The FOF2K7 Hundred Little Things Thread.

[Ben E Lou]

Credit to QuikSand for the seed that germinated this idea. We were chatting yesterday and he made a comment about there being a bunch of "little things" that help or hurt you in FOF2K7. That thought really reasonated with me, and it occurred to me that we've never done something that I've seen done on boards for other games: a "tips and tricks" thread. So I thought I'd start one.

First off, the idea is for someone to be able to read through the thread quickly and grab little "nuggets," not to have to read through a bunch of discussion. Therefore, here are the "ground rules" I'd like for folks to use in this thread:
Post your "little thing" as one succinct boldfaced sentence at the beginning of your post. If you need to elaborate on it, do so in normal text, like this. The person looking for quick tips can skip all this explanation stuff.
This thread isn't the place to discuss these tips and tricks. If you disagree with something posted, or want clarification, hit the quote button, copy the quote, and paste it into a new thread.
It would be great if you'd use one of the headers below, capitalized, at the beginning of your "little thing." If this thread takes off, having the headers will make it easier to consolidate this stuff one day.
OFFENSE

DEFENSE
SPECIAL TEAMS
CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT
INJURY MANAGEMENT
DRAFTING

GENERAL/MISC

This thread isn't the place to discuss these tips and tricks. Yes, I know I posted this twice. That's for emphasis. Again, if you have questions or comments, put them somewhere else.
Your "little thing" can range anywhere from 'newbie pointers' to 'a subtle thing that even the best players might not know.' Don't be shy.

[Ben E Lou]

OFFENSE: If you have a good receiving tight end, be sure to adjust your formation usage to get him on the field on passing plays.


Using the recommended formations, your TE is likely to be on the field only around 65-70% of the times you throw the ball. In the WOOF last year, I adjusted formations a good bit, and my best TE had 73 catches for 1018 yards. He also averaged 10.39 yards per target--good for a tie for 3rd-best in the league among ALL receivers. Indeed, four of the top 15 yards per target guys in the league were TEs. When considering how much to use the strong/weak 3WR sets, a good question to ask is "who would I rather have on the field--my WR3, or my TE?" And when considering how much to use the single back 4WR and 5WR sets, a good question to ask is "who would I rather have on the field, my WR 4 and/or 5, or my TE?"

[flair1234]

SPECIAL TEAMS: It is probably worth it to have at least one player on your roster dedicated to special teams; meaning he may be a scrub in every other rating, but outstanding in special teams (70+).

I have had guys getting 3-4 tackles a game which I think is outstanding.

[QuikSand]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: Make two offers to your drafted rookies - a first offer during the second FA stage that you hope they accept, and then the shorter/richer offer just before training camp

Drafted rookies *always* prefer the last of the 2 or 4 contracts that are available to be offered to them -- the shorter duration, but the greater money. This offer will be accepted, period.

For early round picks, I immediately make my "optimistic" offer the short-duration, lower-money offer, and get a fair share to accept it. Some will reject it, but I *know* they will accept the short/rich contract offer before camp, so I just mentally set aside the funds I'll need when planning other contracts under the salary cap.

[Subby]

OFFENSE: Maximize your team's yards per carry by heavily weighting run direction preferences to the outside edges of the offensvie line - e.g. 20-20-5-5-5-5-20-20.

[stevew]

DEFENSE(3/4): The WLB Blitzes every down.

Therefore, the most important ratings for a 3/4 WLB are primarily going to be his blitzing ratings. You don't need to overspend on one that is good in coverage. If you can find a lesser overall player available with strong blitzing ratings, he's usually a much better value for this particular defense.

[RedKingGold]

DRAFTING: Drafting a quarterback with a high Solecismic score but low intelligence usually means the quarterback is very good at avoiding interceptions (a hidden rating)

[QuikSand]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: Since players become unrestricted in their fifth year, manage contracts with restricted free agents to end either after year three, or to extend past year four.

Other than young players with huge breakouts or very high skills, young players will have fairly modest contract demands. While they are restricted, there is no competition, and you get to work with their demands as much as you like. Most of these young players are open to varying contract lengths - even if they are asking for only one year, they will usually accept three.

For players like these, especially in competitive multi-player leagues, do not sign a contract that runs through year four and ends then. You're missing out on the free, cheap, no-competition years you get from being in the restricted period. Take full advantage, and sign them for years four, five, and six all at once.

[PiemasterUK]

DRAFTING - Just like in the NFL, to get a blue-chip Quarterback, Running Back, Cornerback, Defensive End or Defensive Tackle, you will probably have to use a first round pick.

At the other end of the scale, top-rated Kickers, Punters, Full Backs, Centres and Guards regularly fall into rounds 3 and 4. Other positions fall somewhere in between.


INJURY MANAGEMENT - If you carry only three Quarterbacks and one gets injured, you need to manually set your depth chart in order to field a legal team.

Your third string Quarterback is allowed to have a status of 'Out', but your Coach won't assign him that position himself. If you have the 'coach resets depth chart prior to each game' option enabled, you will have to disable it and manually assign your injured QB to the 3rd string position until he returns to at least 'Doubtful' status. Otherwise you will get an error message that your depth chart is not full every time you try to start a game.

[MartinD]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: If you're not struggling for cap room in the current year, offering 'flat salary' multi-year deals to restricted free agents or when renegotiating can provide significant cap savings in future years.

From experience, a player will normally accept a contract with a similar level of bonus and a salary in each year slighly less than the year 2 salary in the proposed deal that comes up when you go into the 'make contract offer' screen.

Example with made-up numbers:

'Standard' requirements ($28m over 5 years):
Bonus $5m
Salary $1m/$4m/$5m/$6m/$7m

Alternative ($23.5m over 5 years):
Bonus $5m
Salary $3.7m/year for 5 years

While this type of contract takes up more cap space in the first year, it is much more cap-efficient further down the line (particularly on 5- and 6-year deals).

I don't have a lot of experience of dealing with free agency (as I don't normally use FA much if I can help it...), so I don't know how this type of contract offer will work if trying to sign a free agent.

[Ben E Lou]

DEFENSE: In "neutral" situations such as 1st and 10, consider avoiding the risk-taking of aggressive defensive calls.

In other words, it might be a good idea to be just a little wrong than to be terribly wrong. It's especially risky to use run aggressive in neutral situations. If the other team calls a long pass on 1st and 10 and you happen to be in run aggressive....look out.

[Ben E Lou]

SPECIAL TEAMS: Don't neglect long snapping and kick holding.

It's easy to forget to get guys who have good skill in these two areas, but don't. Players with these skills are plentiful. Get them, because there aren't many things in FOF more frustrating than losing a big game because of a bad snap or hold.

[Ben E Lou]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: You cannot carry salary cap room forward to the next year, so use it.

The economics of FOF MP are such that there's more cap room than there are good players available. This can and does drive up the price significantly for players. Ignore what the player requests, and think in terms of what percentage of your available cap room he's worth to you.

[Ben E Lou]

INJURY MANAGEMENT: Clicking on a player's injury on his player card will tell you whether or not he's a risk for re-injury, and how likely it is that he'll be re-injured.

[Ben E Lou]

DRAFTING: A player's performance at the combine is usually a much better indicator of how good he is than the bars you see.

[adubroff]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: Consider the role you have in mind for a player for the upcoming season when negotiating a player. If he is likely to start for the first time it's often good to extend the player a bit. If he was an unexpected starter who you expect to return to bench duty, then it often makes sense not to extend a player.

[adubroff]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: Loyal players can save you large amounts of cap space over the course of a career.

[stevew]

DRAFTING/CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: Pertaining primarily to RB's. Players picked 1-11 in the first round can be offered up to a 6 year rookie deal. Players picked 12-32 can only be offered up to a 5 year deal.

If you are selecting a RB in the first round of the draft, it is almost always worth moving up to take him in the top 11. And it's probably worth a prolonged contract hold out as well to get him into a 6 year deal. RB's tend to deteriorate quite a bit faster than other positions, so if you can do 6 + 1(franchise) you'll save a great deal of money over his 7 most valuable years.

[adubroff]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: When signing an undrafted rookie, it's often wise to give him 2 years at the minimum and 20k bonus as it will make him eligible for summer league should he make your squad.

[Anthony]

DRAFTING/CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: rather than fill your squad out with just any ole player that you know you would hesitate to use in even a dire situation, at least pick up guys who specialize in Special Teams. Or put another way - if you're gonna have scrubs, at least have as many scrubs as possible that can at least contribute on special teams.

having a good handful of guys with excellent special teams ratings will do wonders for you. they'll assist in better field positioning when you return kicks, and increase the odds of downfield tackles to give the other team poorer field positioning. you can have the best defense in the league, but if your special teams is consistently allowing good starting position then you're starting off at a big disadvantage.

[QuikSand]

GENERAL/MISC: If you want to have good chemistry effects for your team, make an effort to get players with a high personality rating as your position group leaders.

The strength of affinity (and conflict) for a given player is a function of his personality score and that for the group leader. If your leader has a fairly low personality, any efforts you make toward strong chemistry effects will be seriously limited. Securing players who can serve for some time as leaders with high personality can make a nice anchor for chemistry-based additions later on.

[tarcone]

GENERAL/MISC: In the Trade Information screen, if you right click on a player it brings up his bars, vitals and key stats.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

SPECIAL TEAMS: Avoid the temptation to skimp on special teams in training camp.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

GENERAL/MISC: Avoid trades that result in small increases in player talent but which will greatly reduce team cohesion.

Cohesion is often overlooked by those new to the game. Trading a veteran who is still getting it done to upgrade slightly on talent can often result in a net loss of performance due to the hit on cohesion. The longer the guy has played for your team, the bigger the hit when you trade him. However, when starting a team rebuild, this is not so important as you have to start some time in bringing in newer, younger talent.

[Ben E Lou]

INJURY MANAGEMENT: Do NOT let a player with a concussion play unless you're prepared to lose him for the rest of his career.

There's a very high chance of re-injury, and that re-injury usually is the end of the player's career.

[QuikSand]

GENERAL/MISC: Mentoring a young player helps his development only during his first three seasons, and only if both the player and mentor are on the active roster.

This was pretty rigorously tested and pinpointed for FOF 2004, and I think the community has basically assumed that it continues to work the same way, in the absence of anything to say otherwise. I also think it's unclear whether a mentor (or young player) on the injured reserve list still fulfills the mentoring relationship - most (myself included) suspect he does not.

[QuikSand]

GENERAL/MISC: If you use an add-on feature to apply numbers to the positional experience window for a player, be careful not to read too much into those numeric values.

One of the popular add-ons to the game adds a decile score like 70 or 90 to these positional grades, making it easier to see the experience level. But that makes it very easy to start thinking of this as something like "% effectiveness" and to start thinking that you can now calculate that your 50/50 rated center, if placed at left guard where is is tagged as a 70 experience, will become essentially a 35/35 player by "multiplying through."

I think the fact is that nobody this side of Ann Arbor has much of any clear sense how much is lost due to a lowered positional experience ratings. It might be as simple as the above, but it's brutally tough to try to test, and I don't think anyone has come up with anything empirical.

Probably best to use the numbers as a comparative guide, rather than thinking it's now a simple mathematical exercise to know how well a player will perform out of position.

[Ben E Lou]

DRAFTING: If you're consistently getting a very high percentage of "Very Overrated" results, it's not because your scout is bad or something is wrong with the game.

It's because you're interviewing a disproportionate percentage of players who aren't as good as their initial bars would suggest. Change Tracker 2 has made it easy to study draft classes. Roughly 1/3 of rookies are better than their initial future potential (underrated/very underrated). Roughly 1/4 are pretty much as-is (as scouted). Roughly 40-45% are worse than their initial future potential (overrated/very overrated).

[QuikSand]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: If you're in a MP league competing for a free agent, think in terms of bonus/year and salary/year, in that order.

Left to their own devices, most players in FOF evaluate free agent contracts basically in these terms, with bonus being weighted at least twice as highly as salary. Early salary is better than late, but it's the "bonus per year" (spread over the contract length) that matters most of all to the player, and very often helps to explain odd contract selection decisions (like players taking a rich one year deal over a richer multi year deal, or a deal worth apparently less than another offer of equal duration).

[flair1234]

Drafting- Don't be afaraid to go down the list for the player that you want.

If you see a guy during your scouting that has bars you like with good combine scores, is very underated; don't be afraid to jump down and grab him, even if the bureau ratings have few players rated higher than him. This seems to be dubly rtue with MP leagues.

[Daimyo]

DRAFTING: The game uses the draft pick value chart for trades involving draft picks.

example of chart here: hxxp://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/draft06/news/story?id=2410670

AFAIK it will never accept a deal unless the total value received by the ai exceeds or equals the value given up by the AI. You can use the chart to make efficient trades. For future year draft picks it still uses points... perhaps estimating an expected draft position? Teams value their future picks differently.

[Ben E Lou]

INJURY MANAGEMENT: Be extremely careful about playing guys with knee injuries that have a chance of re-injury. The re-injuries are often long-term injuries that sometimes come with a severe ratings reduction.

[Ben E Lou]

GENERAL/MISC: If you have the AI set to handle depth charts, the AI may decide to do position-switches for you at training camp. When I'm playing SP and using AI depth charts, I always turn the AI handling off before training camp, and then turn it back on immediately afterward.

[MalcPow]

GENERAL/MISC: Age matters. A player's birth year is not simply cosmetic. Although it plays a less important role than years of experience when it comes to development and retirement, it is still a factor in determining when your guy will reach his peak or hang them up. It's not uncommon to see a very highly rated draft prospect that is nearly fully developed but also four or five years older than his class peers, be aware you could be getting a guy who will consider spending more time with his family sooner than his league tenure might imply.

[Ben E Lou]

OFFENSE: Running the ball more often and effectively will increase the efficiency of your passing game.

[apollo_tsg]

DRAFTING: right click a person you plan on drafting, his name will be changed to red so you can find them faster during the draft.

[Ben E Lou]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: In a competitive Multiplayer League, it's almost always a good idea to use the Franchise Tag on *someone* on your team.

This applies to any player who could start for any team at any position. If you let him become a FA, you'll often end up paying more for him than the franchise salary, or not being able to keep him at all because you got outbid.

Even if you know you're not going to want to keep the player around, or you think he's not worth a Top 5 salary, in nearly all cases one of other 31 human owners will give you at worst a late round pick for him. That's better than the alternative: getting absolutely nothing for him.

[strait8]

When signing scouts I always do that in phase one of staff signing. There are only so many good ones to go around. I always bid max for the best and some times I get them'.

For HC OC and DC I wait till stage three. I find there is invariably a lot of very skilled coaches unsigned and with out offers. At that stage you can offer an OC asking for $5 Million about $1.5 million and sign for 5 years. They will jump at this.This is a good way to keep coaching costs down.

[tarcone]

GENERAL/MISC.: In the Offensive Game Plan Adjustments screen, never put Never in any slot under Go 4th Down. Leave it at least 5%.

I ran into a situation where I had it listed at Never. Late in the 4th quarter of a playoff game down by 1. At my 25 yard line we punted on 4th down. Ending my season. Put 5% if your nervous.

[Ben E Lou]

OFFENSE: Look at the league-wide stats for clues on areas where the recommended game planning options may not be the best way to go.

The most obvious one of these is inside running, as Subby mentioned earlier in this thread. I just opened a savegame with default roster sets. A the end of 2008, league-wide ypc on runs to the left was 4.41, right was 4.39, but middle was only 3.79. It requires no testing at all to know that it's a good idea to run outside more than recommended.

[Geldo]

Thought this attachment might be a nice summary of all the excellent posts so far.

I collected them all, put them into categories and saved them as a pdf.

I have credited everyone involved since the expertise is your's/their's and not mine.

Hope this helps anyone who wants a roundup of every post so far in an indexed easy-to-follow single file.

Geldo

[Ben E Lou]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT: Unless your league forces longer signings, there is *never* a good reason to offer an undrafted rookie a contract that's longer than one year.

1. Your longer term deal will lose out to someone else's one-year deal.
2. You can re-sign him next season, usually for minimum salary.

[Ben E Lou]

GENERAL/MISC
It is *extremely* rare that there is a good reason to build a new stadium in MP. Renovate.

Perhaps at some point this will change, but this is just plain imbalanced right now, tilted heavily toward renovation being the way to go. When I say "extremely" rare there, I mean: "I can't think of a scenario why you'd want to build a new stadium, but maybe one exists..."

[gstelmack]

GENERAL/MISC
It is *extremely* rare that there is a good reason to build a new stadium in MP. Renovate.

Perhaps at some point this will change, but this is just plain imbalanced right now, tilted heavily toward renovation being the way to go. When I say "extremely" rare there, I mean: "I can't think of a scenario why you'd want to build a new stadium, but maybe one exists..."

I agree, with the caveat that the one reason is to get a roof on it if you hate bad weather games.

[QuikSand]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT

If your team is dealing with serious salary cap issues, be wary of later round draft picks. Since the 6.3patch cycle, late-round draft picks are substantially more costly than the rookie minimum salary. Even Mr. Irrelevant will cost something like 30% more than the minsal guys available afterward.

[QuikSand]

GENERAL/MISC

Every player on your roster should make a contribution. If he's not good enough to be active to develop or play, then consider whether he ought to be replaced with a guy who can help with mentoring, cohesion, or chemistry.


Expanded version:

On just about any team, you're bound to be carrying 7 inactive players, and probably a few more that will really not contribute very much on the field. Think about what these guys are doing for you. Are they developing into useful players someday? Are they useful as fill-ins for injuries? If so, that's fine. If not, why are they on your roster? Would you be better off with guys who served some other role, like being a mentor? Affinity group leader? Long term cohesion guy? Strong affinity contributor? Guys on the bench *can* help your team, and unless your roster is super super deep with great potential, the opportunity cost of getting value from these roster spots is often next to nothing.

[stevew]

During the season, in order to fill spots for injured players, look to sign players with 2 or 3 years of experience. In SP, the AI tends to release several of the 28/40 types.

Plus you get the first opportunity to sign these guys the following offseason

[QuikSand]

CONTRACTS/CAP MANAGEMENT

Early in the offseason, here's a great way to get a quick snapshot of your roster:

Open the roster, under "Scout Overview," and then do these ordered sorts:

Current Estimate
Position
Starting

This gives you a nice, layered look at the guys you have on your roster to start the new season. At the top will be the guy slotted as starters at the end of last season, whether signed or not. Then you will see all the players who are still under contract, sorted by position. Then, you will see all your free agents, sorted by position. Pretty handy way to see where you have needs, and to get a general lay of the land for the offseason ahead.