Warrior General Games

I am really enjoying the hybrid defense and running more zone or man play calls depending on situations. It is pretty nice. The player builds could use some improvements though if we ride a hybrid defense again down the road when BSB resets. We will see though.

Originally posted by Detroit Leos
I am really enjoying the hybrid defense and running more zone or man play calls depending on situations. It is pretty nice. The player builds could use some improvements though if we ride a hybrid defense again down the road when BSB resets. We will see though.

What you’re doing on Defense is really amazing.

I am using a hybrid defense as well. However, the only man defenses I am choosing have the LBs in zone or blitzing and I am only running man vs trips formations...at about a 50% zone/man rate. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. I only have to invest some SPs into man coverage or coverage tech on my 3 cover/hybrid CBs (I have never invested cover tech in any of my pure zone players)
2. LBs can still have Gold EOTP fire on all plays, which is a huge part of my pass defense
3. The offense cannot spam weak side tosses as sometimes I will be playing man with the CBs

Originally posted by Cybertron
I am using a hybrid defense as well. However, the only man defenses I am choosing have the LBs in zone or blitzing and I am only running man vs trips formations...at about a 50% zone/man rate. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. I only have to invest some SPs into man coverage or coverage tech on my 3 cover/hybrid CBs (I have never invested cover tech in any of my pure zone players)
2. LBs can still have Gold EOTP fire on all plays, which is a huge part of my pass defense
3. The offense cannot spam weak side tosses as sometimes I will be playing man with the CBs

Yeah, you definitely give up some specific SAs on plays if you do not use underneath coverage all of the time. I certainly do not. I have a blitzing LB that does not always blitz and will drop to coverage, a coverage LB that blitzes sometimes, zone or man SAs which cannot fire on plenty of plays, and shuffle players around all over the place. If I actually cared to gameplan, I imagine it would be even more devastating to opponents. Been default though all season so far on both offense and defense.

My theory for diversifying my PB is that it covers up some weaknesses, or if some play run against us targeting a defensive play, it may only happen once or twice in the game, not 10+ times.

Definitely fun running a whole lot of swiss army knife defenders out there that do not really specialize in either zone or man too much.

There's been a looooooooooot of tier up/down games this season that have been closer/win by the lower tier. I imagine there was a nice 'behind the scenes' change to that so CD could stop hearing us complain about so many ladder matchups across tiers.

Originally posted by Raid
There's been a looooooooooot of tier up/down games this season that have been closer/win by the lower tier. I imagine there was a nice 'behind the scenes' change to that so CD could stop hearing us complain about so many ladder matchups across tiers.

The joy of having only one pro and one journey tier and ladder matches favoring out of league play. Like I have said though, building a PB for playing up a tier is quite important IMO.

Originally posted by Detroit Leos
I am really enjoying the hybrid defense and running more zone or man play calls depending on situations. It is pretty nice. The player builds could use some improvements though if we ride a hybrid defense again down the road when BSB resets. We will see though.

I have been pleased overall with the Grape Apes hybrid D this run. There’s a couple of things I’ll change next run but I like it.

Congrats on the win from me as well, as that's a huge accomplishment, but I do think there's some things zone could do to remedy these soft spots without having to turn to hybrid.

Gliwice only ever called conservative zone plays that relied on a 4 man line and a basic cover 2 or 3 shell. I think there are a lot of LB/safety/CB blitz schemes, in addition to the use of a 5-2, that can throw off a team trying to abuse the run-specific weaknesses in a zone defense without having to turn to hybrid. With proper investment into blitz awareness and break run block in key positions, and a mastery of the zone playbook, I don't think pure zone is necessarily weak to the run in trips, big I, or 2WR (the last of which you didn't list, but the strong and inside run in 2WR is also a weakness for zone). As far as beating pass defense, with a perfect gameplan your QB still only managed a 68.3 rating in that game along with taking 2 sacks. Normally I'd give that a handicap for playing down half a tier, but you also had a massive morale advantage due to Gliwice's disrespectful and greedy insistence on exclusively throwing long passes. Both of the interceptions you threw were from "OP" overload formations as well (big I), so I'm not yet convinced zone can be exploited just by the use of specific formations alone.

Did you demonstrate that zone has exploitable weaknesses that need to be addressed by either the use of hybrid defense, more creative play calls, or asymmetrical builds? Yes. But that's a check, and not a checkmate.

Originally posted by Kvothe27


Did you demonstrate that zone has exploitable weaknesses that need to be addressed by either the use of hybrid defense, more creative play calls, or asymmetrical builds? Yes. But that's a check, and not a checkmate, and a far cry from saying zone is dead.


I focused on Rushing and didn't really try and optimize for Passing. There's a different level (or 2) for that.

If Zone starts having a 20-30% win rate against Man, because people can easily exploit the formations I listed above, who plays it?

Originally posted by Xars
If Zone starts having a 20-30% win rate against Man, because people can easily exploit the formations I listed above, who plays it?

The agents who optimize their zones for stopping those exploits, I presume.

Originally posted by Xars
The more basic point is this:

His O was going to beat up my D as he's a tier up (ok half.. about 30K SP).

My O is (half) a tier below his. Do you think my Offensive performance would be less at even SPs with that game plan? Or more?

Everyone tries to beat Zone running the same plays. Plays that don't work as they go right at Zone's strength. However, Zone - BY DEFINTIION - does not handle Overload Formations well; and it shouldn't. Thus certain formations - and certain plays - are much better against Zone than others.

Isn't this a play calling game?

IMO, there have been a shortage of Offensive plays to utilize against Zone - which is why I've been asking for them. Certain formations were missing basic plays. Now they have them. More could be added. Passing plays that attack Zone properly are needed. The seam route plays that work against Man are vulnerable to jumping LB-INTs (game, not real life so much). It's why you utilize HB swing/ flat passes to the overloaded side - but the game is missing them big time.

Zone has other weaknesses as well.

LZ7 should be fun if Zone remains the popular/ default choice.

Again, always great when you can beat a team a tier up, but I would say most who've been around for a while try to overload the weak side too. Log had a S* powerback who can break 33 tackles, which was the biggest key of all.

Case in point, Logzilla played the Lions twice this season before, using the same type of plays

Game 1
Wolflions - 51
Logzilla - 13
https://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/798713

Game 2
Wolflions - 40
Logzilla - 17
https://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/800451

In those two games Log threw for 42%, 1 TD, 6 Ints.

They also ran for 4.5 ypc. I wouldn't call this zone breaking. Those defensive takeaways in the first 5 mins, and the 33 broken tackles by your HB seem to be the biggest factors in the last game

Originally posted by Xars
No one else has S* Power HBs.

Only I have that.

https://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/player/336240


I have a Powerback

Originally posted by dlcurt
I have a Powerback

I think that was the point curt.

Originally posted by BoDiddley
Again, always great when you can beat a team a tier up, but I would say most who've been around for a while try to overload the weak side too. Log had a S* powerback who can break 33 tackles, which was the biggest key of all.

Case in point, Logzilla played the Lions twice this season before, using the same type of plays

Game 1
Wolflions - 51
Logzilla - 13
https://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/798713

Game 2
Wolflions - 40
Logzilla - 17
https://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/800451

In those two games Log threw for 42%, 1 TD, 6 Ints.

They also ran for 4.5 ypc. I wouldn't call this zone breaking. Those defensive takeaways in the first 5 mins, and the 33 broken tackles by your HB seem to be the biggest factors in the last game

There are some very, very important differences in these games that have nothing to do with what you're stating.

I can't give out all my secrets all the time.

I'd imagine Xars' builds are a bit better this time around so his players perform closer to what he needs for his scheme.