https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/9800#1785138

Here's another zone play with the ss assigned to the flats. This guys is a rookie but he drifts towards the middle of the feild ? The pass came to his assignment but he was no where to be found.

https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/9800#1785140


MLB: Curl Flat Left.......hook L
CB: Flat Right................ok
CB (2): Flat Left.............ok
CB (3): Curl Flat Left.... curl L
CB (4): Curl Flat Right.. curl R
CB (5): Hook Left..........hook R


Bold is what I think the assignments should have been just so the holes in the zone is covered .

The pass was to the curl CB with 79 zone. He drifted away from the ball when the pass was released . I don't think a run key or anything should cause this hole in coverage .

It was a good "end route senerio" pass by the qb but the defense was out of position bad for seemingly no reason . ....except its zone coverage

https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/9800#1785161

Same here the SLB and wlb should have the hooks/curls. Not curl/flats the cbs already have the flats?

https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/9800#1785182

This,one looked better. All the cover guys had the zones assignments correctly covered . Yet it's a shorter situation , but a pass so a pass key should help. Here our cover guys are deep which helps the dbs and olbs but I wish they could get the other benefits from a pass key yet not some of the alignments that come along with it .

The reciever is better and you can see the LBer get a bit lost in coverage , but all the off ball defenders keep covering their zones deeper and deeper after the pass is thrown .

That boost in 4.5 really helped zone, and man, but is wish more off ball defenders reacted quicker in zone and not so often in man. 4.6 has these off ball defenders reacting slower and zone plays weaknesses are highlighted .

Don't get me wrong man gets beat deep, but it's feels way more advanced in comparison . Idk if one is more complete at the moment

https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/9800#1785189

A cover 2 zone. vs. A long pass out side here. The cb 1 has 72 zone and the flats for his assignment . He ran right toward the te into the hook zone then played trail back to his original zone. The two deep safeties should have played the deep outside more, and where that pass finalized was in the curl zone, but LB there was too deep due to protection . The weak spot in that defense is the deep fly/ flag patterns . But we got beat where the defense should have been strong.

https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/9800#1785192

Here's a zone with 4 under. The middle is left open but with the tight field our guys spacing could have been alot better. A couple of guys are covering right next to each other and the guys who make a play on the ball in the middle of the field is the FS and CB1 . They are not likely choices to pick up the hook zone but for some reason they were the closest .

I'd be curious to see a breakdown of the 11 int vs 2 int and what play calls they were, and how deep the passes were thrown. Arm strength will have a bigger factor in preventing interceptions for longer passes, but shorter passes should not be impacted as much.

I think this illustrates the biggest flaw of zone coverage right now. What is happening is that the receiver is exiting the zone for the CB but there is no one in the area outside of the zone. The zone logic is pretty much this:

1. Locate the middle of the zone, and make that the center of where we are playing.
1b. This location will float as we run around if we have low zone coverage skills.
2. When a player is near our zone, play man-to-man until they leave our zone.
2b. If there are multiple players in the zone, we cover the one who is closest to our zone center.
3. If we are deep zone, we try to position our depth so that no players are behind us.

I've struggled with adding logic to be aware of open zones. I would love to hear input about this - and, is it worth trying to change in 0.4.6 or should we keep the changes smaller?

Zone
The logic seems to pretty much cover what they should be doing.
The only other thing I can think of and I dont know if it's possible to code it, but expand and shrink the zone areas determined by a combo of intel - speed - zone coverage - play familiarity?

QB comparison
I was gonna wait til after game 8 to get more info but if I do it after this next game they will have closer pass attempt to each other. Ii will be out of town til next Monday so unless I get some RL down time between now and then I'll go back through it then.

Sending out next update
Yikes thats a tough one. Nobody is ever happy no matter what you do. If you put out a perfect game they will complain that it is too perfect. But from what Im gathering, big changes or a lot of changes is the hardest thing for GM's to accept. They get used to game planning a certain way. The last update was so drastic that they felt that they had to relearn the game and blow up their rosters that they'd been building for a RL year or so. Some adapt better than others.

As you know, sometimes when one chicken starts clucking in the pen, it gets all the other chickens clucking even if they dont know why they are clucking. They just think they're supposed to cluck. :)

I can't knock the logic. Perhaps 3 can somehow effect the underneath zone in a similar fashion also. Cause at times the deep zone is as deep as the defenders in curls responsibly . This play you want something like that cause the outside is stretched and that seem is the weak spot. Other perfect alignments in zone will give up alot of 5 and 10 yards that really should have been contested.

As for moving forward with any zone updates tweaks might be the way to go. I see drastic changes if alignments were changed so the underneath can cover all the zones all the time. These references of plays earlier were from the first half only and only one pass play was legit.

So, imo zone is almost as broke as man was before 4.5. Deep Zone has benefited from changes over the years, but the underneath is that bad. I just never tracked it to why and think from what I saw numbers and reads would change again .

My logic thinks 4.6 should focus on finishing man/qb reads with a sooner release . Or just go for something really complete. With qb running/scrambling , blocking/ sacks-hurries, overuse , and zone looked at in depth and tested thoroughly and released a long time from now.

My heart knows there no rush to do anything different and in some time things will be clearer maybe to maker a more final decision at a later date . That's probably the way to go as I tested long passes for a while now. I think I know which ones work and the kind of numbers I could get. We throw picks , but I think the short passes are harder and I want to test plays there as well as go away from my heavy zone scheme .