Gaining experience playing out of position

[QuikSand]

Thiss came up in a discussion at IHOF, and I thought it might be worth sharing here. It started with me making an assertion based on some second-hand anecdotal evidence...

- I'm not convinced that playing a safety at CB actually increases his position experience at CB. You would think that it would... I'm not certain that it does. Anyway - my guy in question (S Wynn) played several games as a starting CB this year, and as used as a CB in a lot of situations -- and I don't think I have seen any movement in his position experience there.

and then I put together a very quick study to back up what I believed to be true...encapsulated below:

- - - - -

For what it's worth, I ran a quick season with a couple of young CBs, to see how their visible position experience changed depending on where they were actually being played. (I employ the reshack with the colors enhanced by numbers from 10-100, and am reporting the numbers below, for simplicity)


Joseph Cromartie
LCB RCB FS SS LCB RCB FS SS
Start 40 40 40 40 30 50 30 30
Normal 60 50 40 40 60 70 30 30
RCB/LCB 50 50 40 40 50 60 30 30
FS/SS 50 40 40 40 50 60 30 30


KEY:
Joseph is a natural LCB, Cromartie a RCB... the "start" shows their visible pos exp at the start of the season.
Normal - each guy started (injuries = 0) at his natural position for the full year
RCB/LCB - each guy playsd the opposite CB slot to his natural role
FS/SS - Joseph started at FS, Cromartie started at SS all year

So, from this, it seems to me that:

-A player starting at his normal position gains primary experience right there, and perhaps a lesser amount in a closely related position (here, my LCB also get better at RCB, though by only one tick compared to 2 at LCB)

-A player playing at a closely related position (e.g. LCB slotted at RCB) seems to gain in both his formal position and his played position, but the aggregate change seemingy is not be as much as if he just played his primary position

-A player playing truly out of position (e.g. LCB slotted at FS) seems to still make lesser gains in his formal position, but little or no gains at the position being played (it's possible the gains there are so small as to be unmeasured by the 10-point scale I'm seeing, I suppose)


Just to add to the knowledge base.

[gstelmack]

The interesting (and to me most critical) piece of information there is that if you have a young LCB and want him to gain experience, you are better off with him backing up the starting LCB rather than the RCB.

Or to put it another way, change the guy's position before the first TC to whatever you hope he'll play on your team long-term.

[Fonzie]

Wow. Thanks for sharing this, Quik.

I hope this is a bug, as it is otherwise completely counterintuitive to me. Why would a player not gain experience at a position they are playing regularly?

[cuervo72]

Wow. Thanks for sharing this, Quik.

I hope this is a bug, as it is otherwise completely counterintuitive to me. Why would a player not gain experience at a position they are playing regularly?

The answer probably depends on if you're asking the question logically, or programmatically.

[QuikSand]

Well, reverting to thinking about this purely as a computer game and not football... it's possible that the game simply doesn't capture dateils of number of games/plays played at specific positions. So, the function that results in experience gained woudl just connect to the position where the player is formally listed. However... that wouldn't really explain why the guys playing otuy of position get a different distribution... so I'm at a loss. But my best guess, generally, is this is a function of the data structure, or maybe the limitations imposed by that structure.

I don't see any way to make sense of this in "football player" terms, but I simply don't think that approach is the best one to take with issues like this.

[MizzouRah]

What if at the beginning of the season you change his position to FS or SS, then play him all season at that position?

I know it's hard to explain the latter part of your last message, but I wonder if it is tied to their position "formally"?

[Wolfy]

I have had a fair number of players who seem to gain experience faster at their opposite position.(LGvs RG for example). Seems to happen mostly with OL and WR and even if they only play their "real" position.

After awhile I took it as a sign of better potential and would typically change their position next camp.

[Sgran]

How about this explanation: You haven't changed his position, which means he practices at LCB. Then on Sunday you drop him in at free safety, where it's sink or swim.

[Front Office Midget]

I feel like I've noticed a lot of guys gain experience by starting/backing up outside of their position. For instance, I had an excellent DT who I played at LDE in dime situations, and he was red in LDE after a season or two.

[mmbogle55]

I liked Midget's story-as it mirrors my plan for a rookie this season........

[yabanci]

This doesn't really add much, but it's interesting nonetheless.

In a single player game, I took a screenshot during the draft of a left tackle who was shown as developed only 1% (adjusted rating of 4.9, 11th among offensive tackles). I was curious to see what the bars would end up looking like for a 1% developed player.

Here is the screenshot taken of him while still on the draft board:

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2647/1percentdevelopedadjgradv7.png



As you would expect, his position experience level at LT and all other line positions is 1 (using a 1-10 scale).


Now here is a screenshot of him after camp but before any preseason games have been played (drafted by an AI team):

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6836/1percentdevelopedpostdryb7.png


setting aside the anomaly of a 13/53 player being considered 1% developed, what I found interesting was after camp his position experience stayed the same at his primary position but increased at two other positions.

No position change, no playing time, only a standard training camp, yet he develops at two positions other than his own.

Not sure what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from this.


There was another interesting occurrence during the same solo game. Unfortunately I didn't take an early screenshot of him, but I had a second-year flanker whose position experience was (to the best of my recollection) FL=4 and SE=3 (could have been 4). I sent him to the summer league and this is how he came back. You can see the reason I moved him from flanker to split end:

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6984/baxterpostsummerleaguerq8.png

A flanker goes to the summer league and picks up a bunch of experience at split end. Not really what I had expected.

Again, no answers here, just a couple of things regarding position development that made me scratch my head.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Both of these cases are very interesting. Hmmmm.

[primelord]

Well, reverting to thinking about this purely as a computer game and not football... it's possible that the game simply doesn't capture dateils of number of games/plays played at specific positions. So, the function that results in experience gained woudl just connect to the position where the player is formally listed. However... that wouldn't really explain why the guys playing otuy of position get a different distribution... so I'm at a loss. But my best guess, generally, is this is a function of the data structure, or maybe the limitations imposed by that structure.

I don't see any way to make sense of this in "football player" terms, but I simply don't think that approach is the best one to take with issues like this.

Just as an FYI. The game does capture the exact position each player is in on every play. Now whether it does anything with that data in terms of their experience levels I don't know. However it certainly records on X play that Joe Smith was the RCB or Don Juan was the FS etc etc.

[CraigSca]

And, to throw another fly into the proverbial ointment of this conversation, what about the guy who is rated as a "10" at a particular position who cannot officially be moved to the position (changing to that position isn't given as an option in the drop-down box)?