Is it my imagination?

[Wheeler Dealer]

Is it my imagination, or is there some sort of random team momentum set at the beginning of each game.

Occasionally, a game will start with everything going in favor of one team. I'm sure you've seen that happen.

I had a recent game where I had four fumbles in the first quarter! I had another where my first possession was a stuffed run on first down followed by two sacks. My next two possessions weren't much better. Meanwhile, my opponent was gashing my normally good run defense for 10 yards a carry. Then I put together a drive only to miss a 33 yard field goal! This against a team that wasn't as good on paper.

I had a game against the Patriots where I could do no wrong in the first half. I was completing 90% of my passes and running at will. They finally scored just before half to make it 28-7. My team and my coaching clearly wasn't as good. Basically this same team beat me 62-24 in the playoffs the prior year.

The game(s) that convinced me was against Baltimore, one I should win. I was getting kicked around pretty bad at the beginning of the game when I noticed my HBs weren't being used in the game the way I had set it up. Neither injuries, health nor fatigue seemed to account for the bizarre substitutions. I went back to my depth chart and it wasn't the way I had set it after the coin flip. The only thing I could think of was that I had agreed to start the #2 TE during the week and then changed my mind. (He had a padlock by his name.) I assumed the game was correcting my roster incorrectly.

I powered off and started again without going back to the #1 TE. I was approaching halftime, down only 3 thanks to a KO Return TD. Then I got a power flicker and lost my game.

The third attempt went even better than I had expected based on the ratings on the teams. Everything worked for me in the first half and nothing much worked for the Ravens. I won 50-14 playing my 2nd string during the 4th Q.

I believe the program sets a random momentum factor at the beginning of each game. If you are on the bad end with the better team you may be able to overcome it during the course of the game. But it's not random like an average HB ripping my good run defense for 15 yards at random times during the game. If it's going to happen it's always grouped near the beginning of the game.

[ebongreen]

It could also be that there's a really good random-number generator in this game, so you'll see awesomely streaky behavior once in a while - as you would expect to see with a good RNG.