JDB

Have you decided against doing anything to actually make the all-blitz defensive scheme one that you can't be successful with?

I haven't seen anything from you about this in quite a while.


Thanks

It's the only way to stop the run and the pass right now, so unless we're going to fix coverage, LB spacing, LB reaction times, and speed vs weight, what's the point?

I've been focusing on other aspects but I am sure I'll return to this soon. I wanted to get a new release out that has some of the smaller updates since 0.4.1 without adding a bunch of significant changes that would delay those smaller updates.

A good start in me not running a blitz every down would be to have more than 30 defensive plays. I can't game plan for quarter and situation anymore with only 30 without blitzing every down out of certain sets. I'm annoyed as WarEagle at this.

The 40 / 30 numbers for the playbooks should be changed from maximum to minimum number of selections.

I know you can still get around this via rules but it's a good start.

Has there ever been a response to the reason why there is a limit on the number of plays we can pick from in the first place? I've searched and have seen the question asked many times, but can't find an answer.

My problem is I want to do a lot more with rules on defense, but I'm limited to plays. What makes this worse is that play overuse gets called so much more on defense anyway.

The penalty doesn't get applied if you have balanced playcalling.

If you blitz 85% of the time, yes.

I have balanced play calling and still get penalized. The problem is two fold:

1) There are not enough plays that do X in the defensive playbook. That is not enough 2 Deep Man where the LBs play Man in Normal. So that you end up with a lot of blitz 1 or blitz 2 plays if you try to run a Cover 5. If you don't run a Cover 5, you're f'ed in the passing game unless you very specifically limit when to call Zone defense. (See below.)

2) The first problem leads to the second problem. You're already stretching to build a playbook that is effective and makes sense in the game, but you've found 30ish plays that work relatively well. Now, let's say I want make my play calling more advanced and run a M2M heavy defense through the first three quarters, except against the run only sets where I'm going to run a Blitz 2 or 2+ zone defense. Then if I'm leading by more than a TD in the 4Q, I'm going to switch to a prevent defense that relies on a lot of zone sets. To pull this off, I really need 45-50 plays in order to get a wide variation of plays in the 1-3Q, and still have room for my prevent defense in the 4Q.

Bonus fold. Three whole folds now.

3) The defaulting defensive sets against offensive sets basically means that all defensive game planning needs to be done through rules. I basically run my offense all through rules now (~50 now). In order to call a good defensive game, I'm finding that I have to do all my defensive game planning also through rules. (I was doing this last year to be honest, and then go away from it for some reason, but now I'm back to it.) And since I'm going to use rules, I might as well use situational rules, which call for an extended playbook. ****, if I could have all of the defensive plays available, I would select them all and then start paring them back when they didn't work. Right now, I struggle to balance out 30 Quarter, Dime, Nickle, and Normal plays when I want different sets for different situations.

To be fair, I have the same complaints against offensive playbooks / playcalling. I wish I could have all the plays available and have more control over what plays would be called in which situations.

I agree, add we're both right.

If you try to have any control over playcalling, you'll get dinged with the penalty.

If you select a good mix of 30 plays on D, don't use rules, and leave your matrix set so there is an equal chance of every play being called, you won't get dinged.

It's also harder to win.