Passing game woes - Offensively and Defensively

[svendraconian]

2 separate issues here, but they fall broadly in the spectrum of how to get these new gameplans to work.

Offensively I custom designed 150 plays and built my gameplan. My running game is excellent - but my 70ovr QB throwing to 50ovr receivers struggles to get over 50 percent. None of my receivers are consistently better then .50 percent on catches vs targets. I get decent yardage overall and a high YPA, but completions are low... even as I add in more screens and short passes.

Defensively I can't hold an opponent under 65-70% completions. I have a top 5 defense and keep the yardage down, but every week the opponent is 21-25 for 160 yards. I play a lot of Cover 1, some press and then mix in Cover 2, Man and a little Cover 3/ Cover 4. My corners are 70overall, 70 in man coverage. My FS is 70 over, w/80 in zone. SS and Nickle are in the 60s and 50s.

Overall team success is ok, 8-8 last year and 4-2 this year. This team was drafted through an allocation draft so.

In essence, I can't complete any passes - but I did design my own plays (based on actual modern passing concepts). On the flip side, I can't stop my opponent from completing passes at will, even if they don't gain any yardage. I've even Rexd both game plans and the results were more or less the same.

[TAFIV]

since i don't know for sure what plays are being called and actual stats of your players these are just possibilities but:

on offense here's what i find to affect completions the most:
---for QBs check the following stats, if they are low that could be your problem
------Accuracy: A quarterback’s ability to hit a receiver in stride, leading to longer gains
------Timing: A quarterback’s ability to take advantage of defensive player miscues, leading to more big plays
------Read Defense: A quarterback’s ability to read a defense, leading to less throws into double coverage
---So far from what I've seen order of importance is - Read Defense, Accuracy, Timing

---for receivers check the following stats, if they are low that could be your problem
------Avoid Drops: Ability to catch what’s thrown in their direction
------Route Running: Quality of passing routes, which leads to more catches
------Courage (TE/WR only): Ability to catch passes thrown over the middle of the field
---order of importance - Route Running, Avoid Drops, Courage. if you run a lot of short passes Courage and Avoid Drops flip in importance, although i don't like having less than 40-50 in Avoid Drops if at all possible

for your defense a couple of possibities are:
--- are your players short for their position? could cause the balls to go over their reach
--- depending on how much of the cover 3 and cover 4 are getting called that means on cover 3 you have 3 players in zone FS, SS, CB(which one varies by play) on cover 4 you have 4 players in zone FS, SS, CB, CB (which CB varies by play since on cover 4 you usually have 4 on the field)
--- also if you are playing Cover 3 against a 2 WR set or Cover 4 against a 2 or 3 WR set you will be, depending on the specific play be pulling either 1 or both main CBs off the WRs to fall back into mid to deep zone allowing your opponent to get off lots of easy short passes

[Hammer]

Perhaps the plays you are designing are not very good. Try using standard plays. Have you researched just how few long passes and how many short passes are used in a real game?

Passing distance and formation variation is key in this game to keep the defense guessing.

What looks good on paper maybe isn't translating in the game. I see AI plays where 3 receivers look to be in the same spot on the field. It bothers me, but does it matter? I think designing your own plays is like shooting in the dark right now. Some further guidance from above would be good.

[Yoda]

I see AI plays where 3 receivers look to be in the same spot on the field. It bothers me, but does it matter? I think designing your own plays is like shooting in the dark right now. Some further guidance from above would be good.

This is something I believe has been in each version of FoF that I've played (although most others disagree with me).

In each play, players are in a certain area of the field. So, if you have 3 WRs all going to the same area, there are going to be at least 3 defensive players there as well- possibly more if you include double coverage, zone coverage, ect.

[Hammer]

Okay. So then I guess we should pressume it doesn't matter. Following that thought process a cleverly designed play on paper also probably counts for nothing if an ugly play on paper doesn't hurt.

Taking that thought process a step further writing your own plays is a waste of time if you are looking to improve your offense. Perhaps time is best spent increasing/decreasing players targets to your satisfaction.

I am thinking distances matter. The FOF7 required distance variations or thereabouts are still in force. By the same token throw different patterns in the distance set to keep it fresh to the defense. Use common sense (throw to the high BPR guy deep kind of thing). Don't worry about the squiggly lines, they are just window dressing. But do take note of the weaknesses of defensive plays being used as the play you call is likely to get a dice roll advantage if it hits the weak spot.

Not sure how much of this I believe but its food for thought.

[svendraconian]

Good discussion so far.

I designed my own plays so that I could control the targets even better - control who the top 2 targets are, make sure I have certain positions in protection, even tried to get my "big play" guys more posts and the "get downfield" more slants. All the plays are based on sound NFL concepts (I coach and study this stuff - not saying its perfect, but its based on the right principles).

I think its interesting to think that it might be enough variety in the routes themselves. Maybe I'll go tinker with the individual plays again and see if it has to do with certain receivers running different plays - but running the same route.

The idea that I don't have enough receivers in the same "spot" is very intriguing as well. I assumed that that you wanted to spread out the routes and create space (Triangle reads), but maybe the issue is that you need to "flood" the zones with identical routes.

Looking though the game-logs, I don't ever see a pass going to an outlet receiver. Maybe its my QB? Maybe I don't have good "outlet routes" drawn up. Is anybody else noticing that trend?

Edit: I could have be using too few formations [I designed the plays to feature certain personnel packages] - I'll also look to see if I can add a few more passing formations from my unused plays.

[TAFIV]

I see AI plays where 3 receivers look to be in the same spot on the field. It bothers me, but does it matter? I think designing your own plays is like shooting in the dark right now. Some further guidance from above would be good.

from looking at my playbook the plays that have multiple receivers in the same spot on a play have different length routes to get there so they would be there at different times even if it would only be 0.5 seconds apart could make a difference especially if defense is playing zone because then you have 1 defender having to watch multiple receivers

[Hammer]

I think I am leaning towards it not mattering. We have to remember there are not little men running around. There is a limit to what the coding actually does to represent a real game I suspect. If the history of FOF has taught me one thing it is that this is not real football. Don't study it as such.

[MattG]

If the history of FOF has taught me one thing it is that this is not real football. Don't study it as such.

+100.

[Ned Doolittle]

I am in agremeent with Hanmer. I think a lot of the game is window dressing designed to look like you have more control than you think. I like it for the General Manager aspect but I would never waste the time to design my own plays. I looked at the play design once, it took a long time to set up one play and I decided I wasn't going to do that 100 more times for a full playbook and decided "Rex it is". I don't think I could do a much better job than Rex, at least not enough to justify to time investment.

If you want to control targets, or more specifically control who gets most of the passes - get one elite WR and surround him with low route running guys. I make sure my TE is not a Tony Gonzalez type, i go for TEs who are good in blocking and avoid drops, and that should sway the game to get your elite WR targets and passes. But to go through the trouble of designing plays to influence targets - nope. No thanks. If you have a team of all elite guys or all guys with high route running the ball is gonna get spread around.

[MattG]

If you want to control targets, or more specifically control who gets most of the passes - get one elite WR and surround him with low route running guys. I make sure my TE is not a Tony Gonzalez type, i go for TEs who are good in blocking and avoid drops, and that should sway the game to get your elite WR targets and passes. But to go through the trouble of designing plays to influence targets - nope. No thanks. If you have a team of all elite guys or all guys with high route running the ball is gonna get spread around.

Offensively I think the game is pretty darn good, defensively and substitution wise it's lacking. With that being said you can easily influence who gets more targets just by selecting which letter is first in the pass play...I make sure on my team with a stud X that X is almost always first. For my team when it had two great WR's it was X and Z. When I had a great TE it was Y. You can easily get a stud TE 150 targets with just a few clicks.

[svendraconian]

I went in and modified the gameplan. I was passing very heavily out of 1 formation (4 WR set), pretty close to 1/2 of my passes were from that look. Had a few routes that were a little too heavily used (RB screen being the worst offender). Added some formations, swapped a few plays here and there had great initial results. 2 games with a QB rating over 100 including a 70%, 4 TD, 350 yard performance (easily the best game yet). More testing is needed, but I think variety (formations and routes) is definitely a consideration.

As for the time to create plays... meh. Creating the first few was a little time consuming, but once you hit the rhythm it really isn't bad. Took a little over an hour, maybe an hour and a half to create 150. I'll probably tweak and add some every year as my talent changes.

Too each their own, but I like having some ownership over my plays. Once you learn how to create a play, it's really pretty quick.

[Hammer]

Meanwhile the defense just watches on drinking tea and eating cake, as they just relax in camp.