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View Full Version : Injuries and use of injured settings, when do players play?


MIJB#19
12-27-2010, 03:07 PM
While playing FOF, to me it's still a mystery why some players do not play despite that they've been inserted into the depth chart. There are two things involved here: the injury at hand and the game plan setting for use of injured players.

I'd be interested to hear about the stories of others and/or depth chart and game plan settings that have proven to work for you.



The assumption
Players are listed probable, questionable and doubtful. My assumption was that each of these three groups will have their own boundaries of play (or not play) based on the "Use of Injured players" setting.

The plan
Sim into a SP career and save the game going into a particular week. Then plug injured players into the depth chart as starters, with 100% playing time and special teams encouraged. I would start at somem particular "Use of Injured" (from here on UOI) setting and move up or down from there to find the switch from to play or not to play.

Case 1
guard, 1 week (mild hand) injury, probable
UOI=50, player will play
UOI=25, player will play
UOI=15, player will play
UOI=5, player will play
UOI=1, player will play
UOI=0, player will play
Conclusion: this particular player with this particular injury will always play, no matter what UOI setting you'll use.
Early assumption: You don't need to touch UOI to make a "probable" player play.

Case 2
Cornerback, 1 week (knee) injury, questionable
UOI=25, player will not play
UOI=50, player will not play
UOI=60, player will play
UOI=55, player will not play
UOI=59, player will not play
Conclusion: this particular player with this particular player will need a setting of 60 to have him play.
Assumption: To make a "questionable" player play, you need to put the UOI at 60.

Case 3
Wide receiver, unknown (hamstring) injury, questionable
UOI=100, player will play
UOI=60, player will not play
UOI=80, player will play
UOI=70, player will not play
UOI=75, player will not play
UOI=79, player will not play
Conclusion: this particular player with this particular player will need a setting of 60 to have him play.
Conclusion: "questionable" and "questionable" do not always match and apparently the injury itself determines whether a setting of 60 is sufficient, or whether you need a setting of 80. It's possible that there are several different injury groups that have their own boundaries.



Early overall conclusion
That's where I decided to stop my research, for now. Based on case 2 and case 3, it's required to go much deeper into this issue to find out what setting is required to make or not make a player play. At the moment, I do not feel inspired and motivated enough to go that deep into testing FOF's injuries.

Advice based on this conclusion
It appears to be best to use a very high setting, probably even 100 (I didn't come up with this idea solely by myself, Ben E Lou suggested as such elsewhere) to make sure an non-out player will see the field. Then it'll be all up to yourself to determine which players you do and do not want to play.
This is without taking into account which injuries during the game will or will not keep a player on the field and potential re-injury to a CEI, that you wouldn't have risked on your own.



As already noted above, I am interested to hear about the stories of others and/or depth chart and game plan settings that have proven to work for you. Or additional testing. Based on this early small sample size, I think it's safe to say that the injury status itself doesn't tell you a complete story on whether your settings will be high enough to make your player actually play.

azjoe_02
12-27-2010, 06:55 PM
Nice info MIJB.

I have often wondered about this aspect myself and at least once *thought* I had a guy in the lineup and was risking him to an injury and ended up having him sit due to this setting that I had forgot about.

I just wonder how much of this will actually be able to be used. I mean in leagues with higher injury settings, you will likely have several guys injured at the same time and end up having someone used (even if you don't have them listed in the depth chart) that you didn't want to. I guess that is a risk we'll all have to take at some point.

It would be nice to have an option to tag a guy to play while the remainder of the roster stays at the base UOI setting. Maybe a thought for a future FOF?

MIJB#19
02-07-2011, 09:12 AM
Bumpage.

After a full regular season in MP following this test, I'm pretty much convinced that there's nearly no point in not going with a very high play injured setting. I've used 90% all season long and haven't even considered lowering it. If a player gets hurt badly enough (read: out), the game will sub him out anyway, whilst pre-game you have plenty of options to inactivate 7 players that you really don't want to risk or that you expect will play worse than the inactive backup.

The only times I could see myself even considering a lower setting is if I have more than 7 injured players that I don't want to IR and consequently have to put one of them on active. I'll go with the most severly injured players and set the play-injured really low, forcing the player to not play afterall.

Second exception would be pre-season, where you have no real gain by playing your injured players, unless you actually hope they get more severly injured.