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DeuceDouglas · 08-03-2019, 07:07 PM

Hey guys, something I've done over the last few iterations has been run a franchise through a bunch of seasons keeping track of the simulation stats along the way and comparing that to the real NFL numbers dating back to 2006. I did this with Madden 17 as well as Madden 18 and again last year with Madden 19. So once again, I simulated 15 seasons in Madden 20 and while this is a new thread and a new Madden, there's very much the same issues with this years sim stats as there was with last years and overall they look very similar (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

So like I said, these are going to look a lot like Madden 19 which was a big improvement over Madden 18 and pretty much the same issues that we saw with Madden 19 are apparent once again so starting from the top, I'll cover what some of those issues are.

Passing Touchdowns & Interceptions

Impossible to miss at the top of the chart is the big yellow bar across the passing touchdown stats and what the yellow indicates is that the stat is higher than anything ever seen in NFL history. The interesting thing here is that this is pretty much how the NFL has been trending over the last ten year as the top nine passing touchdown seasons in NFL history have been the last nine seasons of the NFL (2010-2018) with a new record being set once again last year. The issue here isn't so much that the number is consistently broken, it's by how much it's broken by. So last year was a new all-time high of 847 passing touchdowns and then in the first season of simulation that is broken by 124 touchdowns which is a TON and while the league has never come close to over 900 passing scores in a league year, that was routine throughout the simulation with there being a couple of occasions where the 1000 TD mark was nearly reached.

As you can see above with the individual leaders, the issue isn't with the top end of individual leaders throwing an absurd amount of touchdowns. 40 TD's was only broken twelve times over a 15 season period and no one touched 50 which has been done three times now in the past thirteen NFL seasons so that's not the problem. The issue seems to continue to be that there's too many QB's throwing an above average amount of TD's and you can definitely see that in the individual leaders. There's only been one season in the past 13 of the real NFL where the entire top-10 has been composed of all 30+ TD throwers and in the simulation stats that was the case in all but two of the simulations. You'll rarely see any QB with under 25 TD's and anything under 20 is even more rare.

Onto the second part was the interceptions and this is kind of similar to Passing Touchdowns in that interception numbers have been trending down and getting lower and lower for the past decade but looking at the simulation numbers, you're going to see that the interceptions thrown numbers are more in line with the numbers from the 50's and 60's than today's NFL. While the numbers have been trending down, the real NFL has yet to get below 400 INT's, something that was done every single season of the sim, even getting below 300 in one season.

So again here, looking at the individual leaders for INT's thrown, nothing really looks off at all at least at the top-end. You're not seeing the leader in INT's throwing substantially less than what's been seen in real-life and overall throughout the entirety of the sim the numbers are pretty much dead on the entire way. The problem here is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground when it comes to QB's throwing picks. You have those guys at the top throwing low-to-high teens or even 20+ but below that there's a lot of QB's that will only throw anywhere from two to six or seven interceptions. Seeing seasons from QB's where they'd throw 30+ TD's and less than five interceptions was very common with the amount of QB's throwing less than ten being even higher.

Rushing

This has no specific designation because, despite holding up better over time than Madden 19, the numbers are still significantly off with issues that are the most glaring aspect of the simulation numbers. Starting with carries per game, you can see the decline over the last decade plus of the real NFL so the immediate drop of the simulation isn't too much to complain about but does contribute to the lack of plays seen in simulation compared to the real NFL. But overall, I don't really have much of a problem here.

However, yards per game is where things start to come off the rails. The numbers are better than Madden 19 which barely cracked 85 Yds/G rushing and saw a decline that dropped it all the way to the low 70's over time. So while it's better here, it's still coming up way short of the actual NFL where the lowest Yds/G total in league history was 104.3 in 1994. The weird thing here is that if you were to just look at league leaders, nothing really seems to be wrong and you'll routinely see guys averaging well above 5 yards per carry with plenty of yards and as you can see above, Zeke, Barkley and Gurley all eclipsed the all-time record for rushing yards with relative ease so it's an odd situation. Also, obviously the thought here is going to be rushing QB's not counting and while that would help, I'm not convinced that would entirely fix these numbers but it would undoubtedly help them for sure.

Beyond that is rushing TD's which, despite rushing numbers being so low, often find themselves either above or near the all-time record of 487 rushing TD's set in 1978. This was something that was a HUGE problem in Madden 18 with that number being absolutely obliterated each season but in Madden 19, the numbers here were just about perfect. The all-time record was never touched and the rushing TD's bounced around from the high 300's to the low 400's and were just overall spot on.

Then finally for the last part I tracked which was yards per carry which like yards per game is better than Madden 19 and was initially very close but over time drops way below where it should ever be especially considering that the record for yards per carry was set just this past season with a 4.4 average. Yards per carry is something that should always be around that 4.1 to 4.2 area with very little wiggle room as it's one of the most consistent stats you'll find when it comes to the NFL. Unfortunately here, cracking 4.0 was rare and as the sim went on and the real-life stud running backs like Ezekiel Elliott and Saquon Barkley left is where it started to really plummet.

Yards Per Catch

This is a smaller thing and when you look at the numbers the difference between 11.5 and 11.8 or 11.9 may not seem like a lot but when you're taking into account 32 teams over an entire season, that's actually a pretty significant difference. Y/C is something that's bounced around quite a bit over the last decade plus but with simulation it seems to trend way more towards the high-end than low-end and is a bit of an outlier which is why it's mentioned here.

Plays Per Game

Again, this may seem trivial and like there's not much of a difference but it's actually quite significant. Take 2013 for example where the league average was 65 plays per game and 33302 plays were ran over the course of an entire season and compare that to the first year of the sim where there was 60.4 plays per game and 30945 plays over the whole season. That number would be the lowest since 1995 & 1996 when there was only 30 teams in the NFL. This is a number that's bounced around quite a bit so I'd be willing to be more lenient with it but it's consistently lower than anything we've seen recently in the NFL which is why I have a slight issue with it.

Field Goals

This is something I decided to look at last year but has probably been an issue for multiple iterations and that is the drastically low amount of field goals that you'll see during simulation. As you can see looking at the numbers, the real NFL has consistently been in the mid-to-high 900's on FG's attempted even cracking 1000 a couple times and in the simulation there wasn't a single season that even reached 700 attempts. Obviously this pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the inflated TD numbers as more TD drives means less FG drives but there were a ton of situations where a team's kicker would only finish the season 7, 8 or 9 made field goals for the entire year. Breaking 20 was virtually unheard of and 30+ FG's which was done by half the league last year wasn't seen once.

Another thing here is the FG% which in the real NFL has consistently been above 80% and bounced around from the low-to-mid 80's but in the simulation reaching 80% was something that was never accomplished. This was something I didn't really look into last year but decided to investigate this year and started to see what was contributing to this. In most kickers cases, the vast majority of their field goal attempts would come from 50+ yards and seeing a kicker who was something like 10 for 17 but 1 for 7 from 50+ yards wasn't uncommon. I saw more than a few times kickers that were 1 of 10 from 50+ with only a handful of kicks coming from inside of 50 yards which greatly contributes to the lower FG%. Something that came to mind as well as I was simulating is that I feel like the lack of FG's is likely what contributes to the overabundance of ties. I've noticed over the years that very rarely does an OT game end in a FG and way more often ends with a team scoring a TD and I'd be willing to bet the lack of FG's has something to do with that.

Miscellaneous

Quarterbacks still seem to very rarely ever get injured during simulation. And when I say very rarely I mean probably not even a handful of times throughout all 15 seasons where anyone other than the starter had more than a couple of pass attempts. Not a huge deal and it makes tracking data a lot quicker and more efficient but something that I feel like should be a bit more common.

It feels like there's a lot more parity within franchise than you see in the NFL. There was a quite a few seasons where it seemed like half the league was around 7-9, 8-8, 9-7, etc. and it seemed like there was very rarely teams at the high-end (13-3, 14-2, etc.) or low-end (2-14, 3-13, etc.) and there were a bunch of occasions of 9-7 teams making, and often winning the Super Bowl but for the most part, the better records would end up making it.

Individual Leaders

Completions

Spoiler

Pass Attempts

Spoiler

Passing Yards

Spoiler

Passing Touchdowns

Spoiler

Interceptions Thrown

Spoiler

Times Sacked

Spoiler

Carries

Spoiler

Rushing Yards

Spoiler

Rushing Touchdowns

Spoiler

Receptions

Spoiler

Receiving Yards

Spoiler

Receiving Touchdowns

Spoiler

Sacks

Spoiler

Interceptions

Spoiler

Season-By-Season Team Records

Spoiler

Super Bowls

Spoiler

toodles2you90 · 08-03-2019, 08:40 PM

Have you ever tweaked sliders and done this? I've always wondered if adjusting sliders adjusts sim stats at all.

canes21 · 08-03-2019, 08:57 PM

They don't.

Grey_Osprey · 08-03-2019, 09:13 PM

Sliders don't play a part in SIM stats? SMH. What about quarter length?

Sent from my SM-S727VL using Operation Sports mobile app

canes21 · 08-03-2019, 09:15 PM

Quarter length is only for the game you play. All simmed games are simulated based off of 15 minute quarters.

steve115658 · 08-03-2019, 09:19 PM

I wonder if it would have an effect to raise all kickers attributes. Could possibly increase field goals and slightly decrease touchdowns?

Smallville102001 · 08-04-2019, 01:21 AM

I already new how bad sim stats were from doing a few sim with ea access and this just shows how bad it really is. Sim stats this year may be the worst in madden history or if not at least the worst in a long long time. I dont expect everthing to be perfect but ever thing is like off this year and by a lot to. Like people have talked about sliders dont fix or really chance sim stats. The one stat that sliders do change I noticed though is RB yards and attempts. On default to many guys are getting like 250+ attempts and so to many guys getting like 1000+ yards. If you put injures and fatigue around 52 on eatch things are much better. When I did that in sims only like 5 guys or so will have 250+ attempts with not changing those sliders you will have like 15 guys. Its a combination of things with putting fatigue up a little bit guys get a few less attempts a game it looks like and if you keep injures at 40 instead of upping it to around 51-52 RB dont seem to get hurt enough and that is part of what keeps attempts down is that its not easy to play all 16 games has a RB.

IcedCoffee1983 · 08-09-2019, 11:37 AM

Last year there was an issue where QB’s would never attempt to rush in simmed games, is that issue still present?

It was stupid because rushing QB’s were only rushing like 12-15 times in an ENTIRE SEASON.

Any chance this was fixed?

08-03-2019, 07:07 PM	#1
DeuceDouglas Madden Dev Team OVR: 22 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 4,313	2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data Hey guys, something I've done over the last few iterations has been run a franchise through a bunch of seasons keeping track of the simulation stats along the way and comparing that to the real NFL numbers dating back to 2006. I did this with Madden 17 as well as Madden 18 and again last year with Madden 19. So once again, I simulated 15 seasons in Madden 20 and while this is a new thread and a new Madden, there's very much the same issues with this years sim stats as there was with last years and overall they look very similar (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). So like I said, these are going to look a lot like Madden 19 which was a big improvement over Madden 18 and pretty much the same issues that we saw with Madden 19 are apparent once again so starting from the top, I'll cover what some of those issues are. Passing Touchdowns & Interceptions Impossible to miss at the top of the chart is the big yellow bar across the passing touchdown stats and what the yellow indicates is that the stat is higher than anything ever seen in NFL history. The interesting thing here is that this is pretty much how the NFL has been trending over the last ten year as the top nine passing touchdown seasons in NFL history have been the last nine seasons of the NFL (2010-2018) with a new record being set once again last year. The issue here isn't so much that the number is consistently broken, it's by how much it's broken by. So last year was a new all-time high of 847 passing touchdowns and then in the first season of simulation that is broken by 124 touchdowns which is a TON and while the league has never come close to over 900 passing scores in a league year, that was routine throughout the simulation with there being a couple of occasions where the 1000 TD mark was nearly reached. As you can see above with the individual leaders, the issue isn't with the top end of individual leaders throwing an absurd amount of touchdowns. 40 TD's was only broken twelve times over a 15 season period and no one touched 50 which has been done three times now in the past thirteen NFL seasons so that's not the problem. The issue seems to continue to be that there's too many QB's throwing an above average amount of TD's and you can definitely see that in the individual leaders. There's only been one season in the past 13 of the real NFL where the entire top-10 has been composed of all 30+ TD throwers and in the simulation stats that was the case in all but two of the simulations. You'll rarely see any QB with under 25 TD's and anything under 20 is even more rare. Onto the second part was the interceptions and this is kind of similar to Passing Touchdowns in that interception numbers have been trending down and getting lower and lower for the past decade but looking at the simulation numbers, you're going to see that the interceptions thrown numbers are more in line with the numbers from the 50's and 60's than today's NFL. While the numbers have been trending down, the real NFL has yet to get below 400 INT's, something that was done every single season of the sim, even getting below 300 in one season. So again here, looking at the individual leaders for INT's thrown, nothing really looks off at all at least at the top-end. You're not seeing the leader in INT's throwing substantially less than what's been seen in real-life and overall throughout the entirety of the sim the numbers are pretty much dead on the entire way. The problem here is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground when it comes to QB's throwing picks. You have those guys at the top throwing low-to-high teens or even 20+ but below that there's a lot of QB's that will only throw anywhere from two to six or seven interceptions. Seeing seasons from QB's where they'd throw 30+ TD's and less than five interceptions was very common with the amount of QB's throwing less than ten being even higher. Rushing This has no specific designation because, despite holding up better over time than Madden 19, the numbers are still significantly off with issues that are the most glaring aspect of the simulation numbers. Starting with carries per game, you can see the decline over the last decade plus of the real NFL so the immediate drop of the simulation isn't too much to complain about but does contribute to the lack of plays seen in simulation compared to the real NFL. But overall, I don't really have much of a problem here. However, yards per game is where things start to come off the rails. The numbers are better than Madden 19 which barely cracked 85 Yds/G rushing and saw a decline that dropped it all the way to the low 70's over time. So while it's better here, it's still coming up way short of the actual NFL where the lowest Yds/G total in league history was 104.3 in 1994. The weird thing here is that if you were to just look at league leaders, nothing really seems to be wrong and you'll routinely see guys averaging well above 5 yards per carry with plenty of yards and as you can see above, Zeke, Barkley and Gurley all eclipsed the all-time record for rushing yards with relative ease so it's an odd situation. Also, obviously the thought here is going to be rushing QB's not counting and while that would help, I'm not convinced that would entirely fix these numbers but it would undoubtedly help them for sure. Beyond that is rushing TD's which, despite rushing numbers being so low, often find themselves either above or near the all-time record of 487 rushing TD's set in 1978. This was something that was a HUGE problem in Madden 18 with that number being absolutely obliterated each season but in Madden 19, the numbers here were just about perfect. The all-time record was never touched and the rushing TD's bounced around from the high 300's to the low 400's and were just overall spot on. Then finally for the last part I tracked which was yards per carry which like yards per game is better than Madden 19 and was initially very close but over time drops way below where it should ever be especially considering that the record for yards per carry was set just this past season with a 4.4 average. Yards per carry is something that should always be around that 4.1 to 4.2 area with very little wiggle room as it's one of the most consistent stats you'll find when it comes to the NFL. Unfortunately here, cracking 4.0 was rare and as the sim went on and the real-life stud running backs like Ezekiel Elliott and Saquon Barkley left is where it started to really plummet. Yards Per Catch This is a smaller thing and when you look at the numbers the difference between 11.5 and 11.8 or 11.9 may not seem like a lot but when you're taking into account 32 teams over an entire season, that's actually a pretty significant difference. Y/C is something that's bounced around quite a bit over the last decade plus but with simulation it seems to trend way more towards the high-end than low-end and is a bit of an outlier which is why it's mentioned here. Plays Per Game Again, this may seem trivial and like there's not much of a difference but it's actually quite significant. Take 2013 for example where the league average was 65 plays per game and 33302 plays were ran over the course of an entire season and compare that to the first year of the sim where there was 60.4 plays per game and 30945 plays over the whole season. That number would be the lowest since 1995 & 1996 when there was only 30 teams in the NFL. This is a number that's bounced around quite a bit so I'd be willing to be more lenient with it but it's consistently lower than anything we've seen recently in the NFL which is why I have a slight issue with it. Field Goals This is something I decided to look at last year but has probably been an issue for multiple iterations and that is the drastically low amount of field goals that you'll see during simulation. As you can see looking at the numbers, the real NFL has consistently been in the mid-to-high 900's on FG's attempted even cracking 1000 a couple times and in the simulation there wasn't a single season that even reached 700 attempts. Obviously this pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the inflated TD numbers as more TD drives means less FG drives but there were a ton of situations where a team's kicker would only finish the season 7, 8 or 9 made field goals for the entire year. Breaking 20 was virtually unheard of and 30+ FG's which was done by half the league last year wasn't seen once. Another thing here is the FG% which in the real NFL has consistently been above 80% and bounced around from the low-to-mid 80's but in the simulation reaching 80% was something that was never accomplished. This was something I didn't really look into last year but decided to investigate this year and started to see what was contributing to this. In most kickers cases, the vast majority of their field goal attempts would come from 50+ yards and seeing a kicker who was something like 10 for 17 but 1 for 7 from 50+ yards wasn't uncommon. I saw more than a few times kickers that were 1 of 10 from 50+ with only a handful of kicks coming from inside of 50 yards which greatly contributes to the lower FG%. Something that came to mind as well as I was simulating is that I feel like the lack of FG's is likely what contributes to the overabundance of ties. I've noticed over the years that very rarely does an OT game end in a FG and way more often ends with a team scoring a TD and I'd be willing to bet the lack of FG's has something to do with that. Miscellaneous Quarterbacks still seem to very rarely ever get injured during simulation. And when I say very rarely I mean probably not even a handful of times throughout all 15 seasons where anyone other than the starter had more than a couple of pass attempts. Not a huge deal and it makes tracking data a lot quicker and more efficient but something that I feel like should be a bit more common. It feels like there's a lot more parity within franchise than you see in the NFL. There was a quite a few seasons where it seemed like half the league was around 7-9, 8-8, 9-7, etc. and it seemed like there was very rarely teams at the high-end (13-3, 14-2, etc.) or low-end (2-14, 3-13, etc.) and there were a bunch of occasions of 9-7 teams making, and often winning the Super Bowl but for the most part, the better records would end up making it. Individual Leaders Completions Spoiler Pass Attempts Spoiler Passing Yards Spoiler Passing Touchdowns Spoiler Interceptions Thrown Spoiler Times Sacked Spoiler Carries Spoiler Rushing Yards Spoiler Rushing Touchdowns Spoiler Receptions Spoiler Receiving Yards Spoiler Receiving Touchdowns Spoiler Sacks Spoiler Interceptions Spoiler Season-By-Season Team Records Spoiler Super Bowls Spoiler sinthros, secondsolution, edgevoice and 11 others like this. __________________ Madden Franchise Mode: It's Time to Be Classic Twitter

08-03-2019, 08:40 PM	#2
toodles2you90 Rookie OVR: 0 Join Date: Apr 2018	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data Have you ever tweaked sliders and done this? I've always wondered if adjusting sliders adjusts sim stats at all.

08-03-2019, 08:57 PM	#3
canes21 Hall Of Fame OVR: 41 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Tennessee Blog Entries: 2	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data They don't. briz1046 likes this. __________________ “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” ― Plato

08-03-2019, 09:13 PM	#4
Grey_Osprey Pro OVR: 0 Join Date: Feb 2013	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data Sliders don't play a part in SIM stats? SMH. What about quarter length? Sent from my SM-S727VL using Operation Sports mobile app

08-03-2019, 09:15 PM	#5
canes21 Hall Of Fame OVR: 41 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Tennessee Blog Entries: 2	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data Quarter length is only for the game you play. All simmed games are simulated based off of 15 minute quarters. __________________ “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” ― Plato

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08-03-2019, 09:19 PM	#6
steve115658 Rookie OVR: 9 Join Date: Jul 2012	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data I wonder if it would have an effect to raise all kickers attributes. Could possibly increase field goals and slightly decrease touchdowns? __________________ The Red Zone: Indianapolis Colts Season 1: 18-1 Super Bowl Champions Season 2: 16-3 AFC Champions Season 3: 16-3 Super Bowl Champions Minnesota Vikings Season 4: Coming soon

08-04-2019, 01:21 AM	#7
Smallville102001 All Star OVR: 0 Join Date: Mar 2015	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data I already new how bad sim stats were from doing a few sim with ea access and this just shows how bad it really is. Sim stats this year may be the worst in madden history or if not at least the worst in a long long time. I dont expect everthing to be perfect but ever thing is like off this year and by a lot to. Like people have talked about sliders dont fix or really chance sim stats. The one stat that sliders do change I noticed though is RB yards and attempts. On default to many guys are getting like 250+ attempts and so to many guys getting like 1000+ yards. If you put injures and fatigue around 52 on eatch things are much better. When I did that in sims only like 5 guys or so will have 250+ attempts with not changing those sliders you will have like 15 guys. Its a combination of things with putting fatigue up a little bit guys get a few less attempts a game it looks like and if you keep injures at 40 instead of upping it to around 51-52 RB dont seem to get hurt enough and that is part of what keeps attempts down is that its not easy to play all 16 games has a RB.

08-09-2019, 11:37 AM	#8
IcedCoffee1983 Banned OVR: 0 Join Date: Jul 2015	Re: 2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data Last year there was an issue where QB’s would never attempt to rush in simmed games, is that issue still present? It was stupid because rushing QB’s were only rushing like 12-15 times in an ENTIRE SEASON. Any chance this was fixed?

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2006-2033: Madden 20 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data