Reds vs Yellows
Just for recap, the Yellows drafted for 2-way players and the Reds were all defense. That being said, the Yellows dominated this game defensively!
Final score: Yellows 14 - Reds 0.
That's right, 0 points. The first ever shutout. Granted, if I'd put field goals in the game, the Reds would have gotten a couple of those. We moved the ball a couple drives, but just couldn't punch it in.
The Yellows just had too much talent on both sides of the ball. It didn't show up against the Greens because WRs were so bad, but now the Yellows passing attack is really hard to stop. With the upgraded defensive AI we were able to stop the homerun ball, but my poor Reds just got dinked and dunked all the way down the field. The score would have been a lot worse if it weren't' for several goal-line stands we pulled off.
Here are a few things I learned from the game:
1. Speed is the #1 rating in this game, there's no way around it. The Yellows were faster than the Reds, and it really showed on the field. Even though my defense is extremely skilled, I had to run a zone almost all game to deal with the difference in speed. On the other hand, the Yellows were able to stay in base man defense and blanket my receivers. That allowed them to send blitzers and kill any passing attack I was able to get going. For Exhibition Season 2 I'm going to have to tightly control the distribution of speed, and use it appropriately in the draft.
2. I need field goals. I really wanted to turn punts into a potential scoring play, but it's not going to work. It got really frustrating to get inside the 5 and have no options for salvaging a few points on 4th down. Punting from the 5 just seems stupid. I'm going to have field goals in before the next Ex-Season.
3. The overall skill level of the league sucks. Frankly, I didn't make enough good players for this season. I'm ok with every team having scrubs, but this is ridiculous. Every team on the field is made up of 1-2 studs, 1-2 average guys and 4-6 complete garbage players. (not to mention the 4 guys that were so bad they didn't even make it on the field) That's just not going to be fun. That's probably also why there are so many huge plays. If I spread the talent out more, the game flow will probably be better.
4. Play design is going to be important for defense. I'm already seeing that I ignore a couple defensive plays because they put my players in bad spots, and it shows up on the field. I didn't really put a lot of effort into defensive plays because it never really mattered in Madden/NCAA/2K. With 8 guys instead of 11 on the field, each player's positioning and coverage really matter. When I was designing an 11 player game, I could just throw 11 guys out there in any fashion and have a reasonable defense.
There are a couple things to tighten up before I run the next game. (mostly having to do with bad RBs pausing at the line of scrimmage and scrambling QBs)
If nothing crazy pops up, I should be able to finish off the Reds games this week. That just leaves the last 3 games of the season for special teams refinement, and then we're at the championship!
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