What bars do you pay the least attention to?

[Vaevictis_386]

I find myself totally ignoring blocking strength for OL. Two minute offense and 3rd down completions for QB don't seem to translate into anything I can detect in the game.

[aston217]

Run defense, run blocking, punishing hitter, block strength, receiving bars not named GD or RR or BPR, kick accuracy, are a few for me that I don't really prioritize.

[lastcat3]

Run defense, run blocking, punishing hitter, block strength, receiving bars not named GD or RR or BPR, kick accuracy, are a few for me that I don't really prioritize.

Really run defense? In my opinion how strong a defense is against the run really indicates how good the defense is overall. I think the pass defense is the one that is a bit skewed because a lot of times when a team is behind they will pass a lot to try to come back and will wrack up some yards against a prevent defense.

I think having DT's strong against the run is very important.

[aston217]

yes, because teams kill you by passing for 9 yards per attempt and 70% completion rate as opposed to 6 and 50%, not by averaging 4.8 yards per carry instead of 3.8.

It's just a matter of priorities. I don't want to totally have no run defense. I like having some LBs who can stop the run. Your top defenders having quality play diagnosis bars will help out with the occasional stuff, as well.

Everything else is geared totally towards stopping the pass either via pass rush or pass defense.

[lastcat3]

yes, because teams kill you by passing for 9 yards per attempt and 70% completion rate as opposed to 6 and 50%, not by averaging 4.8 yards per carry instead of 3.8.

It's just a matter of priorities. I don't want to totally have no run defense. I like having some LBs who can stop the run. Your top defenders having quality play diagnosis bars will help out with the occasional stuff, as well.

Everything else is geared totally towards stopping the pass either via pass rush or pass defense.

I guess just different opinions. I have the frame of mind that even though it is a passing league (both in real life and in FOF) stopping the run is still the most important. You have a significantly better chance of losing a game if they are able to both run and pass against you well in a game. Where as in a game where they throw for close to 300 yards or more but run for only say 50-75 yards you will end up winning more times than not.

I do notice in FOF no matter how many yards they gain against me passing the ball if I keep them under 100 yards rushing I win more times than not and if they run for over a 100 my chances for losing become a lot better.

But then again you might be talking about MP while I am talking about SP. I'd imagine some of those guys on MP throw the ball out of the wazoo while AI SP teams try to stay balanced in their attacks for the most part.

[aston217]

I think if you're holding teams to 50-70 yards in a game, you're either fielding an all-time run defense or your opponent isn't running much -- which hurts their own pass productivity. If they do strike a good balance, I feel like 80 or 100 or 120 yards doesn't make a huge difference on the ground.

yeah, just different opinions I guess. To be clear I don't mean abandoning the idea of stopping the run wholesale, just accepting that if you focus on pass rush and pass defense, you're probably going to suffer a little in the "having RD bars" category. And that to me, is more acceptable than the opposite.

I'm also talking about MP. Although, actually, I think the best MP teams tend to be more balanced than AI teams. Rex always seems to advocate more passing than I think is wise. On the other hand, Rex tends to throw shorter a much higher percentage of the time, and it's rarer to encounter teams that have really loaded up on the ability to get the big passing play.

[Vaevictis_386]

receiving bars not named GD or RR or BPR, I don't really prioritize.

Pretty much in agreement here.

A few second thoughts though --

What about avoid drops? By stats, it seems not to matter much. But what if long and deep passes have serious chances of being dropped. So, one guy might have 8 drops and another 4 in a single season, but 80% of those would have been for major gains. I've no idea.

What about courage? If that equates to make a catch over the middle of the field, it might matter -- that message comes up in Solevision a lot. I have not kept track of how often though. It seems TEs make most of their catches that way; maybe it is important for them.

[lastcat3]

I think if you're holding teams to 50-70 yards in a game, you're either fielding an all-time run defense or your opponent isn't running much -- which hurts their own pass productivity. If they do strike a good balance, I feel like 80 or 100 or 120 yards doesn't make a huge difference on the ground.

yeah, just different opinions I guess. To be clear I don't mean abandoning the idea of stopping the run wholesale, just accepting that if you focus on pass rush and pass defense, you're probably going to suffer a little in the "having RD bars" category. And that to me, is more acceptable than the opposite.

I'm also talking about MP. Although, actually, I think the best MP teams tend to be more balanced than AI teams. Rex always seems to advocate more passing than I think is wise. On the other hand, Rex tends to throw shorter a much higher percentage of the time, and it's rarer to encounter teams that have really loaded up on the ability to get the big passing play.

I wasn't implying that you were averaging only giving up 50-70 yards a game. I was implying that you would only give up 50-70 yards in some particular games and you would have a very good chance to win because of it.

I looked up my team and through 14 games I am second in rush defense and giving up 86.2 yards per game as an average.

As far as what you say passing is like in SP that really mirrors what real life is like. Real life they throw a lot of flats and short passes and a few less intermediate passes and may throw just a handful of long passes per game.
I think even though the AI in FOF can be taken advantage of by human players it really does mirror what gameplans are like in real life. I think the computer AI gameplans are more what real life football is like while MP is more video game football.

I just looked up the top rushing defenses for last year in the nfl and Pittsburgh was second with an average of 90.6 ypg, Denver was 3rd with 91.1 YPG, and San Fran was 4th with 94.2 YPG.

[MIJB#19]

kick accuracyFunny, it's kicking power for me, actually. :D

[TheFoosballWizard]

Funny, it's kicking power for me, actually. :D

I focused on just kicking accuracy for a while, and I noticed a lot of kickers with low accuracy hitting a high percentage of kicks for other teams. At that point I decided I was just going to stop thinking about kickers altogether. They're stupid. :cool:

For WR I just look at RR, GD and BPR. I pretty much ignore the other bars.

Unless it's WLB in a 3-4 I pretty much ignore pass rushing bars for linebackers. I don't blitz much unless someone has a bad OL or QB with a bad SR.

[aston217]

I'd rather have a guy who can keep my scoring hopes alive when drives putter out at the 30 than a guy who hits 90% instead of 75% from within the 25-yard line.

With the low power kickers, you have pretty little hope for the longer field goals, no?

I've had decent success with the low acc/high power combination and letting them attempt from however far they liked. For example, in six games, this 31/79 acc/power guy I have is 12/12 from within 40, 7/7 from 40-50, and 2/5 from 50+.

Looking around the OSFL, a guy who has 33/92 in those bars is 196/214 (91%) in his career on sub-40 yard FGs. 68/103 from 40-50, and 32/71 from 50+.

Mainly, I don't think even low accuracy kickers (there are exceptions) tend to be that awful in the sub-40 category. So I always look for a guy who will give me both range and kickoffs (both kickoff bars are ideal, or just hangtime if not), and accuracy is just a bonus.

[MIJB#19]

Don't misunderstand me there. I've actually kept two kickers around at times, one for kickoffs and one for the short field goals and the extra points.

[Nemesis]

Avoid Drops for FB's.

[revrew]

I find myself totally ignoring blocking strength for OL.

Wait, what? That's the static bar that often helps identify rookies who are going to boom. Of all bars NOT to ignore, that would be among the top o' the list.

[aston217]

That's only kinda the case. It's just that really, really good players have high bars in every category, including the static bars.

It's not uncommon at all to just have a high static bar. Especially in OL, you'll see plenty of useless guys with average or even very good block strength bars, and it's purely reflected in their combine.

Now, if you have a guy that has much higher block strength than his bench press would indicate (this is fairly rare, I think?), and his other combines are decent enough, that might be pointing to a guy whose bars are also on the high end of what their combines would allow.

Rookies who boom are typically identified as being ones whose combines outdo their correlating (non-static) bars. Reason being, those bars are likely to climb, and if they do, the rookie's overall would naturally need to boom (to some degree). There are guys like this who have very little for block strength.

But anyway, even if it helps identify a masked player here or there, that's a little separate from the actual in-game utility of the bar. It might be useful but it seems most people feel it's icing on the cake, and the block skill bars are far more necessary.

[MRL17]

The bars I ignore are different depending on position. But I will agree that run defense doesn't matter for anyone on defense except maybe your top tacklers (MLB & SS) and even for those guys, I don't really focus on it.

Punishing hitter I ignore for everyone. I only look at it to try and decipher the other strength based bars when drafting.

Blocking Strength doesn't matter very much. Even guys with zeroes in it still get pancakes if they're good run blockers. Also there doesn't seem to be any correlation between strength and giving up sacks.

Courage is one I never look at for WR/TE.

Two Minute offense, read defense, and scrambling for QBs.

Power inside for running backs. Most running in FOF is outside runs, so why worry about if you can run inside? Also hole rec doesn't matter much to me.

[MRL17]

I do notice in FOF no matter how many yards they gain against me passing the ball if I keep them under 100 yards rushing I win more times than not and if they run for over a 100 my chances for losing become a lot better.

Don't misunderstand. No one is saying ignore the opponents running attack. You just don't necessarily need good run defenders to stop them. If you play alot of base defense with a good amount of run defending in your defensive Playcalling, you can do a pretty good job of keeping teams under 100 yards rushing even without good run defending players.

[MIJB#19]

Wait, what? That's the static bar that often helps identify rookies who are going to boom. Of all bars NOT to ignore, that would be among the top o' the list.I'd say that I too ignore the strength bar in terms of acquiring players, but by virtue of how unmasking players progress, occasionally I end up with strong linemen anyway.

[aston217]

Power inside for running backs. Most running in FOF is outside runs, so why worry about if you can run inside? Also hole rec doesn't matter much to me.

I've actually had a good amount of success with Power Inside / Hole Rec RBs who don't have too much else (low or no breakaway, for example). I guess if I see a good PI/STO combination with good hole rec, I would think that's a pretty decent and consistent runner.

[tej2101]

Run defense, run blocking, punishing hitter, block strength, receiving bars not named GD or RR or BPR, kick accuracy, are a few for me that I don't really prioritize.

Nailed these, I agree.

[ezpkns34]

RE: run defense argument

I focus so much on the pass that I run as many plays in the Nickel as I do in my base 3-4 (probably a few more in Nickel actually)

Granted, I also only play in SP, so much easier to opt for the all out pass defense

[aston217]

100% of the time I play pass normal I'm in the Nickel and 100% of the time I play pass aggressive I'm either in Nickel or Dime (lately, all dime). I think it's a practice that lends itself to MP fairly handily, too.

[conception]

My pass defense as well is 100 percent nickel or dime. The only time I even have a base defense on the field is when I am going for the run, which my gameplan doesn't allocate for very much. For me, 11 starters on defense includes a nickel back, and my extra linebacker is brought in only for his run defense.

[JoePalkovic]

How important does everyone consider a player's Volatility rating? I see it translate for big plays by RBs and occasionally WRs and TEs, but for a defensive player, for example, I don't really see (maybe I'm not looking) how much the Volatility score effects his production on the field.

[MIJB#19]

How important does everyone consider a player's Volatility rating? I see it translate for big plays by RBs and occasionally WRs and TEs, but for a defensive player, for example, I don't really see (maybe I'm not looking) how much the Volatility score effects his production on the field.Volatility has no effect on the performance on the field. It only affects the likeliness of the player getting a random ratings change during training camp.

[Nemesis]

Volatility has no effect on the performance on the field. It only affects the likeliness of the player getting a random ratings change during training camp.

What about the likelihood that a player's combine is as good, or bad as it is? In otherwords, a guy with 1 vol will have a dash range that's pretty consistent, while a guy with 99 vol will have a dash range that varies widely from year to year (along with his initial, (thus making him look better/worse then he really is)).