Warrior General Games

Why is rush blocking significantly stronger than pass blocking? I’d like to say better, but I don’t know if that’s quite exactly the right way to describe it. Hold Ground doesn’t matter much & rush blockers have a fairly decent ability to pass block even without any/minimal investments.

I remember we talked about it & the general consensus by the game breaking dickheads was that more superstars on the line would make it “easier”, but clearly that isn’t the case. Even without fully boosted defensive linemen and a fairly stale pass rush game, my team does fairly well for itself. Whereas with 3 pass focused stars and a cluster of decent backups gets you 3-4 sacks on a good day. The excuse last time was “there’s a lot of star dl”, but even without them it’s a mess in the trenches. For offense at least.

When the blocking’s bad I notice that with more pocket awareness the less likely the QB throws the ball, even if there’s open receivers (with QR & without). It makes it hard to have a contingency plan when the contingency plan decides laying down is the best option.

We’ve been (mostly I) begging for better pass blocking forever & it just seems so stupid that we have to settle. DL builds don’t feel conducive; 60 tech & power equating to 52 hurries for the season from the interior (while heavily rotating) is crazy to me.

Hurries don't matter, only sacks. You're struggling to pass because you don't have a S* HB and so everyone just blitzes you into oblivion because there is no reason not to.

i'd stop running SB trip WR post so much, they're on too you

Originally posted by ellix
Hurries don't matter, only sacks. You're struggling to pass because you don't have a S* HB and so everyone just blitzes you into oblivion because there is no reason not to.

Bad take; hurries are extremely important. Many of the hurries we get result in bad passes and the occasional turnover. In zone, hurries can carry you to a top tier defense. Pressure on the QB is always important, just because it’s an online game don’t forget it’s based on a real sport.

Also, another bad take on the S* HB. Yes, they’re oh so important to the game bc they’re simple and relatively untouched in terms of capability & the fact that everyone would quit if everything was scaled to even remotely realistic standards; however, two running backs that do their job is equally respectable.

My point was never “it’s a struggle to pass”, nor did you answer or provide valuable input into the discussion. I said run investment is better. You giving me some shit about a S* HB is EXTREMELY irrelevant if I’m being honest, and furthermore proves that the user base literally only cares about running. The teams we play blitz heavy, at no point would I complain about blitzing heavy when I only man blitz. The issue (and I complained about it with my own team previously) is that mediocre DL can make an impact, so well built DL are just free to do whatever they want.



Originally posted by cyberninja
i'd stop running SB trip WR post so much, they're on too you

I’m more of a cross guy, post usually only comes out on 3rd & long. Even then, it works better for us….

Maybe I should be using more..

Passing wise, I’ve used almost every passing play available (not counting off-season additions). I used to like multiple back sets, but now with the limitation on how many can be held back I don’t really see the point. That was like having a force field; whoever thought this was ok, I have words.

All these bad takes I have sitting at the top of Vet. How weird.

I told you what the issue was with your passing, if you want to ignore it, go ahead.

Your whole premise is flawed because you're basing your analysis on the performance of an Oline who doesn't have the benefit of a run game.

Originally posted by ellix
basing your analysis on the performance of an Oline who doesn't have the benefit of a run game.

So... tags are a bigger issue than poor pass blocking. I think both are a problem, maybe. But I think messing with either could exacerbate the problems of how dominant catch-in-traffic is relative to other receiver types. If we want to fix the problems on the DL, I think first we need to fix the problems with the coverage. At the moment, an elite pass rush is necessary because a QB that tosses it up for grabs often finds a completion, and forcing bad throws (as Ty said) and getting sacks (as Ellix does) are the two primary deterrents to a Hail Mary meta.

Here's the reality of the issue.

Pass blocking is binary, while as run blocking is not.

Either the QB gets sacked, or he doesn't. If your Center pancakes the whole defense or pancakes no one, it doesn't affect the outcome of the play other than the QB was sacked, or he wasn't.

If the Center gets 10 pancakes but the QB gets sacked, the play was still a failure. And vice versa, if the C eats shit and gets put down on the first tick of the play, if the QB gets the ball off, he did his job.

Run blocking doesn't work this way. Pancaking your opponent does matter, going down tick 1 or tick 30 makes a huge difference, etc.

And because good coaches either instinctually or conceptually understand this, they neglect pass blocking in exchange for run blocking.

And this is already an issue for defence, because these same pass blocking neglecting olines you'll notice almost never allow sacks when the defense doesn't send 5+ at Vet.

Go watch teams who send only 3 or 4 blitzers and see how often they get sacks. Even when they have 3x the pass rush investment compared to the Oline they're against.

Furthermore, really, hurries don't matter. Good teams will get hurries on like half their plays and QBs will still easily put up 60% completion ratings depending on the teams. You could argue that hurries reduced the completions, but that's really a moot point by then because if you're allowing completions to that degree, most teams are going to be losing regardless.

And it's not like I'm not speaking from experience here. Hanna Barberic up until two seasons ago was Sacramento Salvo. An all pass team, who purposefully built our Dline slow to not get sacks and gave them all 100 Intimidation to increase hurries for our superstar loaded zone defense to pick off the bad passes. The end result was no better than any other zone team in terms of interceptions, but worse overall performance because we didn't get sacks like they did.

Oline also don't care about morale and conditioning like Dline do. Something else we noticed with Salvo. A Center on 1 morale and 1 energy still fights off a 100 energy and morale DT just fine. It might be statistically worse over a large large number of plays. But in practice, there's not much difference.

If you want hurries to matter and you want pass blocking to matter, ask for them to implement the QB throwing the ball away under pressure.

before the zone nerfs my old teams got more interceptions than any other team within 10 seasons. we also had top 5 sacks and 100% had most hurries despite sending only 3-4 the majority of plays.

Thanks to the zone nerfs its just not possible to play that way anymore. Probably for the best as i used about 50% non boosted players to get those results.

on those teams i actively didn't want sacks as a hurried pass had a better chance to be intercepted i doubt it feels that way anymore. Especially for non zone experienced coaches.

@ty OL are basically useless in pass blocking if that's all your relying on to complete the act of throwing a pass or if your hoping they hold on long enough for the receivers to get open. its just not going to happen at anywhere near it does reliably like it does in other football games. Successful passing in this game has very little to do with good OL play and much more to do with winning CIT rolls and getting to the 10 yard downfield mark as fast as possible.