Whats up?

[kcarr]

Quote: Originally Posted by Xaos

I'm calling my plays, using a Balanced HB philosophy with Size/Strength/Mauler(Engulfer) Guards/Tackles and I forget my playbook. But my sliders are 75 on everything.

The size/strength philosophy puts a ton of emphasis on size and on strength, obviously, but this is done at the expense of emphasis on blocking ratings which can sometimes make olinemen without great actual blocking skills appear great in terms of overall.

[ebongreen]

Quote: Originally Posted by Xaos

I'm calling my plays, using a Balanced HB philosophy with Size/Strength/Mauler(Engulfer) Guards/Tackles and I forget my playbook. But my sliders are 75 on everything.

Wow, if your sliders are 75 across the board, it's no wonder your halfback is being eaten alive. I'm a little surprised you're getting positive yardage at all - the opposing linebackers must have him painted red practically every play.

[Xaos]

Quote: Originally Posted by ebongreen

Wow, if your sliders are 75 across the board, it's no wonder your halfback is being eaten alive. I'm a little surprised you're getting positive yardage at all - the opposing linebackers must have him painted red practically every play.

I'm talking about 75 on offense across the board, my bad.

[ebongreen]

That's better, but may not be good enough. In addition to what kcarr had to say about your O-line philosophy, from my testing it seemed like you need about a 30-point spread between your Running Back Ability and the defense's Tackling sliders. Your heightened run-blocking will help that some, but probably won't mitigate it entirely. Besides, if the defense's awareness is still set at 50, I'd wager the 'backers are still going to come crashing through gaps too early on most runs and smack your halfback silly.

Do you know and use good playcalling practices by learning the defensive tendencies of the team you face and calling plays designed to attack their weaknesses?

[Xaos]

Quote: Originally Posted by ebongreen

That's better, but may not be good enough. In addition to what kcarr had to say about your O-line philosophy, from my testing it seemed like you need about a 30-point spread between your Running Back Ability and the defense's Tackling sliders. Your heightened run-blocking will help that some, but probably won't mitigate it entirely. Besides, if the defense's awareness is still set at 50, I'd wager the 'backers are still going to come crashing through gaps too early on most runs and smack your halfback silly. Do you know and use good playcalling practices by learning the defensive tendencies of the team you face and calling plays designed to attack their weaknesses?

For that last part.....more or less. And I should decrease defensive sliders, your saying? Or increase offense?

[ebongreen]

The sliders I made and posted in the sliders forum seem to work for a lot of folks and provide (what I think) is relatively balanced gameplay.

Based on what I've read of your setting, I think your defensive awareness is too high, and maybe your tackling, relative to what I worked out. Take a look and see what you think.

[Xaos]

Quote: Originally Posted by ebongreen

The sliders I made and posted in the sliders forum seem to work for a lot of folks and provide (what I think) is relatively balanced gameplay. Based on what I've read of your setting, I think your defensive awareness is too high, and maybe your tackling, relative to what I worked out. Take a look and see what you think.

Alright man, I'll look at your sliders and see how they work for me. Thanks alot.

[cutter73]

What are your coaches stats? Those affect things in a major way. Buying the run blocking special skills and the RB special skills for your HC, OC and position coaches will do wonders for your running game. I don't use sliders, so can't comment on that. But at the default level, once you build your coaches, running the ball gets less of a headache.

What plays are you calling? Are you always running in the same situation? Mix in some play action passes to keep things off balance. Don't run up the middle consitantly against teams that like to blitz constantly. Don't run outside consitantly against teams that run a Cover-2. Don't call counter plays unless you set them up first with a few regular run and pick a counter based on that. Also, don't run them or tosses where one of your OL has to pull unless you have linement with good agility/speed/acc stats. Not just the pulling lineman, you'll need the guy next to him to have good stats in those areas as well. A lot of high overall rated linemen don't have those stats in the right place for those plays. A lot of high overall linemen also don't have high stats where you might thing they do. I've had 90+ rated linemen who couldn't pass block, and 90+ linemen who couldn't run block. Other ratings like learning and awareness can drive the overall ratings up and make you think you have better players than you actually do.

If you're going to run outside, and the defense plays a lot of man coverage, pick a play that puts both your recievers on the side opposite you want to run to. This takes the corner out of the picture and give you one less defender to worry about. Also, pick toss plays where the recievers stay in to block rather than run a route. The defenders seem to always see the run coming and just let your recievers go, so keep them on the line to block. especially if they have a decent block rating. Carry a TE with good blocking skills to sub in for running plays, or if you don't have one, sub in a backup OL to play TE in those situations.

One more thing to keep in mind is that if you get too far ahead of the other team on the scoreboard, they basically sell out to play the run all the time. They start blitzing like crazy even if they aren't a big blitz team.

I hope some of this helps. Like I said, I don't use sliders so can't comment on that part of the question. But doing all the above, I generally get around 12-1400 average yards a season in the running game with around a 4.+ average per carry. A lot depends on what defenses you play any given season.