"Era Specific" Ratings - Anyone ever tried?

[legendsport]

I'm wondering if anyone's ever tried to make a more "era-specific" ratings file. What I mean by this - and this is my particular interest in asking - is whether it's possible to create ratings to mirror the way football was played in the late 50s, early 60s.

I'm not talking about two-way, iron-man stuff, but rather run-heavy, poor passing offense.

If for argument's sake, it's possible to get the lower completion rate, higher interception rates of the era by giving QBs lower ratings.

Anyone ever tried this?

I'm interested in possibly (I know it'd be a lot of work) rating players this way for my 'Blood n' Guts' football dynasty (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=63524), which may end up being an MP league down the road. For that I'm already planning on adding in more real college-graduated players as well as CFL guys to round out the 1960 player pool with exclusively real people. To that end, I'm "pre-simming" the 1956-59 seasons for the NFL, NCAA and CFL. I'll use those stats as history and potentially (in the case of NCAA/CFL) for ratings purposes. This could be very cool if it works out the way I'm envisioning. Check out the dynasty for more info - or the still under construction website (http://bag.simsportleagues.com).

Thanks in advance for any advice or feedback.

[Ben E Lou]

I'm wondering if anyone's ever tried to make a more "era-specific" ratings file. What I mean by this - and this is my particular interest in asking - is whether it's possible to create ratings to mirror the way football was played in the late 50s, early 60s.

I'm not talking about two-way, iron-man stuff, but rather run-heavy, poor passing offense.

If for argument's sake, it's possible to get the lower completion rate, higher interception rates of the era by giving QBs lower ratings.

Anyone ever tried this?

I'm interested in possibly (I know it'd be a lot of work) rating players this way for my 'Blood n' Guts' football dynasty (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=63524), which may end up being an MP league down the road. For that I'm already planning on adding in more real college-graduated players as well as CFL guys to round out the 1960 player pool with exclusively real people. To that end, I'm "pre-simming" the 1956-59 seasons for the NFL, NCAA and CFL. I'll use those stats as history and potentially (in the case of NCAA/CFL) for ratings purposes. This could be very cool if it works out the way I'm envisioning. Check out the dynasty for more info - or the still under construction website (http://bag.simsportleagues.com).

Thanks in advance for any advice or feedback.

You'd have to create draft files for each season, because otherwise your league would eventually have a modern talent pool, but creating the initial file would be terribly difficult. I just spent less than 10 minutes altering the default player file, setting all QBs, TEs and WRs to "Roster Filler," and improving the RB/OL talent. It resulted in a league with significantly more running than passing (of course teams trailing threw more), and the top QB having only a 86.7 rating. 19 teams averaged 30 or more rushes per game, compared with only seven (all with losing records) averaging 30 or more passes per game. The key would be keeping the QB/TE/WR talent low, and the RB/OL talent high in the draft files. Rex will take care of the game plans pretty well. Just looking at one, he recommends 64/15/21 on 1st and 10 with a team in this league, 95% running on 3rd and 1, and even on third and long, no less than 24% running in any box.

[legendsport]

You'd have to create draft files for each season, because otherwise your league would eventually have a modern talent pool, but creating the initial file would be terribly difficult. I just spent less than 10 minutes altering the default player file, setting all QBs, TEs and WRs to "Roster Filler," and improving the RB/OL talent. It resulted in a league with significantly more running than passing (of course teams trailing threw more), and the top QB having only a 86.7 rating. 19 teams averaged 30 or more rushes per game, compared with only seven (all with losing records) averaging 30 or more passes per game. The key would be keeping the QB/TE/WR talent low, and the RB/OL talent high in the draft files. Rex will take care of the game plans pretty well. Just looking at one, he recommends 64/15/21 on 1st and 10 with a team in this league, 95% running on 3rd and 1, and even on third and long, no less than 24% running in any box.

Yeah, I'd be creating draft files for each year - probably taking what others have already done, tweaking down the passing stuff and adding in some CFL players and using the NCAA results from 3-in-1 as a basis for getting more real college players into the pool.

Thanks for the test run, it sounds like I can do it - although as you said, it'd be a lot of work.

[legendsport]

Did a little research to compare 1960 with 2007 and came up with these numbers, which are kind of interesting:

G Comp Att Pyards Pct PTD Int YPA Rate Rush Ryds RTD Ravg
1960 12 13.2 26.4 170.6 50.2 1.4 1.8 5.9 59.9 32.6 133 1.0 4.1

2007 16 20.4 33.3 214.3 61.1 1.4 1.0 6.0 81.5 27.3 111 0.8 4.1

These are the per game averages for all teams over the 1960 and 2007 seasons respectively. As you can see, the TD rate from the passing game is pretty much exactly the same now as it was back then (these numbers are rounded it was actually 1.417 in 1960 and 1.406 in 2007, so 1960 QBs actually threw slightly MORE TDs than today's guys), but modern QBs complete about 7 more passes per game (and throw about 7 more times as well) while throwing significantly fewer INTs.

The differences on the ground aren't that dramatic. 1960 teams ran more (5 times per game more) and punched it in via the run more often, but the average per rush is the same.

What I'm getting from this is that maybe in addition to tweaking the offensive passing ratings for QBs and receivers down, maybe the pass defense ratings should be tweaked upward. I don't think that the QBs of that era were that much worse than today, necessarily, but game planning was slanted against the pass - especially short passing and the rules definitely favored the defense.

I will probably mess around and see if I can duplicate the 1960 type of offense for my Blood n' Guts league/dynasty. Worst-case scenario is I still use my real CFL & College guys to round out the player pool, but everyone gets magically boosted into a modern offensive environment.