I absolutely believe that this engine "favors" certain formations over others. The engine, be design, is built around a Pro Set / I-Formation setup. Everything else is a "deviation" from that basic set (your basic potato). The defensive formations are built with the same concept in mind with a 4-3 as the basic potato, and everything else is a "deviation" from the norm.

You may be absolutely right that you could out gameplan others using any of these formations. However, if the Wishbone had a favorable result in gameplay.....everyone would be using it. If the Dime had a built in favorable result....everyone would be using it.

As it stands, the Pro Set is the favorite....for a reason. The Dime is NOT a favorite.....for a reason.

Perhaps this is simply a meaningless discussion, and clearly it takes a different philosophy/approach to use a Dime full time vs a 4-3 or a 4-4. But, IMO, if you run the "out of the norm" sets..you have to overcome some built in "bias" as well as your opponent.

As it stands, the Pro Set is the favorite....for a reason. The Dime is NOT a favorite.....for a reason.

This is true, but not for the reason that you seem to indicate that it is true.

The game of GD is, and always has been, a copycat game. So people are running predominantly Pro (or to a lesser degree, I-Form) because a handful of uber-successful coaches used that offense to dominate everywhere they played. Then everyone else followed suit.

Same thing on defense. You see it with the 3-4 these days. People make the switch without having any clue why they're doing it, other than "Coaches are winning NCs with it, so I need to do it."

Posted by gt_deuce on 7/13/2017 5:58:00 PM (view original):

As it stands, the Pro Set is the favorite....for a reason. The Dime is NOT a favorite.....for a reason.

This is true, but not for the reason that you seem to indicate that it is true.

The game of GD is, and always has been, a copycat game. So people are running predominantly Pro (or to a lesser degree, I-Form) because a handful of uber-successful coaches used that offense to dominate everywhere they played. Then everyone else followed suit.

Same thing on defense. You see it with the 3-4 these days. People make the switch without having any clue why they're doing it, other than "Coaches are winning NCs with it, so I need to do it."

I agree that copycat is part of the equation. For sure. Very few want to do the "odd thing"

I don't disagree that there are "favorites" out there. But I don't think it's because one formation has a distinct advantage; except there are examples out there to mimic when you copy someone else. To try something new, it takes a lot of patience, studying, tweaking, wash, rinse and repeat. I decided to try out the Trips offense 7 seasons ago and it took me that long to learn it. It was frustrating as it gets, but I finally feel like I have a good grasp of how to utilize the offense to my degree of success. It's hard trying something that's not very popular, because you don't have anyone you can bounce ideas off; though I know I'm too hard-headed to ever reach out to someone for help.

If there are anymore questions on the things I wrote up, keep asking them and I'll try to oblige. Good luck to you all.

Posted by orangepace on 7/12/2017 10:43:00 PM (view original):
Just took a quick look at your game in hopes I could provide some help, but damn, too much to know where to start. But I'll give it a good 'ole college try:

You used the Dime Formation, which should give you an advantage to stopping the pass. However, some quick thoughts:

• Completion % - His QB's only had a 45% completion percentage. So your defense was pretty effective at disrupting passes.
• Yards/Completion - He averaged 13.7 yds/completion. That's not all that unusual for a high quality passing attack, so nothing all that out of the ordinary here.

Digging a little deeper:

• Form IQ - His offensive Form IQ was on average 19.4 pts higher than your defense's. In fact, on 34.7% of the plays, your defense was at a 20+ Form IQ disadvantage. That's a significant difference, putting your defense at a significant disadvantage.
• Blitzing - You brought the house regularly. By my count, you blitzed either your LB or SS on 83% of the pass plays. While that contributed greatly to the Completion % and you were able to grab 6 sacks, that left the middle of your defense highly exposed. You can see this by the fact that his RB's and TE's combined for an average of 15 yds/comp, whereas, his WR's averaged only 12 yds/comp.
• Defensive Coverages - His QB attempted to throw Long on 9.3% of his passes. You were in PsL coverage on 43.5%. He threw Medium 86.7%, while you were in PsM coverage on 45.9%.

?Why do I highlight these stats you may ask?! Well, combined, you have a defense with low Form IQ, dropping into Long Coverage and blitzing from the middle. If he was smart, he would have stopped throwing to the WR's and just ate you alive all day in the middle. I would have roasted you for closer to 800 yards given the circumstances.

Wow. Posts like these make me realize i still have no clue how to play this game. How can you tell the form iq stat?

Posted by bss007 on 7/14/2017 1:09:00 AM (view original):

Posted by orangepace on 7/12/2017 10:43:00 PM (view original):
Just took a quick look at your game in hopes I could provide some help, but damn, too much to know where to start. But I'll give it a good 'ole college try:

You used the Dime Formation, which should give you an advantage to stopping the pass. However, some quick thoughts:

• Completion % - His QB's only had a 45% completion percentage. So your defense was pretty effective at disrupting passes.
• Yards/Completion - He averaged 13.7 yds/completion. That's not all that unusual for a high quality passing attack, so nothing all that out of the ordinary here.

Digging a little deeper:

• Form IQ - His offensive Form IQ was on average 19.4 pts higher than your defense's. In fact, on 34.7% of the plays, your defense was at a 20+ Form IQ disadvantage. That's a significant difference, putting your defense at a significant disadvantage.
• Blitzing - You brought the house regularly. By my count, you blitzed either your LB or SS on 83% of the pass plays. While that contributed greatly to the Completion % and you were able to grab 6 sacks, that left the middle of your defense highly exposed. You can see this by the fact that his RB's and TE's combined for an average of 15 yds/comp, whereas, his WR's averaged only 12 yds/comp.
• Defensive Coverages - His QB attempted to throw Long on 9.3% of his passes. You were in PsL coverage on 43.5%. He threw Medium 86.7%, while you were in PsM coverage on 45.9%.

?Why do I highlight these stats you may ask?! Well, combined, you have a defense with low Form IQ, dropping into Long Coverage and blitzing from the middle. If he was smart, he would have stopped throwing to the WR's and just ate you alive all day in the middle. I would have roasted you for closer to 800 yards given the circumstances.

Wow. Posts like these make me realize i still have no clue how to play this game. How can you tell the form iq stat?

When you click on a team, a popup box will open showing all the players and on the "roster" tab. You'll notice several tabs on it - Roster, Ratings, Formations, Stats, Game Log, Schedule, History, News, and Blog. Click on the "Formations" tab and you'll see all the formation IQs for each player on that team.

Posted by harriswb3 on 7/13/2017 6:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gt_deuce on 7/13/2017 5:58:00 PM (view original):

As it stands, the Pro Set is the favorite....for a reason. The Dime is NOT a favorite.....for a reason.

This is true, but not for the reason that you seem to indicate that it is true.

The game of GD is, and always has been, a copycat game. So people are running predominantly Pro (or to a lesser degree, I-Form) because a handful of uber-successful coaches used that offense to dominate everywhere they played. Then everyone else followed suit.

Same thing on defense. You see it with the 3-4 these days. People make the switch without having any clue why they're doing it, other than "Coaches are winning NCs with it, so I need to do it."

I agree that copycat is part of the equation. For sure. Very few want to do the "odd thing"

I love doing the odd thing. Makes it more interesting. All my teams have ND as the sole Off Formation. I was sick and tired of the pro, I and trips. And I have won NC and done great with Shotgun. So wanted to try ND.
Now I am convinced as others have said that you can win with any formation(s) if you do what you need to :
First and most important is Personnel; Great Players
2nd Great Gameplans to use those great players.
3rd Raise formation iq of the formations you use.
4th PLAY those players to raise those numbers.(note I play exclusively in d2 so these rules work for d3 and d2; probably not as much in higher levels)
I have only had trouble with Wishbone but I am also convinced that that was ME and not the formation because I know of others that have won NC's with it including one that primarily Passed out of it.
I hope this post helps at least 1 person.

Posted by vhoward415 on 7/14/2017 8:01:00 AM (view original):

Posted by bss007 on 7/14/2017 1:09:00 AM (view original):

Posted by orangepace on 7/12/2017 10:43:00 PM (view original):
Just took a quick look at your game in hopes I could provide some help, but damn, too much to know where to start. But I'll give it a good 'ole college try:

You used the Dime Formation, which should give you an advantage to stopping the pass. However, some quick thoughts:

• Completion % - His QB's only had a 45% completion percentage. So your defense was pretty effective at disrupting passes.
• Yards/Completion - He averaged 13.7 yds/completion. That's not all that unusual for a high quality passing attack, so nothing all that out of the ordinary here.

Digging a little deeper:

• Form IQ - His offensive Form IQ was on average 19.4 pts higher than your defense's. In fact, on 34.7% of the plays, your defense was at a 20+ Form IQ disadvantage. That's a significant difference, putting your defense at a significant disadvantage.
• Blitzing - You brought the house regularly. By my count, you blitzed either your LB or SS on 83% of the pass plays. While that contributed greatly to the Completion % and you were able to grab 6 sacks, that left the middle of your defense highly exposed. You can see this by the fact that his RB's and TE's combined for an average of 15 yds/comp, whereas, his WR's averaged only 12 yds/comp.
• Defensive Coverages - His QB attempted to throw Long on 9.3% of his passes. You were in PsL coverage on 43.5%. He threw Medium 86.7%, while you were in PsM coverage on 45.9%.

?Why do I highlight these stats you may ask?! Well, combined, you have a defense with low Form IQ, dropping into Long Coverage and blitzing from the middle. If he was smart, he would have stopped throwing to the WR's and just ate you alive all day in the middle. I would have roasted you for closer to 800 yards given the circumstances.

Wow. Posts like these make me realize i still have no clue how to play this game. How can you tell the form iq stat?

When you click on a team, a popup box will open showing all the players and on the "roster" tab. You'll notice several tabs on it - Roster, Ratings, Formations, Stats, Game Log, Schedule, History, News, and Blog. Click on the "Formations" tab and you'll see all the formation IQs for each player on that team.

If you use Yatzr's game analyzer, it becomes even easier if you are evaluating a specific game or games. It will "average" the FIQ of all players on the field for a given play so you can then easily do some "math" to calculate differential on each play.

The question that pops up in my mind when I look at raginirishs Wayne State team is why in the world are you redshirting two QB's and P? Especially when one of your QB's has a GI rating of 33 at D2? NEVER red-shirt a Punter. I know what you're going to say, "I already had a Punter on my roster." Yeah, you don't need two P's EVER on your roster. You wasted a scholarship. A Freshman Punter will do just fine. Recruit a P/K every four years, NEVER Red-shirt.

Posted by harriswb3 on 7/14/2017 10:43:00 AM (view original):

Posted by vhoward415 on 7/14/2017 8:01:00 AM (view original):

Posted by bss007 on 7/14/2017 1:09:00 AM (view original):

Posted by orangepace on 7/12/2017 10:43:00 PM (view original):
Just took a quick look at your game in hopes I could provide some help, but damn, too much to know where to start. But I'll give it a good 'ole college try:

You used the Dime Formation, which should give you an advantage to stopping the pass. However, some quick thoughts:

• Completion % - His QB's only had a 45% completion percentage. So your defense was pretty effective at disrupting passes.
• Yards/Completion - He averaged 13.7 yds/completion. That's not all that unusual for a high quality passing attack, so nothing all that out of the ordinary here.

Digging a little deeper:

• Form IQ - His offensive Form IQ was on average 19.4 pts higher than your defense's. In fact, on 34.7% of the plays, your defense was at a 20+ Form IQ disadvantage. That's a significant difference, putting your defense at a significant disadvantage.
• Blitzing - You brought the house regularly. By my count, you blitzed either your LB or SS on 83% of the pass plays. While that contributed greatly to the Completion % and you were able to grab 6 sacks, that left the middle of your defense highly exposed. You can see this by the fact that his RB's and TE's combined for an average of 15 yds/comp, whereas, his WR's averaged only 12 yds/comp.
• Defensive Coverages - His QB attempted to throw Long on 9.3% of his passes. You were in PsL coverage on 43.5%. He threw Medium 86.7%, while you were in PsM coverage on 45.9%.

?Why do I highlight these stats you may ask?! Well, combined, you have a defense with low Form IQ, dropping into Long Coverage and blitzing from the middle. If he was smart, he would have stopped throwing to the WR's and just ate you alive all day in the middle. I would have roasted you for closer to 800 yards given the circumstances.

Wow. Posts like these make me realize i still have no clue how to play this game. How can you tell the form iq stat?

When you click on a team, a popup box will open showing all the players and on the "roster" tab. You'll notice several tabs on it - Roster, Ratings, Formations, Stats, Game Log, Schedule, History, News, and Blog. Click on the "Formations" tab and you'll see all the formation IQs for each player on that team.

If you use Yatzr's game analyzer, it becomes even easier if you are evaluating a specific game or games. It will "average" the FIQ of all players on the field for a given play so you can then easily do some "math" to calculate differential on each play.

Some of us really old-school guys (maybe just 1 or 2 now) still do everything by the eyeball method and don't use those tools or whatever it is that most use nowadays.

I'm sure it is easier to do it your way, however. I'm just stubborn.

I am with you Vince. Eyeball and Old School Football Sense are my tools. I recruit guys that fit my system and rarely are the best rated.

robust, you have been a heck of a successful coach, but I am going to have to call the BS flag on your comment "rarely are the best rated." In the past 22 seasons at Valdosta State you have had ONE recruiting class finish outside the top 9. haha, you are getting elite players for sure who also must fit your system very well. Props to you.

Thanks JHG....I do get elite players that perfectly fit my personal eyeball rating system. GUESS says that my recruit classes the last ten seasons average being 5th+ in Leahy D2.