Today I made some pretty hefty upgrades to the man defense matchup AI. This section of AI applies to human teams as well, so it was pretty important to spruce up. Basically what it does is take the play the defender called, and lines up the CB/LB/S on the right offensive receiver.
Previously, it always put your best defender on the best receiver, and then worked on down the list. That was really effective, but it caused a lot of weird matchups when the rankings didn’t go as expected. (like if you had a great cover LB, he’d often line up on a WR leaving a CB to cover the RB out of the backfield.) Also, you didn’t really have to worry about position balance. Just grab the best cover players, regardless of position, and they would always match up against the best receivers.
That’s not how it’s supposed to be!
Now, the coverage AI respects traditional matchups. Here’s how it works:
- CBs line up against the WRs, based on quality. (best on best, 2nd on 2nd..etc)
- LBs line up on any RBs in the pattern (again, best to worst)
- Remaining receivers and defenders go back in the pool.
- Safeties added to the pool
- Now everyone left is ranked from best to worst, and the rest of the matchups are set. (This usually means any safeties in man coverage take the best remaining receivers)
- If there are more man defenders than receivers, the QB gets shadowed by the first defender who doesn’t have a coverage responsibility. This ends up being really useful when the QB breaks the pocket and runs.
- If there are still any man defenders with no responsibilities, they start double-covering receivers. (unlikely, but it happens sometimes)
The result is that you need to make sure you have CBs with cover skills if you play teams with WR talent. If you play a power-passing team (RB focused passing) you need to have cover LBs. You can get around this if you’re clever with your safeties and playcalling, but that’s basically how it will work. In early testing, I’m loving how it feels.
Granted, I can never draft a very effective defense, but at least I can’t use any cheap tricks to make up for it.
