Analyzing Game Data
 

I really wish I could figure out a way to track the success/failure of the plays in my playbook without taking hours and hours of scanning the logs to figure out exactly what each play called is. Wish those logs show me the name of the play.

Anyone else have a better system they can share?

Someone oughta write a good log parser for the game logs so I don't have to do it myself. :)

Yeah this would be awesome... But unless u are and excel gurú... This is what it is :)

For one season, I used a spreadsheet where I basically recorded every offensive play.

If you do very little, it wouldn't take *that* long.

For example

Play name: XZ 76
Result: 17

I fleshed it out with target, defense, what play # of the game it was, what down and distance, any other notes, etc. but everything is really optional.

That season I scored over 500 points... lost the NFC Championship game on a last-minute TD, and haven't done it since.

FOF9 really should have data on play success... that was by far my most fun season playing FOF, but it was really tedious and there are probably better things to do with one's life. I've been thinking of trying a minimalist version again (play name / yardage) but eh maybe not.

I also log my offensive and even defense into Excel sometimes usually just for division opponents or perennial playoff squads. Go quite a bit further into it than it seems you might and try to make it PivotTable friendly. The last time I did it used the following columns for passing plays:

Form Target Rte Yards Result YAC Cov-Shell D-etails 3rd Power Opp

Result: PR, Defensed, Drop, Scramble, Null
D-etails: use a key for blitzers, 8 in coverage, double coverage, Spy and Buzz
3 and Power are binary

For running I use a poor man's "DYAR" more than yardage just categorizing results as and looking at the distribution: stuff, 1-2 yards, 3-5 yards, 6-9 yards and 10+yards

The most useul takeaways I found were:
- balance is key, I did this analysis once and saw the 4 route outperformed the 3 route and 5 over 6, switched my playbook to include more 4/5 and less 3/6, did the analysis on the next season, now 3 outperformed 4, same wth targetting the same receiver
- PR% is much more stable without target depth mattering as much as you might think, same for INTs
- putting 8 in coverage can be awesome, blitzing can be awesome likely roster/opponent dependent but normally one or the other strongly outperforms rushing 4 like a schmo (caveat that balance and variety are always important)
- roughly 1/3 of receptions get some YAC, how much seems mostly dependent on the receiver's bars though defensive blitzing/available tacklers has somewhat of an effect
- the chart from Defensive philosophy is mostly true regarding coverage shells but there are exceptions
- perhaps the most useful aspect of my analysis was seeing how to maximize my chacne to convert a 3rd and X and I have been clocking 45+% 3rd down conversions on my mature builds for a while with this..much like real life the most common mistake people make is throwing short of the sticks Third Down and Air Yards | Football Outsiders

I would echo that "balance is key". My offense actually started underperforming the more I crunched the numbers, because I started to put in too many "high YPA" plays, which happened to be long passes, which then became less effective, etc.

I also agree that increasing 3rd down efficiency is one of the best benefits that can come from tracking plays. I've been thinking it might be worth it just to track 3rd down plays.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

Excellent post, btw.