Front Office Football Central - View Single Post

TroyF · 08-29-2008, 08:04 AM

A few other tips for those interested:

With rookies, even undrafted ones, you want to hold onto them until you see the potential rating. It may take a couple of weeks, but it will be worth it if you find a guy who has great potential. In one of my games I had a walk on rookie free agent SS end up with an 80 rating and a potential of 87. The first week he was listed at a 63 rating. I toyed with cutting the guy and decided not to do it because I was just fooling around. Don't keep that 72 vet FB and let your 50 rated OLB without his potential unlocked go. You may regret it.

Special teams matter. Get good return guys. Make sure you have a solid kicker who can kick deep. We all know this in the real NFL as well, but in this game you see how critical it can be when you are starting at your 23 vs. your 34. Cribbs is usually cut in my games with the Broncos. I ALWAYS find a roster spot for him and I always am thankful I did after two games. (like last night when I beat the Chargers 34-31 and he had a kickoff return for a TD)

Get a good playbook. If your playbook is weak or average, pick again.

The CPU running game needs help. Bump up the RB ability slider all the way. Bump up the run blocking most of the way. I may even tweak my tackling downward. The CPU running game is one of the only flaws of the game. You can get your running stats up. The problem isn't so much that the CPU won't break off some runs. Or even have a consistent running game at times. It's the amount of runs for losses. LT had 23 carries in the game last night. He lost yardage on 8 of them. In the runs where he had positive yardage he had 15 carries for 68 yards (4.5 average) On the 8 other carries he lost 18 yards. that made his day 23 carries for 50 yards. If they could just find a way to make 6 of those loss carries 1-3 yard runs, the stats wouldn't be so bad. I'm still trying to tweak this and see if it can be fixed.

That said, I still can't find a true gamekiller. If I can't fix the running game, I'll intentionally use a weak defenseive playbook and hire a weak DC as a house rule and go from there. It's not like it's causing me to win every game. (quite the opposite, I'd say in my Raiders/Chargers test games I'm under ,.500 at this point. My fun factor with this game is off the charts. Please, oh please, let a text sim borrow a lot of these ideas someday. I love FOF and the improvements Jim has made over the years. But I have NEVER had as much fun with an offseason and/or draft in any text sim (including FM) as I have in this game.

08-29-2008, 08:04 AM	#444
TroyF Coordinator Join Date: Oct 2000	A few other tips for those interested: With rookies, even undrafted ones, you want to hold onto them until you see the potential rating. It may take a couple of weeks, but it will be worth it if you find a guy who has great potential. In one of my games I had a walk on rookie free agent SS end up with an 80 rating and a potential of 87. The first week he was listed at a 63 rating. I toyed with cutting the guy and decided not to do it because I was just fooling around. Don't keep that 72 vet FB and let your 50 rated OLB without his potential unlocked go. You may regret it. Special teams matter. Get good return guys. Make sure you have a solid kicker who can kick deep. We all know this in the real NFL as well, but in this game you see how critical it can be when you are starting at your 23 vs. your 34. Cribbs is usually cut in my games with the Broncos. I ALWAYS find a roster spot for him and I always am thankful I did after two games. (like last night when I beat the Chargers 34-31 and he had a kickoff return for a TD) Get a good playbook. If your playbook is weak or average, pick again. The CPU running game needs help. Bump up the RB ability slider all the way. Bump up the run blocking most of the way. I may even tweak my tackling downward. The CPU running game is one of the only flaws of the game. You can get your running stats up. The problem isn't so much that the CPU won't break off some runs. Or even have a consistent running game at times. It's the amount of runs for losses. LT had 23 carries in the game last night. He lost yardage on 8 of them. In the runs where he had positive yardage he had 15 carries for 68 yards (4.5 average) On the 8 other carries he lost 18 yards. that made his day 23 carries for 50 yards. If they could just find a way to make 6 of those loss carries 1-3 yard runs, the stats wouldn't be so bad. I'm still trying to tweak this and see if it can be fixed. That said, I still can't find a true gamekiller. If I can't fix the running game, I'll intentionally use a weak defenseive playbook and hire a weak DC as a house rule and go from there. It's not like it's causing me to win every game. (quite the opposite, I'd say in my Raiders/Chargers test games I'm under ,.500 at this point. My fun factor with this game is off the charts. Please, oh please, let a text sim borrow a lot of these ideas someday. I love FOF and the improvements Jim has made over the years. But I have NEVER had as much fun with an offseason and/or draft in any text sim (including FM) as I have in this game.