These days, I only have the opportunity and time to play about one game per week, sometimes one game per two weeks, usually on Saturday or Sunday morning before it's time to go do adult stuff with the wife and/or kids. However every weekday morning before work I get about a half hour alone to myself to turn on the XBOX to do other things - so over the past several months I have developed what basically amounts to a practice/scouting regimine.
First off, I do a dynasty report (link below in my sig), so every week I post a game preview for myself and my readers:
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...&postcount=606
Doing these, typing out my opponents' lineup specifically, helps me get acquaintated with my upcoming opponent's lineup and their strengths and weaknesses and also gives me the opportunity to look at previous games I have had against that particular opponent to see what worked, what didn't, what type of things they did to me, etc.
Something else I do about mid week is I literally edit the equipment of each and every CPU starter I am about to face. This practice was tedious at first, but now it is one of my favorite things to do during the week. It serves two purposes - #1 - by the time I am done with the typing out the names for the preview and editing equipment, I can probably name in my head virtually all of the CPU starters and their approximate overall rating and #2 - It makes playing the games themselves much more enjoyable visually, seeing the CPU opponents with much more realistic, modern equipment combinations, not to mention it makes for better, more realistic looking pictures for my dynasty report.
The next thing I do in terms of scouting, and this is probably pointless fantasy, but I look at the previous games my opponent played to see what other teams have done that's been successful versus them. I.E. if they played against someone that played them closely or beat them, I go in and look at the stats from that game to see what they did - "Did they beat them throwing the ball 50 times?" "Did they beat them by throwing it to the tight end 10 times" etc. Even though like I said, this probably doesn't matter, this sort of helps give me an idea on what type of game plan I want to install and helps bring the other simulated games to life in my imagination...which brings me to my next step.
The final thing I do in terms of scouting is, I spend about a half hour in practice mode, usually on a Thursday or Friday. The first 15 minutes I spend on offense "installing" a new formation. I.E. I pick a formation or two from my playbook that I've found myself shying away from and I work exclusively at it and/or I determine who I want to feature that week (a certain WR, a TE, my FB, etc.) based on the step above regarding my opponents' previous games and I work on finding plays for that player throughout the playbook. Offensive practice is especially useful if I am set to play a defense that runs a unique alignment, like a 3-4 or 4-2-5. I'll change my defensive playbook before practicing so that I can get a look versus that "foreign" defense I am about to face.
Lastly, after that, I spend about 15 minutes on defense. What I do on D is I change my offensive playbook to that of my upcoming opponents'. I VERY BRIEFLY glance at the formations and plays they run within them, but purposely make sure I do not memorize any of the info and I scroll through very quickly; I just like to get a brief glimpse of the type of offense they're capable of, similar to how a coach in real life watches film. And if I see a unique, interesting looking play in one of their formations or a unique formation itself, I'll click on it and practice against it a handful of times just to get a brief look.
Being a former high school and college player as well as after having a brief stint in college coaching, doing these steps is very fulfilling and brings me back to those days. One of the things I have always loved the most about football is just how much hype, time, and work goes into each game and doing all of these things is very rewarding in that regard. At first I hated being able to only play once every one or two weeks, now I love it because the "work week" stuff makes things feel much more true to real life. I took a long, 5 year break from playing NCAA and doing dynasty reports because of time constraints and not being able to play games frequently, but I have found the game to be much more rewarding doing it this way. To me, going into a game not knowing your opponent isn't truly football.
06-04-2016, 07:02 AM
