The Premise
In the S25 draft class, veteran ISFL user speculadora created a QB named Owen Holloway. Although now a WR, spec's initial goal was to exploit a quirk (some might prefer to use the word "bug") in the sim engine that we use for our league games, Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2016. This quirk, as described in excellent detail by Maglubiyet here (I think I've linked to this piece in at least half of my media posts at this point), gives quarterbacks a significant in-game speed boost if their Speed stat is less than 80. In effect, this results in 79 Speed quarterbacks being faster than most other players on the field, especially at the DSFL level. While several quarterbacks in the ISFL have started to exploit this bug, I believe Owen Holloway was the first serious attempt to take advantage of it at the DSFL level.
The experiment led to interesting results. Before Holloway ultimately switched to WR in week 11, he amassed 559 yards on 64 rushing attempts for a staggering 8.7ypc average, easily the best in the league. He also recorded 6 rushing touchdowns, an 87 yard longest rush (which I have to imagine is a DSFL record among QBs), and an offensive performance of the year nomination for his week 6 game against the Birddogs where he recorded 176 rushing yards and 2 touchdowns on just 8 attempts (including that 87 yarder) and adding another 61 yards and a TD through the air.
Critically, however, that "through the air" part hampered Holloway's effectiveness significantly. Over those same 10 weeks at QB, Holloway attempted 141 passes and recorded a measly 56.6 passer rating. He completed just 68 of those 141 passes (58.8%) for 706 yards (5 ypa), 6 TDs, and 7 INTs. For as great as Holloway's rushing performances were, he proved to be a liability in the passing game. His overall contribution to the team was at best neutral, but likely negative given the ratio of passing attempts to rushing attempts he had.
So, end of story right? A DSFL QB trying to exploit 79 speed is just not a great idea given how much they would have to sacrifice in the passing game?
Well if that were true then why did I start writing this article? I ain't no clickbait author.
While speculadora did a great job exploiting the sim engine, I argue that he failed to exploit something equally as abusable: the league rules.
In this article, I will demonstrate a huge issue with the current league rules allowing for major abuse in a similar vein as Owen Holloway. I would like you to meet Taysom Hill Jr., running quarterback extraordinaire.
The Exploit
Let's take a look at the league rules on what players can play at what position. Bust out the -rulebook commands, everyone, I'm going to cite rules up in this bench.
Quote:VII. Sim Rules
B. Positional Eligiblity
1. Bot Offensive Linemen may not play any position with the exceptions of OL, TE, and FB.
2. Any player who plays all their snaps at one position must be listed as that position on the depth chart, regardless of their actual position. General Managers are required to mark these out of position players in the special notes of their DC.
Rule 2 is the first sticking point. If we play a QB out of position for every snap, their position will need to change to that position in the sim. Since the CurrentSpeed calculations are dependent on position, we need Taysom Hill Jr. to play at least some snaps at QB so he can get the overpowered 79 speed boost.
I have an issue with this rule as I don't think it's written entirely clearly. What does "playing all their snaps" mean? Could we set Mr. Hill Jr. to be the QB in a formation that isn't used in any of the playbooks we used (for instance, make him the TwoTE QB but only use the Spread Offense playbook)? I would guess probably not. Could we set him to be the QB in a formation that is only used in, for instance, the 4th & Long playbook? That playbook is almost never used so there would probably be many games where he gets no snaps at QB. But he theoretically could get a snap there, so I tend to think that would be allowable.
In any case, for my experiments I chose to take the most restrictive interpretation of this rule available. This means that we are forced to play Taysom Hill Jr. at QB in at least one formation that gets used in at least one "normal" playbook. Luckily, the Spread Offense playbook (a) heavily uses the Spread formation while few others do (yes there's both a Spread playbook and a Spread formation, it's slightly confusing), and (b) features a ton of QB run plays. Nearly 15% of the time, when a run play is called using the Spread Offense playbook, it is the Spread formation QB getting the carry. This makes it perfect for our purposes, we can just play Taysom Hill Jr. only as the Spread QB, use Spread Offense on one down & distance, and use a playbook that uses barely any Spread (for instance, Power) for every other down & distance.
Hopefully the rest of the rules let us play him at some other position besides QB so he doesn't have to pass as much...
Quote:3. Two-way players are completely banned.
4. Players may only play on the side of the ball that their player is listed as (e.i offensive players cannot play defense and vice versa). This does not apply to special teams.
5. WRs cannot play DB
6. Defensive Line
<snip, totally irrelevant to us>
7. Wide Receiver
a. A running back or tight end that plays at least one formation at outside receiver must have their position in the sim listed as either a fullback or a wide receiver.
b. If they are taking snaps at running back at the same time they will be defaulted to fullback to preserve their ability to carry
c. A fullback cannot be designated as a primary receiver. This is a limitation in the sim.
d. Running backs and tight ends are permitted to take snaps at slot receiver without changing their position tag, this allows them to still be designated as the "primary receiver".
e. A running back or tight end that plays 100% of their snaps at wide receiver must be listed as a wide receiver.
f. WRs cannot be designated as FB
g. WR cannot play at RB
8. FS and SS are not allowed to play at LB
9. No team may have more than 2 players designated as FB at one time.
10. Teams must pay $500k for a bot if they have no available players for their lineup. Bot will be assigned by the simmer and will be the lowest OVR available.
And... wait! None of these rules limit where we can play Taysom Hill Jr. Aside from rule 3, which just means we can't play him as a defender (maybe if his name was Brock Phoenix Jr. he could), there is actually no rule governing what positions a QB is eligible to play.
While the idea that started the seed of this article was originally to play a QB at WR, that turned out to not be great. While a 79 speed QB at WR does well once the ball is in his hands thanks to his blazing speed, getting the ball there in the first place is a problem due to his abysmal Hands stat (max of 35) and inability to designate him as the primary receiver (a sim limitation).
After I tried that quickly and was underwhelmed, I thought back to Holloway's amazing rushing stats from S24 and realized that RB was the way more obvious exploit. Holloway's rushing stats were already amazing, and by putting a QB at RB we can guarantee him touches (which was the problem with WR) without having to throw any passes (which was the problem with Holloway).
The Build
Well, first I want to start with just Owen Holloway's exact build but at RB. It should be an interesting comparison to show just how much the depth chart exploit matters here. Just before he switched to WR, his build was this:
In addition, I'd like to test out a couple of other builds. The thing about Owen Holloway is that passing hampered him in two ways. First, it opened him up to lots of negative plays in incompletions, sacks, and interceptions. But second, it meant that he had to spend a decent chunk of TPE just to become mediocre at passing as opposed to truly abysmal. How much better will Taysom Hill Jr. be if he just gives up any hope of being a competent regular QB and just focusing on being the best athlete he can be, just like his father before him?
Let's imagine that someone recreates at the next trade deadline with the sole intent of making Taysom Hill Jr. a reality. If they max earn between the trade deadline and the end of the regular season, and then over the offseason, they will start their DSFL rookie season with roughly 180 TPE (based on looking at max earners from the last few classes like Mojojojo, Dogwood Maple, Eldorian, and 209tacos). So let's create a 180 TPE build to see how good Taysom Hill Jr. could be at the start of his career. Coincidentally, this is almost the exact amount of TPE that Owen Holloway had when he switched to WR, which means that we can use Owen Holloway's build as a fair benchmark to compare this to.
We set Speed to 79 (obviously, because that's the point of the whole thing), Endurance to 71 so we can give him a shirtload of carries, Hands to 35 to reduce fumbling as much as we can (as we'll see, fumbling is going to be the only main issue with this player), and Strength/Agility to help him get some yards after contact by powering through / evading tackles. Arm Strength / Intelligence / Accuracy stay at their minimums because who cares about passing.
And of course, let's see how much of a beast Taysom Hill Jr. can be once he reaches the DSFL cap of 250 TPE. Let's say this would represent his sophomore season in the DSFL.
Since we've already gotten our Speed and Endurance as high as they need to be for attribute breakpoints in the sim code, and Hands is the maximum it can be, the rest of our TPE just gets poured into Strength and Agility to maximize our ability to break tackles.
The Strategy
I'm going to travel back in time to Season 24 and use the roster for Myrtle Beach (RIP) as the baseline for our tests. This has the advantage that I can just change around Owen Holloway's build and position and leave everything else in the DSFL the same, rather than worrying about whether it would be fair to give a different roster a new player or something. Myrtle Beach also was a pretty average team in S24 (4th best record in the league, 4th best scoring offense, 3rd best yardage offense, 3rd best scoring defense, 4th best yardage defense), making it an appealing control.
I'll first change Myrtle Beach's depth charts by making Jackie Daytona the starting QB in all formations except Spread Offense, and making Owen Holloway / Taysom Hill Jr. the starting QB in Spread Offense. In every other formation, Owen Holloway / Taysom Hill Jr. will be the starting RB. I am pretty sure that Playoff Ramos was a bot player, so MBB's only other human running back, 3' Jeffrey, can be the starting RB in Spread and the FB in IForm/ProSet. We still obey all the positional eligibility rules even in the DSFL! I also remove any backup RBs from behind the primary, to avoid the sim subbing in players when we could be racking up even more yards for our running QB of choice.
We then set the offensive strategy to this:
The Power playbook does not use any Spread formation plays, meaning that we will safely avoid passing too much with our run-first QB of choice. However, we do have to use the Spread Offense playbook on one down/distance as discussed previously. I chose 2nd & long, mostly because hopefully we will avoid being in too many of those by ripping off long runs on first down. We use Power 100 on 3rd/4th & long and 2 mins behind to avoid passing, even if the passing sets in those are probably worse situationally. I could definitely see an argument to reduce those run/pass ratios significantly, but I'll try to keep a relatively plausible strategy for now. We set the Backfield Strategy to Primary Back, again to avoid running plays without Owen Holloway / Taysom Hill Jr. on the field.
The Experiment
For each running QB build, I created a sim file using the S24 DSFL W10 file as a base (the final week that Owen Holloway played QB). I then implemented the builds and strategies discussed above, and simmed 1000 games against each other DSFL team (500 at home, 500 away). In effect, this is equivalent to the schedules of 500 full DSFL seasons. I record the game outcome and team statistics, as well as the individual statistics for Owen Holloway / Taysom Hill Jr.
As a baseline, I also used the base S24 DSFL W10 file, with the only changes made being to remove Holloway from Myrtle Beach's depth chart entirely, instead starting Daytona at QB in all formations, and to use their strategies from W13 instead to avoid using playbooks that want Jackie Daytona to run the ball a bunch. This will provide a comparison as to how good of a team Myrtle Beach is if it isn't using a player designed to exploit the rules of the sim and the league.
At the game level, the results are striking:
Adding this one player and tweaking the offensive strategy to suit them turns the league-average S24 Buccaneers (who were 0.03 off of averaging a perfect .500 record) into an absolute powerhouse team. The only game that this team is an underdog in is the away game against the team who won the Ultimini that season. Note that the team with the higher TPE version of Taysom Hill Jr. actually does slightly worse, although I doubt that the difference is meaningful with only 500 seasons of sample size. Owen Hollway performs the worst of the three, but is still clearly good enough to make this team a contender for best in the league.
Note also that I set the strategy to primary back to accumulate stats for the next table - if a team were trying to win more it could surely do so by rotating in some other backs occasionally to spell the running QB and reduce fumbling/turnovers.
At the individual level, the results are somehow even more ridiculous:
Exploiting the QB positional eligibility rules results in a 3500 yard rushing season, ON AVERAGE. This player racks up a 7.7 yards per carry average on over 450 attempts, with the huge volume thanks to the primary back strategy we set. With that YPC, we can basically think of each running play using this player as a standard passing play. For the DSFL, this would be exceptional passing efficiency - the highest YPA QB in S24 was KCC's Reginald Covington III with a measly 6.3 YPA. Across all 3 statistical categories, this player puts up roughly 31 TDs a season on average, although this is mitigated by a very high fumbling rate leading to 11-14 turnovers a season. Still, I think any DSFL team that could get a QB that threw 7.7 YPA with a 31-14 TD-INT ratio would be ecstatic. This player would almost surely be able to set DSFL records in rushing yards (current record: 2570 on 557 attempts!) and rushing TDs (current record: 20).
The comparisons between the various build differences are somewhat interesting. Owen Holloway fumbles significantly more often than either build of Taysom Hill Jr., likely due to the worse strength/agility that hinders his ability to avoid tackles, as well as only 20 Hands compared to the 35 for Hill Jr. However, his passing is significantly better, posting a lower end but still respectable 76.7 passer rating (roughly similar to S24 Matt Peterson or S25 Charlemagne Cortez) and a TD/INT ratio higher than 1. Given the differences between the 180 TPE and 250 TPE builds of Taysom Hill Jr. are negligible, I think we could conclude that the further investments in strength/agility don't help significantly and it might be better to spend a nominal amount of TPE to try and get a passable (haha) passing performance.
The Conclusion
Ban this build, please. It would be completely unfun and no one would enjoy it. I have saved us all the trouble of having to watch it in real life by simulating what it could do if unleashed. The stats are fun to look at, but it should definitely not exist.
With the upcoming rules committee meetings, I would suggest that a rule be implemented that prevents QB from playing any depth chart position other than QB at the DSFL level. If you really must, QB at WR would probably be acceptable but still kind of wack. But definitely ban playing QB at RB.
In a last hail mary attempt for some 1.5x media bonus, I would like to say that I am thankful that HO has decided to switch to a new sim engine.