This is a copy paste of post I just made in L14 forum, thought it might be of interest to others and would like to see what the opinion is on it. cheers, gdb

Just took a look at the league player stats for all teams, and noticed that the defensive backs are giving up a much higher % of catches than previous seasons. Will chalk that up to the new game version. If you dont know how to check it, go to the league page, click on player stats, then defense, then click on the "CthAlld" column and look at the column next to it on the right, the "CthAlld %". On the first page of players listed, there is only one DB under 40%, barely at 39. on the second page there is 4 DBs under 40, and same for the third page. Not a single DB under 30%!! and there are always a few. When you click on the Thrn At column and check the %'s, there are 6 DB's under 40%, and none under 30%. The first DB to crack the 30% barrier is Ralph Ryan (BNA) with 28.3% on 46 thrown ats, which is half of the most thrown ats (90) and ranks him at 59th in that category. So basically, based on the current L14 defensive stats, the 4.1 game version has significantly weakened pass coverage. Was suprised at the number of starting DBs with catch allowed %'s above 60%! Havnt looked at my other leagues/teams yet but suspect similar results. As a result, have seen more teams go to basically all pass offenses or significantly increasing their # of pass plays. Have also noticed that more 3rd & long (over 12 yards) are being completed for first downs, which is real irritating after your defense has gained what should be a strong advantage off the first & second downs. For those who prefer a more accurate simulation to pro football, Is that any better than the all-blitz defenses that were criticized by several. Not saying that a game engine that favors blitzing is any better, but would like to see a better balance between the two extremes.

Yes.

Almost anything is better than the all (or nearly all) blitz defenses some like to use.

Right, an all pass offense is better than an all blitz defense. Neither is a good "simulation" of pro football. What is a good simulation is when the game and player stats are more realistic and the balance of play calls are more in line with the pro game. How many zone coverage defenses are you using in a game WE? Do you have any defensive gameplans that use only Nickel & Dime secondary formations 90% + of the time? Overuse of any plays and/or formations is not a good simulation of pro football and Ive been as guilty as anyone for using blitzing, it was the best defensive strategy based simply on average per play results, sorry. So it comes down to whether or not simulation is more important than the best strategy you can use to win, especially when your roster is not as strong as your opponent. There's a good balance point, but not when you have to overcome game imbalances, like passing gaining a 10% catch allowed overall.

I'm not a fan of zone in this game. However, in 75 this past season my D playbook had 11 plays with at least 2 DBs in zone, 5 of which had all DBs in zone. I didn't consider LBs in zone in these numbers.



Not that I am aware of, and definitely not by design. I guess going against a team that has 3 or more WR every play could cause the Ai to select Nickel/Dime/Quarter defensive sets for me much more than others.

As far as in each game, I don't know. My D matrix is spread equally for both LBs (17 across the board) and Secondary (10 across the board), so I guess it's random depending on what the Ai wants to do in that particular game.

I very rarely get called for overuse. Less than once per game. The play called the most was called 79 times over 16 games (4.93/game).

Weirdly, some zone D does work in some leagues and not others, maybe this is down to personnel

I also have had some surprising short term results on the very few zone coverage plays that I use. I go by the play results, and have had to do some double-takes on a few zone plays that have been working real well so far, but that is still short term, over a one or few games, will see how it goes. I still have PTSD from zone coverage plays in previous game version, lol. Thats why I didnt use them at all, and decided to try a few in 4.1 to see if there was any improvement, and there seems to be some but I dont know how that's possible the way the game code and algorithms are used to decide play outcomes.

I've been systematically working through the zone plays and play scenarios. I don't have enough anecdotal or hard numbers yet, but I have some definite thoughts about how to employ zone defenses. That said, it's only in a complimentary role right now.

When I found out that zone was meant to not work, I took out loads of them and my D slipped badly, so I've put them back in and they seem to work just fine, can't remember which league though, sorry

As far as I can tell, neither zone nor M2M really "work". Instead, some times the DB gets lucky and knocks the pass away from the intended receiver.

Coverage doesn't discourage a QB from throwing it to a receiver -- QBs routinely throw into double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple...undecuple coverage.

And while I know Ray throws around coverage sack, I don't think I've actually seen one. I do see a lot of flawed QB logic sacks -- QBs holding the ball until the WR they are "reading" finishes a route. The flawed part of this logic means that even if it's the second or third "read" on the play, the QB is still going to hold the ball. (So if the QB reads the short route and then "reads" the long route; he's done reading until the long route is done.)

What M2M does is that it always puts a man "near" the receiver so you have a better chance of knocking the ball away. The cover attribute determines the closeness the player is but not really the coverage.

What Zone does is put a lot of people in the passing lanes so that there are more chances to bat the ball away before it reaches the receiver. Zone has obvious flaws in that players can easily go over the top or underneath the zone. While getting burned underneath isn't a game changer, getting burned deep is.

Anyway, when I have say four hours free (October), I'll dump an extended version of these observations into an Advanced Defensive Gameplanning post. Until then, I'm still experimenting.