Double Teaming

[DrAFTjunkie]

Say you're playing a team with one total stud WR (a flanker) and a bunch of average to below average other wideouts...how much is too much to double team the stud? His QB has a 99 in read defense, so am I to assume that the more I double him, the more the QB with throw in the other direction? My pass D is 4th in the league, and they don't have any other real offensive threats, so I'm not too worried about getting picked apart if, but this WR is ripping everybody apart and is on pace for nearly 2,000 yards and I need to focus a lot of attention on him. How much double teaming is too much, and aside from that, are there any other ways to limit this WR?

Thanks

[Yoda]

I honestly believe double teaming has almost no effect until the 4th quarter. Unoffically, i've been keeping track of completions when a player is double teamed when I watch my games. In quarters 1-3, the completion percentage is 78.4%, then in the 4th quarter, it drops to 51% completion. I don't have an explaination on it, and I would take it with a grain of salt, becuse that's just my games. I don't have a parcer for game file, or I'd go through the 10's of thousands of gamelogs I have and get a more accurate number for you.

In the game I just watched, I set the double team top WR to 100% and the QB was 29/33 against me and that WR caught 12/12 passes, 11/11 when double covered.

[DrAFTjunkie]

Yeah, we won the game 38-12. I doubled that top WR (81/81 btw), incrementally increasing the % from 35 in extreme running, to 75 in extreme passing and decreasing the other recieiver from 14 to 0. The top WR didn't have a pass thrown his way in the 1st quarter and finished the 1st half with only 3 catches for 35 yards. They threw 6 passes his way, 5 of which were into double coverage. They also threw 6 passes away from the double coverage, with very little success, as I anticipated. Up 28-3 at the end of the 1st half. So far, so good?

The 2nd half was a totally different story.

We were up big to start the 2nd half, so they were definitely passing a lot more. The top WR caught 6 of 7 passes thrown his way for 161 yards, but only 3 of the passes were thrown into double coverage, resulting in 36 yards. The other 125 yards broke down as follows: 2 passes caught while being single-covered for 23 yards; 3 passes caught on "over the middle of the field" routes for 102 yards, with 67 of those yards being YAC. They also threw 9 passes away from the double coverage, again with very little success.

I don't know what to think of this. They seemed to throw into the double far less, but the top WR completely torched us anyway. Is double coverage n/a on middle of the field patterns. I didn't notice any double-coverage notes in the game logs on these patterns for any of the receivers. Is it possible that their head coach, who is an Excellent offensive playcaller, made the adjustments to find a way around my double coverage with these middle of the field routes?

I've been playing FOF single player since 2001 or 02, and never paid any attention to defensive playcalling. But I'm in MP now, and the team I got is mediocre at best, so I'm looking for any advantage I can get. Defensive playcalling is baffling to me. I planned most of my game around trying to shut down this one WR. He picked up 196 yards and we WON 38-12.

Umm...what?

[bulletsponge]

you won 38-12 be happy and do it again

[Front Office Midget]

When opposing teams have one threat, such as the WR, I usually do a ton of double coverage like you mentioned. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

When that WR has a great day, even with all the double coverage, I generally assume his game would have been even better if he wasn't double covered.

I recently played a game against the best WR in the league, who was really the only threat on offense. Without giving the specifics of my defensive gameplan, we held them (mediocre QB who has some great days and some bad ones) to 20/44 for 217 passing, 1 TD-3 INTs, and the WR was 7/14 for 70 yards. 44-10 playoff victory.