Does the CPU gameplan for you?

[artichoke]

Second year of my dynasty, #12 Oregon (me) vs. #9 Cal (AA level). I had played zone defense almost exclusively my first four games (4-0) and started off that way against Cal. They moved the ball easily on their first drive though I held them to a FG. At that point I thought 'What the hell, I'll probably get killed anyway' so I switched to mostly man to man. From that point on I held the nation's #4 offense to under 100 yards. They only scored after that because of my stupid turnovers.

My freshman QB came on in the fourth quarter (after my top two QB's were injured) and drove me down the field and I won the game 17-15 on a 39 yard FG as time expired.

But anyway my question is, did I stop Cal after their first drive because I disrupted their gameplan, or was it merely that I matched up better when playing man to man? There is probably no concrete answer but it would be fun to hear anyone else's opinion or experience with this.

[i8kevin]

I was going to make a post about this the other day. I don't know if it is coincidence or what but I am in my 4th Season with Clemson and have had 1 to 2 RB's in James DAvis and CJ Spiller. I pound the ball on the ground every game and it seems like later in the season teams kinda catch on and start shutting me down.

In my 4th season I ran the ball all over a D1AA team the first game 200+ yards between 3 RB's. My second game I didn't even break a 100. I want to hope it's gameplan but I don't know.

[rudyjuly2]

I do tend to notice that people catch on. Maybe its just coincidence but I find that if I switch playbooks and then go back after awhile, it gets better.

[malek05]

I think the cpu catches on to what you do. In my first few weeks playing with fsu i was just able to pound the ball down the middle since the cpu would alwasy line up in dime and nickel packages. In my last two games against duke and boston college they ran variations of the 4-3 and always had 8 in the box. Still ran all over duke but it took me 32 carries to get a 100 against BC.

I think alot of it has to do with ratings also. Teams with good secondaries like Miami will play man to man most of the game, while teams with bad secondaries will play zone alot.

[Maxchp22]

I scrambled a whole lot my first couple games with UL-Monroe, and then my next opponents shut my *** down. Threw a spy on my *** for a good portion and I maybe reached a 1/4 of my qb's run average up to that point. good thread.

[Mizzou23]

Don't forget, everyone improves throughout the season, so you're seeing better defenses by the end of the year....higher awareness ratings across the board.

[TWOSILK]

no I really think there is some kind of "scouting" being done by the computer, it seems like they do read into your tendencies, even in game they tend to know how read your tendencies, so it would figure that they would do a little bit of scouting, the way to test this out, would be to play one half with the playbook that you have used all season and if they seem to have your number, reset the game and use a different playbook and check your results

[tedknick]

I completely agree with this. I know last season my qb's were struggling, so I ran the ball alot, including option, well they just shut me down. There were a lot of games that I was forced to throw the ball way more than I wanted too.