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I think we did much better than expected, thanks to all and for those who were posting play counts and results. That is how we are able to figure out the best way or "formula" to get the level of play diversity that we want. Now is the time to review and plan for next season, so we can give any new modifications and settings a test run during the pre-season.

Here is a copy of what was previously posted in the "End of Season" thread...........

1. On offense, we need to get more use of the 4 & 5 WR plays, that means slider settings increased for personnel.

2. On defense, you should be at the 22 plays used mark. If not, there's a problem that needs to be fixed, and that is most likely in your secondary and/or linebacker settings in the Defense column, 2nd from left.

3. In addition to the above, we need to get the "Bottom 5" secondary coverages used at least once or twice a game, that will involve making sure you have at least one of those coverages selected out of your 30 active defensive plays and our settings for secondary specific, and that will take some trial and error to get it, which is why we will have 4 pre-season games this next season.

Those are the three key issues for next season, please post any other issues that you think would be important for the league. Now is the time to figure out how we might be able to improve and increase the play diversity. Here's what I'm thinking.........

1. With the offense sliders all even for offense personnel, increase the sliders for the 4 & 5 WR personnel, how much is the key.

2. Its not hard to get 20+ plays used on defense. What is hard is to get more use out of those bottom 5 secondary coverages. Similar to the 4 & 5 WR personnel, we may try increasing the sliders above even for those coverages. They will allow more yardage, more than likely, but that will help increase the offense and get it more in balance with the defense superiority.

Please do not hesitate to post your thoughts, opinions, suggestions, and all, now is the time and why we will delay the start of pre-season for a day or two, if we havnt come to a general agreement on what to do next. Thanks again to all, this league has been worth the extra effort and very gratifying so far. cheers! GdB

We should consider to reactivate the "No-Auto-Nickel"-rule.
At least for my game planning this was a defensive diversity killer.

Other than the Nickel use, you had as good or better defensive diversity as anyone. "No Auto Nickel" is a two-edged sword, as we found out and why the rule was taken off at the time. If we can figure out how to use it or another method to keep a better balance, that would be great.

For me, I had 4 Nickel def plays active. Over the last 5 games they were used as follows....
1. Dbl LB Blitz - 20 - 1.4...... 2. Dbl WR3 - 11 - 0.8 ..... 3. Man Cover 2 - 11 - 2.5..... 4. Weak Blitz - 2 - 0
So, the Nickel was used about 8 times per game out of an average of 55-60 def plays total.

That was after the rule had been removed. Different playbooks may have something to do with the play selection logic, but it shouldnt be a big difference. My HC's def playbook is "Run Focused Defense (4-3). I had 13 43/46 Normal plays that were used an average of 3 times the Nickel total. In our final game, my 3 wr personnel were used 4 (113) and 24 (23wr) for a total of 28 out of a total of 55 plays. I would have preferred more use of the 2-1-2 and 3-1-1, along with twice the use of the 4 & 5 WR plays. 2-1-2 was used 17 times, 3-1-1 was used only twice. Ideally, would like to get a 10-15 times used between the 212, 113, & 23wr, with the rest spread out between the other personnel.

Maybe it will help to put a number on the play selection distribution? Or a limit, like 10 total. Based on my play results, I wouldnt mind using the Nickel more, equal to the Normal & Dime. I will cut 3 - 5 Normal defensive plays and add more Nickel & Quarter and see how it goes for pre-season.

BTW, thought we would get 4 pre-season games, but it will be 3. I put in 4 but the schedule did not change.

Just to compare:

My defensive playbook is 3-4 Heavy Zone

Last 5 games I had following numbers:
GL 3 p/ 11calls 2.2 per game
NDB 10 p/ 92 c 18.4 per game
Nickel 6 p/ 160 c 32 per game
Dime 7 p/ 20 c 4 per game
Quarter 3 p/ 7 c 1.4 per game

whole season
GL 3 p/ 105 c 5.5 per game
NDB 10 p/ 525 c 27.6 per game
Nickel 6 p/ 324 c 17.1 per game
Dime 8 p/ 161 c 8.5 per game
Quarter 3 p/ 39 c 2.1 per game

first 14 games
GL 3 p/ 94 c 6,7 per game
NDB 10 p/ 433 c 30.9 per game
Nickel 6 p/ 164 c 11.8 per game
Dime 8 p/ 141 c 10.1 per game
Quarter 3 p/ 32 c 2.3 per game

So my conclusion for my GP: I swapped NDB and Nickel and lost GL, Dime and Quarter.
Hard to find a sufficient mix or rule.

For offense I had a decent amount of 5WR and 4WR, however I tweaked the sliders and hope to increase them.

My best guess is that the increased use of the Nickel over the last 5 games was based on the other teams use of 3wr plays, which auto the Nickel unless you have a rule against it, which we did but that sent the count way over to the NDB plays.

If we can improve the settings to reduce the use of the 3wr plays in a better balance, that should no longer be a problem. I had 28 Nickel plays used in the two 3wr personnel in the LC game, which was about 10 plays more than I would prefer to see. Figure an average of 60 offense plays per game, what should we consider the "target" mix? 30 of the 212, 23wr, and 113wr. And then the other 30 spread amongst the rest of the personnel, other than 23te GL. ?

I think you'd just need an adequate number of nickel plays to counter an opponent that runs a lot of nickel trigger plays. I think as long as you are using all your plays you shouldn't have much play overuse if you select reasonable play counts from each formation. Rather than sheer number of plays I'd say the more desirable target should be no plays called more than 5 times. Someone calling 3 plays 10 times each and 23 plays called is worse than no plays called more than 5 times called but only 20 different plays called (both with 30 play playbooks).