Understanding the Game: Staff Hiring

[Mike17]

Understanding The Game

Welcome IFLers, to the first of a series of articles I will be posting that will be more or less all of my knowledge about this game acquired from many real life years, and countless FOF seasons. I'm hoping to narrow the gap a bit between the experienced and casual player so that we can all have a more fun and competitive IFL experience.

These articles will start off with some major things you can do to help your team, and later get into the finer details of gameplanning and roster building.

So let's begin where the season begins: Staff Hiring

Head Coach



This is your most important staff member, and it shows as he is usually the highest paid. Your Coach has 5 attributes that matter for him and they are the following:

Discipline - This affects the number of penalties your team will suffer each game. Your coach's tenure also reduces the number of penalties. So, the higher discipline and longer your coach has been with the team, the less penalized you will be.

Motivation - Ever have a game that was "a tale of two halves?" Your coach's motivational speeches can get your team fired up and playing better whether it's at the beginning of the game or after the half. Conversely, a poor motivator is likely to have his team come out flat more often than not. Your players can also be more responsive to your coach's speeches when you spend more time in weight training in camp.

Offensive Playcalling and Defensive Playcalling - These two should be self explanatory. The better your coach is at play calling, the more effective your offense and defense will play respectively.

Injury Avoidance - Another one that's pretty straightforward. Your coach has a large effect on injuries and his effect is increased by spending some extra time in weight training in camp.

Coordinators

I'm going to lump these two in together. I'm sure even the most casual player understands that the offensive coordinator matters for offensive players and defensive coordinators for defensive players.

While your head coach has an effect on the team as a whole, your coordinators have effects on their respective units. Because they work more closely with their units, they have a greater effect on player development and they can boost the play of position groups that they specialize in.

Your coordinators each have 6 relevant ratings:

Young Talent - Coordinators matter the most for player development and the better their rating for dealing with young talent, the faster your players will develop. A good coordinator along with a mentor is crucial for those players that are very raw to become useful.

Position Groups - Each coordinator has 5 position groups that he affects. His rating in these groups determines (along with the young talent rating) how quickly a player at that position will develop. I also like to think that a good rating in a position group boosts the play of all players in that group, but there are differing opinions on whether or not that is the case.

Scouts

Scouts are pretty straightforward.

Position Ratings - The better ratings your scout has at each position, the more likely he is to display the true ratings of that player when you pull up the player card. This is particularly important for declining veterans. An older player will seem much worse to a poor scout than to a good one, so having a good scout can let you know if that 10 year vet is still going to be serviceable or not.

Young Talent - the scout's ratings at a position along with his young talent rating determine his likelihood to give you the correct impression when you are interviewing rookies and the better the ratings, the more correct the orange bars will be after the interview.

Staff Hiring Strategy

Obviously finances are an issue here, and financial woes will be addressed in another article. But, there is no reason not to offer as much money as your owner allows and always offer a 5 year contract. You can always change up staff in future seasons, but you want to have your coaches locked up for as long as possible in case you want to keep them around. If they're under contract then they can't be stolen away from you.

Keep your Head Coach around as long as possible. His tenure affects penalties, so plan on keeping him around for the long haul. If you have bad finances, it may be in your best interest to carry a lesser coach just so you can resign him every time his contract is up.

Staff members develop and decline just like players do. If you know you are not going to have a winner for several seasons, it might be wise to grab a young coach and let him develop with the team. Likewise, you may want to ditch that old guy who keeps going down in ratings.

Consider your roster when deciding to keep or replace coordinators and scouts. Are you going for a new QB in the next draft? Planning on interviewing a lot of them? Maybe switch to a coordinator and scout with better QB ratings in order to get a good look at those rookies and get them up to speed faster.


Like I mentioned above, this is just information from my personal experience. If there are some other vets around here with things to add, please do so

[Suicane]

Good stuff, and one of things I've always tried to do if my assistants get poached is go young with the new guys and try and keep them for a long time.

[Matt]

thanks mike.
good info.

I think one thing that was omitted from here is a little tidbit from Ben regarding coaches/scouts

In order to sign a guy away from the team who had him last year, it takes significantly more money, so if you’re in the middle of the pack financially and your coach/scout/coordinator is a “free agent,” you might be able to sign him even over the top-tier financial teams.