Breaking Down the Coach Stick: What the WR/CB Matchups Mean(Re-post of NCAA '14 info)

[bcruise]

Personally I was really happy to see NCAA 14's matchup bar brought over to Madden in the form of the Coach Stick. And, once I had the game in hand, I was even happier to discover that it appears to work exactly the same way (although enhanced by extra info like fatigue, and a very broad, top-level comparison of O-Line vs D-Line). It means I don't have to do all this analysis again!

So anyway, I posted the following way back when NCAA '14 came out, explaining how each of the four ratings involved in WR/CB matchups correlated to the actual ratings. It still applies here in Madden 15, except for a couple of terminology differences. You can replace "Matchup Bar" in the following post with "Coach Stick", "Release" is now "Beat Press" (BPR), and, obviously, All-Pro is the difficulty I was using as opposed to All-American. With that in mind....

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...-formulas.html

Quote:

tl:dr: Spoiler WR: 1 Rating Point in SPD = +.5 pt on Speed Matchup 1 Rating Point in ACC = +.5 pt on Speed Matchup 1 Rating Point in RTE = +.5 pt on Route Running Matchup 1 Rating Point in AGI = +.5 pt on Route Running Matchup CB: 1 Rating Point in SPD = -.5 pt on Speed Matchup 1 Rating Point in ACC = -.5 pt on Speed Matchup 1 Rating Point in MCV = -.5 pt on Route Running Matchup 1 Rating Point in AGI = -.5 pt on Route Running Matchup Height is a direct comparison, and Release is WR's RLS vs. CB's PRS Maths ahead: You've been warned. First off, I know there's a thread about whether or not this feature is broken as it relates to giving away a man or zone defensive call. This thread isn't about that. I want to show what's happening when it's working properly. Personally I didn't see any odd behavior of the bar while I was testing - pretty much everything I expected to happen did once I had the formulas figured out. So with that out of the way... As you guys probably know, the WR/CB Matchup bar appears when you hold R2 (or right trigger on 360) and shows how a particular WR squares up with the CB directly across from him. And it always shows the matchup from the receiver's point of view, that is, positives will always be good for the WR and negatives will be good for the CB. What you may not realize is that there's more to that rating comparison than it appears - this becomes pretty obvious if you look at the speed part of the bar, then compare the WR's and CB's Speed ratings to each other. Most of the time, they're not going to match. That's because there's another rating behind that calculation, and they're BOTH playing into it. It's acceleration. Sure, it makes sense and it was the very first thing I checked on, but with the way EA's ratings go sometimes it wasn't exactly a sure thing. There's one other part of the bar that has a second rating tied to it, and in this case it's different for both the WR and CB. The Route Running calculation uses a WR's Agility in addition to RTE, and the CB's AGI in addition to MCV. Man coverage is used because the matchup bar is a head-to-head comparison. For these two comparisons, each of the two ratings involved is worth half of a point on the bar. For example, if you have a WR and CB with equal ratings across the board, except for a 1 point difference in Speed, you'll still see zeroes across the board on the bar. Make that a 2 point speed difference (tipped toward the WR), you'll see a 1 on Speed, meaning the WR has an advantage. Basically you're going to add the two relevant ratings together for each player, compare the sum with the other player's (subtract, in other words), and divide by 2. But there's one other thing you have to do - deal with odd numbers. Remember I said the bar only registers a change on 2 points and not 1? The game rounds down to keep decimals off of the bar. That means you knock a point off the sum of the two ratings if it's odd. So, once you know this, you can pretty easily apply it to any WR/CB matchup. Here's one example, with ND's WR #7 vs. Clemson's CB #21: Notre Dame WR #7 SPD 88 ACC 90 Height 5'11 RLS 61 RTE 90 AGI 90 Clemson CB #21 SPD 91 ACC 94 Height 5'10 PRS 91 MCV 91 AGI 92 Matchup: Speed -3, Height 1, Release -30, Route Running -1 Speed: 88 + 90 vs. 91 + 94 178 - 185 (-1 for odd, so 184) = -6 Divide by 2 = -3 for the WR Height: 5'11 vs. 5'10 = +1 for the WR Release: 61 vs. 91 = -30 for the WR (Ouch!) Route Running: 90 + 90 vs. 91 + 92 180 - 183 (-1 for odd, so 182) = -2 Divide by 2 = -1 for the WR I've checked this with several matchups on various teams and so far it's held up, enough for me to post this publicly. I don't believe there are any other ratings which influence these matchups, as I tested every rating I thought could possibly be relevant with a created CB and WR matchup of entirely equal ratings (except the one I was testing at the time). Several things I thought might have an impact such as Awareness, Strength (for Press/Release), Jumping (for Height), Zone Coverage, etc. did not change the bar. It's important to note the bar is only there as a guide though - Just because a rating isn't factoring into the bar doesn't mean it's not being used at all.

I'd also like to add that the Coach Stick serves as a very easy way to see the difference in difficulty levels. If you go into practice mode and look at one of the WR/CB matchups, you'll see that they change as you move up and down the difficulty levels. A WR who has a small advantage over a CB on All-Pro may be evenly matched against the same CB on All-Madden. You can change the difficulty inside practice mode, so there's no way for any other variable to be affecting that matchup - you do need to run one play to actually have the difficulty change take effect, though. Since anyone can see and test this, this really should put to rest once and for all the debate that All-Madden boosts the CPU's ratings and/or reduces the user's - it absolutely does.

[charter04]

don't know how there have been no reply's to this. The match up stick is what I used to help with my NCAA 14 sliders. Glad that it shows for sure the boost in ratings AM gives. We knew that but, this proves it. Good info

[KingV2k3]

I incorporate the matchup stick in my pre-snap reads all the time...

Good to know how it actually calculates things...

Thanks!

[The Chef]

Dug this up, valuable info imo. It allows me to understand what makes a man to man CB actually worthwhile in man coverage as well as being able to go into a game with a gameplan ahead of time knowing how guys will matchup on the field and who will cause me problems. I tested it in game and it came out correctly so I assume it's the same formula for M18 as it was 2 years ago.

[rakernk]

Great info. Can you help figure out how this works when it comes to the offensive and defensive line? Been trying to figure out what ratings dictate successful offensive and defensive lines, but I have no idea.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

I did not see this post originally, does anyone know if this will reveal advantages/disadvantages based upon gameplan?