05-19-2024, 04:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-22-2024, 09:56 PM by wetwilleh. Edited 1 time in total.)
An earlier investigation, Defensive Player Statistics by Position NFL v ISFL (https://forums.sim-football.com/showthre...?tid=50508), suggested one of the largest discrepancies between NFL production levels and their ISFL counterparts is the volume of sacks coming from defensive ends. While defensive tackles performed mostly in line with this (admittedly irrelevant) benchmark and linebackers notably exceeded it. As a share of all sacks, defensive ends were generating less than half of what you would expect using the NFL numbers as a guideline.
There are a number of possible factors contributing to this difference: number of players by position rostered, formations used, TPE accumulation and allocation by position, etc. But one possible contributing factor the traits available to the positions had a few quirks that I wanted to bring to light and encourage discussion regarding. The TPE cost, requirements, and ability to purchase different traits.
The “Which LB Archetype should I pick?” guide (https://forums.sim-football.com/showthre...?tid=35288) offers this description of trait impact:
While “Which DE Archetype should I pick?”(https://forums.sim-football.com/showthre...?tid=35287) has this description:
One thing to note with all of these trait descriptions, they explicitly mention “blitzing.” We can interpret blitzing to be equivalent to saying pass rush, but that’s not entirely clear if that is the case. In my imperfect understanding of the simulation engine I have seen that one of the variable is a "blitz %" and you can also set position group strategy that may also interact with whether an action is classified as a blitz or a more passive position responsibility ('rush' the passer, 'contain' the run). While I could see blitzing being equivalent to rushing the passer for a linebacker, what actions taken by defensive lineman do or do not count as blitzes? I’m going to continue on assuming the primary impact of these traits is on their ability to effectively rush the pass and generate sacks(yes there is such a thing as a 'run blitz', that seems separate to me from rush technique and more about gap responsibilities which the sim options would capture). But it would be nice to confirm that there is no further interaction with certain formations or strategies that constitute a blitz, or more generally not be tied to 'blitzing' at all. Even still the traits could provide benefit in their effect on block shedding, but is that also something that is or should be limited only to pass rush?
Another thing to note is that the stated effectiveness is equal between both traits. Speed rusher and bull rusher have the same TPE cost(for DE and LB) and same effect. The only other trait that has a stated impact on ‘blitzing’ (read pass rush?) Is ‘Athlete’ which out of this group is only available to the Pass Rusher archetype for linebackers.
Lets go ahead and list out the trait access and costs for position archetype combos now:
Linebackers:
Defensive Ends:
Defensive Tackles:
While it is true that each defensive end or linebacker archetype has access to at most one of these traits (zero in the case of coverage linebacker). Every defensive tackle archetype has access to both of these pass rusher traits at a reduced cost. It is not clear to me whether these traits have a cumulative effect. Looking at many of the top defensive tackles in the league both traits are taken. So I would assume the two can interact beneficially, but being at a reduced cost should we expect both together to match a single purchased trait on either a LB or DE? Does either trait individually match effectiveness even though it is at a reduced TPE cost?
Another thing to note is that requirements for the traits differ slightly. In some cases its pretty obvious why that is the case. Nose tackles are capped at 65 speed so they have a slightly lower requirement to access speed rusher. I think we can also understand that while all other positions have a required endurance level to be a speed rusher, the ‘pass rusher’ LB archetype has competitiveness instead to avoid an overlap with the requirement for athlete. Similarly DT having access to both traits which have hands requirements for the other positions would have a high degree of overlap, so the hands requirement is replaced by a very low agility threshold that is likely a target regardless. And ends up making it comically easy to reach the speed rusher trait for a NT compared to a speed rusher DE
Starting NT to become a speed rusher:
(MIN:35)(MAX:65) Speed: 35 (> 65 Cost 15+30=45)
(MIN:40)(MAX:70) Agility: 40(>70 Cost 10+40=50)
(MIN:45)(MAX:80) Endurance: 45 (>80 Cost 5+40+50=95)
SpeedRusher (req. 65 Speed, 70 Agility, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 75 TPE)
Total cost 265
And a “speed rusher” to speed rusher:
(MIN:55)(MAX:95) Agility: 55 (> 90 Cost 30+50+100=180)
(MIN:20)(MAX:60) Hands: 20(>60 Cost 30+20=50)
(MIN:40)(MAX:80) Endurance: 40 (>80 Cost 10+40+50=100)
SpeedRusher (req. 90 Agility, 60 Hands, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Total cost 430 (62% more)
And this is before considering the impact of getting to 65 speed/70 agility (which I think most would want anyway) compared to getting 60 hands (which appears to have literal zero value to DE and DT). The relative value of getting agility from 70 up to 90 is harder to assess, and I think gets to the real issue at hand. All things considered the ability to get to 90 agility compared to 70 is actually much more useful than the speed rusher trait. So we have this trait with the same name, but wildly different costs, that doesn’t really seem to capture the player ability it is meant to. It much easier for a nose tackle to become a speed rusher than a “speed rusher” defensive end and thats kind of silly even if its not super impactful. If I had to guess this is one of the iterations that got us here. DTs were underperforming so an easy fix was to give them access to a new trait instead of modify they attribute spread. All things considered I think DT are in a really good spot right now, but I guess it just seems a little kludgy to have arrived there by getting access to the more traits/better technique as a rusher.
One of the more curious differences is the higher hands requirement for defensive ends. Compared to LB they need 60 instead of 50 hands to reach either trait. And compared to defensive tackles who can access speed rusher with no investment in hands (instead requiring a mix of agility and speed any rusher would likely want anyway). Requiring hands is essentially a pure tax on defensive end TPE since the earlier mentioned analysis shows 0 PD or INT coming from defensive ends in the ISFL, LB on the other hand can potentially make use of the hands investment. 60 hands or 50 is a trivial difference, even 60 hands compared to 0 hands (70 agility which you would want anyway) is a relatively minor cost to impose, it just seems a silly slap in the face to what should be the most versatile and capable speed rusher.
Now it’s fair to say that I haven’t established how impactful these traits are toward production. Statistical analysis is difficult due to the large number of variable interactions, with some of the most important variables (formation and position in depth chart) requiring sim level data rather than player attribute summaries. But we do see in the tracker that these traits are high priorities for players. Most players at their peak will take all of the pass rush traits available to them, though it will often be after they’ve hit certain attribute maxes. We also see examples of players with no traits performing at a high level (coverage LB can accumulate a number of sacks even if they have no access to these traits though they are one of the least popular archetypes).
So what if anything is to be done? Well I don’t know so I wanted to start by hopefully encouraging some discussion. I’m sure we landed here from a number of small iterations that all made sense at the time, and maybe globally this is still the optimal equilibrium, if I’m missing something let me know.
But in general I guess I would say:
* Defensive ends should be the most versatile pass rushers. They should have at least one archetype that can access both traits (assuming both contribute positively) and this may require a change in the cost for either DE or DT. A LB specializing in pass rush could still keep pace with athlete and their rush trait. DT could still also have access to both, though NT maybe not.
* While hands has some value to LB it is not useful to DE or DT in the sim. The fact the hands requirement for these traits is even higher for DE(60) than LB (50) is a pure extra TPE tax to acquire these traits. At least the hands cost should be the same, even then DE’s would still be getting less from the investment in attributes. But likely even better to replace the hands requirement with another attribute that is less pure dead weight.
These seem to me likely relatively low hanging fruit. I don’t imagine it would do much to upset the overall balance, with the overall impact being to raise DE a tiny bit relative to DT and LB a change which I think is warranted. But I'm probably missing a few things. What did I get wrong? Should we just ignore traits entirely? Are they just a trap to steer people in a certain direction that may not be optimal?
There are a number of possible factors contributing to this difference: number of players by position rostered, formations used, TPE accumulation and allocation by position, etc. But one possible contributing factor the traits available to the positions had a few quirks that I wanted to bring to light and encourage discussion regarding. The TPE cost, requirements, and ability to purchase different traits.
The “Which LB Archetype should I pick?” guide (https://forums.sim-football.com/showthre...?tid=35288) offers this description of trait impact:
Quote:Each archetype has traits that further distinguish themselves in their respective roles.
SpeedRusher is a trait that can be purchased by Pass Rushers only. This makes your LB much faster when blitzing and more likely to break through a block. Athlete is a trait that further increases your LB’s speed when blitzing.
BullRusher is unique to Versatile LBs. This allows them to run faster when blitzing and to have a higher chance of breaking through a block.
While “Which DE Archetype should I pick?”(https://forums.sim-football.com/showthre...?tid=35287) has this description:
Quote:While each archetype can obtain one of two traits in exchange for 100 TPE, SpeedRusher or BullRusher, the effect of both of these traits is the same. They make your player much faster when blitzing and more likely to break through a block.
One thing to note with all of these trait descriptions, they explicitly mention “blitzing.” We can interpret blitzing to be equivalent to saying pass rush, but that’s not entirely clear if that is the case. In my imperfect understanding of the simulation engine I have seen that one of the variable is a "blitz %" and you can also set position group strategy that may also interact with whether an action is classified as a blitz or a more passive position responsibility ('rush' the passer, 'contain' the run). While I could see blitzing being equivalent to rushing the passer for a linebacker, what actions taken by defensive lineman do or do not count as blitzes? I’m going to continue on assuming the primary impact of these traits is on their ability to effectively rush the pass and generate sacks(yes there is such a thing as a 'run blitz', that seems separate to me from rush technique and more about gap responsibilities which the sim options would capture). But it would be nice to confirm that there is no further interaction with certain formations or strategies that constitute a blitz, or more generally not be tied to 'blitzing' at all. Even still the traits could provide benefit in their effect on block shedding, but is that also something that is or should be limited only to pass rush?
Another thing to note is that the stated effectiveness is equal between both traits. Speed rusher and bull rusher have the same TPE cost(for DE and LB) and same effect. The only other trait that has a stated impact on ‘blitzing’ (read pass rush?) Is ‘Athlete’ which out of this group is only available to the Pass Rusher archetype for linebackers.
Lets go ahead and list out the trait access and costs for position archetype combos now:
Linebackers:
Quote:Coverage LB
--none--
Versatile LB
BullRusher (req. 90 Strength, 50 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Pass Rusher
SpeedRusher (req. 90 Agility, 50 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Athlete (req. 80 Speed, 85 Agility, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 50 TPE)
Defensive Ends:
Quote:Speed Rusher
SpeedRusher (req. 90 Agility, 60 Hands, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Power Rusher
BullRusher (req. 90 Strength, 60 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Run Stuffer
BullRusher (req. 90 Strength, 60 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Defensive Tackles:
Quote:Interior Rusher
BullRusher (req. 90 Strength, 50 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 75 TPE)
SpeedRusher (req. 70 Speed, 70 Agility, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 75 TPE)
All-Purpose DT
BullRusher (req. 90 Strength, 50 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 75 TPE)
SpeedRusher (req. 70 Speed, 70 Agility, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 75 TPE)
Nose Tackle
BullRusher (req. 90 Strength, 50 Hands, 80 Competitiveness) (Costs: 75 TPE)
SpeedRusher (req. 65 Speed, 70 Agility, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 75 TPE)
While it is true that each defensive end or linebacker archetype has access to at most one of these traits (zero in the case of coverage linebacker). Every defensive tackle archetype has access to both of these pass rusher traits at a reduced cost. It is not clear to me whether these traits have a cumulative effect. Looking at many of the top defensive tackles in the league both traits are taken. So I would assume the two can interact beneficially, but being at a reduced cost should we expect both together to match a single purchased trait on either a LB or DE? Does either trait individually match effectiveness even though it is at a reduced TPE cost?
Another thing to note is that requirements for the traits differ slightly. In some cases its pretty obvious why that is the case. Nose tackles are capped at 65 speed so they have a slightly lower requirement to access speed rusher. I think we can also understand that while all other positions have a required endurance level to be a speed rusher, the ‘pass rusher’ LB archetype has competitiveness instead to avoid an overlap with the requirement for athlete. Similarly DT having access to both traits which have hands requirements for the other positions would have a high degree of overlap, so the hands requirement is replaced by a very low agility threshold that is likely a target regardless. And ends up making it comically easy to reach the speed rusher trait for a NT compared to a speed rusher DE
Starting NT to become a speed rusher:
(MIN:35)(MAX:65) Speed: 35 (> 65 Cost 15+30=45)
(MIN:40)(MAX:70) Agility: 40(>70 Cost 10+40=50)
(MIN:45)(MAX:80) Endurance: 45 (>80 Cost 5+40+50=95)
SpeedRusher (req. 65 Speed, 70 Agility, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 75 TPE)
Total cost 265
And a “speed rusher” to speed rusher:
(MIN:55)(MAX:95) Agility: 55 (> 90 Cost 30+50+100=180)
(MIN:20)(MAX:60) Hands: 20(>60 Cost 30+20=50)
(MIN:40)(MAX:80) Endurance: 40 (>80 Cost 10+40+50=100)
SpeedRusher (req. 90 Agility, 60 Hands, 80 Endurance) (Costs: 100 TPE)
Total cost 430 (62% more)
And this is before considering the impact of getting to 65 speed/70 agility (which I think most would want anyway) compared to getting 60 hands (which appears to have literal zero value to DE and DT). The relative value of getting agility from 70 up to 90 is harder to assess, and I think gets to the real issue at hand. All things considered the ability to get to 90 agility compared to 70 is actually much more useful than the speed rusher trait. So we have this trait with the same name, but wildly different costs, that doesn’t really seem to capture the player ability it is meant to. It much easier for a nose tackle to become a speed rusher than a “speed rusher” defensive end and thats kind of silly even if its not super impactful. If I had to guess this is one of the iterations that got us here. DTs were underperforming so an easy fix was to give them access to a new trait instead of modify they attribute spread. All things considered I think DT are in a really good spot right now, but I guess it just seems a little kludgy to have arrived there by getting access to the more traits/better technique as a rusher.
One of the more curious differences is the higher hands requirement for defensive ends. Compared to LB they need 60 instead of 50 hands to reach either trait. And compared to defensive tackles who can access speed rusher with no investment in hands (instead requiring a mix of agility and speed any rusher would likely want anyway). Requiring hands is essentially a pure tax on defensive end TPE since the earlier mentioned analysis shows 0 PD or INT coming from defensive ends in the ISFL, LB on the other hand can potentially make use of the hands investment. 60 hands or 50 is a trivial difference, even 60 hands compared to 0 hands (70 agility which you would want anyway) is a relatively minor cost to impose, it just seems a silly slap in the face to what should be the most versatile and capable speed rusher.
Now it’s fair to say that I haven’t established how impactful these traits are toward production. Statistical analysis is difficult due to the large number of variable interactions, with some of the most important variables (formation and position in depth chart) requiring sim level data rather than player attribute summaries. But we do see in the tracker that these traits are high priorities for players. Most players at their peak will take all of the pass rush traits available to them, though it will often be after they’ve hit certain attribute maxes. We also see examples of players with no traits performing at a high level (coverage LB can accumulate a number of sacks even if they have no access to these traits though they are one of the least popular archetypes).
So what if anything is to be done? Well I don’t know so I wanted to start by hopefully encouraging some discussion. I’m sure we landed here from a number of small iterations that all made sense at the time, and maybe globally this is still the optimal equilibrium, if I’m missing something let me know.
But in general I guess I would say:
* Defensive ends should be the most versatile pass rushers. They should have at least one archetype that can access both traits (assuming both contribute positively) and this may require a change in the cost for either DE or DT. A LB specializing in pass rush could still keep pace with athlete and their rush trait. DT could still also have access to both, though NT maybe not.
* While hands has some value to LB it is not useful to DE or DT in the sim. The fact the hands requirement for these traits is even higher for DE(60) than LB (50) is a pure extra TPE tax to acquire these traits. At least the hands cost should be the same, even then DE’s would still be getting less from the investment in attributes. But likely even better to replace the hands requirement with another attribute that is less pure dead weight.
These seem to me likely relatively low hanging fruit. I don’t imagine it would do much to upset the overall balance, with the overall impact being to raise DE a tiny bit relative to DT and LB a change which I think is warranted. But I'm probably missing a few things. What did I get wrong? Should we just ignore traits entirely? Are they just a trap to steer people in a certain direction that may not be optimal?