Played a great game last night

[dalecooper]

"Cool story bro" post:

I played a game last night in dynasty with my teambuilder team (4 * school) against Wisconsin. It was in Wisconsin and they were 1-1 (backs against the wall a little bit) so I was worried I was going to get handled. When the game was loading the brief description of their playbook told me they like to chew clock with short passes and runs. I figured that was OK - I have really good linebackers who gets lots of tackles for a loss, so I could hopefully break up their drives here and there.

Nuh uh! Opening drive, they go 80 yards for a TD. I had a long drive of my own in response but it stalled and I only got 3. Now leading 7-3, they took over, started driving again, and then a blown coverage resulted in a long TD run-after-catch. Now I was down 14-3 and nervous. I got a must-have drive going, including converting two fourth-and-shorts after the CPU unsurprisingly jumped the snap and crashed the line on my third down run play. Finally I put it in and made it 14-10. They drove before the half but got stopped in the red zone, settling for a one TD lead.

But I was going to get the ball back, so I was thinking: could be worse. Unfortunately I couldn't do anything with it. I punt, they go 3-and-out and punt back. Then I got greedy on an option play and fumbled the pitch, and they turned around and threw a pick. (Whew.) I finally put a good drive together and tied it at 17-17. End of 3rd.

They went 3-and-out again. After the punt I got really lucky - the CB whiffed an easy tackle on a 5 yard slant, and I took it to the house for my first lead of the game. They manned up right away and drove for a tying score: 24-24. My next drive quickly sputtered, and they went into clock-killing mode. Finally with only 1:30 left they were on my 15, and I was really sweating it. I stopped three plays in a row thank GOD, and called my last two timeouts to save some clock. For some reason after a short third down run the stupid CPU AI called a timeout with one minute left (thanks, EA!). They went for the FG from the left hash - and pushed it right, no good!

Finally I got the ball back and started doing a hurry-up with lots of short throws, hoping to break a big run against soft coverage. No such luck. After completing a few passes for just 15 yards I got desperate and hot-routed my #1 receiver deep, with one safety creeping up to blitz. I pump-faked the other safety off and threw a bomb. The receiver caught it in a jump-ball situation, but there was a penalty (oh no...). Turned out to be... defensive pass interference. I couldn't believe it. I declined of course. With sixteen seconds left and no timeouts, I decided to just kick it, and it went right down the middle. Ballgame!

That got less than 1000 "classic" points, but it was a nail-biter. I felt like I was in a hole the entire time and trying to claw my way out, but the dirt just kept falling in on me.

[mcpheje]

I had a similarly tense game that I won on a last second field goal. It also go less than 1000 for the classic game score. The only time I've cracked the 1000 mark is on games where I lose at the end.