Nickel Defense

[TheMeat]

In my MP league, I've come to the point this year that I have a very good nickleback, and a very bad WLB. My NB has a 74 in run defense and 70+ ratings in every category. My question is: Is it effective to run a nickel defense the large majority of my plays, and if so what is the upper limit of how much I should use nickel.

I am playing mostly computer teams, only one other human team, and have a very high powered offense, usually finishing top 3 in points scored. This means I am ahead in most games and use a lot of nickel anyways. If I use nickel most or all of the time, will i just get shredded by the run?

[QuikSand]

I think in general, the best guidance in this game is don't overdo anything. if you are running nickel defense the bulk of the time, it's not just that teams will run well against you, but the whole defense will start getting punished for being too predictable.

[TheMeat]

I see, I wasn't too sure if D was like O in that respect, as I definitely learned in my last season that running singleback 80% of the time is not good. Anyone tried running a mostly nickle defense and know where a sweet spot for % might be?

I think this year I will simply up rex's % a bit and start there. It also occurred to me that the aforementioned CB might be better as the FS and my current FS would be better as the nickleman, given that his coverage numbers are a little lower, especially in zone.

After about 30 seasons of SP and MP, I have only just begun tinkering with my defensive gameplan, any general tips or tricks would be appreciated cuz although my knowledge of real football is pretty good, I've come to understand that I can't take that too far in this game.

The re-animated LB thread has also made me think about blitzing and how well it works, when and where to blitz. Does the nickleback still use the WLB % for blitzing? I lowered my blitzing percentages last year by 5-10% in most situations and it seemed to work fairly well with my defense. Maybe because I have a monsterous D-line, 4 guys of 80+. I use that with some pretty mediocre LB's, one 72 ovr and two 48ish guys with low pass rush bars but decent run and zone defending.

Part of all this strategizing is that I traded up pretty high in my recent draft and aquired a 90 ovr SLB with big, mostly red bars all over. my 72 guy left town via free agency. My current aim is to use a high % of nickle, 10-20% over recommended, never blitz the WLB or MLB and blitz the SLB seldomly. Does that seem like a sound gameplan for a team that expects to be ahead most of the time?