Effect on stats of "familiar" offensive plays

[QuikSand]

In thinking a little bit about how some of my recent multi-player games have unfolded, I realize that there's an undercurrent of FOF stats, on both the team and individual level, that is frustrating.

We know that in certain circumstances, a play is noted as being "familiar" to the defense (I don't have the exact wording, I think there may be degrees of this). I don't claim to know exactly what goes into the determination of the "familiar" play flag -- whether it has anything at all to do with the players and their skills (like play diagnosis, perhaps?) but somehow, that label gets triggered. And we know that it is *impossible* for any play to really succeed (i.e. in gain a first down, make substantial yardage... some definition of play success that probably meshes with that we discussed in the extensive KRB thread)

Anyway, it seems clear to me that what is happening in that circumstance, if the play was familiar, then it fails. Incomplete pass, or lousy yardage run. Period.

My problem here isn't that this happens - it's that in such plays, we end up seeing a description and stat attribution as if the players really carried out the play in a certain fashion. A CB is credited with making a "pass defensed" for that play -- but I believe that what happened was that the play was just pre-destined to fail, and the game conjured up some stat to explain why it failed. Or, even more oddly, we see that a sure-handed receiver "simply dropped the ball" on a familiar play -- which makes even less sense to me.

Ideally, I think we'd have a purer sense of individual stats if we were able to peel out (or at least under-weight) any individual numbers that arise from such plays. If my opponent is running a dumb offense and calling the same play time and time again -- my DBs might start racking up tons of "passes defensed" and look like stars, and their receivers might rack up lots of extra drops, when these results really weren't about those players at all, they were just about the predictability of the offense. I don't know exactly what would be the right way to handle something like this, but it seems to me that we have some apples and oranges buried in the individual stats resulting from this game element.


In the past, there have been third-party utilities that parsed game logs and looked for trends by style of play, formation, etc. Clearly some people still have that sort of capacity in the new game with whatever file structure it employs.

I wonder if such a utility would be terribly hard to assemble? Would it be worthwhile, or is this just too picayune to worry about?

[jkat]

Once a defense is familiar with a play you can still have successes with it. The more familiar they are the rarer it may be, but it can still happen.

As far as the notation, what actually happens is that when a play is a failure the game will note that the defense looked familiar with the play. On successful plays it won't be listed. Calling your team's plays and just using a specific one over and over you'll still see the occasional completion after the defense is extremely familiar even though the quarterback may go 3/25. Those completions, and quarterback scrambles, won't have the defense being familiar with the play listed.

It's not that the plays have to fail but rather, mainly when you reach very/extremely familiar, the ratings, or a coefficient in the equations, change to a point that allows the play almost no chance of success. While a receiver may usually catch all the passes thrown his way he may only catch 1/3 or 1/4 of the few passes that make it to him when the defense is extremely familiar.

Just quickly going through a game calling the same run play, out of over 20 plays after the defense way extremely familiar there were two plays that it wasn't listed a 2 yard gain and a 4 yard gain. It may be basically doomed to fail, considering over 90% of the plays were less than a two yard gain, but it isn't just generating stats after deciding the outcome, there is still some chance of the play being successful.

[Subby]

What makes up a "play"? Run/Pass + Formation + Run Direction/Pass Distance?

In other words, is the defense extremely familiar with me running outside the left tackle out of the Weak 2 TE formation or is there something else there with which the defense becomes familiar?

[gstelmack]

In the past, there have been third-party utilities that parsed game logs and looked for trends by style of play, formation, etc. Clearly some people still have that sort of capacity in the new game with whatever file structure it employs.

I wonder if such a utility would be terribly hard to assemble? Would it be worthwhile, or is this just too picayune to worry about?

One of these days I'll get done with the WOOF website stuff and get around to asking Celeval for and update on the details of the Solevision files. I've got most of it, just not the details of the actual plays. I'm waiting for me to actually have time to do anything with it.

[QuikSand]

Thanks, jkat, that was the sort of insight that I just wasn't able to come up with.

[MalcPow]

Thanks, jkat, that was the sort of insight that I just wasn't able to come up with.

+1

Edit to add: Have you done anything similar from the defensive side jkat? Calling the same pass defense over and over, or blitzing the same player? I know there's some speculation from the fix list for 6.1 that the penalty for failing to vary coverage schemes was nerfed a bit. Just curious if you had any insight or had spotted any trends on that side of the ball.

[OldSchool]

"It isn't just generating stats after deciding the outcome, there is still some chance of the play being successful."

Interesting, I'd always assumed it was generating stats after the play as well.