Slider update heading into our week 8. Things are getting closer, bit by bit, by finding defensive 'wins' along the margins. It's tough this year, lol.
Run game as previously mentioned was still high even at 10.
Fumble lost rate went up too much when we dropped from 45 to 40, so giving that a few points for what is clearly a sensitive slider.
FG% is still too high. I generally am paying close attention to the 50+ FGs here, as Madden users attempt more and longer 50+ yd FGs than NFL. Target there is around 58%.
Penalties--giving Holding a small bump as it's not been too high and that's a small nerf to offense on the margins. Lowering PI a smidge. This is less due to it being too low in a vacuum and just looking for another 'margin' way to slightly reduce some of the downfield offensive gains due to DPI.
Changes highlighted in yellow. I've also included a few visuals of where we are with a couple of key metrics vs NFL targets at the bottom:
Total Snaps. Very cool to see these stats are from bona fide NFL-length games now. ~63 off snaps per team vs NFL target of 63.5 Keep this in mind always when looking at scores & stats from other sets/games. Scoring may look lower, but how many snaps are they taking?
Net Yds per Dropback . This means it's taking sacks as well as the negative yardage from sacks into consideration. Yds per Att and comp% are heavily dependent on decision-making and aggressiveness, and humans differ greatly from NFL there. But Net Yds per Dropback represents the true trade-off of outcomes (e.g. stay in pocket longer, throw downfield more, but lower comp% and more sacks). This is one of the stats that should not "lie," and it's still high.
Yds per Carry. Self-explanatory. There will be variance week to week here but we want medians to fall into the 3.8-4.3 range (4.1 midpoint), with a few rare outliers in the 3.5-3.8 and 4.3-4.5 ranges.
3rd Down Conversion. This can be a result of a lot of things, but it's a really critical metric to make sure is balanced. If it's too high or too low, drives are far too easy or tough to sustain. NFL target is 38.9% and we were finally within 0.5% in week 7 after running a bit high most of the season. Hopefully that continues. Given Madden player's tendency toward downfield aggressiveness, this one we really don't want higher than NFL. At or below is generally what we'd expect to see.
Recovered Fumble Rate. This is % of snaps where a fumble turnover occurs. You can see what happened when we lowered to 40 in week 6. Went a bit too far there. Higher slider = fewer fumbles.
Net Punt Avg. You can see what happened when we bumped to 55 in week 5 and then up to 60 in week 6. May end up coming down to ~58-59 but will leave this at 60 for another week or two to get a higher sample size. Target here is 41.5. Week 6 was a tad high but week 7 on point, so just need a couple more weeks to get a more precise # across 3-5 weeks.
