Running Quarterbacks - Mobile and Scrambler
With the migration to DDSPF21, one of the archetypes of players to take the biggest hit was the running Quarterback. 79 speed Game Manager aside, the Scrambler QB was fairly popular in the league before Season 27, but since then the vast majority of Quarterbacks have opted for one of the three pass-first archetypes - Field General, Gunslinger, Pocket Passer.
There are a multitude of reasons for this, but one of the biggest is that as they function currently, the running Quarterbacks simply do not make enough of a difference in the running game to make up for their deficiencies in the passing game. That, coupled with the league’s move towards more pass-happy offenses has left the running Quarterbacks in the dark.
Before getting into the changes, I first want to give a little history on what happened with the sim change:
In DDSPF21, when you give a Quarterback the “RunningQB” flag, what happens is that any play in which they can be designated as a ball carrier they are given a big increase to the likelihood they will take the ball on that specific play. This is something that the college version uses to set up their version of Option Run plays.
When we made the migration we wanted to accomplish two things: make the Spread playbook accessible to all QB types, and make running QBs carry the ball in all playbooks. To make this happen, we made adjustments to select QB running plays and essentially made them into Option plays by manipulating the carry modifier. During initial creation of the playbooks and plays, we were seeing the running QB archetypes getting on average 25-30% of their team’s carries. A number we were very pleased with. Unfortunately, a few months after the sim switch a game update came through which added a penalty to the modifier as the Quarterback got more carries, making it much harder to surpass 6 or 7 carries a game.
Looking to the future, one thing we knew we needed to change was the viability of the Mobile and Scrambler archetypes. People like to play as the Lamar Jackson and Cam Newton type players, and currently they don’t feel they can.
Our solution? Create two new playbooks that utilize Quarterback-ONLY running plays to make sure that teams with the Scrambler and Mobile QBs can best use their talents.
Instead of creating brand new playbooks, what we’ve done is add two new versions of playbooks. First is the Air Raid offense, which is the same exact playbook as the Spread offense, except all of the QB Option plays mentioned above have been replaced with designed Quarterback runs. Second is the Power offense, which is the same playbook as the Smashmouth offense, just with designed Quarterback running plays in it.
In order to achieve better balance all around, there were a few changes being made to the Quarterback position as a whole.
Gunslinger, Pocket Passer, Field General Archetypes:
Speed Max: 75 -> 65
Scrambler Archetype:
Speed Max: 100 -> 90
Arm Max: 85 -> 90
Mobile Archetype:
Speed Max: 95 -> 85
Trait Cost:
Dual Threat: 50 -> 100
Default Trait added for ALL Archetype: Power Runner
Why?
To balance out the new QB-running playbooks, we needed to make a few changes to QBs to make sure we wouldn’t see a new meta of using a passing-centric build and running a bunch with it. Reducing QB speed made the passing archetypes inefficient runners (about 3.8 YPC over a season) with a high fumble chance (roughly 11% of carries result in a fumble compared to 2.5% for the running archetypes).
In addition, the Scrambler Archetype was simply a little too underpowered in the passing game, so increasing their Arm Strength was a logical improvement. With the changes to attributes and traits, the final breakdown for a TPE count to max out a Quarterback looks like this:
Pocket Passer: 1230 TPE
Gunslinger: 1230 TPE
Field General: 1265 TPE
Mobile: 1230 TPE
Scrambler: 1235 TPE
Putting it all Together
The biggest question users and GMs will have is if the running Quarterback archetypes are balanced among the other Quarterback types in terms of stats, IE will I be hurting myself or my team by opting to use one of these archetypes.
To show the viability of these archetypes we have compiled over 100 seasons worth of statistics for the two running QB archetypes using a mix of different playbooks, and using those numbers we have crafted what would have been an, “average” season for a maxed out build of the Scrambler and Mobile archetypes using league average passing attempts and rushing attempts. For reference, in Season 31, the average amount of pass attempts was 597, and the average amount of running plays per team was 358.
![[Image: unknown.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/760203295070486581/920026087977799750/unknown.png)
![[Image: unknown.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/760203295070486581/920026196207603712/unknown.png)
One last bit we wanted to make sure of was that these builds would be not only effective runners, but also consistent. These builds lose some of their reliability if they have extremely varied peaks and valleys in performance running the ball. In looking at those hundreds of seasons, we were able to chart the yards per carry performance of these builds on a game by game basis. Here is what we found:
![[Image: unknown.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/760203295070486581/920027298235822090/unknown.png)
As you can see in the above table, there will always be variability within performance, but by and large these players will be in a healthy spot from game to game, with over 60% of the games simmed had them landing in between 3 and 7 yards per carry.
With the migration to DDSPF21, one of the archetypes of players to take the biggest hit was the running Quarterback. 79 speed Game Manager aside, the Scrambler QB was fairly popular in the league before Season 27, but since then the vast majority of Quarterbacks have opted for one of the three pass-first archetypes - Field General, Gunslinger, Pocket Passer.
There are a multitude of reasons for this, but one of the biggest is that as they function currently, the running Quarterbacks simply do not make enough of a difference in the running game to make up for their deficiencies in the passing game. That, coupled with the league’s move towards more pass-happy offenses has left the running Quarterbacks in the dark.
Before getting into the changes, I first want to give a little history on what happened with the sim change:
In DDSPF21, when you give a Quarterback the “RunningQB” flag, what happens is that any play in which they can be designated as a ball carrier they are given a big increase to the likelihood they will take the ball on that specific play. This is something that the college version uses to set up their version of Option Run plays.
When we made the migration we wanted to accomplish two things: make the Spread playbook accessible to all QB types, and make running QBs carry the ball in all playbooks. To make this happen, we made adjustments to select QB running plays and essentially made them into Option plays by manipulating the carry modifier. During initial creation of the playbooks and plays, we were seeing the running QB archetypes getting on average 25-30% of their team’s carries. A number we were very pleased with. Unfortunately, a few months after the sim switch a game update came through which added a penalty to the modifier as the Quarterback got more carries, making it much harder to surpass 6 or 7 carries a game.
Looking to the future, one thing we knew we needed to change was the viability of the Mobile and Scrambler archetypes. People like to play as the Lamar Jackson and Cam Newton type players, and currently they don’t feel they can.
Our solution? Create two new playbooks that utilize Quarterback-ONLY running plays to make sure that teams with the Scrambler and Mobile QBs can best use their talents.
Instead of creating brand new playbooks, what we’ve done is add two new versions of playbooks. First is the Air Raid offense, which is the same exact playbook as the Spread offense, except all of the QB Option plays mentioned above have been replaced with designed Quarterback runs. Second is the Power offense, which is the same playbook as the Smashmouth offense, just with designed Quarterback running plays in it.
In order to achieve better balance all around, there were a few changes being made to the Quarterback position as a whole.
Gunslinger, Pocket Passer, Field General Archetypes:
Speed Max: 75 -> 65
Scrambler Archetype:
Speed Max: 100 -> 90
Arm Max: 85 -> 90
Mobile Archetype:
Speed Max: 95 -> 85
Trait Cost:
Dual Threat: 50 -> 100
Default Trait added for ALL Archetype: Power Runner
Why?
To balance out the new QB-running playbooks, we needed to make a few changes to QBs to make sure we wouldn’t see a new meta of using a passing-centric build and running a bunch with it. Reducing QB speed made the passing archetypes inefficient runners (about 3.8 YPC over a season) with a high fumble chance (roughly 11% of carries result in a fumble compared to 2.5% for the running archetypes).
In addition, the Scrambler Archetype was simply a little too underpowered in the passing game, so increasing their Arm Strength was a logical improvement. With the changes to attributes and traits, the final breakdown for a TPE count to max out a Quarterback looks like this:
Pocket Passer: 1230 TPE
Gunslinger: 1230 TPE
Field General: 1265 TPE
Mobile: 1230 TPE
Scrambler: 1235 TPE
Putting it all Together
The biggest question users and GMs will have is if the running Quarterback archetypes are balanced among the other Quarterback types in terms of stats, IE will I be hurting myself or my team by opting to use one of these archetypes.
To show the viability of these archetypes we have compiled over 100 seasons worth of statistics for the two running QB archetypes using a mix of different playbooks, and using those numbers we have crafted what would have been an, “average” season for a maxed out build of the Scrambler and Mobile archetypes using league average passing attempts and rushing attempts. For reference, in Season 31, the average amount of pass attempts was 597, and the average amount of running plays per team was 358.
One last bit we wanted to make sure of was that these builds would be not only effective runners, but also consistent. These builds lose some of their reliability if they have extremely varied peaks and valleys in performance running the ball. In looking at those hundreds of seasons, we were able to chart the yards per carry performance of these builds on a game by game basis. Here is what we found:
As you can see in the above table, there will always be variability within performance, but by and large these players will be in a healthy spot from game to game, with over 60% of the games simmed had them landing in between 3 and 7 yards per carry.
![[Image: lip-chap.jpg?width=383&height=468]](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/461498035348701185/777250920941223966/lip-chap.jpg?width=383&height=468)
![[Image: k4AYgU9.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/k4AYgU9.gif)
