First off, it should be clarified that 32 team control does not mean you will end up having to do all of the tasks for all of the teams. What it does mean is that you can change as much as or as little of what’s broken but can be fixed as you want to put the time into doing. How much you intervene in correcting things that are wrong with CPU team management is completely up to you. The bottom line is that it gives you options that are unavailable to you in a single-user franchise.
Should we have to do any of these things for ourselves? Absolutely not. But unless and until EA makes acceptable fixes, the more self-help you engage in, the more enjoyable franchise should be for you, aside from the aggravation of having to do EA’s job for it.
I don’t expect a lot of people to be as detail-oriented about their franchises as I am. For a lot of you, your spare time is precious and you just don’t have enough of it to do even half of what I do. This is just some information sharing. You might see something you didn’t know you could do and want to give it a try. You might find a fix for something that really bugs you. Take from this what you like and have the time for, and ignore what doesn’t suit you.
GETTING STARTED
When starting your franchise, select user control for all 32 teams. Once you’re in franchise mode, go to Settings>Franchise Options and select which of the management functions you want to return to CPU control. You’ll need to change the active team and do this for all 31 teams (or less) that you are not playing as. Except for FA and the draft, a CPU setting will still allow you to perform those functions manually.
EDIT: DO NOT change teams while in the Franchise Options Menu- for some reason that causes a global edit. After doing one team, you have to back out from the Franchise Options menu to the main menu, change teams there, then go back into the Franchise Options. Same thing with coach options.
EDIT 2: This idea eluded me until it was brought up because I've been rolling with everything set to USER for all of the teams for so long.
EDIT 3: The is no longer a Draft Players franchise option. Only options are to make a pick for the CPU, or sim the pick.
In the setup after you've selected all 32 teams, select USER for anything you want to do for the CPU teams and CPU for what you don't. Then after the franchise is started, the only settings you'll have to change are those for the team you'll be playing with, switching them from CPU to USER.
For example, if you are going to to do the bare minimum of cutting the fake players, set Cut Players to USER and everything else to CPU. Once inside franchise mode, all you'll have to do is reset your teams settings to USER.
Coaching Tendencies
In the past, sim stats could be manipulated by changing the run/pass ratios and aggression levels. I’ve also noticed that lower offensive aggression means less deep balls thrown by the CPU. I’ve heard the sim engine is better this year, and how these settings affect gameplay has yet to be determined, so there will be no deeper discussion of these aspects at this time. Just wanted to put out there that 32 team control allows changes of these settings for all teams.
3-4/4-3 Defense
If you think a team should switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4 or vice-versa, you can do that in the coach options. This will affect the team’s defensive stats, so with a 3-4 the sack leader should be a OLB and and with a 4-3 it should be a DE. This will not change the playbook a team uses in played games. If you’ve changed a team’s defensive scheme, you need to select an appropriate defense for it in the pregame menu.
Running Back Splits
This slider setting for sim stats actually worked in M11. If you think a team’s RB1/RB2 splits should be changed, you can do it. This come more into play in future seasons as personnel changes/ages.
THE 2011 PRESEASON
We got expanded rosters, and we got a whole new major headache along with that, which will be addressed in more detail below.
Since the game was already done before teams were allowed to sign UDFA’s, EA had to resort to using fake UDFA’s to fill the expanded rosters. If you’re using any roster update from the final cut to 53 on, there’s going to be an even bigger boatload of fake UDFA’s because those, rather than the real-life guys who got cut and are in the FA pool, will be used to populate the expanded rosters.
This is where you will need to do your first interventions if you haven’t done any prior to this point. You will want to handle all of the preseason cuts yourself to ensure that the 53 guys who made the opening day rosters IRL do so in your franchise and that no fakes make it to the regular season. When cut in preseason, the fakes disappear forever. Conversely, if they are cut during the regular season, they go into the FA pool, so preseason is the time to get rid of all of the fakes. If you want to alter any of the opening day rosters by including a real-life guy who got cut, that’s fine, but be aware that if he’s in the game, he’ll most likely be in the FA pool instead of on a roster. In the event you don’t find the player in the FA pool and want to edit a fake that has a similar height and weight, here is a team-by-team list of the 2011 UDFA signings:
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d...gnings]NFL.com news: Team-by-team undrafted free-agent signings
DEPTH CHART ADJUSTMENTS
If you do nothing else with CPU depth charts, at least go into each one and see who their return specialists are. They often aren’t who they are in IRL. And in future seasons, the CPU will put star players in there, which is the exception rather than the norm, injury consideration being one factor.
I prefer the third down RB to be the one with the best catch rating. This is not always the guy with the highest OVR as a 3rd down RB.
The CPU sets depth purely on OVR, but there are times when that shouldn’t be so. An example being a WR who is drafted to be the new no. 2 guy is a 78 OVR but there’s an aging, slowing down vet who’s a 79 or 80 who should really be below the slot on the DC, but he’s at no. 2. Not a big deal during preseason, but before playing Week 1 of the regular season, you should make some appropriate adjustments to the CPU depth charts- not just for starters, but the CPU does some wonky stuff in the o-line and secondary. Long snappers and who is doing kickoffs are other areas you might want to look at.
IN-SEASON ROSTER FILLING
Most of you would probably prefer to let the CPU sign players when injuries cause roster holes. I just wanted to mention why I do it myself in case any of you like the idea. The reason is front seven personnel appropriate to a team’s defensive scheme. If a 3-4 team has a whole at DE, it shouldn’t be signing a 4-3 end, etc. That’s just how detail-oriented I am. Another thing you can do with D-line holes in 3-4 defenses is make a temporary position change with a spare player (DT to DE or DE to DT). This particularly handy when the team would otherwise have to cut a player to satisfy Madden’s roster requirements. Temporary position changes are also handy when a team’s only FB gets injured and there’s a spare RB or TE that could fill in.
THE OFFESEASON
Coaching Changes
This is one area that doesn’t really affect franchise play, or not much, anyway, and is more of an immersion thing. I like to handle coaching changes becuase I’m a franchise writer and coaching changes are part of the offseason news.
The CPU does not fire underperforming coaches. It won’t retain them at the end of a contract, but it won’t fire them prior. At this stage I like to go in and do what I deem to be appropriate firings. The CPU also often does a poor job of rehiring head coaches that should be retained. If you want to ensure a coach gets a new contract with his existing team, you’ll probably have to do that yourself.
Re-signing Players
Left to their own, CPU teams are bad at retaining players. The way I do re-signings is more time-consuming than most of you would care for, but there are some quicker alternatives that will still leave fewer roster spots to be filled by fake UDFA’s.
My method:
Go to random.org and set the random number generator to give you a number between 0 and 100.
Going alphabetically, you would start with the Bears. Generate a number for each player you think the team should try to keep. I use 34-100, player re-signs, 0-33 means he wants to test free agency. I usually do 4 numbers at a time and keep the yes/no results in my head, so if the first four numbers result in yes/yes/no/yes, then the first, second and fourth players re-sign and the third goes FA. It's up to you how far down the list to go. Once the FA losses are determined, you can tag one of those if you think he's tag-worthy. This method not only leaves less roster-filling to be done after FA and the draft, it generates better FA pools at the upper end of the ratings (which was my initial reason for going this route).
Sounds worse than it really is but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty smoothly.
Don't want to bother with all that random number stuff? I chose the numerical re-sign/FA cutoff so that on average teams would re-sign 2/3 of the players they should want to keep. You can get that same average just by going into the list and sign two, skip one, sing two, skip one. Whether to negotiate or skip one of the "sign two" guys who declines the first offer would be up to you. If you think a team should lose half of its potential FA's, then only re-sign every other player or use 0-50/51-100 with the random numbers.
Free Agency
Again, this is something that I put more time into than most people will. Most of you will just want to have FA signing set to CPU for the other 31 teams and just bid on players for your team and be done with it.
Those who find it too easy to pick up all of your FA targets, might want to consider a “house rule” as to how many guys you can sign, even with it broken down by so many in a certain ratings range. Another thing is to use the random number generator for your targets. After your shopping list is done, decide what the cutoff should be (example: 25) for being allowed to bid on the player. With the 25 example, 1-25 would mean the player can stay on your shopping list and 26-100 means he has to come off of it.
What I do:
I have FA signing set to USER for all teams. After the FA pool is generated, I go into it and list the top 5-12 players by position. My last franchise was an interactive one in which I had other real people acting as GM's for other teams, so I would have to post the FA list for them to make shopping lists, and I happen to have a list or two handy on the HDD. Here's the QB's from 2016:
QUARTERBACKS
Diondre Borel, 91 (R1 comp to Chargers) DAL
Jay Cutler, 86 CIN
Carson Palmer, 84 BUF
Matt Flynn, 73 GB
David Garrard, 72 ATL
Chase Daniel, 71 CAR
(My CBA had no RFA's, but it did have comp picks. You see Diondre Borel from Utah St. there because my 2011 draft class was a generated one in which I changed every player into a real life one, and Borel was the only one who fitted by height/weight)
That's the final version of the list, showing who signed the players, which was posted in the franchise thread so the GM's could see who went where. The original version had each team who was going to bid on the player listed to the right of his name. For CPU teams, I went through their rosters to determine who they should bid on. Once the list was complete, it was random number time again. The high number gets the player. That gives every team an equal shot, unlike CPU bidding where the best teams seem to get most of the best players. After it was determined who was going where, I would start with the Bears and work may way down through the teams and put in a bid for each FA they were going to sign, then advanced to the end of the FA period.
With the new bidding system, it's going to be impossible for me to get everybody signed during the bidding process, so after it's over I'll use the team management screen to sign the remaining players before going on to the draft.
After the draft, I go back to the team management screen for each team, find the roster holes, and fill them without going through the random number process a second time. You could skip this part by assigning "fill rosters" as a CPU function but then you're probably going to have some fake UDFA's picked up. Before this fake UDFA mess, the main reason I filled roster holes myself was to sign front 7 players appropriate for a 4-3 or 3-4 defense.
Another thing I do before determining where the FA's go is make some position changes in the pool. This is mostly aging CB's to FS/SS, 3-4 ends to DT's or DT's to 3-4 ends, 3-4 OLB's to 4-3 DE's, and 4-3 DE's to 3-4 OLB's, OLB/MLB switches, and changes of O-linemen's positions, like T to G.
The Draft
Unless their priority sliders are changed, CPU teams draft by projection. With classes imported from NCAA, the projections are simply a top-to-bottom list of what the imported player’s OVR is going to be, without regard to position. That’s how punters get drafted sixth overall. If the best available player has an OVR higher than any player at his position on a team’s roster, the team will draft him regardless of any common sense considerations.
Draft logic is much less of a concern with Madden-generated classes because the OVR and the projected round of the players are hard-coded- they will be they same every time that class is imported, unlike the varying results you get when importing NCAA classes. Even if you assign players to every scouting slot for every CPU team, the scouting will have no bearing on how the CPU drafts. It will not know any of the player’s ratings. It will only know where the player is projected to be picked, and draft accordingly. And in generated classes, projection does not necessarily correlate with OVR. There will be early round busts and late round steals.
Back to NCAA classes. If you want the CPU to draft better, you have two alternatives. One is to draft for all the teams yourself for however many rounds you want to do that. I’m confident that most who are going to make the effort of doing 32 team control are not going to cheese the draft so a certain player falls to them, but do as I do and draft for each team as if it were my own. I even have teams trade up or down when there is no real sensible or value pick for them when they go onto the clock. One thing should do is you are going to have multiple rounds of user draft picks is save often. When doing a draft with all 32 teams set to USER for drafting, Madden 11 locked up on me at least once per round. This did not happen once I was through with drafting for the CPU teams and started simming their picks, but I still saved at the end of each round as a precaution.
The option other than picking for the CPU teams is to adjust their position priority sliders. They are found in the coaching options, the same place you go to adjust the run/pass splits. For example, if a team needs a kick or punter but you don’t want it to draft one until any sooner than the 4th round, then set the priority so that at least three other positions of need have a higher priority.
For those who use Madden draft classes from year 1, but would like to rename players to a real one who has a similar height/weight, this is a great source:
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/prospectrankings
Post-Draft Roster Filling
This will happen automatically with the setting at CPU, but it will be with fake UDFA’s. Each presaeason, you’ll need to repeat the process of cutting the fake UDFA’s in order to force the CPU to meet its needs with real players from the FA pool.
I have roster filling set to USER for all teams for one main reason. You’ve all seen that when injuries cause a team to fall below Madden’s artifcial roster requirements for a particlar position, the user gets a notice that “Coach J. Blow, your team does not have enough X” and you get the option of signing the player yourself or letting the CPU do it. I like to retain that option for when a DE needs to be signed, so I can sign one that’s appropriate for the team’s defensive scheme.
******
There you have it. I don’t expect most of you who try 32 team control to do even half as much as as I do. But if you get even one thing out of this that enhances franchise mode for you, then this has served its purpose.
09-02-2011, 10:25 AM
