About Coaches

[jorgepreparador]

Hi everyone, Happy Christmas!

One and simply question about coaches.

Improves in time? If i sign a young coach, can he reach better stats in time?

Thanks!

[gstelmack]

Yes, coaches bars change, and can get worse for older coaches.

[jorgepreparador]

Yes, coaches bars change, and can get worse for older coaches.

Thanks!

[TAFIV]

yep it's right in the help file under Offensive Philosophy

[BighouseBrock]

Yes, coaches bars change, and can get worse for older coaches.

kind of odd...i understand players getting worse as they get older, but usually coaches improve over time. the longer you work at a profession you tend to get better at it, especially mentally challenging jobs.

[garion333]

kind of odd...i understand players getting worse as they get older, but usually coaches improve over time. the longer you work at a profession you tend to get better at it, especially mentally challenging jobs.

Four years as a Head Coach didn't help Gus Bradley. :P

The aging is likely a way to sunset the coaches, otherwise you could keep your Best Ever coach for 30 years and that's just unrealistic and unfair.

[QuikSand]

kind of odd...i understand players getting worse as they get older, but usually coaches improve over time. the longer you work at a profession you tend to get better at it, especially mentally challenging jobs.

Good point, that's why top NFL coaches usually coach well into their 80s and 90s.

[Ben E Lou]

Good point, that's why top NFL coaches usually coach well into their 80s and 90s.:D

Maybe the complainant doesn't realize that by "can get worse for older coaches," he means that in FOF8, coaches have a career arc just like players do. it's not like they go downhill from day 1. They improve, peak, and then decline when they are over the hill.

As they should.

[BighouseBrock]

Good point, that's why top NFL coaches usually coach well into their 80s and 90s.

i was thinking more like dick lebeau, bill walsh or tom coughlin all coached indo there 70's (80's and 90's is a push). it wasn't a complaint so much as an observation. i hate to see a serious decline in the early 60's as there are many many good coaches in there 60's. not sure what the avg peak would be.

[Dutch]

I don't think it's a reflection of good coaches declining, but a simulation of the game passing the coach by. (Or the coach retiring or moving to the press box, being fired because ownership wants a new direction, angry fan-base, etc.)

We could argue that Tony Dungy would still be a fine coach today but the point being...he's not....he's not coaching.

So the game has to provide you with some sort of motivation to give up on a coach. I suspect that's where the career skills arc comes into play.

[General Mike]

i was thinking more like dick lebeau, bill walsh or tom coughlin all coached indo there 70's (80's and 90's is a push). it wasn't a complaint so much as an observation. i hate to see a serious decline in the early 60's as there are many many good coaches in there 60's. not sure what the avg peak would be.

Bill Walsh, not really. He was 57 when he retired after Super Bowl XXIII, and then came back for 3 years with Stanford, but was only 63 when he hung em up for good. Coughlin didn't make it to 70 either. Marv Levy did get to 72 though.

I do think there should be some balance to the whole thing. Guys who stick around until they can't go and then the guys who leave early. Bill Parcells was only 50 when he "retired" after Super Bowl XXV.

[Ned Doolittle]

One thing I did notice on FOF8 was coaches tend to stick with the same team for over a decade. I'm not talking about Assistant Coach being promoted to HC by the same team, more like a guy staying with the same team at the same position for a long time. It seems to be a tad on the unrealistic side. Some teams value keeping the same guy for a long time - Steelers in real life have only had like 4 HC total (or something like that) since their inception. Giants kept Coughlin around for a while but he had 2 Super Bowl wins with them under his belt, Pats with Belichek, Denver is known to be a great place to be a HC, Andy Reid tends to keep his job for long periods of time due to continued success. Other than that the league is a carousel for the most part. Coordinators move around a lot, going from OC/DC to HC. I'd like the game to model real life a little bit more with good coordinators moving on after a handful of good seasons and HC's being fired after a handful of average seasons. I mean, who really gets to keep their job just because they finish 10-6, 9-7 every year and get beat in the wild card round every year? I kept my current HC for about 12 years straight, but we have gone to the playoffs every season he's been the HC (he's Ritchie Incognito btw, lol) and we've been to a couple Conference Championships and we've won back-to-back Super Bowls under him, so it can be explained very easily why I've kept him on the team so long. But my coordinators should be more willing to leave the team, and should be more willing to leave other teams quickly.

[OldGiants]

Some number.like 4

Try 4 squared

16 coaches on 83 years. So about 5 years per coach.

[BighouseBrock]

@ ned doolittle. very insightfull, ty, i haven't ran past 2 season yet, so that is good info. i've been focusing on the new playbook/game planning section. loving it and hating it too. very time consuming. all in all i'm loving the new game.

[Grego]

Good point, that's why top NFL coaches usually coach well into their 80s and 90s.

Zinger!
You're so brilliant...

[Ned Doolittle]

@ ned doolittle. very insightfull, ty, i haven't ran past 2 season yet, so that is good info. i've been focusing on the new playbook/game planning section. loving it and hating it too. very time consuming. all in all i'm loving the new game.

You'll notice it around year 15/year 20. I tend to look at the person's past experience just to get a feel for him and I've noticed guys staying an awful long time with the same team, same position. It seems the AI teams are quick to resign their guys - that's fine, the Pats should want to keep Josh McDaniels around as long as they can because he's a great OC. But on the flip side they fully expect him to jump ship the first chance he gets to be HC somewhere else. So the game should do better job modeling the coordinators not wanting to stick around after a handful of good seasons.

Maybe an "ambition" rating would be helpful, a guy with high ambition rating will leave quickly/not resign with you for the same position (while a guy with low ambition would be expected to resign with you). The staff hiring process seems to be very simplistic and could easily be fleshed out more with one or two tweaks.

[Ben E Lou]

Maybe an "ambition" rating would be helpful, a guy with high ambition rating will leave quickly/not resign with you for the same position (while a guy with low ambition would be expected to resign with you). "Ambition" won't do anything about the staff creation code, which is very likely the root of this "issue." FOF creates some guys who have similar bars in every area, but there are also quite a few who are like this guy, and therefore are pigeonholed into one role forever:

Geoff Harper IHOF Staff Page (http://www.fof-ihof.com/showstaff.php?staffid=604)

Now it so happens that he has had good records lately, but the reality here is that whether he's consistently 8-8, 10-6, or 15-1, NO ONE is going to hire him to be their Head Coach unless they decide to pretend that this computer game isn't a computer game. He's terrible at two of the key components for a HC, and good-to-great at everything else, which makes him an awesome OC. Quik will rightly keep re-signing him, and everyone else will rightly keep passing him over for a promotion. The AI does this as well. Harper's HC suitability--largely because of his bad motivation and discipline ratings--is only 48, so no way he gets hired by the AI either if this were SP.

[Vill]

Do we know at which stage coaching improvements are shown?

[redfox000]

"Ambition" won't do anything about the staff creation code, which is very likely the root of this "issue." FOF creates some guys who have similar bars in every area, but there are also quite a few who are like this guy, and therefore are pigeonholed into one role forever:

Geoff Harper IHOF Staff Page (http://www.fof-ihof.com/showstaff.php?staffid=604)

Now it so happens that he has had good records lately, but the reality here is that whether he's consistently 8-8, 10-6, or 15-1, NO ONE is going to hire him to be their Head Coach unless they decide to pretend that this computer game isn't a computer game. He's terrible at two of the key components for a HC, and good-to-great at everything else, which makes him an awesome OC. Quik will rightly keep re-signing him, and everyone else will rightly keep passing him over for a promotion. The AI does this as well. Harper's HC suitability--largely because of his bad motivation and discipline ratings--is only 48, so no way he gets hired by the AI either if this were SP.

Would it be a bad idea to have the game hide those two ratings, to make it more realistic...because in real life he would have gotten a HC spot by now.

[Donnerna]

But on the flip side they fully expect him to jump ship the first chance he gets to be HC somewhere else. So the game should do better job modeling the coordinators not wanting to stick around after a handful of good seasons.

Maybe an "ambition" rating would be helpful, a guy with high ambition rating will leave quickly/not resign with you for the same position (while a guy with low ambition would be expected to resign with you). The staff hiring process seems to be very simplistic and could easily be fleshed out more with one or two tweaks.

But this is already in the game. The Patriots can re-sign McDaniels to be their OC, but he can still be stolen by the first person to offer him a head coach position.

Re-signing him keeps other teams from being able to offer him an offensive coordinator position (equal to what he already signed with Pats) -- but it doesn't keep teams from being able to offer him a PROMOTION to head coach.