Blocking Strength and The Rushing Game

[sabotai]

Most people I have seen have speculated that Blocking Strength does not play a role in the rushing game. Since I've never seen any hard results on this, I did a small test (took about 2 hours) to look at how BS affected the rushing game.

I had all of the offensive linemen on the team set to 9 in Run Blocking. I did 10 seasons with them at 1 Blocking Strength, 10 seasons at 4 and 10 seasons at 9.

With the BS set at 1, the team rushing stats were:
4426 rushes, 18695 yards, 4.22 YPC

With BS set to 4, the team rushing stats were:
4378 rushes, 17969 yards, 4.10 YPC

With BS set to 9, the team rushing stats were:
4667 rushes, 19677 yards, 4.22 YPC

Keep in mind, I had the team set to have the AI set the game plan.

The YPC was actually the highest with blocking strength at 1 (4.2239 vs. 4.2162 at 9). Based on this small test, I'd say it points to the speculators being right. It would seem that BS does not have an effect on the rushing game.

[Cap Ologist]

I'm confused, are you talking about playing time when you say you set it to 1, 4, 9 or am I missing something here.?

[sabotai]

No, in the player file itself (when you create a new game, it asks you if you want to use an alternate player file. These are the files I'm talking about.). Each player in this file has a value for overall ability and each attribute. You can give an individual rating a value of 1-9 (1 = worst, 9 = best) or a 0. When you create a new game with this player file, it will then generate ratings for each player based on the 1-9 (or 0) value. When a player if given a 0 for an attribute, it uses the player's overall rating to create the value.

If it helps, think of this way.

With the offensive linemen all having a very low blocking strength value, the team rushing stats were:
4426 rushes, 18695 yards, 4.22 YPC

With the offensive linemen all having a moderate blocking strength value, the team rushing stats were:
4378 rushes, 17969 yards, 4.10 YPC

With the offensive linemen all having a very high blocking strength value, the team rushing stats were:
4667 rushes, 19677 yards, 4.22 YPC

[jbmagic]

thanks for the test.

good infomation


so what do you think Blocking strength affects? less sacks when passing?

[Cap Ologist]

Oh, ok, I didn't realize that was what you were doing.

[cthomer5000]

how were the sack #'s in these tests?

[sabotai]

so what do you think Blocking strength affects? less sacks when passing?

My guess is that, as I have seen people say before, Pass Blocking is matched up with a defender's Pass Rush Technique and that Blocking Strength matches up with Pass Rush Strength. So that it would have an effect on sacks and hurries.

I'll need to think of a way to test that thoery out though.

[sabotai]

how were the sack #'s in these tests?

I didn't check. I'll try to think of a quick test to run for pass block and block strength.