Season 34 Balance Patch - Offenses, DL, and S

[Pat]

I want to start this post out with an apology. I really had hoped to get this information out in a more timely manner than I have, but with the holiday season upon us I’ve had my time and attention divided in some ways. So, to all of you who have been wondering what the heck else is coming, I am sorry.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on!

Note: In this post I will be sharing a lot of information. This will be a beefy post, so if you only care about a certain part of it, skip to the section with the large header and read down.

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Part 1: Offensive Playbooks Overhaul

Before getting into the details of what’s changing within the offensive playbooks, I think the most important thing to do is to tell you all why things are changing. In all the testing we’ve done in preparation for this patch, as well as analyzing the seasons we’ve had since the sim switch, we’ve come to notice a few key things about offenses across the league as a whole:

Passing play counts in the playbooks are very bloated. This causes the playbooks, which are meant to be unique and fit different real life schemes, to not feel different in any way.
Those high play counts mean that there are just too many options for the game to pick when simulating, and that can lead to very inconsistent performance.
Running as a whole has been devalued a bit in favor of passing due to the fairly wide gap in consistency for gaining yards.
The ways the playbooks were constructed have led to certain positions on both offense and defense feeling a little left out in terms of available stats, leading to users of those positions to have less fun.

With these observations in mind, we came into these playbook adjustments with a few goals:

1. Cut down the amount of passing plays in each playbook to create more uniqueness and consistency, as well as further differentiate running styles between playbooks.
   
2. Make running as a whole a more competitive choice for offenses and much more consistent.
   
3. Naturally create more opportunities for players on both sides of the ball to make plays.
   

Now that I’ve explained why we made these changes and what we hope to have accomplished, let’s get into these updated playbooks and see what we’ve got!

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PRO STYLE

The Pro Style offense is in some ways the most basic of the offenses, using simpler route trees relying on In, Out, Slant, and Comeback/Curl patterns. It is a no-frills type offense that relies on your players to simply outplay the competition. It only uses four formations - I-Formation, Pro Set, Shotgun, and Spread - and runs exclusively 11 and 21 personnel (single Tight End formations). The Pro Style offense looks to get the Tight End position involved more in the passing game, as the TE1 slot runs routes on 70% of all the passing plays available. The Running Back is seen as a dual-purpose player in this playbook, running routes 60% of the time and pass blocking the other 40%.

This offense is great for teams that have two star Wide Receivers and a good Tight End, as those are the players that will see the most targets coming their way. On average the Pro Style playbook will end up smack dab in the middle for performance as its completion percentage, yards per attempt, and yards per completion all tend to fall right in the middle of all the playbooks. Passing-wise it tends to be a playbook that doesn’t outshine the others in any way, but also doesn’t lag behind the pack in any way.

Formation and Target Weight Breakdown for Pro Style Passing:




The Pro Style playbook also offers a very basic, no-frills rushing attack, very similar to what was used by many teams in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It tends to lend itself to a competent rushing attack, utilizing its extra blockers at Tight End and Fullback to create space for the Running Backs, as 75% of the total running plays within the playbook are straight ahead type runs - Dive, Off-Tackle, Slam, etc - that look to put a body on every defender and drive the pile. If you’re a team with a strong Tight End and a Fullback, the Pro Style offense might be a good bet for you to ground and pound with the best of them.

Running Play Type Breakdown:

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SMASHMOUTH

Do you believe that American football declined in quality when the forward pass was introduced? Do you watch in disgust as Quarterbacks don’t even line up under Center anymore and live in the Shotgun formation? If you answered, “yes” to these questions, then the Smashmouth playbook is for you!

The Smashmouth offense harkens back to the days of old, when football was all about matching up large men against other large men and smacking them into each other for 60 minutes. This playbook doesn’t utilize any Shotgun formations, instead opting to keep the Quarterback under center 100% of the time by using the I-Formation, Pro Set, Spread, Two TE, and Jumbo formations. The passing scheme for this playbook focuses on safe, short passes meant to move the sticks and control the ball. It relies heavily on passes to the Tight Ends, with the TE1 and TE2 spots getting more than 30% of the total targets. The Running Back position is much more of a blocker in this scheme, as they only run routes on about 50% of the plays and on the majority of them are used as safety valves or as a dump off.

Teams that opt to use the Smashmouth playbook will see on average the best completion percentage, but at the cost of having the lowest yards per attempt and yards per completion. Tight Ends are not just an option in this playbook - they can be a focal point of the offense.


Formation and Target Weight for Smashmouth passing:



One place that Smashmouth didn’t need a whole lot of fine tuning was in the running game, as it was on average the best performing running playbook we had. Smashmouth will continue to be a strong option for running the ball, thanks in large part to the extra blockers it provides. This playbook utilizes mostly straight ahead runs - no Counters or Draws here - and also looks to attack the outside of the defense. While this playbook loves to line it up and go right at the defense, it does also use Sweep and Pitch plays a heavy amount, with over 35% of the running plays in this playbook falling in those two categories.

Running Play Type Breakdown:

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SPREAD

During this round of fine tuning the playbooks, possibly no scheme received more of an overhaul than the Spread offense. The general idea behind the playbook stayed the same - spread the field and let your playmakers go to work. However, one fundamental area that we missed with the Spread previously was how these playmakers got open and the kind of routes they ran. The current version of the Spread offense uses a lot of pass catchers and then has them run a lot of short patterns. The new version of this playbook has the aim of attacking not just horizontally, but also vertically. Moving forward, the Spread offense loves to get as many Wide Receivers on the field, with 67% of the passing plays coming from the Shotgun, Spread, and Shotgun 4WR formations, and uses a lot of Deep In/Out, Corner, Post, and Streak/Fly patterns. The Tight End and Running Back spots are used primarily as blockers or as safety valves, with over 40% of TE routes being under 10 yards down the field, and Running Backs staying in to pass block about 60% of the time.

The Spread passing attack tends to trade completion percentage for bigger plays, as it has the second-highest (on average) yards per completion of all of the playbooks. It eschews the idea of a fullback in favor of extra pass catchers. If you want to build a team full of Wide Receivers that throws the ball all over the field, the Spread passing attack could be the playbook for you!


Formation and Target Weight for Spread passing:




The Spread rushing attack previously was meant to attack the edges of the defense, but ended up not performing the way it was designed. Currently, the Spread offense runs to the middle of the defense almost 45% of the time through Draws and Dives. The inspiration for the Spread rushing attack this time around was the Power Spread offense that Dan Mullen has used (I know, Gators fans, I know) which once again looks to overwhelm the defense with pure athleticism. One of the hallmarks of the Power Spread is the QB Power Option, which, unfortunately, we are unable to replicate in the current sim engine. However, we have turned more of the up-the-gut runs into more outside runs, with nearly 72% of the running plays being of the Off-Tackle, Sweep, and Pitch variety.


Running Play Type Breakdown:

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VERTICAL

Uncle Rico fans rejoice! The Vertical offense is back and it’s primed for you to throw that football over them there mountains! Modeled after the Air Coryell system popularized by the San Diego Chargers in the 70s and 80s, the Vertical offense has one goal - get the ball down the field. The playbook relies heavily on players running Deep Out/In, Corner/Post, and Fly routes. This might sound very similar to the Spread offense, and in some ways it is. However, while the end concept might sound similar, the way they get there is very different. One of the most innovative parts of the Air Coryell system was that it was the first offense to use the Tight End as a pass catcher instead of a blocker, and that is something that we wanted to replicate with our version of it. Teams using the Vertical offense will see their Tight Ends be large parts of the offense, where their size and catching ability will help stretch the field.

The Vertical offense does one thing better than anyone else - get the ball downfield. It will on average have the highest Yards per Attempt and Yards per Catch of all of the offenses. That benefit comes with a cost, however, as it will tend to have the worst completion percentage and allow the most sacks due to the long-to-develop routes.

Formation and Target Weight for Vertical passing:




Running-wise, the Vertical offense employs more of a power running game, looking to gain quick, short yards to keep the defense honest. You won’t see any Sweep or Pitch plays in this playbook. What you will see is a heavy dose of Slam, Dive, and Off-Tackle runs, pitting your offensive line against your opponent’s defensive line.


Running Play Type Breakdown:

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WEST COAST

As with the current version of the West Coast playbook, the inspiration for this new version is the offense that Bill Walsh created and used in San Francisco. It utilizes a split backfield, as well as multiple receiver sets while focusing on stretching the defense horizontally. One additional wrinkle this offense brings to its concepts is the usage of what are called, “Flood” plays. Essentially, the offense will run receivers on routes to the same side of the field at different levels, which helps the Quarterback read the defense easier and keep the play timing in step.

Over time these concepts have evolved with coaches all adding their own touches to it. Perhaps no coach has more famously adapted the West Coast offense than Andy Reid, who was an early innovator of the Spread Offense, and had melded some of the concepts from both into what has been dubbed, “basketball on grass.” To mirror this shakeup in the passing game, we wanted to add more deep shots to further shake up the offense.

The most unique parts of this passing attack for our purposes are A) it has by a healthy margin the highest amount of targets going to the Running Back slot and B) spreads the ball out in the passing game, with no player dominating the number of targets. This passing offense will see, on average, decent completion percentages (slightly higher than Pro Style) with slightly lower Yards per Attempt and Yards per Completion.


Formation and Target Weight for West Coast passing:




As with the passing game, the running game in this playbook got a substantial facelift. Common run schemes and types in the real life West Coast are traps, draws, and stretch plays. Because of this, when originally crafting this playbook we put a substantial amount of counter plays in. Unfortunately, the seasons have shown that runs up the middle, and counter plays specifically, are not successful very often. We also failed to have any Off-Tackle runs in the original version of the playbook, instead opting for an even amount of Sweeps and Pitches, both play types that can be very boom or bust. These decisions are a big reason why the West Coast suffered in the running game compared to the other playbook options.

To remedy this, we made substantial changes to the playbook run types, greatly reducing the amount of counter plays and eliminating sweeps all together, while adding in a substantial amount of Off-Tackle runs. These more straight ahead and consistent running plays make the West Coast rushing attack much more formidable, and makes the offense itself much less one-dimensional.

Running Play Type Breakdown:





One of the best parts of these changes to the offensive schemes and playbooks is that it raises the floor for lower TPE players, while also letting the high earners still shine, and this is very evident in the rushing totals, due to the nature of the plays being selected simply being more consistent in performance. While compiling numbers for these tests, league overall rushing Yards per Carry (for Running Backs) has seen an increase from 4.29 in Season 32 up to 4.43 during these tests. More interesting than the raw number is that in Season 32, Running Backs had Rush 20 and Rush 40 percentages of 1.85% and 0.88%, respectively. With these changes, those numbers adjusted to 1.72% and 0.86%, meaning that this increase in running efficiency is not due to players simply breaking free for long runs, but instead due to a much more consistent attack.

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PART 2: Defensive Line Adjustments

One of the most-requested changes we’ve heard since the sim transfer was to make Defensive End and Defensive Tackle players stronger. A common thing we have heard is that simply the positions lack the stats to feel fun, and earning TPE doesn’t feel worthwhile. Seeing the average stats of those players over the last six seasons does lend some credence to that belief.

Heading into this balance cycle, we had three objectives for Defensive Line players:

1. Raise the performance floor across the board for all DE and DT players
   
2. Raise the performance ceiling to make earning and applying TPE feel more rewarding than it currently is
   
3. Make DE and DT archetypes more scheme-diverse as currently which defensive playbook you choose makes a large impact on your overall stats
   

With those goals in mind, here are the upcoming changes for Defensive Ends and Defensive Tackles:

Defensive End
Speed Rusher
Increase weight from 270 -> 290

Power Rusher
Increase weight from 280 -> 295

Run Stuffer
Increase weight from 290 -> 300

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Defensive Tackle
Interior Rusher
Increase weight from 300 -> 315

All-Purpose
Increase weight from 315 -> 330

Nose Tackle
Increase weight from 330 -> 345


We understand that some of you playing at these positions may have been hoping for a more extensive overhaul to your position groups as a whole on par with some of what the other position groups have seen, but through many different versions of adjustments nothing came close to improving the overall performance of these positions as much as simple weight changes.

As we’ve been gathering samples for the different offensive playbooks detailed above, we’ve charted defensive player performance, and since implementing these changes to Defensive Line players, we have seen very positive trending for their overall stat health.

Defensive Ends have seen around a 35% increase to their average sack numbers, as well as an increase of just under 7% to their average TFL numbers.

Defensive Tackles have seen a staggering 55% increase to their average sack numbers, and a just as impressive 47% increase to their average TFL numbers.


These numbers show that overall these two positions will be seeing much better performance. However, just raising average performance might not be enough to motivate users to play these positions and to earn more TPE, as well as it might not convince GMs to roster them, unless we can show that the top end performance of these positions has also increased.

To do so, we charted how many seasons in these tests a DE or DT obtained 10 or more sacks or tackles for loss, and compared it to Season 32’s number.

10+ Sack Seasons:
DE - 24.82% of all seasons - S32 actual: 7.1%
DT - 13.6% of all seasons - S32 actual: 4.8%

10+ TFL seasons
DE - 8.38% of all seasons - S32 actual: 0%
DT - 10.83% of all seasons - S32 actual: 0%

One thing to keep in mind when looking at those above numbers is that there is currently a large disparity in overall TPE between Defensive Ends and Defensive Tackles. During these tests, there were 13 individual Defensive Ends with 800 or higher TPE, as compared to 3 such Defensive Tackles.

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Section 3: Free Safety and Strong Safety

For the final section of this post, we wanted to discuss the future health of the Safety position - both Free and Strong Safety.

Since the sim transfer, one position group that has felt left out when it comes to their impact on the field is the Safety position. Heading into Season 28 we gave the position as a whole a slight rework, but even with that Safeties have not been seen as a glamorous position. There are a lot of factors playing into this for Safeties, but they all boiled down to one clear cut reason: a lack of opportunity.

A promising trend we saw through all of our testing was that Safeties, without any sort of adjustments to the archetypes nor position itself, were seeing increases across the board in their stats. This is due, we believe, to a few things:

• Passing schemes targeting more diverse positions and parts of the field
  
• Running plays being more consistent, leading to more opportunities for Safeties to make plays
  
• Pass Rusher Linebackers not hogging all of the stats
  

As a whole, the Safety position (both FS and SS) are seeing increases in many of their stats.

Tackles - 15.4%
Interceptions - 8%
Sacks - 19.2%
Forced Fumbles - 25%

In the tests, we catalogued how often a Strong Safety had more than 75 tackles in a season, and how many times a Free Safety had more than 60 tackles.

Strong Safety - 34.69% of seasons with 75+ tackles
Previous 5 seasons - 11.4%

Strong Safety - 8.44% of seasons with 90+ tackles
Previous 5 seasons - only 1 such occurrence

Free Safety - 28.71% of seasons with 60+ tackles
Previous 5 seasons - 27% (16.7% the last three seasons - 6.3% in Season 32)


Because of the holistic improvements we’ve seen to Safety performance throughout the testing cycle, we will not be implementing any changes to Safeties at this time.

[DeadlyPlayer]

yes

[Painted]

This is some high quality stuff

[goodfortunecoffee]

Because of the holistic improvements we’ve seen to Safety performance throughout the testing cycle, we will not be implementing any changes to Safeties at this time.

I changed by not changing at all!

[Faded]

DL approved

[qWest]

Wow, this feels like it can really shake things up a lot. Maybe not quite the same as S27, but this feels big.

[Kotasa]

CHANGE
IS
GOOD

[Pat]

Wow, this feels like it can really shake things up a lot. Maybe not quite the same as S27, but this feels big.

I really hope it does. It makes me really sad when people are told that certain positions, "aren't fun" or when they put the time and effort in and feel like it's not worth it.

[UberBJ]

Yes but what about the OL?

[Pat]

Because of the holistic improvements we’ve seen to Safety performance throughout the testing cycle, we will not be implementing any changes to Safeties at this time.

I changed by not changing at all!

Honestly it was a huge, happy, surprise to see the kinds of  improvements for Safety that we saw. I've personally see Strong Safeties, playing exclusively at Strong Safety, getting 110+ tackles in a season. It wasn't amazingly common, but it was something I have seen happen more than a few times!