(S23) - Ultimus Week

[hihihi_62]

2.5 TPE Answers:

13) Since I get to be biased in my answer on this one, I think Mathias Hanyadi deserves to be awarded with the Season 23 MVP award over Wilf and Jay Cue. Hanyadi came second in the league in rushing this season behind only Orange County's Takumara but did so with on 40 less carries. He also led the league in rushing TDs with an impressive 13 on the ground. Add in his near 600 yards through the air and that makes him an all purpose stud. Hanyadi managed to pull these impressive numbers while sharing the carries with young stud Acura Skyline also in the backfield and while also sharing the load with an impressive aerial attack lead by Cooter Bigsby and countless stud wideouts that all demand touches. The thing that really sets his season apart is that he was the catalyst on an aging team and finally lead the Wraiths to an Ultimus victory after years of heartbreak. Wilf and Cue both had great statistical seasons but only managed to finish the season with an 8-8 record in Arizona while the Wraiths finished atop the NFSC with 10 wins. Given the fact Hanyadi isn't the only superstar on a star studded Wraiths offence and still managed such impressive numbers is reason enough for me to give the MVP award to him.

[CementHands]

Tier 1 - Task 5 - The makeup of the Ultimini Winning Sea Wolves

The historic moment that I am choosing to write about is a moment that will be shrined in Sea Wolves memory for all time – Their first ever Ultimini Championship.
Now going back to the regular season, Norfolk put up a passing by committee approach, utilizing a roughly 50/50 split between Quarterbacks Ramza and Skywalker. Now, this could be a recipe for disaster if one or both of them wanted to put themselves ahead of the team. They could have been uber focused on their own game, and not willing to help out the other, because if the other slips then they would get more time, more reps.
Thankfully, this did not happen. In fact, the exact opposite occurred this amazing season. They got together and trained even harder. They pushed each other to be the best they possibly could be, and they were there to catch and support each other when they hit a slump.
On to the Running Backs front, a committee like approach also developed, with Skrills and Rogers taking 90% of the total team rushing attempts (including Quarter Back scrambles) – but there was a defined difference between the two main backs. Skrills was by far the heavier, power back getting more attempts up the middle, and close yardage situations, where Rogers was much more widely used and regarded as a speedy back. Whenever he came on the field the defense had to adjust wider coverage, so him just being there posed a threat and reduced the pressure on the QB’s. Skrills was able to pound the ball up the opponents throat all season, being responsible for a team high 7 rushing Touch Downs and Rogers was a threat just by stepping on the field. He had one of the longest runs out of anyone this last season, and the longest run by a rookie by 40 yards, outstanding!
Receivers are a spot that really got some good pressure cooking early on the season and the outcome was a few absolute gems. By far the favorite target of both Quarter Backs was Matthews, who more than doubled the next closest receiver in yards at 937. Hex was a rookie that produced at a wonderful rate and should be a staple in that spot should they return for second season, they are very ready to take over as primary target if Matthews moves on. Haugland was right there with Hex, rotating plays and keeping fresh legs on their side of the field which now brings us to Norfolk’s gem of a 5th round pick if I may say so myself: Krashwagen. 3rd among all total TE’s in the league for receiving yards, he was the top by all rookies by 100 yards. Add on to that 3 touchdowns, and Krash provided an additional threat that the Sea Wolves were able to utilize to spread D, and key down on favorable matchups, or even get a timely 4th down conversion out of him.
Now the piece that was the catalyst of the offense was the line. Pennington Jr. who could very well be Norfolk’s candidate for ROTY lead the way on the line and was a late round pick. He added immense value leading the team with 49 pancakes, and no sacks allowed – the lack of sacks allowed was something that ran as a constant throughout this team, the truest of protect the QB stats, only a total of 4 were allowed throughout the active lineup.
Many games throughout the season were won by a slim margin. The best kicker in the league lead the way here with the awesome leg of Guava-Fresca. 88% in Field Goal attempts, and absolutely deadly from range, he was ably to turn 3 points from a punt situation so many times. He was able to chip away at the score little by little, and often give us the leg up that we needed.
The Defense was outstanding in their own regard. Sack leader of the league, Rookie as well Sinclair was a massive part of the group. Marshall, de Pengu, Scott, Button, Vaughne, Blanco, Simpson, Waffle, Namen Jr., and Sternenstaub were all huge pieces of the shut down D that dragged Norfolk over the goal line.
Tied for the lowest amount of points allowed in the SFC South, and the only team to break 300 points for in the entire league, this season was a culmination of excellence from the top brass, all the way down to the rookies. Everyone bought into their roles, and preformed at a phenomenal level to have a record setting season. This win is for the entire organization – The GMs who managed the team. Drafted the players the last few seasons to fill out this roster and keep everyone active and happy, the veterans who returned to not just kill time before their callup, but actually preform and improve, and the rookies who went all out every night, and showed that they have something to say.
I’m proud of you Norfolk, this is a great victory and it will be remembered as our first.

Code:

845 Words

[platanocat]

12) This task is exclusive to non-recreate rookies of the S23 class and later. In 400 words or more, how has your experience been in the league? Who have you met that has made your time here more fun, friendly, and exciting? Have you been satisfied with your player’s early start? What was it like being drafted for the first time? Do you have any comments or suggestions for the entire league that you think should be implemented?

I have only been in the league for about a week. I joined from the massive group of others from the Reddit r/NFL post. I love the league so far! As soon as I joined the main ISFL discord server, everyone was so welcoming! The community as a whole seems to facilitate a rookie friendly environment. I feel like this is further expanded on by the whole ‘scouting rookies’ system that is in place. In only a few short days, I had added 7 new discord servers to my sidebar!
As someone who works a desk job all day, being a constant part of the conversation has felt amazing. It’s been nice having the options to hop in and out of various servers. So far I think my favorite servers have been the ISFL general server, and the Royals server. The ISFL sever was important to me as sort of an obvious jumping off point. The help-channel has been so easy to just skim for useful information and links. It also probably helps being part of such a large S25 draft class. Tons of other rookies flooded the channel with various questions that I may not have had encountered yet.
As mentioned before, I also have thoroughly enjoyed the Royals server. Not to say that I haven’t enjoyed the other team servers as well, but London’s has seemed the most active. For some reason, other rookies have flocked there as well, making the server almost a pseudo ‘rookie-chat’. Shout out to the Royals team members, as well as the various other teams that hang out there, for helping all of us rookies without questions and shenanigans!
I’ve been pretty satisfied with my player’s early career start. I appreciate being given the opportunity to obtain so much ‘starter’ TPE from such an early point. In my opinion, it not only prefaces the importance of these artificial points to the development of your character; but also helps to develop an early hunger to obtain more! I like that there are plenty of written tasks available. However, I’m honestly more excited about the ability to post podcasts to earn money. The difference in pay makes it an easy choice! I feel like making podcasts not only helps to inject yourself into the community more, but also allows other people in the community to hear your voice. While we’re all still anonymous players, hearing other people speak seems to add a substantial amount of character and personality behind each person’s fictitious name.
Overall, I’m totally enjoying my time so far!

[Kyamprac]

Tier Two Task (x1)

12) This task is exclusive to non-recreate rookies of the S23 class and later. In 400 words or more, how has your experience been in the league? Who have you met that has made your time here more fun, friendly, and exciting? Have you been satisfied with your player’s early start? What was it like being drafted for the first time? Do you have any comments or suggestions for the entire league that you think should be implemented?

I answered this question last time I completed Ultimus Week and feel like I’m in almost a completely new place than I was back then.. so it kind of warrants an update. I’ve only been with the league for a couple of months now, but it feels like much longer because I’ve been able to gain so many new experiences and interact with so many amazing people in the community that help to make this league the success that it is. I’m now in a position where I have at least some inkling of what to do now, and I can kind of help new players coming in with the S25 draft class which makes the league exciting to me all over again in a new sort of way.

In the DSFL draft I was selected fourth overall as a kicker by the Dallas Birddogs, which was exciting in and of itself. The Birddogs were my first choice and I continue to really enjoy playing with them today. Dallas gave me the opportunity to join their war room very quickly after I was drafted, so I’ve been able to gain hands-on experience with the sim and also get involved in the scouting and drafting process for the team. Steg and Kyle (and now Lim) are so knowledgeable and so supportive of their team that it just makes Dallas an amazing place to be. As a running back I’m almost certain I’ll be spending another season down in the DSFL, so I’m really glad to have landed where I did.

Zoe Watts had a heck of a first season, which has made the game really enjoyable as well. She still has a ways to go to develop, but I think there’s a real chance she could be one of the best running backs in the league. Having a player that performs well in the sim just makes the whole experience all the better, and I look forward to seeing what she can do going forward. I have no idea where she’s going to land in the upcoming ISFL draft, but that uncertainty and excitement around the draft is one of the best parts of the league I think.

Since joining, I’ve taken on two league jobs: one with player progression team and one with the new Dotts trading card team. This has also kind of enhanced my experience in the league as they are two completely different jobs with different responsibilities that allow me to get involved in different ways. Through player progression team I can have a direct impact on bringing new players into the league and kind of helping them figure things out by way of things like the rookie point task. Through Dotts, I feel like I’m part of one of the new exciting parts of the league as it continues to grow and develop with the added bonus of getting more photoshop experience.

Code:

486 words

Tier Three Tasks (x2)

18) Create a billboard, magazine cover, or video game cover depicting a superstar of the league. Graphics only.



20) Show your player hoisting the championship trophy. Graphics only.

[NicholasTheGreat]

1) The league has a rich and fascinating history, and our perspectives on it differ from person to person. In 800 words or more, describe any significant non-playoffs moment in ISFL or DSFL history, whether you were around for it or not. Describe the context, the significant members, and the events. What exactly made this event so famous (or infamous) and why does it deserve to be remembered?



One of the most significant moments in International Simulation Football League history has been slowly occurring throughout the background in the last several seasons. It is a movement that has been pushed down, celebrated and memed but is finally standing tall within the Simulation Football community. They are no longer in the shadow and are now treated as individuals and not lower class citizens, I am of course talking about the biggest units on the football field, the Offensive Lineman.


Take your minds back several seasons when Frost wasn’t ruining an expansion team called the Sarasota Sailfish and the league was a much different size to what it is now. The Offensive Line was seen as a joke and people who created in that position were seen as troublemakers and judged on the position of their character. This was extremely relevant in the create a player guide and other ‘official’ documents when it advised against creating a player who was an Offensive Lineman. The player was warned about the lack of importance for this position and how it may not be ‘fun’ to watch it during the games as there was only minimal statistics that are recorded in the statistical index. To surmise the offensive lineman were bullied about creating the player and that was after they had got through all of the warning signs put in place to stop people from creating there in the first place.


The next phase was the beginning of individuals who attempted to buck the trend of Offensive Line bullying and attempted to reform the position. Players Like Cal and Ben took up the mantle of Offensive Lineman and tried to challenge people’s perceptions about the sort of people that create themselves as Offensive Lineman. Cal especially was prevalent in this movement, slowly the change started to occur but there wasn’t enough change occurring. Cal created the ‘Fair Rub Club’ and the ‘Fair Rubs’ movement to improve public perception of the Offensive line position which as well acted as a catchphrase and battlecry for all offensive lineman and offensive lineman supporters. The tide was slowly changing but it needed reinforcements, it needed further support and it came in the form of a little white alien named Snoo. Snoo was the mascot of reddit and when the league started it’s biannual recruitment drive on the playform a flurry of new users to the league jumped aboard and created their future. These users did jnot the history of the position but while the warning light blared during their creation, they pushed through and entered the Fair Rub Club as members of the Offensive Line. People like Simon, NicholasTheGreat, CalvinGolloday and DougQuail didn’t know the history and saw the warning signs. They ignored them to become Fair Rubs.

The players mentioned above are the future of the offensive line position and as more people realise the importance of this position, people are transferring their skills so they can play the position. Have a look at Scorp, Bayley or Van, they are some high profile users who have switched to the offensive line position showing its growing importance to the league.

However, the campaign of the Fair Rub Club was not over yet, respect has been restored to the position and teams actually thought about drafting them but there was nothing to chase, there was no end of season reward available for offensive lineman, as they were ineligible for the Pro Bowl due to decision made by Head Office. After rigorous campaigining and spamming of chats, the Fair Rub Club eventually earned the honour to potentially make a pro bowl. The Fair Rub Club was finally achieving their dreams.

To help celebrate this momentous occasion I went to celebrate a few people in particular:

Cal and the people that paved the way: These people here are the ones that created the movement and allowed for the people arriving today to not face the scrunity, torment and embarrasement that the ones who paved the way had to endure. They created the movement and helped it achieve their goals, as the majority of them venture into retirement as start getting to that point, it is important to note the sacrifice they had to make.

The New recruits: Everyone else creating an offensive lineman bolstering the positional group giving it the power to make changes to the system that only people power can ensure occurs. They are the cor of the new wave of offensive lineman and make it the position group it is today.
iSteg: This article about the resurgence of Offensive lineman can not be written without including iSteg. iSteg was responsible for writing the articles that inspired the change for Offensive Linemen. They went from afterthought to potential but with Steg they went to a requirement. His thorough research proved that Offensive Lineman are bettle then their bot counterparts and boost a team’s chance of winning games. It made it required for a team to have OL, full stop.

[Nictox]

Task 8 (400+)

I have been asked to examine the London Royals team, which admittedly I will do poorly. At first glance you look at the teams roster and are just like, "Wow, these guys got some thic bois on the line." Which of course is referring to their offensive linemen who are all shopping at the big and tall stores. The strength of these guys is insane. Probably the strongest individuals on the team. Please note I am purely basing this off of my own player who is huge. Really the Royals are showing their love for the Fair Rub Club and I believe that is going to be a game changer. The bots are good (and they have some cool names) but nothing beats a human offensive lineman who is built like a tank. Another great thing about the Royals is the youth movement happening. There are a lot of young players in London right now that are hungry to win some games. Their starting quarterback is a sophomore with something to prove and an all around awesome guy. I am looking forward to blocking for him this season and protecting him. The Royals running back is a third season player and he appears to be ready for everything as the resident old guy of the team. I am really excited to watch the two young wide receivers we have, I have a good feeling they will be awesome this season. If I had to pick a weak player out of the bunch, not including bots, it would be our tight end. That is no knock to him though, he is doing his thing and still going to be great next season. I reality I do not believe London needs to do anything to change the way they are playing. I think they did fantastic last season with a very young team (with some key veterans) and should only get better from there. Now that the young guys are stepping up into bigger positions I expect them (including me) to do very well. Will I make the hot take that they will win it all this season? Yeah probably, I am a homer at heart. I truly believe their willingness to draft and sign offensive linemen sets them farther apart from other DSFL teams who like the bots. They are in it for pancakes and for the successful blocks.

[401]

SHL PT

[morsy]

6) (As a side note, I really wish the history of the league would be better preserved, as the Wiki lacks info even as crucial as the past Ultimus bowls, so if anything in my article is wrong, please excuse my ignorance)
First of all, I want to give a big congratulations to the team I will be writing about for winning the Ultimus this year: Yellowknife Wraiths, you deserved it. As probably most offensive players, I liked your style of outscoring your opponents instead of relying on your defense too much. I liked how you made winning the Ultimus game look easy, putting so many points on the board against a great opponent like the Copperheads who also had a great team this season. As a wide receiver I certainly appreciate your pass-heavy offense, while also featuring one of the best running games in the league. Not gonna lie, having both Haynadi and Acura Skyline on the same team is kind of unfair to all other teams. In combination with your receiving squad it‘s no surprise you put up those insane numbers. I know the regular season is long over, but I‘m sure some Chicago Butchers fans still have nightmares about that time in week three when they had to play you. My poor Hahalua didn't fare that much better.
Ignoring your performance in the regular season, I think you also deserved the win based on your incredible bad luck in the past. Making it to the Ultimus game year after year, season after season, only to lose that one game that decides it all must have been heart-breaking. Yet you always managed to push hard again the next season, make it to another Ultimus bowl only for the same thing to happen. It shows a lot about the character of your players and your front office that you kept working hard year after year to finally get that win you desperately wanted. I know some people, myself included, mocked you a bit for it, but I‘m sure they‘re all happy that the tragic heroes finally got their happy ending. Also congratulations to every single player on your squad. They really stepped up in the Ultimus game. There wasn't a single disappointing player on offense or defense and when you have so many people you can rely on because you just know they can make a play, it‘s almost impossible to beat a team. Like you can‘t cover "the best player" if everyone plays like the star of the team.
I hope you‘re all sobered up after the big celebrations in your small town and I sincerely hope that you won‘t repeat either your cruel losing streak in the Ultimus or the playoff drought you had to endure after your lone playoff win before that one in season eight. It would really be a shame if the playoffs over the next season would have no Canadian participant.

13) I support the introduction of a new award for both the International Simulation Football league and the Developmental Simulation Football League and I call it the "Most efficient offensive player of the year" award. Now we already have several awards for offensive and defensive players and they all deserve to be given out but when you think of objectively good players, you usually think of the ones that put up the big numbers. And sure, it‘s nice if you‘re the quarterback with the highest quarterback rating, the running back with the most rushing yards or the edge rusher with the most sacks. But what about those guys that don‘t put up those huge numbers but are super valuable to their team?
Look at this year‘s receiving stats. The players with the most yards usually need more than 100 yards to score one touchdown. Isn't that insane? They have to run over one whole length of a football field for just one score. A guy like Baltimore‘s Quinn score one touchdown for every 284.5 yards he ran, Sarasota‘s Angler even needed an average of 305 yards per touchdown! Now on the other side of the spectrum we have players like New Orleans‘ McCormick with 86.5 yards per touchdown and – probably unsurprisingly – myself, William Alexander, with 94.8 yards per touchdown. As I came up with the idea for the award and should clearly be the first winner, I suggest you name it in my honor. Thanks!

21) I don‘t want to bash any other team or say that my team, the Honolulu Hahalua, were better and this other team, the Austin Copperheads, didn't deserve to be in the playoffs, I just want to show that it was very close and that we ultimately would have deserved to make it with just a little more luck on our side.
As you may know it was a very close playoff race this year in the ASFC and the Austin Copperheads made it in with a record of 8-8, while my beloved Rays had to watch other teams have fun after going 7-9 in just our second year of existence with a very young squad. And as you probably also know, the Austin Copperheads made it to the Ultimus bowl this season, proving that anything is possible in the playoffs and that nobody cares about the regular season, once the madness of the post-season starts.
The teams both one each game in our direct matchup so that‘s a good indicator that they were pretty much on the same level. However the Hahalua win came later in the season and was more convincing, given it was a 40-3 blowout. The Hahalua also showed that they‘re good at playing the big teams, beating the Liberty, Yeti, Copperheads, Otters and Second Line in the regular season. Who knows, with a good run the team could have made it to the Ultimus, too. Sure, you can criticize that in the end we lost the easy games we should have won against the not-so-great teams and that‘s both fair and true. However I still believe that it was a very close race in the ASFC and that we weren't one bit worse than the teams that got into the playoffs.

[ValorX77]

Tier 1, Task 3, Podcast (20 minutes)

[AsylumParty]

5) One of the especially interesting aspects of this league and its functioning to me, is the sheer intricacy. It's really incredible that we have have assembled, collectively, such a complicated machine. Sure, we already had a foundation - the National Football League - but we have had to refine it over the years to be suited to little dots, that are hit or miss as an actual simulation, but that is besides the point. There are a number of aspects to this that I want to touch on, specifically.

First of all, I find it endlessly interesting that our GMs, bless their hearts, manage their teams down to the most micro aspects. I was not drafted by the Honolulu Hahalua, for instance, partially because I was asking for too much money. I do not mean to imply that Griffin Porter, my player, is going to change the future of the league or anything, but decisions as small as that can have long-term implications. Constantly, GMs are presented with decisions: "is player x worth this, when we need that and that?" So, sure, you could say that they *just* manage a team, but naturally, that entails many more things. They are managing a salary cap; they are picking and moving pieces based on the type of team that they want to build, and must also account for personalities; they are formulating strategies on a weekly basis based on opponents who are also evolving and strategizing against them. And sure, I may be assuming the best of all GMs here, but I think that the ones that do not put in meaningful effort are typically weeded out, be it by failure, or others that recognize this. Though, I think in saying that I should also tread carefully not to dissuade others from giving a general manager position a shot, because so long as you have the team's best interests at heart, others will recognize this, and your team will be better for it. There are always going to be teams that have to have losing records. Honestly, I have more to say about how much GMs impress me, but so that this does not turn into a singular topic response, I think it is best I move on.

Someone that I did not begin this discussion with the foresight to recognize, but dawned on me part way through, is Ballerstorm. He is the reason that all of this exists in the first place. And if I remember correctly, he based this loosely on the SHL's format at the time, as that is where he was coming from. I would certainly have to say, uncontested, I imagine, that he has had the farthest reaching touch on every aspect of this league. Though, like I said, as far as I know (I am not an SHL native) this was not simply a cut and paste routine. I think that Ballerstorm's method of laying down an already working foundation was a smart one. But from there, he had to make a number of adjustments appropriate for a football league. His goal, I think, was to simulate the real-life football experience as best as possible, and as far as I can tell, he did a phenomenal job.

Before I am done, I want to heap my praise and equal wonderment on anyone doing a job. This is not just to say that it is impressive people can come together to do these things, which it is, but rather that I could not possibly touch on the expertise each individual gains at certain elements of this league that others do not see. This is a bit of a catch-all, as I can not possibly fit each job's unique elements in my desired word count, but it is worth stating anyways. Updaters are the absolute bread and butter of this league. It is what we look forward to every week, knowing that our efforts are paying off. The giant, collective organization of the spreadsheet by total strangers is really a complex mechanism that continually impresses me. Further, we are running a FANTASY LEAGUE FOR OUR OWN LEAGUE. How cool/meta is that? We are pushing the limits of where we can go with simulation to the point we are both participants and observers of this league simultaneously. It has instilled me that same bittersweet feeling of wanting to root for players that play against my team on occasion (but that they won't do so well that they win) that real fantasy leagues (is that an oxymoron?) do for me. And while there is so much more, I want to lastly talk about how many different aspects of the league that head office manages. It used to be far less organized than it is now, so there is even a self-policing aspect that has, in my opinion, turned out quite well. Sure there are road bumps, but no league is without mistakes. All in all, I am really impressed at how complex a system this is.

[timeconsumer]

5) Write 800 words or more on something that interests you. It could be related to statistics, to a league issue 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 800 words about your team’s Werewolf server. Be warned that freedom comes with risk, and this category will be judged especially stringently for anyone trying to spew complete nonsense.

I gotta say guys first of all I really like this new format. This gives me a great opportunity to draw on some of the knowledge and experiences I have stored up from 3 years in this league. So let's get down to brass tacks and talk about some interesting aspects of league history. Today we're going to be talking about eras. I know it's kind of a weird and broad category but stay with me.

Now I'm not going to break down eras officially and call this the air raid era and this the steel curtain era or anything like that. Rather I'm going to discuss certain trends we saw during different periods of the league and what sim settings or changes were the cause of these starting or ending. So here we go.

Early in the NSFL around seasons 1 through 3 was a very busy time for front 7 players. Because of the lack of bot OL and not enough active players to fill the role almost all teams were starting 3 or 4 50 TPE offensive linemen. This wasn't a huge deal in season 1 as all players were trash at that time, but by the time season 2 and 3 rolled around the active defensive linemen were absolutely dominating these weak offensive lines. We saw records in sacks that we may never see broken again. Further compounding this issue was that teams passed the ball a lot since rushing wasn't very effective. A very good RB maybe got 3.4 yards per carry.

It was around this time, maybe season 2-4 where we started doing custom modifications to the playcalling. First thing we did was make it so your playcalling settings were accurate. Before when you put a 50 for run/pass it really had so much noise in it that you might as well put a 70 or a 30 because the sim was just going to do whatever it wanted. Our solution was to limit the range of what you could put in there but allow us to really control the frequency, because that makes sense. Next we learned about the corner blitz problem and implemented some custom playbooks to remove those from the game. It was this experience that then led to us modifying the Spread playbook to have more designed QB runs so that a mobile QB had more than 3 rushes per game (the default).

Come season 4 we saw a big change with the introduction of bot offensive line. This had two main effects. First all offensive lines got better, duh. Second we saw a lot of active offensive line move to other positions for their team so there was a huge influx of talent. This ended up being an era of fuck it chuck it football. Seeing teams going 70 pass or more was common. We eventually tuned this down around season 7 by increasing sliders for rushing and dropping them for passing.

Another big thing happened around Season 7 or 8 with the change to the playcalling for blitzes. Previously we were looking at Nickel 75 as the dominating defensive playcall. The SLB in Nickel 75 was getting a ton of sacks and we were seeing the effects negatively on defensive ends who were losing a lot of production to LBs. A nerf to bring this down to 35% blitz was made to keep this in line. It's still the dominant playbook but at least now defensive ends can compete for sacks too.

More changes that happened around these period was a major overhaul of archetypes. We worked on a few different goals with buffing some and nerfing others but one of the main goals was to noormalize weights for OL and DL. As it stood there was really no sense in picking some of the smaller faster builds because the weight disadvantage made no sense. So we made them all weigh the same which removed a lot of the flavor from the game but did allow people to choose more archetypes and not be concerned about it hurting their performance. We did more changes with all archetypes including QB and CB and so on and so forth. In hindsight we could have done better work and made fewer archetypes with more unique features between them, but we didn't. Maybe next time.

So now what, where do we go from here? It's interesting how far we've come but I do think it's time that we look to pick up where we left off and do some basic modifications. I think DL weights need to be explored more to offset the amount of human OL we have these days, they have a harder competition and need the balance restored. Secondly I think it's time we boosted passing yard sliders just a touch, not a ton but one or two notches. We're getting to the point where 4k yards passing isn't happening even with the 16 game season, we're running the ball a ton. Also our passer ratings are very low and a higher Y/A will improve that a lot. Again it's just a small tweak but it's needed.