Just thought I’d put a post on here to share my delight at winning my first Conference Championship.  My Chargers beat Justin Johnson’s Dolphins 31-16 in Miami & ensured that there would be no repeat by last years champs!  

I now move on to face Derek Barton’s Packers at the big dance – the very team Miami beat last year in the bowl game.  Hopefully I’ve not used up all my luck by winning 11 straight since becoming HC in San Diego (the team has won 12 on the bounce, but I was not in charge for the first.)  I was virtually shaking when we were running the clock out in the 4th, so god only knows how I will be if we perform to this level in the Superbowl.  

We got past the AFC Champs thanks mostly to retiring vet QB Drew Brees.  He went 20/27 for 338 yards, 4 TDs & 0 INTs – exactly the kind of big time performance you need in crucial games.

I now have a week or so to calm down & begin preparing for the big game.  Fingers crossed that I can clinch my first ever Lombardi Trophy!!  

well i lost!!  

not impressed, as my opposition coach called the BZ play 47 times during the game.  even the supposed BZ busting plays pretty much sucked against this all out assault.  its been a few days now & i'm still not happy about it.

still, what can i do but add to the noise that the BZ play is far too good?!  

--Last edited by beats on 2006-12-01 02:46:59 --

This is another gameplan flaw. Plays that are called repeatedly should drop off in performance. Hey the rules even says they do! My experience is that defensive plays do not reduce in effectiveness no matter how many times you call them.

Surely this would not be hard to do in the software.  Reduce the chance of good things happeneing by a % or two for each time they are called over a limit of say 5-10. More than this and they start to suffer just like in real life.  This would bring a lot of realism back into this game.

If people are leaving in droves then Danny should fix these bugs that would not take a lot of work to do for him.

The flaws that I see in gameplan would take me about 2 hours of programming time to fix and would stop a lot of people getting pissed off.

I think the rules say that only plays on Offence drop off with repeated use, but I really think that it should apply to Defence as well. As with Offensive plays, you could have the more extreme Defences (e.g. BZ!) reducing in effectiveness more quickly than "bread and butter" Defences (e.g. RD).

As you say Tom, it shouldn't take too much programming to make a change like this, especially as they've already got a similar routine in there for Offensive plays!

And finally, commiserations to Graham - I once had an opponent call an all-BZ defence against me and got hammered. It was a meaningless game for me, as I'd already won the division but I was still pissed off about it for days afterwards - I can't imagine how annoyed I'd have been if it was in a Superbowl!!!

Very poor consolation I know, but you can at least claim a moral victory for running (presumably) a more balanced and well thought out Defence plan!

Quote :

the BZ play is far too good

I would have agreed with you 12 months ago, but I think these days most people are putting together a gameplan that will perhaps not always maul BZ but certainly do significant dammage.

MY AY Eagles for example got 34% of our running yards from plays that destroy BZ out of sight, and another 40% from plays that IMX get rarely stuffed by it, certainly well under half of the time. That's three quaters of my runs, and ipso facto half of total plays from scrimmage that trounce BZ! Then there are few runs in there that are suseptible like 8% RL, 2%RT and some OR and CW too, which all seem to get busted, but by and large I think you have to have a system set up to react and punish such a defence.
FTR We had 14 runs all with over 1% of the rushing total and call 2 runs per 1 pass.

This is what happened the last time someone called all BZ against me
Eagles: rushing 2 for 2 yds inside and 19 for 246 yds outside, passing 1 for 1 and 9 yds short
That's just hte first quater, YES, first quater 63runs for 359 @ 5.7 total, though I knew it was coming which helped. (gotta love Gamble's old AY Steeler D).

Seeing a BZ only defence take a GP offence apart reminds me of a playoff game a few years back, where the Buccs (IIRC) just blitzed McNabb's blindside pretty much every play and hurried him lots, the Reids response was to call more passes to where the blitzers were coming from, but it just didn't work, I was screaming "run forest run!" but they didn't and we got stomped.

running, its good!

just my 2 cents.  

--Last edited by alex on 2006-12-02 01:38:55 --

The number of times I've called some offence plays I'm not sure it makes a lot of adjustments within the game.

Beats probably hates getting a far bit of BZ from my Vikings. Sorry Beats, but it seems to come out in my reactions a lot when it works well. Like Alex says there are ways to beat it and running is the best.

Certainly think repetition of plays should reduce its effectiveness. I've attempted to achieve that in what I'm coding.

With gameplan I think from what I hear of these "issues" that have existed for a while, that development (if any) is probably occuring on new or other games.

Considering how many coaches announce retirement or team cutting back each week or two on yahoo, one would expect peter and danny to expedite the amelioration of these issues, but no word has reached me...

That's part of the problem though, isn't it? The way Pete seems to see it, the less coaches they have playing the game, the less it becomes worth his while investing time and money in improving it.

Personally I enjoy playing the game despite its faults and intend to continue playing, but it'd be nice to see some of those faults fixed to make it an even better game. Whether I'll feel the same in a few years' time after maybe having suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous design faults one too many times, who can tell ...  

--Last edited by Jon G on 2006-12-12 00:05:41 --

I love GP, and plan to be in the AY till I'm in a pine box but these days the frustrations are such that I really don't get much out of having a second team (C) because with 2 teams you end up getting S DPed to death in at least one game.

I'll stay in AY, experiment and have fun in C and put the rest of my energy into other products (i.e. pester Paul about what I want in a football game)