Nickel Package

[QuikSand]

I'm intrigued by Morgado's work in highlighting the success that can be had by using a heavy-nickel alignment on defense.

With my current team, I momentarily have three pretty good safeties, and two quality corners. If I set my depth chart to list my third safety as my top reserve corner, do we think that he would get a lot of playing time as the "nickel back?" I'm assuming so, and if so, I think my team might benefit from this adjustment.

I'll probably try it and I might post the results if they seem helpful, but I'm interested if anyone has thoughts on this.

[madflava13]

Granted I have only had FOF 2001 for a couple days...I'm playing as the Vikes, and I have two awesome safeties, two decent corners, and a third CB with a really high interception rate. I put him as my top backup, and play with 70 in the Nickel package percentage. More often than not, my 3rd CB comes up with some big INTs (long returns, even TDs pretty frequently). So I believe that top backup spot is a "nickel back" spot... Hope this helps.

[Morgado]

Originally posted by QuikSand:
If I set my depth chart to list my third safety as my top reserve corner, do we think that he would get a lot of playing time as the "nickel back?"

I end up doing this very frequently during several careers when my secondary was badly injured. In a sense, we were doing what the 2000 Giants are doing - 4 safeties on the field at one time. Well, 3 with a fairly tall CB and a backup high INT chump.

madflava13's selection of a ultra-high INT CB3 is pretty much my prescription. The only thing to worry about is that sometimes CB3 will enter the game in his backup role and wear down his own endurance. Over the course of a game, even two low endurance links can induce CB4 into playing Nickelback on some downs (even without injuries).

Other postitions that i've been able to use in the "wrong" spot:

DTs as DE
RB as WR
FB as TE
C as G and T

The curious part about this is that C, DT, and FB are some of the deepest talent positions. If you wanted to take this to an extreme, you could actually keep just enough of a position on th roster to maintain legal roster status and then stack up on the low cost but high skills positions like FB to play both FB and TE for example.

Come to think of it, S are much cheaper than CBs...

Hrm.


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"Solomon yo! Watashi ga kaette kita!" (Solomon! I have returned!) - Major Anavel Gato, Compeito Island 11-10-0083

[dawgfan]

The question here is whether playing a guy "out of position" incurs some type of performance penalty. It might be worth an experiment to take a team, quicksim 20 seasons with players in "correct" positions and then 20 seasons with the same players, but swap positions, i.e. play the CB's at S and vice versa. You'd probably want to isolate the experiment to one area at a time to limit other factors.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, I'm working late doing a lot of production work on my workstation while my e-mail/game machine sits unused...

[QuikSand]

After one season of dabbling with "S as nickel back" (my team had 2 credible CBs and 4 solid safeties) I have nothing to report. My safety cache was riddled with injuries all year, and I ended up rotating guys so much that I cannot isolate who played what position. Alas, maybe next season...

[Fritz]

Quik -

If you are in nickle frequently (80+) you may try moving a starter (FS) to the 3rd CB spot and move the S you were putting up into that vacated spot. This will put your 4 best on the wings.

[Blackwind]

Quik,

I've had great success over the past four seasons running a nickel scheme using my #3 CB (Bryan Laxdal in the TTS thread) in both the first backup safety and corner positions. I've got the Nickel percentage set at 75 with the coverage percentages at Man (35), B&R (35), 2 Deep (10), 3 Deep (10), and 4 Deep (10). Dime and prevent are set to 0. Blitz (55) and Blitz Multiple (35) with LB's (10-15 ea, 20 for my WOLB with great pass rush) and secondary (10 ea). The Nickel Back is getting as many interceptions as the FS does (Double Coverage at 50 for #1 and #2 WR) and has a significant number of tackles to indicate good run stoppage. Hope this might help a little.