aston217
11-16-2010, 02:06 AM
I have a SP game I'm in Season Five of, and thought I'd throw this out there. Could be nothing, but it was just interesting to me. If anyone's interested in a little story...read on.
I inherited a Top 5 or so QB in his 7th year (67/67; he's 31 now in his 11th year and I don't think that rating has changed), as well as an elite young WR (75/75 now in his 7th year), with whom I've paired another pretty good one (58/58 in his 4th). Had a top pass catching TE, I think, but he's retired now. Anyway, point is the team has been good from the get go, and drafting has gone pretty well. First four seasons were 13-3, 11-5, 15-1, 13-3. 2 Bowl appearances and 1 win. Here's my top QB:
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5279/hutchins.jpg
Pretty good stuff, right? Big red bars, 2-time Super Bowl MVP, 2-time pro bowler, currently the #6 QB by ratings. Gave him a huge contract that would probably have been demanded in real life, and there's 2 more years to go after this one. For those who noticed that he's "unhappy" though and are wondering why: he lost his job this season.
I have a young QB I drafted as Mr. Irrelevant, who is a 2nd-year guy now, and who I've been hoping to groom as my QB of the future, or at least a darn good backup/future trade tender. The guy comes out of the draft with a 96 sense rush bar, and went 10/28->13/30 in camp. He was 25/31 at the beginning of the season, and was the #2 man as a rookie. I got him a small army of QB Mentors for the preseason before cutting most of them. He's at 25/25 now, and what looked like a short/accuracy masked pair has gone away with the disappearing green, but I hope that's not the end of the story with him. Here's Mr. Irrelevant Williams:
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2959/williamsyd.jpg
Now: the story of how in the world did Mr. All-Everything Hutchins lost his job. Just wanted to reiterate that this guy's been real good, or at least I thought.
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/9882/hutchinsstats.jpg
4 straight 4000-yard seasons is nothing to sneeze at, at all. Winningest, and most yards of any QB in the league, although picks weren't extremely low. He won a championship in 2012, and had his highest rated season yet in 2013. Something that jumped out at me that year though, was he had three really bad games (0TD-4INT, 0TD-4INT, 0TD-3INT). I don't remember if there was any story there with gameplanning; I think they were just off days. Of course, he made up for them with a ton of money games.
2014, though, a different story. He started out fine, but was injured early (mild, knee). He was knocked out of the 2nd game (well, downgraded to 'questionable' with a chance of reinjury, so I sat him). His backup played well in his absence, so I let him heal all the way back to 100% before putting him back in. He went 25/37, 264, 0TD-1INT in his first game back. 23/39, 336, 2TD-4INT in his second game. At that point, I made the call to go with the #2. I couldn't explain it, but the QBR was too big of a dropoff with Hutchins.
Here's where it gets interesting. The backup though? Not Williams, the young (maybe) future starter with the 96 sense rush rating. Nope, it was one of his ho-hum mentors that I kept as the 3rd QB, before deciding he would be the #2 to begin the season. 5'11, 33-year-old, 12-year-journeyman vet Clyde Banks (33/33):
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/3084/banks.jpg
I kept him because he had bigger bars compared to the other 2 mentors I kept in preseason, and figured he'd be alright in a pinch if Williams was too young just yet. I mean, this guy is a true journeyman: a different team each year I've run this SP game for. He started a full season back in 2011, and it was very forgettable (65.7 QB rating; 15TD, 24 INT).
When Hutchins went down, he went 19/30, 228 yards and a score in relief. The next two games, he had QB ratings of 102 and 142, respectively. The final game of his starting tour of duty had a 97.1 rating; he had 8TDs to 3 picks at this point and was doing very well. I tweaked the gameplan a bit to have some more deep passes, and feature the screens more (since middle-range was his weakness and screens were a strength). One of the early games, the screens were dreadful (9 attempts - average of 1 yard per attempt) - but I stuck with it anyway. This guy, Banks, ended up making most of his hay with some really good deep passing, the times we took shots. After giving Hutchins 2 games back from his injury (I took down the screens back to normal with Hutchins in), I gave Banks the reins for the rest of the year and he delivered. 16-0.
http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/986/banksstats.jpg
He got injured the last game of the season slightly; Hutchins came back, threw one pass, and had it intercepted.
I'm not sure I'm really asking a question here, more just staring in wonderment. I love that the game is built like this, where some aging vet who is rated 33/33 can get a shot after an injury, and just run with it, while Mr. Cover-of-Every-Magazine for most of his starlit career can just inexplicably shut down.
I realize I didn't give Hutchins a ton of time to have some stud games to compensate for the rough ones, but the side-by-side is remarkable.
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/4564/teamstatsz.jpg
33.4 points different in QB rating? Over two yards more in yards per attempt. 67% vs 62% completion percentage. Sure, the roster is really good: but you figure Hutchins would have been able to take more advantage of it, or at least that some low 30's OVR old man wouldn't light it up this way. My scout's QB scouting is "poor" actually, but let's say you apply the +/- 15% range of error that might entail, in the unlikely scenario that Hutchins is overscouted as much as possible and Banks underscouted as much as possible. That means instead of 67 vs 33, we have 57 vs 38. Still a huge difference, and Banks is the older guy here, by two years.
Just for fun, to give a better standard of comparison, I saved a different branch of the game at Week 9 (Banks having had 4 games; Hutchins 3; this was the point where I decided to go with Banks) and simmed three times through the remainder of the season with Hutchins as the starter. The team steamrolled to a Championship victory twice (I didn't do playoffs the third time) time, but Hutchins' QB ratings were 98, 86, and 95. His yards/attempt never approached approached 8.5.
Conclusions? I'd guess that either QB is doing equally well with this team (and Hutchins just had a bad start). Just very surprising considering the difference in OVR between the two players, and the 33/33 guy I picked up this FA could even have the slight edge over the 67/67 4-year starter. Certainly, my "canonical" season played out with some dice rolls to skew it in favor of Banks, but nonetheless it was a fascinating way for the season to go. Now I gotta decide what to do with these guys next year. Gotta wonder what a team would do in real life, if this happened. I suppose, we'll see once the playoffs are done. I'll throw out a poll: what do you think a real GM would do?
* - addenum: while we're talking about interesting, RDE Joe Place, with the 33 tackles, 8.5 sacks and 11 hurries, is a 29-year old BACKUP defensive end in his 9th season, rated 26/30 (since I moved him from LDE to RDE), with 54/64 run defense, 3 PRT, 30 PRS, 15/18 play diagnosis, 9 PH, and 0 endurance. Crap bars mostly. Not a single start the whole year, although he was backing up both sides for a number of games. First year in NE; last year he wasn't on a team. Seriously outperformed the guy in front of him (B. Consing, a 40/43 2nd-year whose stats you can also see there on the team summary. Consing also has 0 endurance, but 87 RD, 14/24 PRT, 13 PRS, 43/58 PD, 60PH). Kinda tangential to t he main topic, but I thought that was real interesting, as well.
I inherited a Top 5 or so QB in his 7th year (67/67; he's 31 now in his 11th year and I don't think that rating has changed), as well as an elite young WR (75/75 now in his 7th year), with whom I've paired another pretty good one (58/58 in his 4th). Had a top pass catching TE, I think, but he's retired now. Anyway, point is the team has been good from the get go, and drafting has gone pretty well. First four seasons were 13-3, 11-5, 15-1, 13-3. 2 Bowl appearances and 1 win. Here's my top QB:
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5279/hutchins.jpg
Pretty good stuff, right? Big red bars, 2-time Super Bowl MVP, 2-time pro bowler, currently the #6 QB by ratings. Gave him a huge contract that would probably have been demanded in real life, and there's 2 more years to go after this one. For those who noticed that he's "unhappy" though and are wondering why: he lost his job this season.
I have a young QB I drafted as Mr. Irrelevant, who is a 2nd-year guy now, and who I've been hoping to groom as my QB of the future, or at least a darn good backup/future trade tender. The guy comes out of the draft with a 96 sense rush bar, and went 10/28->13/30 in camp. He was 25/31 at the beginning of the season, and was the #2 man as a rookie. I got him a small army of QB Mentors for the preseason before cutting most of them. He's at 25/25 now, and what looked like a short/accuracy masked pair has gone away with the disappearing green, but I hope that's not the end of the story with him. Here's Mr. Irrelevant Williams:
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2959/williamsyd.jpg
Now: the story of how in the world did Mr. All-Everything Hutchins lost his job. Just wanted to reiterate that this guy's been real good, or at least I thought.
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/9882/hutchinsstats.jpg
4 straight 4000-yard seasons is nothing to sneeze at, at all. Winningest, and most yards of any QB in the league, although picks weren't extremely low. He won a championship in 2012, and had his highest rated season yet in 2013. Something that jumped out at me that year though, was he had three really bad games (0TD-4INT, 0TD-4INT, 0TD-3INT). I don't remember if there was any story there with gameplanning; I think they were just off days. Of course, he made up for them with a ton of money games.
2014, though, a different story. He started out fine, but was injured early (mild, knee). He was knocked out of the 2nd game (well, downgraded to 'questionable' with a chance of reinjury, so I sat him). His backup played well in his absence, so I let him heal all the way back to 100% before putting him back in. He went 25/37, 264, 0TD-1INT in his first game back. 23/39, 336, 2TD-4INT in his second game. At that point, I made the call to go with the #2. I couldn't explain it, but the QBR was too big of a dropoff with Hutchins.
Here's where it gets interesting. The backup though? Not Williams, the young (maybe) future starter with the 96 sense rush rating. Nope, it was one of his ho-hum mentors that I kept as the 3rd QB, before deciding he would be the #2 to begin the season. 5'11, 33-year-old, 12-year-journeyman vet Clyde Banks (33/33):
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/3084/banks.jpg
I kept him because he had bigger bars compared to the other 2 mentors I kept in preseason, and figured he'd be alright in a pinch if Williams was too young just yet. I mean, this guy is a true journeyman: a different team each year I've run this SP game for. He started a full season back in 2011, and it was very forgettable (65.7 QB rating; 15TD, 24 INT).
When Hutchins went down, he went 19/30, 228 yards and a score in relief. The next two games, he had QB ratings of 102 and 142, respectively. The final game of his starting tour of duty had a 97.1 rating; he had 8TDs to 3 picks at this point and was doing very well. I tweaked the gameplan a bit to have some more deep passes, and feature the screens more (since middle-range was his weakness and screens were a strength). One of the early games, the screens were dreadful (9 attempts - average of 1 yard per attempt) - but I stuck with it anyway. This guy, Banks, ended up making most of his hay with some really good deep passing, the times we took shots. After giving Hutchins 2 games back from his injury (I took down the screens back to normal with Hutchins in), I gave Banks the reins for the rest of the year and he delivered. 16-0.
http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/986/banksstats.jpg
He got injured the last game of the season slightly; Hutchins came back, threw one pass, and had it intercepted.
I'm not sure I'm really asking a question here, more just staring in wonderment. I love that the game is built like this, where some aging vet who is rated 33/33 can get a shot after an injury, and just run with it, while Mr. Cover-of-Every-Magazine for most of his starlit career can just inexplicably shut down.
I realize I didn't give Hutchins a ton of time to have some stud games to compensate for the rough ones, but the side-by-side is remarkable.
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/4564/teamstatsz.jpg
33.4 points different in QB rating? Over two yards more in yards per attempt. 67% vs 62% completion percentage. Sure, the roster is really good: but you figure Hutchins would have been able to take more advantage of it, or at least that some low 30's OVR old man wouldn't light it up this way. My scout's QB scouting is "poor" actually, but let's say you apply the +/- 15% range of error that might entail, in the unlikely scenario that Hutchins is overscouted as much as possible and Banks underscouted as much as possible. That means instead of 67 vs 33, we have 57 vs 38. Still a huge difference, and Banks is the older guy here, by two years.
Just for fun, to give a better standard of comparison, I saved a different branch of the game at Week 9 (Banks having had 4 games; Hutchins 3; this was the point where I decided to go with Banks) and simmed three times through the remainder of the season with Hutchins as the starter. The team steamrolled to a Championship victory twice (I didn't do playoffs the third time) time, but Hutchins' QB ratings were 98, 86, and 95. His yards/attempt never approached approached 8.5.
Conclusions? I'd guess that either QB is doing equally well with this team (and Hutchins just had a bad start). Just very surprising considering the difference in OVR between the two players, and the 33/33 guy I picked up this FA could even have the slight edge over the 67/67 4-year starter. Certainly, my "canonical" season played out with some dice rolls to skew it in favor of Banks, but nonetheless it was a fascinating way for the season to go. Now I gotta decide what to do with these guys next year. Gotta wonder what a team would do in real life, if this happened. I suppose, we'll see once the playoffs are done. I'll throw out a poll: what do you think a real GM would do?
* - addenum: while we're talking about interesting, RDE Joe Place, with the 33 tackles, 8.5 sacks and 11 hurries, is a 29-year old BACKUP defensive end in his 9th season, rated 26/30 (since I moved him from LDE to RDE), with 54/64 run defense, 3 PRT, 30 PRS, 15/18 play diagnosis, 9 PH, and 0 endurance. Crap bars mostly. Not a single start the whole year, although he was backing up both sides for a number of games. First year in NE; last year he wasn't on a team. Seriously outperformed the guy in front of him (B. Consing, a 40/43 2nd-year whose stats you can also see there on the team summary. Consing also has 0 endurance, but 87 RD, 14/24 PRT, 13 PRS, 43/58 PD, 60PH). Kinda tangential to t he main topic, but I thought that was real interesting, as well.