Crappy news that the PS3 patch was delayed, I've been holding off starting a new game for weeks now.

Yeah, I've been taking it very slow, I didn't want to start over so I'm basically waiting at the start of my first regular season to continue.

Not so quick guys, Josh posted this at 5:17pm (PST)


So, we will have to see what happens.

Here's the link: http://www.operationsports.com/forum...at-news-2.html

Maybe this has already been addressed, but what about the bug where you can only save on certain days of the week during a season?

That's the contract bug where scrubs would ask for tons of money.

I've been playing for like a week now and I'm enjoying the game. It would be nice to update the game but alas, no phone connected. Been able to take the niners to some level of respectability. Tho, Andre Woodsen threw for over 5600 yards in his walk year. I've noticed that OL are a dime a dozen in the game and no one wants a top talent via trade because you can get a slightly cheaper alternative in FA so there isn't a trade market.

Lack of trade market really doesn't bother me, there's usually only a couple trades a year IRL.

Is it possible to re-sign a player during the year if his contract is expiring?

I'd like to know this as well.

Yes, You get a couple of shots to resign them during the year. If you sim the season for whatever reason, you lose the shot to resign them

I'm not worried about that, but I was offering a 92 rated tackle in their last year of their deal and hoping to just get something, like a mid round pick, and no one is even interested

Yes it is possible to resign a player in the last year of his contract.

Around week 3 or 4 in the season, I forget when exactly, but it is before the trade deadline, players in the last year of their contract will start popping up on your clipboard for contract renegotiations. This will continue through the rest of the season, so if you fail to agree on terms during one week, usually in about two weeks there will be another item on your clipboard to renegotiate with that player.

Depending upon the player's personality, I think there is a point when they will no longer enter contract renegotiations with you, if you don't agree to their demands. I haven't encounter this yet.

I'm very glad to see that, trades of players in the last year of their deal are even more rare in the NFL than other trades.

I keep all my players marked as available for trade on my trade block. And, at least during the draft, I usually see several of my lineman listed in a trade negotiation when I select "trade up". As an example, I have a 93 LG, 91 C, 82 LG, all listed with draft picks in offers I can make to the Giants for their 1st round (30) pick in a 2009 draft. And at the moment the Giants have 3 LGs on their team, an 84, 81, and 81. They also have only one center (85) and only one RG (92).

Interesting enough my highest rated LT (91) and RT (80) are not listed anywhere in a trade offer to the Giants for their pick. The Giants have LTs of 90, 61, and 56. They have RTs of 84 and 77.

I will see if I can find a team that is interested in trading for my 91 rated LT.

Football has very little trades that don't happen leading up to or during the draft. It's not nearly like baseball is.

While looking for a team interested in my LT (91), I found teams that also wanted my backup C (81) and starting RG (84). I also finally found a team, the Jets, interested in my RT (80). The Jets have only one RT (79), though they do have 4 LTs with the highest rated (94).

Still haven't found anyone interested in my LT (91). He has 5 years remaining on his contract and will make $3.9 million this year. Also, during the draft while looking for someone interested in my LT, I noticed that at one point in the second round, two out of the three best available players were LTs rated 84 and 82. The third best player is rated 79 and has usually been the player getting picked. It looks like no one is interested in a LT, so what I am going to do is quickly advance the draft and see who picks those LTs, then I will reload my save and see if I can try and trade my LT with those two teams.

The Falcons were the first to draft the 84 rated LT late in the second round. The Eagles traded up to take the 82 rated LT in the third round. At the time they did this, the other top two rated players left in the draft were both RTs. And when they took the 82 LT off the board, the new third highest rated player left in the draft was another LT.

So, I reloaded my save to see if the Falcons or Eagles would show any interest in my rated 91 LT. Neither team had him listed on any of the offers I could make for one of their draft picks on my second run through the draft. At least in my game, it looks like all teams are very well stocked at the left tackle position or do not wish to trade for a LT.

I finally found two teams willing to trade for my 91 rated LT during another attempt.

After the end of the first day of the draft but before day two of the draft begins (between rounds 2 and 3). I was able to go to my roster select my LT and select trade and two teams were interested. The eagles had an initial offer of two 5th round picks for him. And the Texans offered a future 1st and a 3rd round pick for him. So, I guess you just got to be persistant in looking for a trading partner for your LT. Or, reload a saved game often enough.

Thanks for the information. I will keep an eye out for the chance to re-sign them.

Especially in this game where a player comes into your team with 0 knowledge of your playbook, I wouldn't want to trade for any player as a one year guy.

Good point as well.

My girlfriend just bought me this for my birthday, and I'm having a pretty good time with it so far.

FYI for PS3 owners, looks like the patch should only be delayed until sometime next week.

So is the 360 patch up then?

It is now.

Sweet - I'll be firing this one up tonight....

Same here. Can't wait to try this after work.

One thing I don't like. When I start a new career, I can't fire/replace any of my current assistants. So, I'm stuck with them until the 2nd year, correct?

I'll probably be getting this soon now that the patch is out..

I'm wondering how well these will work post-patch? Obviously, FG's will need to be toned back down since the developers fixed that, but also with the RB issues, I'm wondering running related sliders will need to be re-tuned? Any more thoughts about how these were playing pre-patch? I'm debating about trying this set or a set on OS as I start my first career now.

One of the reason that I put RB Ability up was because of the fumbling issue (I started seeing far fewer fumbles). I may need to tune it down some. I haven't played the game in awhile, so I'm going to do some practice games tonight and see what happens. I forget exactly how well my sliders were playing when I stopped, but I wasn't really happy with them overall. I know deep passes were still an issue and I think raising Def. Awareness is the only step left to help fix that.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm think I'm going to give this set on OS a shot, but I'll probably switch to yours if they don't play well.

I'm a bit overwhelmed with the number of choices in creating a coach. 165 different portraits to go through and now I'm having a tough time deciding on my coach's personality.

You're kidding? Why does it seem every game designer gets that wrong? What's the first thing a new head coach do? Hire His staff. It is one of the most important things a HC does.

I think they got DeSean's personality traits on the money (from what little we've seen):

- Driven: Tireless work ethic
- Calculating: Self promotes
- Competitive: Winnging is the goal at the forefront
- Dramatic Tends to overreact to situations
- Prefectionist: Expects everything to be perfect
- Self-focused: Cares about himself and feels the world revolves around him
- Expressive: Never shy about giving his opinion
- Impulsive: Makes decisions on the spur of the moment.


I'm surprised that the NFL allowed some of those negative connotations in one of their games to be assigned to players. I'm looking forward to seeing how those personality traits actually play out.

Just grabbed this off of ebay for $35. Can't wait to dig in. Keep us posted on those sliders if you don't mind, Eaglesfan.

I started playing a new coach dynasty today with the patch out. Love this game.

I can't decide if it is better for my long term success to just work on mastering a few plays in preseason or working on all of the plays to make sure they all stay learned.

Either way, I think Kolb is going to suck in this game for a few years and I think I made things more difficult by not keeping Reid and creating a rookie coach.

Edit to add: The number of stats the game keeps during a game is rather impressive, stuff like how many times the QB threw into coverage, percentage of throws into coverage, throws into double coverage, etc.

I'm not entirely sure how to take this first preseason game.

It's my first preseason game with the new patch, I took over the KC Chiefs for a challenge. I let the computer do some of the practices, and they practiced the Hail Mary play a couple times. I in no way played this game realistically (I relied on basically one play) and only called the offense.

Final Score Chiefs 82 - Bears - 76 in OT

Total offense combined for both teams 1919 yards. (1108 for KC, 811 for Chi)

1086 passing for KC, 618 for Chi, 22 rushing yards KC, 193 for Chi.

The game started off with a kick return for a TD for the Bears. I started off playing very basic, mixing in some run with play action. I had a fumble end both my first two drives, then a pick 6 and quickly found myself in a 24-0 hole. So I figured with nothing to lose after two failed runs, why not try a Hail Mary pass - 80+ yard td. Okay, that was easy - but maybe a fluke... Next drive another 30+ completion, followed by a 40+ TD. Rinse, repeat throughout the game, I think I was stopped maybe 3 times on Hail Mary passes, and eventually did not mix anything else in unless I was stuck within the 10 yard line.

Now, I expected my play to slow down once my second string got in by second quarter (it was 38-26 CHI by then) but they actually did even better.

Starter B.Croyle finished 13 for 19, 419 yards for 4 tds 1 int (the pick 6 in the beginning of the game) thru 2 quarters (all against the first team D)

Backup D.Huard 17 for 29 673 yards 7 tds 0 ints for 2 quarters and 1 play in OT.

The Bears QBs (Grossman/Orton) combined for 6 tds 4 ints.

--

Now again, this is preseason, eventually I was facing the 2nd string D, and it's probably considered 'cheese play' to rely so heavily on the hail mary pass (I didn't even have to switch formations, differential the play or anything) but I really didn't expect it to work to the tune of 82 pts (and more if I hadn't goofed around).

It's a small sample and I'll have to see how it plays out against other teams and during the regular season but I'd still say the passing game is off on default.

I tried some sliders that were similar to Sabotai's but slightly different from OS. They have QB accuracy at 3 and WR catching at 6. It was Philly against Pittsburgh and I think it produced much more realistic stats (than the game in the above post.) McNabb was 2 of 5 for 38 yards before he was injured and taken out of the game for good.

Kolb played the whole game and was 12 of 38 for 157 yards with 1 TD and 3 INT's.

The rushing sliders weren't as high on these sliders as Sabotai's (I think rush blocking is 72 and run ability is at around 60) and if anything I think the rushing numbers were too high for both teams. Both backup HB's had over 100 yards with Dayne getting 160 and Buckhalter getting 112 on just 11 carries. Still, that is easily fixable if it becomes a problem by going closer to default rushing sliders.

Very pleased with the game so far and looking forward to the weekend when I have more time to play.

Actually, I think it means he expects everything to be perfect before it even happens. ;)

I need sliders. Help?? :)

Did you change the defense's sliders at all? Break Block will have a pretty big impact on run defense and pass rush.

They said they weren't going to tune the game at all, but the defensive players on both teams are playing better than they did pre-patch (but this is just on a few games observation - 2 in Coach Now and 1 in Preseason Career). I'll probably take my defensive sliders down 10-15 points on all of them and see how that works.

Nice. Those look yummy. :)

I went with the set on OS. I'll look tomorrow for all of the numbers, but IIRC defensive awareness is at 25 and the comment was that was to help the run game. Knockdowns and interceptions were slightly raised from default (around 60.) Tackling and break block were at 50. However, that slider set was developed pre-patch. From reading about the insane passing numbers pre-patch, and trying those sliders today, I think they toned down the passing some and sliders will need to be reworked.

Should be a fun night tonight!

Yeah, don't even try my sliders, I've already tweaked them a lot from what I posted earlier. I think the devs said the problem with the RB fumbles was fatigue. Whatever they did to fatigue that made fumbles better probably effected every other player too and that may have changed how the game plays some.

I'm going to try an experiment with slider (using my Detroit dynasty). My idea is that since, at its core, it's still Madden's AI, physics, play design, etc. that the game will never really be balanced. All of the sliders I have tried, they have always either made the good players play worse than they should, or made the bad players play better than they should.

I'm going to try and make a system where I adjust the sliders every game based on the talent of the starters of the two teams. For instance, my defenisve line and linebackers is pretty bad, so they should be bad at tackling and breaking blocks, so I'll adjust those sliders down. If I play a team with a great defensive front 7, I'll push those sliders up for the CPU.

So what are the sliders people are using?

I have to ask...why are people using sliders? I have yet to find anything wrong with this game. I've rushed for 100+ yards 4 of 5 games, including two over 150.

You know...this is something that I've always considered. One of my biggest beefs with a lot of sports games is that I never feel like the talent level is that much different. I remember testing out sliders in NCAA and playing a crappy team felt way too similar to playing a USC or Ohio St.

I'm trying them because at least pre-patch, it was widely held that rushing totals were low and passing totals were way too high.

I'm on defaults as well.. really getting back into this game big time. Scott Linehan is gone, a new coach has arrived and has the "commander" trait. Can he turn this team around?

I think it's just about the coaching and game plans. I think some people don't see this game how they want to see it and don't understand exactly how much stuff is going on "under the hood" on this one.

I started a dynasty with the Lions in the dynasty forum for those interested. This game is such a blast.

I hope and pray that NFL Head Coach '10 or '11 allows multiplayer leagues. Imagine the fun.

Spent about 3 hours with the game tonight and I'm happy to say.. post-patch everything looks REALLY good as far as stats and what not.. played around a bit and then dove into my career as the Rams head coach.

Damn this game is going to eat up my life this football season. We beat the Titans in preseason game 1, 31-10 and the whole experience is just incredible.

I've gone from a 42 approval rating to a 55 so far.. mainly due to trading for Deuce McAllister to backup Jackson.

I REALLY love the little things this game just assumes needs to be done, like subbing in your backups once the 2nd half starts, letting my D coordinator pick his own plays.. etc...

Great game....

If you guys don't stop talking about this game in such glowing terms I may have to break down and buy a PS3 or Xbox360.

Dammit.

Really wish the PS3 patch was out...

Latest update was early next week was the target release for the patch.

Good to hear, thanks for the quick update. I can't wait to start a franchise.

I threw the game to the side because when I was doing supersim, I could rush Ryan Grant 50 times in the game for 300 yards. Sounds as though this was potentially fixed? (360 version)

Evidence why people are stupid.

Why can't people just play a game like it was meant to be played?

"shrug"

:rolleyes:

I ran it 50 times to see if the game would ever had some effect on my RB wearing down at all over the course of a few games which didn't happen.

Sorry that I have the expectation of a football game showing the effects of fatigue on my players. How silly of me.

Oh no, a flaw in a video game. That game must suck. Guess I just have lower expectations.

On OS, Josh has said that the PS3 patch should be out tomorrow barring any last minute problems. Also, a roster update should be available tonight or tomorrow that adjusts about 35 players ratings based on their early performance. Since I'm only a game in, I'm probably going to restart since this will be the last roster update for about a month or so.

PS3 version patch is now up. Now I just need to decide if I want to start a new game with my Dolphins or a team that won't take years to turn around.

I put about seven or eight hours into this yesterday, starting from February playing up until kickoff on week three. I reset all the sliders to their defaults and the results seemed to be a lot more realistic than they were pre-patch. There were five fumbles in my last game but that could have just been an aberration as neither team coughed it up in my first game.

As to what Mustang mentioned above, I don't know how much fatigue plays a role for the running backs in this. I've been subbing Ricky Williams in for Ronnie Brown when he gets tired to keep him fresh but noticed that the AI-controlled Jets ran Thomas Jones 41 times in week one while his backup only had one carry.

How are everyone else's stats post-patch? Any slider tweaks you'd recommened?

That fucker Vinny Cerrato got me fired after three preseason games. The one screen I hate is the cut day dialog, where you can hit a button for GM recommendations. I've been getting into the sloppy habit of figuring the AI would just cut scrubs and hangers-on, but one vet was listed at a skill in the 60s but with $20 million in bonus money coming (Pete Kendall). So when the AI GM cut him, he threw next year's cap number about $10 million to the red.

Now, we all know that's how Washington likes to play the game, but I got a nasty note from the owner. Sure enough, the next week, dumbass Cerrato has me cut another crappy vet with a $100K cap hit the next year and the owner axes me with a 89 approval rating before the final preseason game.

Vinny, of course, keeps his job.

Fatigue for RBs has been mentioned to not show up until later in the season. In other words, you won't see the effects in a single game. You just wear your guy down so that by the end of the season, he's nothing. I've certainly noticed a YPC average for Rudi going down since the first game of the season.

Anybody know how to change a guy's position?

I've only played the game post patch, but I've gone away from sliders except or the WR catching which I've knocked way down. I've had great results my first 3 preseason games.

I'd also like to figure out how to change a guy's position.

On the roster screen, the A button will bring up a sub menu on a player where you can realease him or edit his number and position

Supersim uses a completely different engine. I'm not sure if fatigue is working for that, but it seems to be working when I call the plays and watch the action.

Yeah, I tried Supersim for a few minutes in a test career post patch and it still seems to be almost as bad as the Madden/NCAA Supersim engine. I won't ever use Supersim in my career.

just received my copy from the friend at EA. How does the patch thing work for the PS3? Does it DL automatically when they finally release it?

The PS3 patch is out. If you are signed onto PSN it should begin downloading immediately, it's around 19MB. Once the main menu loads you can also find updated rosters to download.

Yes, it downloads automatically when you start the game.

Holy christ! Jack English is GOD! I am playing the most amazing game ever and he just came back from a 26 point fourth defecit to put us in the lead! He has over 500 yards and 7 TD since I had to throw literally every play of the 2nd half.

This is unreal.

DAMNIT! Jeff Reed hits a FG to send us to OT barring a miracle. THIS IS INSANE!

And we're going to OT at 47-47.

Damnit, we lost 50-47 in OT.

Jack English is God though. I am not sure what happened in this game, as I have used default sliders since the new patch came out and I've NEVER seen a game like this. Here are the final stats..

Jack English: 33/53 for 608 yards, 7 TD
Calvin Johnson: 14 catches for 243 yards, 3 TD
Naj Conley: 7 catches for 102 yards, 1 TD
Roy Williams: 5 catches for 95 yards, 2 TD

Ernie Sims: 21 tackles, 5 TFL

Big Ben: 21/28 for 362, 4 TD
Mendenhall: 31 carries for 147 yards, 2 TD
Hines Ward: 8 catches for 131 yards

What a game. We scored 27 in the fourth quarter to take the lead but end up blowing it at the end. UGH.

Honestly, I just cant play this game anymore. Very slow loading screens in-game. Weird approval rating bs where the owner wants you to do some random thing in a completely ridiculous situation. Offensive players running away from an open hole in an attempt find a tackler. Receivers catching balls 10 yards away from a first down with nobody around and just running out of bounds. Not being able to do some things before they show up on your clipboard isnt dealbreaking, but is very annoying. Constantly giving reaction to your players good and bad plays just gets repetitive and old. I could go on.

I really wanted to like this game, but I just cant get past all the annoyances. Honestly, the biggest is the slow load times to just see who was injured, what the penalty was, or the reaction to your reaction. No reason for those to not pull up instantly. Its obvious they put a ton of work in the game, I will try and check it out next year.

Just wanted to offer up a different opinion for anyone interested.

I agree with all that. There are quite a few annoyances. Hard for me to excuse too, since isn't that the point of the console, to let the developers optimize the code for the system it's being used on? Why am I waiting for so many load times? It's not like these are state-of-the-art graphics, either.

Secondly, they have been doing Madden for what, 20 years? They're STILL having trouble getting the game to play football like football? Runningbacks going sideways with a gaping hole right in front of them, quarterbacks throwing to a spot 3 yards out of bounds, etc., etc. All the same stuff.

All in all, though, I'm still having fun with it. I imagine that soon the annoyances will mount and the ease with which you can dominate will force me to put it away but for right now it's giving me my money's worth.

I was so hyped about this game, but felt I needed to wait for the patch before starting to really play it. Somehow in that waiting time my interest died (NHL 09 and Warhammer Online may have had something to do with it), and I haven't been able to get into it. I'm hoping to get back to it at some point, but historically once I put a game down I very rarely pick it back up.

I could easily live with this if the game and play clocks would stop while the game was loading screens. But it doesn't, and if I want to check an injury or whatnot between plays, I sacrifice several seconds of time. This is especially annoying when calling plays on defense, since you don't get 40 seconds like you do on offense.

Much like Fidatelo, my interest in the game mostly died while waiting for the patch. And after several games of watching players act even more dumb in this game than they do in Madden, I'm not sure I'll be loading this up again anytime soon.

Waiting for the patch also killed my interest a bit. The players doing stupid stuff doesn't bother me. The results of the plays are totally being calculated behind the scenes and to generate a different animation for everything has to be almost impossible. I can live with it.

The slowness of play-calling sometimes though is very bothersome.

Overall, I still think this game was a huge step in the right direction and is very playable in it's current form.

+1

I played it for a flurry of days right after the patch, but I agree with you sabotai.

Definitely a step in the right direction if they continue the series. FOF gets my NFL fix again this season.

So far to me it looks like what you get when you build something huge completely from scratch in a fairly short time period, a game that finally has its core gameplay mechanic figured out... but has not had the time to work out many little details, gameplay issues, and outright bugs (loading is atrocious game killer).

I'll probably keep playing it to see how good its engine really is. I'm a bit forgiving since I know software isn't easy, I have high hopes that they finally found a direction, and they got the basis of a great game in the making. Things like perfecting the simulation and gamespeed and faster workflows take time, the 2.0 version usually should have more polish.

I'm still enjoying this post patch. The load times are annoying but hardly a game breaker for me. Injuries don't occur that often and you can dismiss the penalties and have your assistance make the calls. I'm not a fan of the current game changer choices (or whatever that's called). But all of that can be skipped if you quick sim anyways.

Definitely not a perfect game, but quite fun and they did fix most of the major issues with the patch. They're stuck with the Madden 08 engine, so not much they can do there (although they did manage to greatly improve the fumble issue).

This game will be a lot better when the new XBOX patch allows you to load the game to the hard drive.

You guys know what sucks? Theres no PAL version. The games right up my alley. No way to play it. Fucking sucks.

And for the life of me, i cant figure out why there's no PAL version, since all the licencing is worldwide anyways, and theres a shitload of gridiron heads outside the US.

Picked up the game used for next to nothing today. Before I fire this up at this point with the game fully patches are there any dynasty destroying bugs left that I need to be aware of? And if so are there any work arounds to those bugs? Thanks in advance.

I have the 360 version fyi.

No dynasty destroying bugs that I'm aware of post patch.

If you're a U.S. sports fan in Europe, buy a PS3. No region locks on the games. You can import all of the games and play them without issue.

I've been playing the game quite a bit over the last few weeks. There are frustrating things with it, but I'll be damned if I'm not having a lot of fun with it. Here are some keys to really enjoying the game:

1) MASTER a majority of the plays you want to run. A lot of the idiotic running is caused by guys who don't know the playbook. I think it's overdone and it's beyond frustrating at times, but it is what it is. Mastered plays run a lot better. using coaching points to improve RB skills also helps a lot.

2) Mix up the play calling. If you call the same run or pass play everytime you get to second and ten, you are dead. When I get bored and don't think about the plays I'm calling, my offense dies.

3) If the team you start with has a horrible playbook, change the playbook and sim a couple of years ahead. Bad playbooks just don't work well in this game.

-------------------------------------------------------

There are other annoyances:

1) You have to use house rules or you can build a dynasty. Draft "sleepers" are always compared to great players. (ie: If that prospect with a 1 by his name is compared to Larry Fitzgerald, he's likely going to be very, very good) You can trade down, pick every sleeper and have a dynasty built up without trying if you don't control yourself.

2) the important moments or whatever they called just suck. 4th and 4 at my own 25, I lead by 3, 1:43 left in the game. I need to go for it or my approval drops 15 points. yeah. Whatever. Usually winning fixes all of that, but it's still a large annoyance.

3) Certain players have such low endurance figures that they get hurt at least once a game. It's gotten to the point in my games that I actually carry an extra DT every game because I know Frank Okem will go down sometime in the second quarter.


Overall, this is a hell of a game. But with NBA2K9, Saints Row, Dead Space and Fifa. . . I think it's days are about numbered for this year. This is one of those great "surprise" games that really came out of nowhere. I expected pure garbage and got the best draft interface I've ever seen and have gotten probably 30 hours of gameplay out of it to this point. (I'll play out this season, so it'll end up being 45 by the time I'm through) Very nice surprise.

Troy...agree on just about everything you said. The biggest gripe I have is the defining moments are just stupid. To get better approval you have to something only someone named Stoops would ever be Stoopid enough to do.

The people who whine about this game are people who flat out can't figure out what to do to be good so they pitch a fit. Mastering as many plays as you can is the key to winning and so many people continue to try and get just a little good at all the plays. Not enough time in the game to do that.

Agree 100%. My guess is 99% of these guys sim through the preseason like I used to do. It simply kills you. You need to run plays in the preseason over and over until you have your plays mastered and the rookies/FA guys know what the hell they are doing.

If you have guys who are low rated in learning, get rid of them. They won't ever be smart enough to see the field consistently. (the other option is to put them is specialty situations where they are always in for a 3 or 4 plays run from the same formation.

For the record, this works in real life, too. That's why Aaron Brooks doesn't have a job.

Really enjoying the game thus far and finding it tough at this point. Just want to share an experience I have with defining moments.

It was 4th and 3 from my own 45. I'm down by 6 points in the 4th. Everyone seems to want me to go for it so I do. I'm learning a new playbook so I stick with what we know best. I run Darren McFadden off right tackle. I get a notice that my approval has gone up for deciding to go for it. McFadden takes the ball off right tackle for 55 yards and a touchdown. I get a notice that my approval has gone down due to the outcome of a defining moment.....WTF?

Other than that I've had alot of fun with this game. I learn to deal with the faults.

Another fun moment I've had, unrelated to defining moments, was with the Broncos playing the Raiders in week 1. One of my season goals was to beat the Raiders in week 1 on Monday night. Another was the fans want you to crush the Raiders in week 1. So it appeared my approval was riding on this game.

We play a horrible game, the Raiders score on an INT return for a TD, a kickoff return for a TD, a McFadden run of 64 yards and 2 FG's. To add injury to the insult we entered the game without Tom Nalen our C who was lost for the season in the pre-season. Over the course of the game we lose 3! other O-Lineman(2 full time starters and Nalen's replacement for the season), and as a result running is no longer an option by the 3rd quarter.

Late in the game down 27-22 the Broncos start their drive. It seems to me like we are destined to score as we pick up 2 4th down conversions before Cutler hits Eddie Royal over the middle. It appeared Royal was going to score the go ahead and possibly game winning TD but he gets caught from behind by a Raiders defender at the 3 yard line and fumbles. The raiders pick up the ball as my heart sinks.

Its OK I think, we've stopped their offense all day and we have 3 timeouts. Sure enough they go 3 and out and we have the ball with just under 3 minutes left at their 45 yard line. Just under 2 minutes later we are sitting at 1st and goal from the 8 yard line. I try to sneak a draw past them and it gets to the 5. We are running out of time and with no timeouts I call a pass play. Cutler drops back......and throws a pick. The Raiders return it for a TD and we lose the game 34-22.

Cutler was very accurate on the day completing 70% of his passes for 350+ yards and 3 TDs. However his 2 picks that were returned for TDs cost us the game. It was interesting trying to gameplan around a depleted O-Line. To start the game we were getting 4-6 yards a run, but the 3rd quarter down now 4 O-Linemen every run was stuffed. Cutler was sacked 5 times in the 2nd half, 0 times in the 1st. This team really interests me, but there is no way we are going to win very often with this O-Line.

The first example here is a bug that needs to be fixed, the second is what will keep me playing this game.

I'm 4-3 with the Bengals my first season and somehow my approval is 41. Why? All the stupid decisions I have to make with common sense. Those defining moments are just terribly put together. If I get fired, it'll be squarely because of those.

Can you not turn the defining moment thing off? It sounds broken, or at least stupid.