Leonidas
11-30-2006, 07:03 AM
A few days ago there was a thread posted about drafting a stud QB and I saw he had very low intelligence and only learned 7 formations and I commented that this kind of scared me. Playing tons of 2k4 during gameplay I always had a sense that a QB with a diverse set of formations tailored to him was more effective than a QB taking over someone elses set of formations. I never recorded any data on it, but I got this feeling because the comments when a backup came in seemed to have a whole lot more of the "defense seemed to know that play was coming" type thing than when the starter was in. I also instinctively felt 12 formations was a kind of magic number to a diverse offense.
So that thread got me to thinking about how to test this with my 20-season test runs. So I took the Carson Palmer-led Bengals I have used so frequently and did some work with that. Palmer is a 71/87 guy in this particular iteration with 15 formations.
I ran a baseline set of seasons with all 15 formations programmed into formation use and utilizing the passing gameplan I developed previously. Something interesting I noted is the performance was down a bit from previous collection on this gameplan. That planted another seed, that since was my first data collection with the latest patch that maybe the new patch has changed defense. I'll test that out some more tonight.
Anyway, I went back and tweaked the gameplan to give Palmer only 8 formations. I gave him the I, I w/2TE, Pro, Weak, Single back, single back w/trips and goalline. From an overall efficiency perspective I didn't notice anything significant. The team won about the same amount of games and scored about the same number of points. However, I did notice a real difference in how the teams got to those wins and points with 15 vs 8 formations. The team running 15 formations passed the ball much more frequently (near 50 more times a year), ran it about 30-40 times a season less. Both teams were using the same basic gameplan, the same run/pass frequency ratios, but were clearly not throwing and running it the same amount of times. So with fewer, more basic formations, the team will run more, pass less.
OK, there may be a critic out there who points out the I didn't leave him the 4-wr or 5-wr spread offenses to throw more. How many guys with less than 10 formations have those offenses? In my experience they almost always start with the basic formations first and acquire the spread offenses later, if they ever learn them at all.
I consider this a mix success. My theory going in is to run a more diverse, pass oriented offense you need more formations. That indeed seems to be the case. But I also felt you should have a more effective offense with more formations. That was not the case as it didn't make a noticeable difference.
So my bottom line recommendation from all this, if you want to run a strong run offense, the number of formations and the IQ scores are pretty much irrelevant. But if you want to run the run and shoot or an old Air Coryell type scheme you might want to consider a guy who can run the appropriate formations for it, or at least has the potential to learn them.
So that thread got me to thinking about how to test this with my 20-season test runs. So I took the Carson Palmer-led Bengals I have used so frequently and did some work with that. Palmer is a 71/87 guy in this particular iteration with 15 formations.
I ran a baseline set of seasons with all 15 formations programmed into formation use and utilizing the passing gameplan I developed previously. Something interesting I noted is the performance was down a bit from previous collection on this gameplan. That planted another seed, that since was my first data collection with the latest patch that maybe the new patch has changed defense. I'll test that out some more tonight.
Anyway, I went back and tweaked the gameplan to give Palmer only 8 formations. I gave him the I, I w/2TE, Pro, Weak, Single back, single back w/trips and goalline. From an overall efficiency perspective I didn't notice anything significant. The team won about the same amount of games and scored about the same number of points. However, I did notice a real difference in how the teams got to those wins and points with 15 vs 8 formations. The team running 15 formations passed the ball much more frequently (near 50 more times a year), ran it about 30-40 times a season less. Both teams were using the same basic gameplan, the same run/pass frequency ratios, but were clearly not throwing and running it the same amount of times. So with fewer, more basic formations, the team will run more, pass less.
OK, there may be a critic out there who points out the I didn't leave him the 4-wr or 5-wr spread offenses to throw more. How many guys with less than 10 formations have those offenses? In my experience they almost always start with the basic formations first and acquire the spread offenses later, if they ever learn them at all.
I consider this a mix success. My theory going in is to run a more diverse, pass oriented offense you need more formations. That indeed seems to be the case. But I also felt you should have a more effective offense with more formations. That was not the case as it didn't make a noticeable difference.
So my bottom line recommendation from all this, if you want to run a strong run offense, the number of formations and the IQ scores are pretty much irrelevant. But if you want to run the run and shoot or an old Air Coryell type scheme you might want to consider a guy who can run the appropriate formations for it, or at least has the potential to learn them.