The engine has been almost completely redone, particularly with regard to short passing. Just use one of the updated ones in the newer thread.

[TheFoosballWizard]

When I first saw this topic I thought it was going to be an April Fool's joke by Ben, then I noticed the original post date.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by TheFoosballWizard

When I first saw this topic I thought it was going to be an April Fool's joke by Ben, then I noticed the original post date.

What? I've seen Ben throw it short, once.

[Firefly]

Well, that short passing game used to be a real pain in the butt. Almost impossible to stop.

[QuikSand]

those were the days