Operation Sports Forums - Revamped Coaching

Revamped Coaching

If you’ve read any of my other threads to date it should come of no surprise that I’ve been thinking how the coaching carousel, coaching tree and coaching attributes could work in an ideal Madden. As like the other threads, this leans heavily on the imaginings of DeuceDouglas who deserves a tonne of credit if EA ever implement an expanded sim style Franchise Mode (I’ve decided to stop calling it CFM as I hope they remove the “connected” part and have a Career Mode, GM Mode and Coach Mode – Online/offline).

Anyhow, back to the Coaching in Madden. If you’re playing as an Owner in Madden then you can hire your coaching staff. The way it is implemented is flat out limited with only a scout, a trainer and a head coach available and every CFM starts with firing 2/3 of the staff and hiring the level 30 scout and trainer with world class regression to a max length contracts. The Head Coach is a little better, they come with a dynamic level that changes based on success, an offensive and defensive scheme and a host of packages to make the Owners life easier. The packages boil down to:

Extra weekly scouting points
Extra XP when training
Extra XP when doing skill training for specific group
Hey CPU, you really want to take this trade for your 1st round pick… (expert trader)
Please don’t retire… (retirement packages)
Please come play for my team… (FA packages)
Please stay with my team… (resign packages)

Okay, so my first move is to scrap levels. Boom, gone! Instead the coaches get an 0-99 rating in certain categories contributing to an OVR. I’m unsure whether a Badge system for coaches would be too much if they expanded for attributes and archetypes or not (see signature for link to that)? So in this case I’ve chosen to ignore the badge system and how it could link with that and just go with a discussion on attributes for now.

OVR – An accumulation of Awareness, Skill and Intangibles
Awareness – Pass Offense, Run Offense, Pass Defence, Run Defence
Skill – Motivation, Technique, Development, Scouting, Charisma
Intangibles – Morale, Performance, Progression, Potential (Hidden)

Coach Awareness Ratings

Pass Offense – Coach Awareness in game of calling Pass Plays in Gameplan, probability of predicting the style of defence on the next play in coaching tips, slight boost to player awareness on passing plays. Makes/suggests better adjustments to playcalls during game.
Run Offense – Coach Awareness in game of calling Run Plays in Gameplan, probability of predicting the style of defence on the next play in coaching tips, slight boost to players awareness on running plays. Makes/suggests better adjustments to playcalls during game.
Pass Defence – Coach Awareness in game of calling Pass Defense in Gameplan, probability of predicting the style of offence on the next play in coaching tips, slight boost to players awareness on pass-d plays. Makes/suggests better adjustments to playcalls during game.
Run Defence – Coach Awareness in game of calling Pass Defense in Gameplan, probability of predicting the style of offence on the next play in coaching tips, slight boost to players awareness on pass-d plays. Makes/suggests better adjustments to playcalls during game.
Special Teams – Coach Awareness in game during special teams plays, includes trick plays. Boosts probability of players outstanding special teams performance and can give slight boost to player awareness during ST plays.

Coach Skill Ratings

Motivation – How good a coach is at motivating the team, affects in game morale gains and losses, e.g. following a Pick-6. Provides boost for progressing/developing durability and some physical skills (strengths). Provides boost to season fatigue and season turning points (on edge of playoffs) whilst on staff. Important for a Drill Sergeant and Strength and Conditioning Coach.
Technique – How good the coach is for teaching the fundamentals and advanced techniques of a position. Gives a temporary (whilst on staff) boost to certain skill attributes e.g. DL position coach with high technique will boost pass rush and block shed skills. Players with higher awareness will gain better boosts as they are better at taking tutelage on board. Important attribute for Technician Coaches and ex-players are likely to develop into technician coaches. Provides modest boost for progressing player Skills but not as much as a high development coach.
Development – How good the coach is for tapping into the potential and progression of a player. High development boosts the progression stat of a player whilst on staff, making them more likely to receive progress and bigger gains when they do progress. High development also can provide an indication of a player’s potential in reports.
Scouting – How good is the coaches eye for talent, affects the accuracy of scouting reports and the accuracy of free agent reports whilst on staff. Affects how accurately you can scout an opposition. Determines how fast drafted prospects are evaluated in a position group during offseason/preseason/(in-season even?). High scouting rating more likely to identify players in other position groups that could shift position well. Important for Head Scout and
Charisma – How likeable is the coach, can aid position group morale recovery and overall team chemistry, used to attract free agents, retain key players, ask players to put off retirement for another year, influence trade deals with other teams. Very important of Vice President of Player Personnel, GM and Players Coach roles.

Coach Intangible Ratings

Morale – Dynamic Rating and can influence morale of their position group and overall team chemistry. Have they recently been promoted, praised, scolded, told they can’t interview elsewhere, their position group had a good/bad game, won/lost a division game, made it to the playoffs/Superbowl.
Performance – Stat tracking the overall performance of a coach in their career. Links with progression to set up the coach “level”. Low level likely means inexperienced, rookie or a recently poor performing coach.
Progression – A stat that defines the probability and magnitude of the increase in a coach ratings. See later notes on how coaches progress. (There is no regression rating for a coach as it is a lifetime of accumulating knowledge).
Potential – Hidden Stat, a soft cap on the max OVR of the coach where progression slows down.

Second move, establish archetypes for coaches. Now archetypes shouldn’t set ratings, ratings should influence archetype so that when you quick view a coach as “Elite Defensive Mastermind”, you know sort of what you’re getting. But should the coach improve on the offensive side they would become “Elite Mastermind”. So the coaching archetype breakdown could look like the following:

“Levels” for archetype (0-99 ratings are just examples of requirement ranges to make the grade):

“Normal” Coach - Basically, no level appears at the beginning of the archetype description where coaches do not meet any of the criteria/requirements. So non rookie coaches with less than 3 seasons. No Bonuses.
Rookie – The coach is new to their coaching level and is unproven. 0 Performance, Slight bonus to progression for 1st season.
Journeyman – The coach has multiple seasons at their coaching level and is sufficiently proven, 10-50 Performance, 30-60 Progression, 3+ Seasons at level, Buffer against Morale hit penalties
Upcoming – The coach has potential and pencilled for a promotion soon, 10+ Performance, 70+ Progression, Boost to Charisma for 1 season after promotion
Established – The coach has proven themselves consistently at moderately high level, 60+ Performance, 6+ Seasons at level, Buffer against Performance hit penalties
Demoted – The coach has recently been demoted/fired so content to take a lower role for a short time (ex-head coaches becoming DCs or position coaches for instance), 0 Performance, Boost to Motivation for 1 season after demotion
Superb – The coach is considered one of the best at their level, 80+ Performance, 70+ 0VR, Slight buffer against performance hit penalties and boost to Charisma
Elite – This coach is considered Top5 at their level and proven themselves at a very high level, 80+ Performance, 80+ OVR, Boost to Team Chemistry, Charisma and moderate buffer against Performance hit penalties.
No1 – This Coach is the best at their level and perfected their craft, 90+ Performance, 90+ OVR, Boost to Team Chemistry, Charisma, Motivation and good buffer against performance hit penalties.

“Focus” for archetype:

Running – This Coach’s primary focus and expertise is on establishing a running game
Passing – This Coach’s primary focus and expertise is on establishing a passing game
Run Stop – This Coach’s primary focus and expertise is on stopping the run
Pass D – This Coach’s primary focus and expertise is on stopping the pass
Balanced Offensive – This Coach is focused on a balanced offensive approach
Balanced Defensive – This Coach is focused on a balanced defensive approach
Trench Warfare – This coach is focused on establishing a running game and stopping the run
Air Raid – This Coach is focused on establishing a passing game and stopping the pass
Old School – This Coach is focused on the running game and a balanced defensive approach
New School – This Coach is focused on a the passing game and a balanced defensive approach
Bend Don’t Break – This Coach is focused on stopping the pass and has a balanced offensive approach
Run’n’Gun – This Coach is focused on stopping the run and has a balanced offensive approach
All-around – This Coach is sufficient in all aspects of offensive and defensive approaches
Special Teams – This Coach has a unique ability for coaching Special Teams
Unique – This Coach has no real focus in their game style but offers other high level unique traits, e.g. Just scouting for Head Scout, Trainer, Strength&Conditioning Coach, Vice President of Personnel
Jack-of-all-trades – This Coach has no real focus in their game style and has little unique traits

“Style” for archetype
Motivator – Primary Style is Motivation above all other skills.
Technician – Primary Style is Technique above all other skills
Whisperer – Primary Style is Development above all other skills.
Scout – Primary Style is Scouting above all other skills. A true head scout will feature low Coach Awareness rating as they are primarily a scout.
Future GM – Primary Style is Charisma above all other skills. A GM and VP of Personnel will feature low Coach Awareness ratings as they are primarily front office types.
Players Coach – Relatively even style focus of motivation and charisma
Drill Sergeant – Relatively even style of focus on motivation and technique.
College Styler – Relatively even style of focus on scouting and charisma
Schemer – Relatively even style focus of scouting and development
Salesman – Relatively even style focus of development and charisma
Instructor – Relatively even style of focus on motivation and development
Teacher – Relatively even style focus of motivation and scouting
Professor – Relatively even style focus of technique and development
Analyst – Relatively even style of focus of technique and scouting
Role Model – Relatively even style of focus of technique and charisma
Strategist – Low skills overall but higher Awareness Ratings
Mastermind – Relatively even and high style focus of all skills.

Okay, phew!!! You've made it this far, well done! Anyway, the list is long as different combinations of Awareness, Skill and Intangible produce a different archetype which will become important later for coaching improvement. But the idea is that if you have a DL coach who then works their way up to D-Coordinator and then a defensive focused Head Coach, they're going to have way less exposure to the offense. Say this same coach is really gets the players fired up and later learns how to really teach the technique. Lets say this coach has some success as a head coach, all of a sudden you have an “Established Balanced Defensive Drill Sergeant” (umm, Mike Zimmer anyone?). That title whilst a little long (it is one of the longer ones) allows a more casual player to say, “hey I want a decent defensive head coach, oh there's one” without having to scroll through the breakdown of ratings.

Maybe Tom Brady retires and becomes a QB coach. He's going to come in as a “Rookie Passing Technician”, maybe he learns the nuances of developing players and has early success with his high progression rating becomes a “Upcoming Passing Professor” (cheesey I know). Maybe he really nails down how to stop the pass and wins a superbowl, gets over 90OVR and becomes a “Elite Air Raid Mastermind”.

Coach Age
Okay, so whilst there is no regression rating for coaches unlike my Expanded Player Attribute thread (see signature), as a Coach ages and racks up more and more seasons in the league they are going to accumulate knowledge but become more of a known commodity. So as they age the Progression rating goes down, this means they are less likely to improve every season and once they hit their (hidden) potential then the progression starts to plateau. So an older coach might have more balanced Awareness and Skill ratings, you know what you're getting and they can't be moulded as easy. In order to not flood the coach FA market with a tonne of well progressed coaches there will have to be retirements at any age but more likely as progression state depletes and they get older.

Coaching Layout
So like in Madden 17, how it now shows the depth chart as a layout where player tiles can be clicked on and shifted, I imagine the coaching tree being a screen layout exactly like that but with a roster style scroll system in “staff management”. The tree would look like this (see future diagram at end of article too):

Head Coach
Offensive Coordinator
QB Coach
RB Coach
TE Coach
WR Coach
OL Coach
Defensive Coordinator
DL Coach
LB Coach
CB Coach
S Coach
Special Teams Coordinator
Assistant ST Coach

GM – You basically
Head Scout
VP of Personnel
Head Athletic Trainer
Strength&Conditioning Coach

Wow, that's 18 positions and it seems a bit daunting but then you handle 75 players on your Madden Roster and cut that down to 53 and 10PS with ease. It's about the presentation allowing for both casuals and hardcore players alike.

Coaching Progression

So if you read about the coaching tree in the NFL, every head coach can be linked back to their tutor when the were a position coach or coordinator. Their styles can be very similar due to how they were taught. I wanted to recreate this through how coaches progress. So a coach gets signed to a “lower level” position coach job. They possibly already have an archetype like “Rookie trench warfare Analyst”, so this coach is going to be well suited to either the RB, OL, DL or LB role on a team looking to stop the run, establish the run and get the players technique boost whilst also being good at scouting the opponent and their own players at the OL spot. The archetype dictates part of the coaches development path, so in their second season they will progress in Run, Run Stop, Technique and Scouting. However, say this rookie coach is assigned to the OL position, their progression will also be influenced by the OC. So say the OC is a “Established Balanced Offensive Schemer”, this means the rookie coach will get a bonus progression to Pass, Run, Scouting and Development. Whilst they would still be a trench warfare archetype early on, the OC help allows them to become a slightly more well rounded coach possible ready one day for a promotion to OC themselves. Or they could go to a defensive position coach and work their way up to being a very well balanced Head Coach.

The same applies to the OC, DC and STC from the head coach, the head coach archetype will influence their progression as much as their own archetype.

If a coach progresses to the point that they fit a new archetype, then the archetype will change but so will their progression style. So a very similar OC matched against a very similar QB coach means the QB coach will progress very very well in their strengths but not improve on their weaknesses as much unless a new OC is brought in.

A special teams assistant coach would progress more specifically under a special teams coordinator. Ex ST players are likely to retire into ST coach positions and also this is a great place to put a future OC, DC or HC for a season before promoting them as they become a little bit more balanced.

GM Position Progressions

The Head Scout, Head Athletic Trainer, VP of Player Personnel and Strength & Conditioning Coach all fall under the GM position. Any coach placed into one of these positions will not develop their Coaching Awareness, therefore coaches in these positions are often “unique” and not a good place to develop a position coach or coordinator.

The Head Scout is in charge of the scouting department. The key skill here is Scouting obviously, but motivation and charisma can help.

Motivation – Helps motivate the scouting department and can get more scouting reports completed in a season
Scouting – Accuracy of scouting reports presented and speed at which newly drafted players are evaluated.
Charisma – Influences signing of UDFAs after the draft

The Head Athletic Trainer helps develops the durability rating (toughness, injury) of a player and the key skills here are motivation, development and scouting.

Motivation – Helps the injured player back from injury so influences injury time length
Development – Helps the injured player not suffer too much of a drop off in attributes due to injury and offers slight boost to regression attribute of player holding off father time.
Scouting – Accuracy of medical scouting reports presented and probability of finding red flags in draft prospects.

The Strength and Conditioning Coach helps develop the durability rating (stamina) of the player and improve certain physical ratings (strengths, acceleration). The key skills here are motivation, technique and development.

Motivation – Helps the player develop their stamina (and season stamina and mass if you've read my expanded attributes thread). If a player is being asked to put on weight, important skill in making sure it is good weight (increase in size and strength with no decrease in Mass and Stamina rating).
Technique – Are the proper techniques being employed, lower or higher risk of non football injury.
Development – Helps the player develop their strengths (upper and lower, see expanded attributes) and explosiveness in the form of acceleration depending on the progression rating. Affects the magnitude change in strength and acceleration if a player is asked to gain or lose weight in offseason.

The VP of Player Personnel is the guy the players and coaches go to when you're not around, so you want a good one to make sure the key player resigns, brings new Fas in and helps with trades, draft day and UDFAs. Key skill here is Charisma and scouting, although motivation helps.

Motivation – Affects the influence on players considering retirement and demanding trades or holdouts due to low morale.
Scouting – Affects the accuracy of Free Agent ratings and the speed of evaluating the free agent ratings once signed.
Charisma – Affects the influence of trades with other teams, the likely hood of a player resigning, Free Agents signing, players demanding trades or holdouts when morale is low.

GM controlled positions would progress along their own archetypes only and would not progress in Coach Awareness as mentioned before. Therefore these positions are not ideal to progress your coaches skills and people assigned to these roles become highly specialised over time.

Coach Promotions and Performance

So a coach has an OVR rating and a performance rating at their current position level. A team fires their head coach and are now in the market for a HC, they're scouring the NFL coaching tree and have multiple options in the Coach Free Agent Market, on other teams or promote from within. A GM will try to find balance between the HC, DC and OC so if a defensive HC was fired but the OC was retained, then they will try to find another defensive HC. Maybe they clean house of the HC, OC and DC positions, so they take on a HC who then might recruit some former position coaches to be the OC and DC on the team based on OVR and performance. This would strip the former team of a couple of position coaches who will then have to dive into the free agency market.

Promotion from within would be easy, if in the offseason, press on the OC or DC tile and select “Promote to...HC”, then maybe promote a position coach with “Promote to...DC”. If during the season (if coach fired midseason) then there would be an additional command of “temporarily promote to...HC” which would automatically revert back to OC at the beginning of the offseason, you could then officially promote the coordinator to HC with a new contract. Careful of not promoting your temporary HC as they could take a huge Morale hit and demand to be released/traded.

Promoting from other teams would be available in the offseason, the other team would receive a notification asking to talk terms, they can oblige and you then negotiate a contract, or they can refuse and the other teams coach might take a huge morale hit.

Free Agency would be combination of coaches who's contracts expired and college coaches wanting to enter at various levels in the NFL. Having a good filter system in the available coaches screen is a must, as well as search function. Maybe I only want to see “Unique” Athletic Trainers or “Upcoming Run'n'Gun Scout OCs” for my HC position. Negotiate away any time of year from here.

The CPU would aim to promote or sign coaches with existing experience at the position as dictated by their Performance rating or promote from a lower level if the coach had a higher Performance Rating. The FA market panel would show the coaches hopeful position, but bargains could be had getting a previous Head Coach to be a position coach (hello Leslie Frazier and Pay Shurmur).

Coach Playbooks, Schemes and Player Archetypes

How do you go about creating variation in the playbooks with so many coaches and the current Madden only using 32 different offensive and defensive playbooks??? Well, there would have to be quite a lot more playbooks created. Every HC would display their preferred offensive and defensive playbooks on their tile. The OC and DC would similarly show their preferred playbooks on their tile. Depending on the HC, if the HC is balanced then they would use both the offensive and defensive preferred playbooks. The HC is skewed to either offense or defence then the OC or DC playbook is used to compensate. Penalties and bonuses could also apply to coach progression if matching or mismatching schemes apply.

E.g. A defensive 3-4 Head Coach is hired and the current DC was retained for some reason but the current DC is primarily a 4-3 coach, the defensive HC overrides the DC and the team uses a 3-4 as they have the higher defensive rating. If the HC was actually offensive focused with low defensive awareness, the DC in this case would override the offensive HC and their Scheme would be used i.e. a 4-3 scheme and playbook.

Where a OC or DC has been overridden by the HC scheme and playbook, there would be a Playbook menu option and in there would be OC and DC slots where the HC can temporarily borrow formations and plays from the OC or DC to insert into their playbook. When the OC or DC leave, the slot becomes empty. Consider this the effect of a good coordinator on a head coach. For example, when Norv Turner left the Vikings mid season, Pat Shurmur stepped in and the new playbook was inserted as Mike Zimmer is a defensive coach. Say a new DC starts with the vikings and wants Zimmer to try a couple of Hybrid Formations, the DC has their playbook overridden but the option slots exist in the menu to add those formations to try.

MY BIGGEST CFM BUGBEAR OF THEM ALL – THE COACHING CAROUSEL BUG!!!! Would be solved instead of making the scheme player archetype attached to the coach, it would be attached to the playbook. So the Rams hire Wade Phillips, therefore his playbook means the Rams are now changing to a 3-4 defensive front as new HC Sean McVay was the offensive coordinator for the Redskins previously. Wade's playbook overrides McVay's defensive playbook due to higher D rating. The player scheme archetypes change to match Wade's playbook, so now players are moved to fit 3-4 OLB pass rushers from 4-3 DEs BUT(!!!!!!!) Madden would now recognise the new archetype and not trade or cut all the newly moved players and draft for the old 4-3 scheme archetype despite using a 3-4 playbook!!!! Seriously, fix this for Franchise if nothing else... sigh.

Position coaches do not have a scheme and playbook yet, but if they are ever promoted within or to another level on another team, they will take the previous OC or DC schemes (power run, zone run, attacking 4-3, base 3-4 etc) with them and possibly copy the playbook or use a very similar variation on the playbook.

In Summary

Coaches have a new OVR rating which breaks down into Awareness, Skill and Intangible. These breakdown further in order to give the Coach a real flavour of who and what they are and to establish a coach archetype. The coach archetype influences progression but so does the higher level coach they play under. GM controlled positions exist but these are specialised. Coaches grow, perform and get promoted/signed or demoted and the carousel keeps turning. The coaching tree influences the coaches scheme and playbook which can temporarily evolve based on Coordinator “suggestions”. Player Archetypes get fixed to the playbooks so Geodude can then die happy.

Conclusion

There we have it, an expanded but accessible dynamic coaching carousel with multiple levels and progression according to coach archetypes and the coaching tree with greater affect of coaches on the players and team! As usual, will try to respond to feedback and love other peoples takes on expanding the coaching aspect of Franchise. I am aware this could make multiple user online leagues an absolute nightmare of complication and envision a day where Online Coach Mode and Offline GM mode are separated where expanded coaching is only applied in the Offline GM mode unless it works well enough for online too.

Note: I use the words offence and defence a lot in this thread and as I am British I could be using the completely wrong ones for American Football due to my British Spell Checker. Apologies all around there.

P.S. Concept drawings to follow of the Coaching Layout and the Coaching Tiles but they take a bit longer to put together than writing it up does.