2006-2025: NFL Data vs. Madden 17 Sim Stats

[DeuceDouglas]

I meant to post this back earlier in June with the hopes that some of the issues could be fixed in time for Madden 18 but's it's probably far too late for that now but I figured it still wouldn't hurt to post it. But I went through and simmed through ten seasons in Madden in an effort to see how the simmed stats matched up with real life NFL data from the past 10 years.

I'll start with the league stats and league averages:



So overall really not that bad with the exception of a few areas.

The Run Game

This is currently the biggest issue I saw. Attempts are far too high, YPC is far too low, and rushing touchdowns are absurdly high compared to the real NFL. The lowest amount of rushing TD's throughout the league in the ten years I simmed was 645. The highest amount in the last 10 years of the real NFL is has been 476. YPC also has hovered around the 4.1-4.3 area for decades and it held steady in the mid-three's for the entire sim.

Scoring

Scoring is just too high. This is something I kind of anticipated as seeing high scoring CPU games is very common but every season I simmed absolutely blew away every yearly average from the last 10 years of the NFL. It mainly seems to be an issue with the absurdly high amount of rushing touchdowns there are but passing touchdowns, while not as bad, also had every season sim with more passing touchdowns than there have been in any NFL season in the last ten years.

Plays per Game

This may not seem like a big one but it's another outlier in terms of the averages. Again, every season simmed had more plays on average than the highest season in the last ten years of the NFL. I'm guessing that this contributes but is definitely not directly responsible for the spike in scoring.

I also compared the league leaders from each season in a lot of the major stat categories which I'll put below:

Pass Completions

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Pass Attempts

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Passing Yards

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Passing Touchdowns

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Passing Interceptions

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Times Sacked

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Carries

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Rushing Yards

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Rushing Touchdowns

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Receptions

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Receiving Yards

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Receiving Touchdowns

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Sacks

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Interceptions

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The only real issue I saw among those numbers besides what I already mentioned with the run game was the sacks. Now I'm not entirely sure whether it's a sack issue or a Khalil Mack issue because he was the only outlier within those numbers. He broke the current sack record four different times in the ten seasons including a season in which he had 34 (!) sacks. I don't know what caused it but it didn't seem to affect the overall sack numbers which weren't too out of wack although I'm not exactly sure what happened with the last two seasons where sacks drastically dropped off. But having 26.5 and then 27.5 in back-to-back seasons and then 34 sacks especially shouldn't be happening under any scenarios IMO especially coming from one player.

A couple other miscellaneous issues:

• Sack yardage isn't tracked or deducted from team passing yards sacks. So what a QB throws for is what shows up in team stats. This can inflate pass yardage a decent amount depending on how much they are sacked.
• Saving and loading franchises caused an unbelievable amount of lockups. It seemed like every other time I tried to load or save a franchise the game would lock up and I'd be forced to restart.
• Small thing but when you hit X (or square) to sort, it should default to sorting most-to-least rather than least-to-most. There are a few categories this works for but by and large the majority of categories should be sorting to the highest number rather than having to click the button twice to see leaders.
• Not directly related to the sim stats but with the changes they've made to simming players that are traded for will accumulate stats for both teams for the week they are traded for. At release I traded for a couple players prior to playing week 1 and when I advanced the week and checked stats both players had stats for their previous teams as well as for the game that I played.

Take it for what it is though. It's only ten seasons but with certain things like the rushing touchdowns and YPC, the trends are very steady and would likely translate even over more seasons given more testing. Overall much better than I expected it to be and there are just a few areas that new to be tweaked. I was also going to check starting OVR's for positions across the league to see how much they fluctuated over the course of ten seasons but with schemes changing overalls, I'm not sure any of that information would have been reliable at all. I think if you're playing as an Owner they don't change so I may go back and check on that at some point.

[coach422001]

Maybe I'm missing something but it looks like points per game is up about 2 in Madden over the average in the NFL (?) and plays per game per team is up about 4 (so 8 additional play per game)? I'm not sure what you're showing would represent a jump in scoring (20-23 in real life vs 24-26 in the game) to me. The number of plays in the game can be influenced I believe by the settings but I'm assuming you ran 15 minute quarters with a minimal acceleration to the play clock (?).

Unless you were referring to scoring from the run game as a subheader to 'the run game' header, in which case clearly there is a disconnect.

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by coach422001

Maybe I'm missing something but it looks like points per game is up about 2 in Madden over the average in the NFL (?) and plays per game per team is up about 4 (so 8 additional play per game)? I'm not sure what you're showing would represent a jump in scoring (20-23 in real life vs 24-26 in the game) to me. The number of plays in the game can be influenced I believe by the settings but I'm assuming you ran 15 minute quarters with a minimal acceleration to the play clock (?). Unless you were referring to scoring from the run game as a subheader to 'the run game' header, in which case clearly there is a disconnect.

It's over the course of 256 games in a season so even though the difference seems quite small, it is fairly significant. Especially considering that even the lowest output of the ten years simmed in Madden in a lot of cases is still higher than anything seen in the last ten years of the real NFL. And this is just dealing with simulated games so there's no user input as far as quarter length or play clock runoff.

[Iteachpercussion]

Your findings corroborate what I have seen as well. I do not sim out 10 years, but I have done a lot of single season sims with my classic rosters. What you have found in consistent.

I have found no way to reduce the number of plays in a simmed games. EA set it up to be between 60-70 plays per team, per game. It normally runs towards the higher side of that. The result is, as you have seen, higher number of plays equals higher yardage totals equals more points per game. As you pointed out, a couple of plays per game, a couple more points per game seems insignificant until you look at the whole season and realize that means a lot of plays, yards and points.

[Steelers4190]

Interesting stuff. Hopefully 18 tweaked this a bit. I've always noticed that with the QBs in CFM. Yards and completion percentages seemed to be fine, but TDs were just too high. I will say T Dawgs XP sliders did help a little bit. Still too many "Elite" guys, but at least there is now a middle class of QBs. Before it was either they were fringe HOFers or busts. No inbetween.

[BleedGreen710]

Good stuff. I knew the sim stats were innacurate but it's nice to see it all organized like this. About the OVRs, first of all the scheme adjusted rating only shows up in depth chart if I recall correctly. If you just look at the teams full rosters you will see their true OVR. That's how me and tdawg created our player xp sliders.

And second, the OVRs are just as bad as the sim stats maybe worse. It took a lot of time to make the xp sliders because the OVRs are way off after a 10 year sim. I think maybe only one positions xp slider remains default but other then that you need to double or triple some of the sliders to reach numbers that come close to the same distributions as the default rosters OVRs.

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[montesixpac]

So, what about special teams and fumbles? I'm seeing a lot of similar yardage with greater scoring which makes me think that better starting field position is playing a role in the increased scores.

Also, is the ratio of touchdowns to field goals greater in the game than in real life. If for some reason teams are more efficient at getting into the end zone, going for and converting on 4th, and therefore kicking less field goals it could up the scoring.

[Iteachpercussion]

Quote: Originally Posted by montesixpac

So, what about special teams and fumbles? I'm seeing a lot of similar yardage with greater scoring which makes me think that better starting field position is playing a role in the increased scores. Also, is the ratio of touchdowns to field goals greater in the game than in real life. If for some reason teams are more efficient at getting into the end zone, going for and converting on 4th, and therefore kicking less field goals it could up the scoring.

The issue with field goals could be a possibility, however, I have done some work there myself. Using my classic rosters, I was attempting to bring field goal percentages in line with the 1980s and 1990s. So I substantially lowered the KPW and KAC. Though it dropped some percentages, the number of field goals attempted were still in line with real life. However, overall scoring was still high. I also have lowered QBs ratings to get 1980s and 1990s stats. While I have been successful in terms of TDs, INTs, Compl%, and yards per attempt, scoring is still too high.

The scoring issue, I believe, is mostly tied to the fact that there are too many plays per game. Again, if each team runs even 4 more plays in a game compared to real life, that is 8 plays per game. That is 128 extra plays per week. That ends up being 2048 plays in a season. I also think the Madden engine is set to produce more scoring.