There should be a fine line between being 'well-drilled' and a Defense working it out. In reality, how many times per game do teams run the same play? There are people out there who only put passing plays in with a slant option. A good defensive coach would quickly counter that with plays that disrupt that route or position players to 'jump the route' with an interception or double/triple team that specific route to force the QB to throw elsewhere.

Just as a team that runs the same blitz play over and over will find the QB adjusting with screens, dumpoffs, scrambles etc.

We called 14 long passes for 10 yards. But that shotgun TE out play did well vs two different base man under plays . It did have shorter routes.

Are QBs getting into thier drops a bit quicker ? It seems QBs are scrambling a bit less too. Still Only one game.

Across three Leagues (all using BETA) I didn't see much difference. Too early to know for certain but I think it needs further tweaking.

Franchise Football (Roster only): Wild card games:
No team over 250 yards passing,
sacks at an acceptable level (20 in 6 games - avg 3.3 per game)

Victory: Week 1, Season 3:

No team over 300 yards passing,
3 teams over 250 yards passing
122 sacks in 16 games (approx 7.5 per game)
5 100 yard rushers
2 100 yard receivers

Legends: Week 3, Season 8

Difficult to extrapolate the data as you cannot search by a specific gameweek, unless you check the stats in each game.

However, no real improvement in passing yards, sacks are through the roof.



Summary: The 'human player' is way more aggressive than the AI coach. Resulting in double the sacks than a roster only League. They are prepared to pass more often but are all struggling to put yards up.

Pass blocking still needs to be better and last longer, QB's hold the ball too long still and rarely go through 'reads', very few deep ball completions in any league - (My longest passing play of the week was in a 0.4.5 League)

The Play calling decision making needs a serious revamp. A team can have 20+ different options available but the Coach will focus on specific plays, seemingly getting stuck on his favourites even when he has plenty of other options. Obviously, getting a working passing game takes precedence.

Plays need a serious revamp period. There are fewer than 25 passes that work well in 4.5, and almost all of them are short passes or rely on some sort of exploit.

Because of how bad OL blocking is on the Gun 5, 14, and 104 sets, they are basically unplayabe (still). The 122 is largely awful as well. That leaves you 25 passing plays in the 113, 203, 212 sets with the 311 exploit to round it out. There are only so many combinations that you can do with that.

I disagree that pass blocking needs to hold longer, but it does need to be better.

The major problem is WR play. They have been nerfed so badly in terms of SP, route, and B&R Avoid that they can barely move. This was all to make up for the old SP vs SP on the outside where 95+ SP WRs with no skill averaged 30 YPC.

There needs to be a lot more balance in the game. If I put a 95 SP guy with 50 catch on the edge, I should know that he's going to get deep a lot, but he's also going to drop a lot of passes downfield like a Heyward-Bey. But if I play a bunch of 80 SP guys with 100 catch, I should expect them to run a route a 10-12 yard route in 1-2 seconds and catch every open pass.

This is the absolute best/worst example I have found of what I mean. My QB has 3(!!!!!!) seconds to throw this ball. My WRs don't even get to 10 yards. AND THE DBS ARE PLAYING OFF OF THEM! https://victory.myfootballnow.com/watch/717#128372

This is why this game is so frustrating for offensive game planners. I understand that running a Gun 5 on the 1 is ill advised, but I'm trying to run an explosive spread offense to prove a point that you CANNOT do it.

I returned to mfn1 during the '48 season because JDB said he was prepared to release the code across MFN at the end of that season. It was immediately apparent, despite objections from some others around here, that the code was severely problematic. Now, as we prepare to enter the '50 season, the latest update is still a mess, and JDB won't even acknowledge the underlying concerns. I'm having a hard time figuring out why I should continue to "test" this code.

I mean, we could just focus on these three key problems and dramatically improve the game, but it appears JDB is unwilling to comment on them:

WRs can't even move as quickly as DL, regardless of attributes

Desperately need min speeds at skill positions, and reconsideration of speed caps at others

Playbooks need a major overhaul

Instead, after all these years, we get deeper dropbacks (why?), longer blocks (supposedly?), and an overall flattening of speed (thanks, Ray!)

I would say there are four key problems.

In addition to the three you listed above, there are far too many knockdowns. Almost every incompletion is a knockdown in a game.

It'd be much more realistic to see WRs boxing out DBs, especially on hook routes, and then having to fight through a tackle.