Dominant Quarterbacking

[Morgado]

Okay folks, time now for another installment of FOF Central's Most Disturbing Home Videos. I am currently running an experiment to check just how decisive a factor dominant quarterbacking is. To test this, i've brought back an old Quiksand concept: the Island of Misfit Toys. One of the problems with the Misfit Toys careers was that it was too difficult to put together anything that looked halfway decent - mostly because you couldn't develop a strategy... all you could do was pick up the pieces and hope it resembled something that had a direction.

Anyway, the idea behind using this format is that I wanted to see what a dominant quarterback could do by himself armed only with 52 7 year minimum salary players to work with. So the house rules in effect are:

1. Draft picks may only be used on the QB position.
2. Besides draft picks, only 7 year minimum salary rookies may be signed.
3. Only QBs may ever be renegotiated.
4. No initiating trades.
5. Draft picks are automatically signed.

The method for getting through preseason is a new one i'm also testing out - put the "cannot afford to injure" players on inactive and let the scout handle all depth chart action (but not roster action). So when someone is hurt too badly, I rotate in key players and put them at risk to injury. Since there are always 4 or 5 QBs on the roster, there is never a risk to the starter.

As you can imagine, I ran into my fair share of breakout players. From 2002-2012, i've had one great T, one great G, one very good LB, and miscellaneous other small-time breakout players. The offense used was a fairly typical Midwest 35 and the defense was a fairly typical MIB Base Nickel.

The QB I picked up early on to key the team:



Note that the relevant test period is only from 2005-2012 because I was originally using the Riverside Breakers to test something else but decided to switch since QB Campos was close enough to what I needed. Anyway, the records were as follows:

2005 7-9
2006 5-11
2007 5-11
2008 6-10
2009 9-7
2010 9-7
2011 7-9
2012 5-11

This is not all that great, but just imagine what it would have looked like if Campos actually had a real team! I'd say that the dominant QB by himself is worth about 5 to 7 wins each season. The 9-7 seasons were particularly healthy seasons where the token breakout players were actually healthy for more than half the season... so the extra two wins are probably due to them. Another interesting note is that the cohesion and expertise ratings were in the cellar when I reverted the team in 2005 - it only recovered about 2008 or so, and by 2009 expertise ratings from 75 percent training camp sliders gave about 70 expertise. As soon as the team achieved some degree of stability, Campos was throwing for about 3900 yards a season to a corps of ridiculously bad receivers and backs. I'm not surprised now that Midwest 35 offenses can produce about 4500 yards passing and 35 TDs regularly when the dominant QB has a decent offensive line and targets.

I'm not sure how much of a factor field position is, but the defense was terrible. In particular, my CBs were bottom shelf material. The least disastrous position was DT, in line with the observation that a lot of people make about DT depth in the drafts. I think this is a fair assessment of QB potential since every aspect of the team (except maybe the coach, who I paid 6 million to guarantee he'd sign with us) really sucked the nut. This biases everything against QB success and yet Campos managed to get respectable numbers (fairly high INT rate, but otherwise very good production for flying solo).

Oh, something just occurred to me... if WR quality does indeed contribute somehow to INT frequency (like was hypothesized elsewhere), then that might be one way to look at the high INT totals... *shurg*

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The 64 Dollar Question: What *is* The FOF Journal?


[This message has been edited by Morgado (edited 02-12-2001).]

[QuikSand]

Interesting... in my two fiddlings with the IMT concept under FOF 2001, I'd say that a "veteran" team under that concept ended up with a median record of about 4-12. Not surprisingly, adding a star-caliber QB makes a noticeable difference-- I'm not sure that any other single player would, to be honest.

As for the interceptions, I buy into the argument that this is such a complex system that while every factor counts, it's awfully tough to isolate single factors into cause and effect relationships. Sure, your WRs were lousy, and the QB threw picks. But, his tackles were probably pretty lousy too, and he probably didn't get very good blocking overall. Plus, the good QB's only "weaknesses" were pretty mortal numbers in accuracy and 3rd down passing, both of which (it could be argued) weight pretty mightily into the interception outcome.

All told, pretty interesting.

I wonder... if we would all agree that the biggest "difference maker" on an IMT team would be the QB, what other position would be second greatest?

I'd hazard that MLB might be the next most important, but I'd also be tempted to lock down one cover CB.

[Ctown-Fan]

A little story about the pond frogs . . . After in year 32, my second quarterback in Pond Frogs history, Bernie Oliver, retired. This was a team that had just lost in the Super Bowl. I figured with the 48 million I had in free cap space I'd be able to pick up a decent QB to continue my winning ways. I got to Free Agency and there was no one avaliable. Same in the draft. I was forced to go with my back-up who had a fair composite scout rating.
Despite having a roster value in the 90's I went 4-12 . The following year, I picked up Broderick Winslett in Free Agency (composite 76) went 15-1 and capped of the year with a super bowl win. My roster was basically the same both years, and my skills ratings went down, but he make up the difference. Later tonight when I have more time, I post screen shots and stats for the two season--to help reinforce this.

As for the second most important player, I am starting to believe that actually it is a good center, and not a defensive player. This is just a hunch, but I think you can get by on defense with one "weak" group on the defense, thereby eliminating one specific "special" position player that needs to be dominant. Be it a corner back, linebacker, or defensive tackle.

[Morgado]

Originally posted by Ctown-Fan:
As for the second most important player, I am starting to believe that actually it is a good center, and not a defensive player. This is just a hunch, but I think you can get by on defense with one "weak" group on the defense, thereby eliminating one specific "special" position player that needs to be dominant. Be it a corner back, linebacker, or defensive tackle.

Ctown, interesting Pond Frog anecdote. Quik - I see your point about the 3rd down and accuracy and yeah that's probably somehow affecting the INT totals too.

On the subject of second most important player, I think it depends on how much you run the ball. If you are playing a 75 offense, then no doubt it is the center because the C position gets way more KRO than any other position. If not, then i'd have to go with either DT, MLB, or WR (since if not running, then passing). I'm not entirely sure what would make more of a difference - the better field position from improved defense or the better target. Pass blocking shouldn't be too much of an issue if the QB has enough scrambling although he'd probably stay healthier.

On the defense being okay with one "weak" group... the only breakout player I had on defense was one LB who went from near redliner to 60s across the board. Not exactly the dominant MLB, but a far cry from the other scrubs on the team. The only other players on defense who would ever see the light of play on any other normal team I ran would be one or two of the safeties as a backup, the DTs as backups and the kick returners (as KR/PR and last on the depth chart at CB). However, even this scrubbish group managed to post not one but two shutouts during the test period... I think it's a safe assumption to say that one "weak" group will not break the back of a defense, only hold it back from being superior.

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The 64 Dollar Question: What *is* The FOF Journal?

[Daimyo]

Nice experiment. Actually I tried this before using the WLC file with Snyder and a team of URFA signed to seven year deals. I got pretty much the same results (ie seemed to top out around 9-7). Did you save the career files so you could run the same seasons again with the good QB "hidden" on the depth chart to get a sort of baseline?

I was actually planning to run a different experiment this afternoon to look at the difference in positions. I was going to sim about 15 seasons (about 500 team*seasons) and then see how the relative "Roster Strength" of different positions correlates to wins, PA, PF, etc etc...

[Daimyo]

Unfortunately I just noticed that roster strength does not have a print button... so I doubt I will be doing that experiment afterall.

[ibdb]

I'd also thought about tying in the position strength ratings to results. My concern there was similar to one that QuikSand has voiced elsewhere -- that computer GMs may have very strong players at a position, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they exploit those players to the fullest extent of their abilities.

Since we can't see the computer's tendencies, we can't tell if one with a high QB strength rating actually runs an offense that takes advantage of that skill. There just seemed to be too many things that couldn't be controlled for to give me great confidence in the results.

Trying to model all this gives me an entirely new appreciation of what a deep game engine that Jim has created.



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The city of Houston was named after Sam, not Dean.

[Daimyo]

I would assume the computer game plans are created exactly like the "default" human game plans created by the computer. I have found these to cater very much to the type of players I have and often I make only minor changes if any.

[ibdb]

If you start a career as a new team (choosing each team in the league in turn), and check their tendencies, are they each the same, or do they differ?

Pregame scouting reports through the season indicate that some teams run more, pass more, blitz more, etc. How much of that variance is tied to skill levels on a team, and how much is tied to unknown influences from the Grassy Knoll is what I wasn't sure how to deal with.

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The city of Houston was named after Sam, not Dean.

[Morgado]

Originally posted by Daimyo:
Did you save the career files so you could run the same seasons again with the good QB "hidden" on the depth chart to get a sort of baseline?

Actually I did this and more - since the experiment was all about QBs and they're all i'm drafting, I have a stable of about 4 different good quarterbacks at various stages of development. Since each QB has their own strengths, there might be a way to somehow do controlled experiments by plugging in various QBs with identical rosters around them (ie each individual game re-sim a few times with each guy so the depth chart around them reflects the exact same injuries at the start of the game).

The original reason I was getting so many QBs was so that down the line it wouldn't matter if one got injured midgame since another All-Pro type QB would simply step in and not miss a beat.

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The 64 Dollar Question: What *is* The FOF Journal?

[ez]

ibdb: the starting game plans for all teams are the same every time you start a new career. in fact, they're identical to what they were in FOF2.

unlike FOF2, though, it seems game plans in FOF2K1 do change, probably according to your scout's opinions.

nobody has answered conclusively whether CPU teams change their game plans over time (again, in FOF2 they didn't). one way to test this would be to change to an established franchise at some time in the future and record the game plan. next, start a new career with that franchise, and compare their future game plan with the one they start every career with...

[Carligula]

Originally posted by ez:
nobody has answered conclusively whether CPU teams change their game plans over time (again, in FOF2 they didn't). one way to test this would be to change to an established franchise at some time in the future and record the game plan. next, start a new career with that franchise, and compare their future game plan with the one they start every career with...

[/b]

Short answer: They do.

Long and boring answer: I had a career up to 2056, and switched to the most run-oriented (Philadelphia) and most pass-oriented (Tennessee) teams among those with winning records (to try to adjust for team quality affecting run/pass balance). The results follow, 2000 offense/formation percentages and then 2056:

Philadelphia:

75/72/58/41 76/80/66/50
58/47/43/31 79/67/49/42
64/21/12/9 67/26/19/18
68/26/13/26 70/30/17/30
69/57 84/54
14/16/10/22/11/18/9 17/17/18/26/8/8/6
19/50/20/7/4 17/50/22/7/4

45/23/5/4/23/0 44/0/27/27/0/2
53/20/7/2/16/2 44/0/27/27/0/2
24/12/2/2/58/2 19/0/13/13/5/50
17/11/2/7/52/11 13/0/10/13/8/56
50/50 12/15
38/38/52/50/54/54 38/46/60/62/52/51


Tennessee:

75/72/56/41 69/67/50/37
71/55/36/39 67/53/35/35
67/14/19/18 64/25/19/21
68/26/13/26 70/28/18/28
42/56 29/44
14/14/8/42/4/12/6 19/18/12/26/7/10/8
16/49/22/7/6 19/47/23/6/5

0/0/45/17/33/5 49/0/27/2/20/2
0/5/48/18/29/0 52/0/27/4/15/2
0/0/28/10/41/21 14/0/10/0/42/34
2/3/30/16/18/31 10/0/8/0/42/40
50/50 1/1
23/23/46/74/21/21 44/62/62/64/49/45

The Eagles run about 10% more now; the Titans pass 5% or so more. My scout says Philadelphia has only the 11th-best RB in the league, but the 7th-best FB, the 2nd-best C, the 2nd-best G, and the 6th-best T. Tennessee has a couple of mediocre QBs, the 9th-best TE, and the 6th-best WR. So it looks like they do adjust according to personnel, and not just the glamour players (QB and RB).

I haven't been around the forums much lately, and just found Morgado et al's work on gameplans and so on. I'm impressed - nobody was doing anything this in-depth for FOF2. Keep it up!

[This message has been edited by Carligula (edited 02-12-2001).]

[Morgado]

Time once again for another episode of FOF Central's Most Disturbing Home Videos. Today we have some funkdafied 7 year minimum salary players for show and tell as well as some shocking news regarding the Riverside Breakers. First, we turn to some redliner players we all know and love:



The striking thing about redliner breakouts (and other breakouts as we'll see in a moment) is that symmetry Quik noted in another thread. There is always some kind of symmetry going on with the various ratings but CB Congdon is a very strange case. I don't recall ever seeing kick return skills going up on a breakout, so I was surprised by this.

Now for some non-redliner breakouts:



As before with the redliners, there's some obvious symmetry going on here. Another key is that (oops, FB Templeton is flipped) the potentials all start out relatively low, but even more important that all the "major skills" are nonzero. I believe this is really important in identifying breakouts - they will almost always have positive (and fairly significant) ratings on the major skills that scouts tend to rank by. So what we're really looking for are players who have between 20-40 red ratings and low to nonexistent green potentials.

Although usually minor ratings like Endurance, 3rd Down Catching, and Carrying don't change, you can see some examples above where they do (and in fact we had a guy whose return skills changed!). As a rule of thumb though, don't count on minor skills booming or busting - just the major skills most of the time. Another funky symmetry going on is in the low greens for the non-redliner breakouts. In general, the green potentials also follow the same rough symmetry that the red ratings are showing. FB Templeton is a really good example of this.

And for our third and final segment, we are disturbed to report that the IMT Riverside Breakers have made the playoffs for two consecutive seasons armed only with QBs and whatever breakout players I stumbled across in the 7 year undrafted rookie free agent pool. In the first season (2013) the Breakers went 9-7 and lost the Wild Card game. The second year though, the Breakers went 10-6 and won their Wild Card game. Even more interesting is that stud monkey QB Campos was injured for more than half the season in each of the playoff seasons, meaning the backups (who are also fairly beefy) carried the team - especially since the defense was plagued with injuries in all units and the WR corps was hobbled both years (we're talking 8-12 players injured per week).

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The 64 Dollar Question: What *is* The FOF Journal?

[This message has been edited by Morgado (edited 02-13-2001).]

[ez]

Carligula: you're beautiful, man...

[QuikSand]

I have never seen a breakout player like Cris Congdon above-- a big jump in return ratings?!?! Fascinating. In most cases, I've seen what you alluded to-- some ratings seem to be fairly "set" and the others are the movers. Congdon is something of an outlier.

I've tried to suggest that the breakout phenomenon is not limited to players who are strict redliners. Perhaps your pretty colors will help in the cause-- folks just seem to respond to pictures more than to tables of numbers. (Maybe it's time for me to figure out how to post screenshots... nah)

Another thing that your pretty pictures do show is that there exists a wide rnage of players who are clearly being "masked" in some way as we see them in the draft, and then the masking is lifted after the training camp. Sometimes this is a monumental changes, turning a lousy player into a very good one (like DE Moore) and sometimes it's much less of an impact-- I've seen dozensa dn dozens of payers like you LB Harper, who develop some new upside, but really don't turn into a "star" by any means.

I don't claim to understand the process that FOF 2001 uses to show us players as being worse than they will eventually be, but I suspect that there is one generic algorithm involved. I believe that it (in general) understates the red lines by a certaion degree, and then understates the green lines by a certain degree. My best guess is that this system sometimes leads to players who look like the pure redliners, sometimes look like your second group of near-redliners, and sometimes just look like ordinary lousy players.

Odd symmetry is a key in trying to identify both breakout and busts. If we believe that most players are generated through some sort of weighted but elaborate random number geenration algorithm, then we know that they will tend to look pretty "ragged." A quick flip through a given position (especially something manageable like LB) causes certaiun players to just "jump out" as looking too symetrical to have ben randomly generated. I find that with a very high frequency, these players are the ones who move after camp (again, bustiong or breaking out)-- though the magnitude is difficult or impossible to predict.

One thing we do seem to know, though-- there does seem to be a relationship between the pre-camp values of a redliner players and the overal magnitude of the breakout (if it happens). Guys like G Walters and RB Ivey come to mind from your group above-- when they break out from a set of ratings like 40 acros the board, they will tend to look pretty darned good after they boom.

In the GroupThink career, we saw such a player-- a classic redliner LB with most of his ratings right around 50 or so (as I recall). He's not ours (he went in the late first round, between our first two picks) but he's a strong candidate not only to break out, but to possibly become a star-caliber breakout.

Good stuff... and nice colorful pictures.

[Daimyo]

Actually those pictures helped me a lot. I guess the redliners I always took before were generally guys with all red bars in the 10's. I would see some movement, but never to superstar status. After reading this post my next WLC draft was very weak so I started looking for redliners whose red bars were at least in the 25-50 range. I pulled FIVE breakouts in one draft and three of them are now near maxed out guys (1 DT, 1 LB, and 1 WR). So I guess maybe Quiksand and Morgado already knew this, but I just learned that not only is being a redliner or very near it a condition, but so is the magnitude of the red bars. Thanks Morgado for posting the pics. I know they at least helped one person.

[CubsFan915]

Originally posted by Daimyo:
Actually those pictures helped me a lot. I guess the redliners I always took before were generally guys with all red bars in the 10's. I would see some movement, but never to superstar status.

Thanks Morgado for posting the pics. I know they at least helped one person.

Make that two... I was in much the same situation as Daimyo... Thanks, Morgado!

[Morgado]

Originally posted by QuikSand:
Congdon is something of an outlier.

I tend to agree with this. The minor skills tend to move very little, but return ratings are like not even minor ratings... they're like off the radar in miniscule ratings. I've never seen any player ever get that kind of return rating jump either.

Perhaps your pretty colors will help in the cause-- folks just seem to respond to pictures more than to tables of numbers.

Heh yup, I suspect the same thing. The rating numbers are always difficult to really visualize for me because the way I naturally scan drafts and FA pools is to rapid fire click on the next or previous arrows until some strange bar graph leaps out at me. Only at that point do I even bother examining numbers... i'm guessing a lot of people are doing likewise.

Another thing that your pretty pictures do show is that there exists a wide rnage of players who are clearly being "masked" in some way as we see them in the draft, and then the masking is lifted after the training camp. Sometimes this is a monumental changes, turning a lousy player into a very good one (like DE Moore) and sometimes it's much less of an impact-- I've seen dozensa dn dozens of payers like you LB Harper, who develop some new upside, but really don't turn into a "star" by any means.

I have had quite a number of such players - especially in the IMT QB test career since i'm exclusively signing 7 year minimum salary castoffs. In case anyone has the wrong idea, i'd like to reiterate again that these breakouts are totally the exception and not the rule. For every one redliner who becomes a great breakout, there are at least 3 others who have extremely small breakouts and at least 2 others who have no breakout. So burn your picks at your own risk.

...one generic algorithm involved. I believe that it (in general) understates the red lines by a certain degree, and then understates the green lines by a certain degree. My best guess is that this system sometimes leads to players who look like the pure redliners, sometimes look like your second group of near-redliners, and sometimes just look like ordinary lousy players.

This pretty much sums up the way i'm looking at it as well.

Odd symmetry is a key in trying to identify both breakout and busts. If we believe that most players are generated through some sort of weighted but elaborate random number geenration algorithm, then we know that they will tend to look pretty "ragged." A quick flip through a given position (especially something manageable like LB) causes certain players to just "jump out" as looking too symetrical to have been randomly generated. I find that with a very high frequency, these players are the ones who move after camp (again, busting or breaking out)-- though the magnitude is difficult or impossible to predict.

Another thing to notice about the general talent pool is that there seem to be categories of archetypes in each position. Like, you always see certain profiles come up in large abundance each draft... I think i'll go fish up some images and try and show what i'm getting at in a bit.

One thing we do seem to know, though-- there does seem to be a relationship between the pre-camp values of a redliner players and the overal magnitude of the breakout (if it happens). Guys like G Walters and RB Ivey come to mind from your group above-- when they break out from a set of ratings like 40 acros the board, they will tend to look pretty darned good after they boom.

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean when people who fish for breakouts should be looking for non-chump redliners or near redliners. The only way to get any kind of substantial improvement is if the base the breakout algorithm calculates off of is significant to begin with. A breakout that doubles all skills of an offensive lineman who has 2 in run blocking pre-breakout is still lousy post-breakout.

Daimyo: Glad it helped, but come on... now you're gonna smoke us in the standings by even more! First Summers... now this... bah hehe...


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The 64 Dollar Question: What *is* The FOF Journal?

[Daimyo]

Man.. thgose guys are goign to break my cap next year though... they kind of broke my balance of adding one or two good players per year. Plus i have this 4th year DE with 99,99,99 who I'm not really sure is adding too much to my defense and he wanta almnost stupid QB money, but I just can't let him go 'cause I haven't seen a player like him since fof2... I think my team will have about 30 URFA's next year ><

[TalonGard]

I have a CB who has gone from a 50/50 on kick and punt returns to near 90/90. I used him as my #1 return guy in both of his fisrt two seasons and he broke out in the third. Could being a special teams starter have an impact on this kind of development?