Warrior General Games

First off, I'll try to keep this updated with any sim changes or things I find that would alter my opinions on how play calling works. As far as I know, no one but Corndog and Bort know 100% sure how this works so this is nothing more than a guide on how I do it. This shouldn't be a guide you take to heart without doing testing yourself, maybe I'm wrong on some of it and it won't work for you like it works for me. Also, keep in mind the more complicated you try to make your tactics the better chance of a mistake or the lovely GLB randomness that happens from time to time.


I. Setting up your Tactics

-The first thing you should do is specify the distances you want to base your defense off of. In the screenshot below you can see that I have Very Short to anything equal or less than 1.0 yards. I used a decimal there because it may say 3rd and 1 and you get a play selected from your Short setting. This is because it was actually 3rd and 1.1 which would fall under the Short setting. It's not actually shown, but the Very Long setting would be anything greater than 10.0 yards in this scenario.

http://postimg.org/image/rfylhw95v/

- This next step will go over setting up a very basic defense. The first thing the sim looks for is a setting in the Inside & Outside boxes(http://goo.gl/8qSvbD). In the screen shot below you can see that I have 0 in the Inside Rush defense box and 50 in the Outside defense box. In this situation, ~50% of your plays called on 1st Down would be outside Rush defenses IF you have a match in your playbook. The other ~50% of the time it will move on to your Short, Medium, and Long settings. I always keep the total of these 3 boxes to equal 100%. In this case my play calling would consist of 40% Short, 40% Medium, and 20% Long plays being called IF the Outside rush defense wasn't called.

http://postimg.org/image/eo9jp1wj3/

II. Setting up your Playbooks

- In the screen shot below you can see that I have at least 1 play to match every situation that our simple tactics above will encounter. If the outside defense gets called then Man DE Flats is called. If we don't get the RNG on the outside rush call we move over to distances. I have 4 plays set in there that match down and distance. In this situation if Short came up I would be blitzing with Over Will Mike Blitz 1, if Long came up I would be blitzing with Cover 3 Tiger, and if Medium came up the sim would be left with 2 options and would randomly select that play based on the priority you set.

http://postimg.org/image/8iswokuu1/

III. Implementing the DC into playcalling

IV. Other Tips

- You can use DE's to contain pitches against a lot of plays, but it works the best against those Spread pitches which can be tough to stop. I'll show you the difference between 2 teams using it, 1 with DEs on a Power Pass Rush setting and the other on an Elusive Pass Rush setting.

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/replay/167747/1493041

In the play above you see the DE is on a Power Pass rush setting, running straight towards the QB without regard for blockers. This causes him to recognize it's a run too late allowing the HB to pick up 3 yards.

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/replay/173278/674671

In this play you see the DE is on an Elusive pass rush and he takes a route around the OT meeting the HB about 5 yards behind the LOS. He missed the tackle so we didn't get the result we wanted but we did slow the RB down enough to allow the LILB time to stop the RB for no gain.

**Always remember to switch your DEs back to Power or Combo if you are facing a passing team, the Elusive pass rush isn't as good as Power or Combo when trying to get pressure on a QB.

V. Testing results of non-matched plays

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/177022 - In this game I was testing to see if there was a difference in play calls based on what the offense was running. The defense had 2 options, 4-3 Man Base (Pass/Run Defense) and C2 Double Lurk (Pass Only play). The offense was set to 50% run 50% pass and the theory was that you should only see the 4-3 Man Base play vs all runs if your play calling was effected by the offensive play call. The results ended with both defensive plays getting called equally proving that the play the offense is running has nothing to do with the play you call on defense.

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/177035 - In this test, Rob and I were determining which was a higher priority, Zone or Blitz. The defense has 2 plays to choose from a Medium Zone Defense and a Medium Man Blitz. The tactics are set to 100% Long 100% Zone 100% Blitz, since the sim doesn't have any long plays to choose from it forces it to show us which is next in line on the priority list. It was Zone.

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/177045 - In this game both Rob and I tested opposite strategies, I put in 100% Short on every defensive option for DD on defense. There were only 3 plays for the defense to choose from, a Medium Pass Play, A Medium Pass/Run Play, and a Long play. For DA, Rob had 100% long in the tactics and the sim only had a choice of 1 Medium and 1 Short play. The test was to see if the sim would pick smartly, i.e. if the coach was asking for a long defense would it select a Medium defense since that would be the closest to it. It didn't, it called each play equally.

Reserved if needed.

Can't +1 this enough! Thank you so much for your hard work guys.