Advice for pass defense?

[Steelplayer36]

I have read alot on this board, and being a vet from TCY, I thought I should finally try out FOF. After running through about 10 seasons, I started over with a draft, with the sole purpose of building an outstanding defense, to try and combat the obvious flaws in pass coverage. In my 3rd year I won the SB... but not because of my defense... my RB ran for about 200 yards in the game, and we squeaked one out... 4th year this is my defense that got toasted by an average/slightly above average offense. Mind you, this was on easy, and I will have to cut next year as my cap will be WAY over. Just wanted to test this out within the framework of the game...no editing. Cohesion ratings all over 88, and NO confilcts at all.

LDE 61/61
NT 71/71
RDE 82/86

SILB 41/41
WILB 62/72
SLB 78/78
WLB 75/75

CB 88/90
CB 79/79
CB 71/71
FS 86/86
SS 79/79

All the DB's can cover...espeically m2m, and intercept all day long. CB1 led the league in INT's. My RDE lead the leauge in sacks, not too far behind was my WLB (96 PRT and 99 PRS). This defense is stacked, and I always play a gameplan that focuses on stopping the pass. In the Super Bowl the other team threw for 350, ran for 150 and torched this defense like it was nothing. This defense got torched 5 times all year, and oddly enough, never by a great offense. They tended to shut them down. Does a great defense help you win? No doubt. However, something with the engine makes it a crap shoot. You cannot rely on your defense...even with the players I had here, to stop anything. I read the play log, and on several 3rd and long plays where my defense is pass all the way, thay get burned.

I guess my question is, is there any way to make your defense play more consistently? I will always enjoy these games, and will fight to make sense of them as many of you do... but something as glaring as a seeming random diceroll to determine if a pass works, with little regard to the defenders, makes it a little tough.

[Autumn]

I don't have the answers here, I'm still struggling with defenses as well. But I would say one clue is if you're running a gameplan that's geared toward the pass. I've found that nothing very drastic works in gameplanning, ironically you may be making your pass D worse by overemphasizing it. I think the game rewards balance.

That being said there's a lot that's hard to figure out about D. For example my defense often does better shutting down a play if it's in the wrong defense, for example expecting run but the offense passes.

I think that coaching matters a lot, particularly in terms of how well you manage to match your defenses to the offensive plays. And cohesion. My defense has benefited more from those two things than from talent.

[RedKingGold]

To keep it simple: Defense is borked in this latest edition.

Best thing you can do is collect as many red bars as you can, and hope to gain an early advantage to force the other offense into predictable playcalling.

[Sef0r]

To keep it simple: Defense is borked in this latest edition.

Best thing you can do is collect as many red bars as you can, and hope to gain an early advantage to force the other offense into predictable playcalling.

How true is this? I am not challenging you to "prove" this to me, I am just curious. Is it because a 70/70 WR plays at the same level as a 99/99 CB? Meaning that a 80/80 WR will beat the 99/99 CB each time because he is that much better?

Or is this game just generally broken?

[Hammer]

Its not broken, just needs a tweak. The game balance is generally fine. When you get a great offense though, it seems a great defense comes off 2nd best when the two meet. More specifically a great passing offense is too hard to stop in this game.

You can improve your defense by planning and personnel, but not to the same extent as on offense.

Winning seems to be a matter of getting a quality QB and 2 quality WRs. Get red bars in the right place on D as an after thought. You will win a lot of games this way. Naturally though in MP, people are on to this. Thus, the value of elite QBs is sky high as you would expect, but WRs are sky high also. More than they should be, due to their increased importance in FOF compared with real life.

In real terms this doesn't spoil the game at all. In MP most people realise the importance of WRs, so getting the elite QBx1 and WRx2 isn't easy at all.

[Sef0r]

Does a really good pass rush make a difference to a team with a great QB, WRx2 combo? I will have to look at the MP league I am in and check game logs to see if a team with a good combo but weak line do THAT well.

[Hammer]

QB sense rush is a massive factor. Very roughly speaking, I'd estimate about as important as the 5 offensive line positions combined.

A good pass rush helps for sure, but again, not as much as it should.

[flair1234]

I don't think defense is as broke as most think.

In the NFL to make stops defenses need to make plays. By plays I mean sacks, tackles for losses, and turnovers. Those types of plays do not occur during every set of downs.

The other thing that stops offenses are bad throws and penalties.

Even a great defense will have trouble winning a game by themselves against an average offense; if the average offense avoids making stupid mistakes.

For a real life example of great defense vs. simply a good offense, look no further than this years superbowl. The Steelers offense had to have an above average day to beat the Cardinals. The Stealers defense did not play bad... but in the 2nd half the Cardinals offense simply played well (but not great).

I think this game mimicks that well. You need your playmakers on defense to mke plays.

[markusg77]

For me the most obvious sign that passing is way too easy in FOF2007 are the pure stats.
E.g. in my most recent SP league in the first 8 years, six times a QB passed for more than 5000 yards, with 3 passers topping 5000 in one year.

How many times did it happen in real life? Twice - Marino in 1984 and Brees in 2008. Most of the best of the best were able to do it (Manning, Brady, Young, Montana, Elway, Aikman, Fouts, Moon, Favre, Warner...).

By the way none of the QBs who went over 5000 was on my team, they're all on CPU controlled teams.

[Chubby]

I don't think defense is as broke as most think.

In the NFL to make stops defenses need to make plays. By plays I mean sacks, tackles for losses, and turnovers. Those types of plays do not occur during every set of downs.

The other thing that stops offenses are bad throws and penalties.

Even a great defense will have trouble winning a game by themselves against an average offense; if the average offense avoids making stupid mistakes.

For a real life example of great defense vs. simply a good offense, look no further than this years superbowl. The Steelers offense had to have an above average day to beat the Cardinals. The Stealers defense did not play bad... but in the 2nd half the Cardinals offense simply played well (but not great).

I think this game mimicks that well. You need your playmakers on defense to mke plays.


The Cardinals weren't an average offense or just a good defense.

[flair1234]

The Cardinals weren't an average offense or just a good defense.

I said the Cardinals were a "good" offense. They were by no means a great one.