Rice and the Clutch rating

[RogueHominid]

Okay, so I have experienced this a few times, but none so painfully as last night. I played a guy who was beating me most of the game, but I was able to pull ahead late in the 4th and go up 17-14. I kicked the ball to the corner to avoid a Woodson runback, and got a lucky bounce. The guy had 95 or so yards to go and less than 2 mins. to do it. The short of it was that he won the game with 1 second left on a corner-post to Rice. I had Barney on him and a FS hot routed to double. It was a great play by my opponent, and I normally don't watch replays in-game, but what I saw was just crazy: when Rice made his break for the corner, it's like Barney got mad cow disease--he ran back to the middle of the field, about at LB depth, and was AT LEAST 10 yards away from Rice when he caught the winning TD.

I've never seen anyone else do this voodoo magic but Rice, and my question is: wtf? It seems like the clutch rating must have come into play, and it also seems that that means crazy AI for the defense. Has anyone else seen this? I hope they fiddle with this concept if they release another game next year.

[yamabushi]

Ive always been of the mind that the Clutch ability would bump up that players abilities in 'clutch' situations (which it should). Could it be thats its the opposite and it actually degrads the opponents abilities instead (which it shouldnt)?
The only player I consistently play with, with clutch is my CAP QBs. Ill have to pay more attention in those situations and see what happens.

[RogueHominid]

I think it accomplishes the former by way of the latter, Yamabushi, or at least that's my hypothesis. This happens when I play Dwight Clark as well: he'll make a great key play, but he does this because the defender chooses that play to take a really weird angle on the route/ball or go into a totally inappropriate animation that takes him out of the play. That's pretty much what happened on the Rice TD. The reaction that Barney had to the corner fake before Rice broke back to the post was to run completely in the other direction. I am totally fine with Rice beating a double team--he did it most of his career--but it's the way the game interprets the attribute that seems a bit off to me.

It would be nice if there were some CBs with a clutch rating to counter this.

[urlacher51]

focous bug maybe, i know when im playing a zone defense and i see my defender not cover the guy going in his zone but another player not even near his zone really pisses me off, i have givin up big plays late in games because of this.

[yamabushi]

If it is the case, and it looks like it is, that the Def gets degraded, Might it be because of guys like Rice or Montana (does he have clutch?) that its not possible to 'up' their stats anymore, and for the 'clutch' to work the CPU has to dumb down the Def?

Heres another question to ponder, would clutch vs clutch cancel each other out, or would the cpu just coin flip it?

With all my CAPs Ive never consider giving a Def player clutch....

[RogueHominid]

I think you're right, Yamabushi: the clutch rating is applied negatively by lessening defensive attributes rather, not positively by further boosting the attributes of the offensive player.

Regarding the focus bug, that one's annoying too, but the event I'm describing happened in man coverage.

I do know of one DB in the game who has clutch, Dick Anderson, and it's nice to have him for those 3rd down TE corner routes to Coates or the screen passes to Payton, Sanders, etc.

The other defensive guys who have it, like Marchetti, really do come up big on 3rd down, late in the game, etc., so the attribute really does do something on defense. I may look over lists of potential gold corner CAPs and see if there's someone who I could conscionably call "clutch," create them, and match them up against Rice to see what the results are.

Any suggestions on that front? Who do you think is the most clutch corner of all time?

[yamabushi]

Darrell Green with out a doubt.
5'9" 184
Speed Burner, Coverage, Clutch.
If youve got the 5 gold thing throw in Ball Hawk and Closing Speed.

[RogueHominid]

I tried Green as suggested, and I got vodoo-ed by Ricky Sanders on a couple of key 3rd downs. Maybe it's just me