For the final regular season Greens game, we take on the Blues
The Blues drafted for offense, and they look scary! I just made major updates to how the QB sees open WRs, so taking on Major Hecker should be interesting…
It wasn’t. 🙁
We ended up winning 63-21 in 70 plays. It was really a QB show, however. That was kind of cool to see. Our QB Thurber went 5/11 for 304 and 4 TD while Hecker went 6/15 for 179 and 2 TD. Both QB were seeing the open guy and making great decisions the whole game. The only reason the stat lines weren’t doubled, was because of dropped passes. That’s really starting to become a plague on the season. In this game, there’s no excuse for dropped passes. Hecker is starting an 81 and 79 at WR1 and WR2. Dropped passes shouldn’t happen for open WRs that good. That’s something that needs to get fixed.
Hecker also had a hard time with DE pressure. (Much harder than Thurber) Hecker has the best OL in the league, so he shouldn’t have had a problem at all. In fact, the Blues OL should have been killing me all game. I did a decent job of getting to the QB and I bottled up the running game pretty well. I should have been getting my — handed to me.
It really comes down to speed. Speed is killing everything else right now. My DE speed is too much for the OL to handle. My blitzing LB speed can’t be adjusted for either. In fact, that’s also why my special teams is so dominant. This game I made a point of not watching Urquhart (dominate again) but instead watched the special teams coverage and blocking. I also swapped out all my good ST players for speed, to test my theory. We dominated again, while the Blues struggled. Speed is the difference. My blockers get to almost every block, almost every time. If you look at the field from high, it’s often set up perfectly with a green blocker on every blue guy. All Urquhart needs to do is weave his way through the traffic. Even if my blockers are getting pushed around, they hold their blocks.
That’s another thing about speed, fast blockers stay in front of the slower defensive guys. The Blues blockers that successfully make a block, will often lose their guy eventually. The faster Greens defender can break free or run around the block to make the tackle. That’s what I see on special teams, and I think it’s what is happening on offense. Even if the OL makes a block, my DL speed can adjust. Pancakes help a little, but it’s not fundamentally fixing the problem.
Re-reading all that, I make it sound like speed ruins the game. That’s not necessarily true. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with this game being 80% about speed. I actually like the idea that there’s a real difference between fast and slow guys. That’s one thing I hate about Madden, NCAA football, and NBA 2Kn. There’s just not a meaningful difference between speed ratings. The problem in this game is that I need to find a better way to handle that speed difference. I can’t have OLs getting killed by crappy DL, or have ineffective ST players. Skill has to also mean something.
I went into the Blues game planning to take on the defense AI for my next batch of games. Now, I’m not so sure. The Blues struggles with low-skilled high-speed players exposed a flaw that probably needs to be corrected before I spend a ton of time in the defensive AI. I’ll stick with the Blues for the next round of games, and try to address the speed/skill imbalance.
My list of items to get fixed is getting pretty nit-picky, too. I’m keeping a trello list instead of trying to log it in the blog. (it’s public if anyone is interested
regen3 trello) I’ve been thinking of what needs to get fixed, in terms of how I’d draft a team if I were starting a league. It might seem weird, but it help’s me see the state of the engine at any moment in time. When I look back on these posts, it might be a better way to measure progress.
Here’s how it works. If I were to draft a team today, what would I look at and how would I draft?
Draft Strategy
- Round 1: Pick Urquhart. (Sort all players by speed, and pick the top skilled KR/PR)
- Round 2: Sort all players by QB skill, and pick the fastest one near the top
- Rounds 3-5: Sort all players by speed and start drafting the highest skill at WR or RB until I had 2 WR and 1 RB.
- Rounds 6-12: Draft the highest speed available until I fill out the roster. Disregard positional skill completely.
A couple of other items that we’ve been tracking. A 15 minute (70 play) game feels a little short. I think we’re going to need at least 100 plays. I’ll start going 100 plays, and see how that feels. Also, top end speed (450) is definitely too fast and the low end speed (150) is definitely too slow. I’ll keep tracking to zero in on the right range, but as of today it looks like 200-425.