Georgia Stepping Down...

[JesterBlaze]

The season preview is a lot of work, usually done by just a handfull of individuals.

I definitely know that and appreciate what was done. I don't want to sound like I took it for granted.

In general the IFL just had more activity earlier on than it does now I think. Part of that is simply due to lack of player movement in a league where the majority of GMs have been with their team for a while. Only when new GMs come in do we see much change and thus something to talk about.

I weigh the pros and cons of hopping to a new team every so often and lately the monotony break of going to another division and retooling another team is gaining weight. Still a long way from happening but gaining weight.

[JesterBlaze]

1. Tom Brady out for the year, Cassell steps in and they go 11-5. if this was FOF you'd be done.

6. Vikings go to the playoffs having 2 starting QBs at various times throughout the season.

See 2009 Phantoms if I've got the year correct. The year I went 14-2 Stanfield went down for significant time and we didn't miss a beat with Rockwell at the helm.


Rockwell.... what did I give up for that guy...

i pay no attention to everything else jester said cuz he just likes to say the opposite of what i said

[JMO]

i need more challenges with regards to building my team - cohesion is overrated in this game.

lol..shouldn't u be dominating then?

In all seriousness, it would be very very easy to make this game more challenging. Increase the injury setting to 300 or above. building a team would be tough under those conditions.

2. The year before the Pats picked up Randy Moss and essentially a whole new WR corps and went undefeated. this would never be possible in FOF. replacing all your starting WRs??!?

If you gave me a +90 wr in game for a 4th round pick I think my record would improve also.

when Chad Pennington can go to a 1-15 and turn them into division champs overnight that goes to show you how little cohesion matters in football

Last year the phins were a 5-11 team that was unlucky, whilst this year they were a 9-7 team with a very easy schedule. They did improve but it is not all down to Pennington.

the things i would do to increase GM challenge (while decreasing the need to act like a head coach and oc/dc all in one):

1. add more personality to the league. give me some stud players who get me the stats but will be a cancer. jim started down that path with red flag players, but those are few and far enough between that you can avoid them if you want, and even if you do have one their negative effect isn't pronounced enough. make me have to decide if having a Randy Moss/TO on my team is worth the risk.

2. have more players hold out. on draft day where i see who has high/low loyalty ratings i should have to decide "this kid is gonna be special, but is he gonna be on our team for training camp? is he gonna bolt town first chance he gets?"

3. let me choose what kind of offense i want to run and then go out and get players and coaches that suit that style. but keep me away from the X's and O's and don't let me be at as disadvantage over people who do the X's and O's part.

I'm so with you on no 3. If you have played cover 2 all your career you shouldn't be able to go into another system seamlessly in week 5. If you are a 43 lb like vilma, life should become very difficult when you go into a 34.

Size should matter. If you are a 255 lb de, you can't play end in the 34. End of story. If you are 5-10, you automatically don't get picked no.1 overall at QB.

I also want to see many, many more individual stats. For example..for lbs I want to know how many yards from scrimmage you make your tackles, missed assignments, out of positions etc. We should know your experience in different systems.

Of course if this stops jim from working on TCY 2...I'm happy with the game as it is.

[JMO]

I think a simple patch to nerf the offenses in general would work for me as far as the game goes. No reason the worst QB in our league has around a 75 passer rating IMO.
.

The quality if QB in this league is ridiculous. Not sure why.

[Hell Atlantic]

JMO: exactly. i just want to decide "i think running smashmouth offense is the best way to win a championship", then get a power RB and focus mostly on building a killer O-line. that should be my focus. i should get penalized if i get a Tiki Barber type of RB, you know, a smallish RB who is great at catching passes but doesn't have the build to carry the rock 300+ times a season. or if i build an O-line that is geared towards pass blocking then i should suffer the consequences. or if i sign a coach known for being great at West Coast offense (hiring Steve Mariucci when i should've hired Marty Schottenheimer). these are the things i want to worry about. not if i should increase running behind my Right Guard to 23% instead of 19%. the problem with the game is it doesn't let you see the difference between that 23% and that 19% - it's just giving the appearance of me having control. another problem is there is so much to control that changing something a couple percentage points is hard to see because you have other knobs and buttons to press that may affect the thing you want. take for instance Jave complaining about double teams. he wanted to double a WR the whole game but got beat several times by the same guy he wanted two defenders on at all times. he asked how was that possible - and the answer is it shouldn't have been possible. we all came up with some lame possible reasons (i think cuz he was blitzing on those plays, something stupid like that), but the end result is the game allowed Jave to fiddle around with some controls and it didn't do what he wanted to do.

i will always be at a disadvantage over people who tweak their gameplans every weak. and it shouldn't be - i'm not a coach. and if i set my defense to expect all runs against a smashmouth team and they decide to air it out all game then i've lost the game. coaches adapt during a game, they don't say "hey, they've been a smashmouth team all year so even though they're doing nothing but passing i'm going to keep on defending the run". that doesn't happen.

i've been complaining about this for years, this is nothing new to me. but anyway i've long come to the conclusion that i'll never win a MP championship, i've only been to the playoffs about 2, maybe 3 times in any MP league i've ever been in (FOF & OOTP combined). i just don't have what it takes to coach a team to the playoffs. but i can build one helluva team. i'm great at trading and getting the guy i want in free agency. but all that means nothing against a guy who will run tests hundreds of times to find out the best settings for their gameplan, or a guy who got lucky at his league's inaugural draft and kept his best players for many years and has a stellar cohesion rating at all positions. i'm resigned to the fact that i'm just here to build a team and just follow the careers of my favorite players on my team. i'm curious to see what Nathan Mullin does over the course of his career, will find it a challenge in being able to resign him to keep him a Hero for the rest of his playing days; interested in seeing if Ohhhhh Snap!!! Chapman will bust out of his average output to put up great numbers; i think it's a great storyline that Sante is having the best season of his career one year after being benched for a QB with worse talent ratings. these are the things that i follow cuz i know i'm fooling myself if i think i can figure out this game to get my team to do what i want it to do, or if i even know what i need to do in a game.

i am not a coach. i'm a GM. those are two very different hats to wear.

[Matt]

I wish a good running game would be more effective than it is in this game. A good running game is bound to get you a .500 record....if you are lucky. You can't build a "Steelers" type offense and be consistently successful. I don't "test" gameplans either, I just don't have time for that....nor would I be able to have the patience to do that.

At the end of the day, it's just a game. It does its best to replicate professional football, and does a decent job of that all things considered. I like the game better when my team wins.

[JMO]

I firmly believe if you have the talent, you will win. In my other league i go to the playoffs every year and I use a very basic offensive gameplan which i never change and the d-plan is only slightly modified each week.

Your gameplan might make a difference when u are playing an equal team in the playoffs but over 16 games, your talent should either get you there or not. Cohesion is way over rated imo. It is something you should aim for but not the sole thing. I have made one trade for an aging player each year(i think they are seriously undervalued in my league) and it hasn't seem to have hurt me.

[Matt]

In another league I'm in, I have a roster score of 2, and the power rankings showed as such at the beginning of the season. It's been that way for 3 seasons....atleast.
I won 14,13,12 games respectively. The one constant was my HOF QB and his recieving corps

[Matt]

Though red bars do help with winning games.

[SteveBsFan]

1. Tom Brady out for the year, Cassell steps in and they go 11-5. if this was FOF you'd be done.

A 11-5 is actually a 5 loss increase over the previous year. Granted an 11 win season is still good for a backup QB, but you're not factoring in the team being extremely solid around him and also having the best coach in the NFL.

2. The year before the Pats picked up Randy Moss and essentially a whole new WR corps and went undefeated. this would never be possible in FOF. replacing all your starting WRs??!?

I think it would certainly be possible if you have a massively high rated QB and added a massively high rated WR as well as another really quality WR in the same off-season. Those same receivers really helped make Cassel look better than what he would have stepping into a team like the Lions.

3. Matt Ryan takes the Falcons to the playoffs. since QBs are so important in FOF we know this would never happen, you get the double whammy of not having a longtime QB in place plus an underdeveloped QB all in one. no team would have that amount of success in a FOF league.

In most situations, rookie QB's in the NFL do suck. In Manning's rookie season, they finished 3-13. You're taking an exception to the rule and making it as the norm in the NFL.

4. Jets go 9-7 with a new QB and rebuilt O-line.

What about the Renegades who went from 6-10 to 12-4 getting Booker?

I think you're exaggerating the effect on cohesion in this game. Cohesion is just one part of this game, but it's far from the be-all-end-all of building a team. Sure, you've had some losing seasons despite "winning" the off-season battle with star FA's, but as i'm sure the Yankees can tell you, actual games are not won or lost in the off-season.

This game is about a lot of dumb little things that really shouldn't be part of the game, but they are, and they help teams win. For example, the third down rating for QB's, RB's, and WR's. The only thing that slightly makes sense are for receivers who have the intelligence where the first down marker is, but wtf does it mean for QB's and RB's? Do they throw or run better because it's 3rd down? NFL QB's don't go 'oh shit, I was just messing around the first two downs, now it's time to make an accurate throw' RB's aren't like 'ahh, third down, time to run faster or find the holes better'.

Ratings like that are bullshit, and i'd be willing to get they play a much bigger impact in the game than things like cohesion. Sure, cohesion is still probably a factor, as are other little things like coaching ratings, weather, or just flat out bad luck with the random number generator not going your way. That's certainly how I feel losing all these 3 point games.

[JesterBlaze]

i just want to decide "i think running smashmouth offense is the best way to win a championship", then get a power RB and focus mostly on building a killer O-line. that should be my focus.

Yeah, that sounds challenging.

If you want a "smashmouth offense" then you draft a power back and call more power running plays - the same exact power running plays in the playbooks of the "finesse offenses". These terms you've heard on ESPN aren't cookie cutter recipes for building a football team, they're catchy names so that the simpletons can understand that there's a difference in styles - even if the casual fan can't understand what the difference is.

The same things you ask for: The ability to choose to run a certain style of football team and the ability to draft players to fit that system - are in and have been in FOF for a while. You just can't seem to figure it out because there's no messages telling you what you're missing.


Why don't you get a group of friends together and say "I've got a smashmouth offense" "I've got a west coast offense" then flip a coin to determine the "winner" since you don't think you should do anything football related to get that winning feeling you seem to crave so much. And I ask this in all seriousness because the bottom line for you seems to be a craving for "HA wins" and nothing else and if you ever did play this basic game you describe you'd still lose an appropriate amount of time since the game would be simple to your opponents as well. If you only like winning and not the challenge then you'll never enjoy any MP league of any kind ever.

[JesterBlaze]

This game is about a lot of dumb little things that really shouldn't be part of the game, but they are, and they help teams win. For example, the third down rating for QB's, RB's, and WR's. The only thing that slightly makes sense are for receivers who have the intelligence where the first down marker is, but wtf does it mean for QB's and RB's? Do they throw or run better because it's 3rd down? NFL QB's don't go 'oh shit, I was just messing around the first two downs, now it's time to make an accurate throw' RB's aren't like 'ahh, third down, time to run faster or find the holes better'.

You're gonna be pissed when you see the "1st down distance" punter rating in place for the next release.