Offense:
RQB's - have 2, one power and one speed. Use the power one early until he stops breaking a lot of tackles, then switch to the speed one, which should be really fast by then.
HB's - like RQB's, your power HB's work well not only inside, but also on sweeps early in the season. Save your speed HB's for counters & screens until later in the season when they have the speed & agility to bounce outside or cut inside on a sweep/pitch.
WR - I went overboard on strength & blocking this season, but at least 22 on each early in the season will help with outside runs. I went 42+ each this season and my receiving ability suffered. Maybe 32 each would work, but I prefer my receivers have 1st cap speed/agility/catching and I couldn't do that this season.
TE - make these your primary receivers and very fast. While I didn't do that this season, in most past seasons, my TE's were my fastest & best receivers and I used them at all spots other than WR1/2. Many defenses will put a LB instead of a CB on them and LB's are generally not as good in coverage. On running plays, I usually use STOP's when I need a blocking TE.
OL - just build a basic run blocking OL, but with a little speed/agility for when they pull for outside runs.
Vision - over rated on offense, I rarely go above 22 on any offensive player outside of a passing QB.
Stamina - under rated! I have at least 22 Stamina on all my players as when your energy drops into the red, you take a major hit on all/most attributes. Just watch how slow someone is when their energy levels are in the red!
Passing - over rated, instead focus on runs mixing in a pass once in a while. It only takes a couple drops/deflections and your drive stalls. Yes passing might work better early in the season, but once CB's have had time to build themselves up, they generally defense those stop-n-go'es and slants much better. 90% of my non-screen passes were called when I was up big or on a safe 1st/2nd & short.
Go for the home-runs often - on 1st/2nd and 3rd-4th & long, I mainly call a lot of sweeps, pitches, counters, roll-outs, and screens. These are your home-run plays and you would be surprised how many quality defenses still have trouble stopping these.
Expect to get 2.0 YPC running it up the middle - with a decent OL & Power-HB, expect to get at least 2.0 YPC when you run it up the gut. So basically, I almost always run it up the middle on 1st & 0-8, 2nd & 0-6, 3rd & 0-4, 4th & 0-2.
Change things up when you are up by a decent amount - if you are up by a good amount, or you are 1st/2nd & short, call plays you normally wouldn't call to help confuse those who are scouting you. I often call a regular passing play on 1st/2nd & short. This way, when scouted, it wont show that I always run it up the gut. Also, in Q3 & Q4, if you are up big, have a totally separate group of plays you would call on 1st/2nd down so you make it hard to scout.
RQB as QB on all inside runs - this way, it will generally trigger the other team's anti-RQB defense and that means less players in the box and more to the outside, making it easier to run up the middle. Also call an outside RQB run once in a while so a defense won't risk an auto-TD by stacking the box and not covering the outside.
Scouted package - I have a single package I use for scouting that I call on all Q1 1st/2nd downs and all Q2-Q3 1st/2nd downs when not down. This way, if the scouted plays are working, they will be called a lot during Q1-Q3, but if they are not working, your normal offense will take over. I generally put anywhere between 8-12 plays in that package and set AA for medium.
Auto-Adjust - I do use this a lot, and usually set it to Medium for packages with 10 or fewer plays and Slow for package with over 10 plays. Yes this has burned me in the past, but it has helped a lot more than hurt and has actually won me some games. I would have never made it past APF this eason had AA not focused on a play that exposed a hole in APF's defense. I was only supposed to call that play 6% of the time from that specific package, and ended up calling it 13 total times with 4TD's. So yes, AA does work!
Hide your Depth-Chart - use the depth chart pre-sets to store your actual game depth chart and then populate the default one with a basic setup that doesn't show any custom slots. This makes it much harder to scout players used in specific roles. However, make sure to go into your Tactics and set all regular season games to use that pre-set, and manually set it for each scrimmage game, otherwise your the default DC will be used.
Player salary - make sure to give every player around $2000 a day in salary. Any less than that and you are wasting morale, any more than that and you risk low morale due to non-payment.
RQB's - have 2, one power and one speed. Use the power one early until he stops breaking a lot of tackles, then switch to the speed one, which should be really fast by then.
HB's - like RQB's, your power HB's work well not only inside, but also on sweeps early in the season. Save your speed HB's for counters & screens until later in the season when they have the speed & agility to bounce outside or cut inside on a sweep/pitch.
WR - I went overboard on strength & blocking this season, but at least 22 on each early in the season will help with outside runs. I went 42+ each this season and my receiving ability suffered. Maybe 32 each would work, but I prefer my receivers have 1st cap speed/agility/catching and I couldn't do that this season.
TE - make these your primary receivers and very fast. While I didn't do that this season, in most past seasons, my TE's were my fastest & best receivers and I used them at all spots other than WR1/2. Many defenses will put a LB instead of a CB on them and LB's are generally not as good in coverage. On running plays, I usually use STOP's when I need a blocking TE.
OL - just build a basic run blocking OL, but with a little speed/agility for when they pull for outside runs.
Vision - over rated on offense, I rarely go above 22 on any offensive player outside of a passing QB.
Stamina - under rated! I have at least 22 Stamina on all my players as when your energy drops into the red, you take a major hit on all/most attributes. Just watch how slow someone is when their energy levels are in the red!
Passing - over rated, instead focus on runs mixing in a pass once in a while. It only takes a couple drops/deflections and your drive stalls. Yes passing might work better early in the season, but once CB's have had time to build themselves up, they generally defense those stop-n-go'es and slants much better. 90% of my non-screen passes were called when I was up big or on a safe 1st/2nd & short.
Go for the home-runs often - on 1st/2nd and 3rd-4th & long, I mainly call a lot of sweeps, pitches, counters, roll-outs, and screens. These are your home-run plays and you would be surprised how many quality defenses still have trouble stopping these.
Expect to get 2.0 YPC running it up the middle - with a decent OL & Power-HB, expect to get at least 2.0 YPC when you run it up the gut. So basically, I almost always run it up the middle on 1st & 0-8, 2nd & 0-6, 3rd & 0-4, 4th & 0-2.
Change things up when you are up by a decent amount - if you are up by a good amount, or you are 1st/2nd & short, call plays you normally wouldn't call to help confuse those who are scouting you. I often call a regular passing play on 1st/2nd & short. This way, when scouted, it wont show that I always run it up the gut. Also, in Q3 & Q4, if you are up big, have a totally separate group of plays you would call on 1st/2nd down so you make it hard to scout.
RQB as QB on all inside runs - this way, it will generally trigger the other team's anti-RQB defense and that means less players in the box and more to the outside, making it easier to run up the middle. Also call an outside RQB run once in a while so a defense won't risk an auto-TD by stacking the box and not covering the outside.
Scouted package - I have a single package I use for scouting that I call on all Q1 1st/2nd downs and all Q2-Q3 1st/2nd downs when not down. This way, if the scouted plays are working, they will be called a lot during Q1-Q3, but if they are not working, your normal offense will take over. I generally put anywhere between 8-12 plays in that package and set AA for medium.
Auto-Adjust - I do use this a lot, and usually set it to Medium for packages with 10 or fewer plays and Slow for package with over 10 plays. Yes this has burned me in the past, but it has helped a lot more than hurt and has actually won me some games. I would have never made it past APF this eason had AA not focused on a play that exposed a hole in APF's defense. I was only supposed to call that play 6% of the time from that specific package, and ended up calling it 13 total times with 4TD's. So yes, AA does work!
Hide your Depth-Chart - use the depth chart pre-sets to store your actual game depth chart and then populate the default one with a basic setup that doesn't show any custom slots. This makes it much harder to scout players used in specific roles. However, make sure to go into your Tactics and set all regular season games to use that pre-set, and manually set it for each scrimmage game, otherwise your the default DC will be used.
Player salary - make sure to give every player around $2000 a day in salary. Any less than that and you are wasting morale, any more than that and you risk low morale due to non-payment.
Edited by Gerr on Apr 30, 2016 07:52:53
Edited by Gerr on Apr 30, 2016 07:50:46
Edited by Gerr on Apr 29, 2016 16:19:31
Edited by Gerr on Apr 29, 2016 16:17:43
