I have a team in a different world under an old ID I was able to renew. I had a game against a human-coached team that defended every play in 'run' defense mode and he shut down my passing game...five sacks and 4 interceptions. I had another game against a human-coached team in which he defended every play in 'pass' defense mode. Shut down my running game to 1.8 yards per carry. Neither games were blow-outs, though I did lose both. One by 13 and the other by 10.

Does this illustrate the point that it is all about talent? Or do I need to pay attention to what they did?

The team I took over had been very successful season-after-season. Played four to five human-coached teams a season.

His base defense playbook looked bizarre to me, but he stated that is what he played with very few changes game to game. Example: Pro, IForm, NDB and WB set to defend with blitz formations with the blitz setting in the 50% to 100% range at for every down and every yardage range. Against 'Pro'...set 100% to defend 'run' for every down and yardage scenario...blitz formation...blitz setting 75%.

I try to be a good student of the game and I try to pick up on the way this game works as opposed to real-life football logic. I've seemed to have tapped out using my own logic and am now looking closely at what seems to go against reason.

Again, I'm not looking for someone to tell me how to play the game...just tidbits here and there. Thoughts on the above are welcome...either here or private message.

Interesting. I tend to be one that goes over the expanded PBP and runs the game through the game analyzer to see what trends appear in formations, schemes/blitz, and personnel. Then I tend to reach out to other coaches to get their input as well.

First thought that comes to mind was as you stated - was there a quality of player advantage. Guess reports would give you some insight into that question. If there is a big enough discrepancy in overall roster talent ( say 7 points or more) you would be hard pressed to beat them. Was it a matter of one of his position groups being way better than your opposing group on the other side of the ball? Was it a matter of depth, match-ups, etc?

Secondly I would look at the issue - was it not moving the ball and scoring or was it an issue of not stopping them from moving the ball? IF you are giving them a short field constantly that will schew the yardage totals, but will give you some insight into what happened though. How did turnovers factor into it?

I kind of want to see how some of the more experienced coaches reply to this as well. Like you I am always learning this game as well.

I claim to be a very good coach. Not a great one. You both are probably my equal except perhaps in experience.
But my suggestion is, "if" those opponents didn't outclass your team in talent(in which case it just might have been that), then why not try what your opponents were doing and see what happens.
I am the first to admit I am always open to learning something new that I might not have figured out because this is "not" real life football; but merely a game with it's own strength's and weaknesses under the hood.

Talent has to be close to equal before any game planning might make a difference. Even then, it isn't a zero sum equation.

I don't know the formulas, but I think anything you do makes an incremental difference.All those differences add up. For example ...and these are BS numbers.

Two equal teams. You run every play and opponent guesses run every play. Your resulting runs might look like this
3, 5,-1,3,9,0,2,3,4,13,-1,0,2 = 13 carries, 42 yards

You run every play and he guesses pass every play. Your results might look like this

4,4,-1,3,7,5,0,15,-1,3,5,4,2 = 13 carries 50 yards

Throw in the random number generator and it takes a lot of runs to actually notice a difference.

It's 90 percent about talent. When teams are equal or there is little difference between the talent levels, that's where all the other factors come into play.

I havent played GD in a long time, but I doubt they changed the engine since. The setting on the run/pass scale doesnt indicate what play you are trying to defend. It does indicate how far away from the line of scrimmage you are focusing your defense. If your opponent is playing a short passing game, especially to RBs, playing heavy run on defense is the way to go. If you play heavy pass against a short passing game, you are going to get shredded because you are essentially playing prevent. it is a bit counter intuitive and the terminology isnt exactly great, but if you go through enough of the analysis, youll see the correlation.