11-25-2023, 12:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2023, 12:57 PM by kenvald. Edited 4 times in total.)
Quote:7. Write 600 words or more on something about anything in the league that interests you. It could be related to statistics, a league issue that you take seriously, or a niche part of history that doesn’t fit neatly into either of the above categories. This must be directly related to the league, so don’t wax 600 words about your team’s participation on a Werewolf server or something.
Something I have come to find quite interesting is just how random player's career can be season over season. At least for me and my player there has been little to no consistency in terms of my stats improving with my TPE. When I was creating this player I was told the cornerback position is one of the most important positions in the sim to gain TPE for. Max earning cornerbacks would supposedly see a much more impressive career, and be a lot more useful to their team, than their mid to low earning counterparts. But I haven't really noticed that.
I have played in the big league now for five full seasons as CB2. I started out really strong during my rookie season if I say so myself. The stats I gathered, although far from the top of the league defenders, made me confident and excited about my future career. Hell, I even scored a defensive touchdown in my second ever game. Which completely changed my mindset from one who just wanted to try and defend passes, and instead to one who was hunting for interceptions. Picking off the opposing quarterback turned out to be a hundred times more satisfying than defending a couple of passes.
Things looked well in the seasons following. Somehow I even managed to force and recover three whole fumbles while my fumble-related stats were really poor compared to the rest of the league. That happened in my second season. But since then things have slowed down a disappointing amount in the statistics department. I plateaued in my third season and ever since then my numbers have been pretty similar season over season. Even though I've been max earning and bought all my important traits. I'm starting to think all those people who said TPE was important for cornerbacks didn't consider just how much more important it is to be lucky.
It's hard to determine how good a player is while watching the games. The dots are nice and all, but it tells us nothing about why a played happened the way it did. Why was I burned by the wide receiver on the play, or why was I able to defend the pass. No one knows because it's all a roll of the dice every time. We can weigh this die slightly in our favor by earning TPE, but to me it still seems like it's rarely weighted in my favor anymore. Perhaps the game is nicer to rookie players. Let me show you what I'm talking about.
My number of tackles has been within a range of 10 since I started. 66 in season 1 and 76 in season 5. All other seasons had the number of tackles within that range. So it rarely if ever shifts this number. It doesn't appear to be decided by how good my player is. Missed tackles don't change either. I have 1-3 each season.
When looking at the more exciting stats there is on that has some change at least that we may consider improved through my TPE: Passes Defended. But even then, I have only seen one noticeable bump. During seasons 1 and 2 I had 18 and 17 defended passes respectively. Then in my third season I got excited as I finished with 25 defended passes. Perhaps this is where all my TPE goes to actually make a difference on the field. Problem is that 25 is still the most defended passes I have had. Season 4 had 25, and season 5 had 22. It looks like I earned enough to reach some kind of threshold in the sim. But now whatever else I earned doesn't help that stat.
And the most disappointing stats of all: Forcing turnovers. I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. This shows total turnovers, FR and INT.
Season 1: 4
Season 2: 7
Season 3: 3
Season 4: 2
Season 5: 2
Long story short, TPE may not actually matter that much for cornerbacks.