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Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By setherick
12/06/2021 8:01 am
Mcbolt55 wrote:
I know I am aging myself, but I can remember when 4000 yards passing in an nfl season was a record, not expected….granted it should not be nearly impossible like it seems now


But that hasn't been the situation in the NFL in 20 years. Granted, the playbooks in MFN haven't been common since the 1990s either.

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By Infinity on Trial
12/06/2021 10:19 am
I mean no disrespect, but that's pretty old. Joe Namath threw for 4K in 1967 with a 14-game season.

Nearly 40 years ago, the league had a 5K passer, two additional 4K passers, and several just under 4K: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/1984/passing.htm

The 4.6 numbers — at any stage of any league — are worse than any year in the history of the 16-game season in the NFL. And even in the 1950s, when top passers were down around 200 yards per game, you could at least complete passes down the field.

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By TheAdmiral
12/06/2021 11:55 am
At the moment, the passing yards record for Victory is 4505 yards (282.19 ypg) and for Legends it's 4,005 (250.31 ypg).

Both of these figures were in the latest season, this has followed the push to improve the efficiency of passing by examining the data. Setherick and Redneckgopher have both played a big part in this from making the data available and more accessible to everyone.

Credit to McArovil for the 4505 in Victory and Nyses12u for the 4,005 in Legends. Previous best was a 4,002 by Gustoon in Victory

I'm pretty sure both those marks can be improved, but it continues to highlight that medium and deep passing needs to be addressed in the next 'patch/fix/update' to the game engine.


I wasn't aware there was any penalty to OL on medium/deep passes or whether that was addressed/changed/tweaked/removed when the changes were made to blocking in the 'Punt block fix'. (I'm not suggesting that there was no penalty, just I wasn't aware of it). If that penalty is still there I would agree with removing it or at the very least reducing it.

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By Mcbolt55
12/06/2021 2:53 pm
I guess I was thinking more of the 5k passing yards, which has still only happened 12 times overall, with only 1 player (brees) responsible for multiple such seasons (5 of them). Add marinos 1984 record setting outlier and it never happened again until brees in 08. And everybody else joined in since 2011. So just the last 10 years has really exploded into the flag football/madden game that we have today. But your point was 4000 yards, which first happened in 1967, but not repeated until 1979 and certainly not common through the 80s and 90s. (198 times so far overall, with a definite backloaded grouping of recent seasons). Since we live in the now and prefer the explosive kind of game, there is a cause for concern that 4k is nearly impossible to achieve in v4.6, let alone it happening with anything close to the 2 or 3 to 1 TD/int ratio that would be expected to come with it.
Last edited at 12/06/2021 4:04 pm

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By setherick
12/06/2021 7:49 pm
Mcbolt55 wrote:
Since we live in the now and prefer the explosive kind of game, there is a cause for concern that 4k is nearly impossible to achieve in v4.6, let alone it happening with anything close to the 2 or 3 to 1 TD/int ratio that would be expected to come with it.


This. But what's more concerning is the < 6 YPA for most QBs. 7 has become the norm for average NFL starters, and 8 is threshold for having a good year. You'd have to go back to 2002-2004 to see QBs get 4,000 yards and have < 6 YPA (I think Grbac was the last?).

But the underlying thread here that no one wants to talk about is that there are not enough passing plays that work period. (I'll run summarized data later to demonstrate this.)

In 4.5, there were only a few passing plays that worked, and so people built game plans around them and defensive game planners learned how to stop them. But the reason that they worked, and many of us pointed this out, was that they were broken:

1) The Hitch worked because the CB2 fell down half of the time despite M2M. This was a bug, and it was fixed in 4.6, and now the Hitch is a mediocre play. Similar things happened to the other backside slant plays like the 203 PA FB, 212 Split Back Skinny Posts, etc.

2) The Flare, the 212 TE Middle, and 203 FL Post worked because the QB ignored all the other routes and threw to the RB. And since RBs had a speed advantage over LBs they could get free on those plays. Those are all nerfed by the speed changes.

So the only way to generate yards in 4.5 was to take advantage of broken aspects of the game. And so now that those are actually fixed (CB2 doesn't fall down) or "fixed" (LBs are now as fast as RBs) and "improvements" added like all the defenders sprint to the spot of the ball by defying all laws of physics to get there before the ball does, there are fewer yards to get.

So let's take stock for a minute.

1) Fewer short passes "work" because of exploits, which means we're down to few plays working at all.
2) Medium passes have a worse adjusted net yards / attempt than short passes, so there is no reason to use them in the first place.
3) Long passes get sacked 50% of the time and complete passes < 25% of the time when thrown, so there is no place for them in a game plan.

As everyone used to be mad at me when I hung out in the MFN1 forums, who tested this?

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By Mcbolt55
12/06/2021 7:56 pm
I know it’s been mentioned a few times, but I could live with the defensive improvements if the qb would read the play and attempt to go deeper downfield more often, but I have read that the progression is always from the first route to be completed (aka shortest) and out.

That alone would likely revitalize most of the passes that don’t work now. I always got a thrill out of seeing that one time a season the qb would throw the ball down the sideline just as the Wr1 broke past the press coverage, and left wondering why that never happens the rest of the time.
Last edited at 12/06/2021 8:00 pm

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By setherick
12/06/2021 8:12 pm
Here's the data from Big Data that backs up the above point I was making about medium and long passes.

ANY/A is lower on medium and long passes
TD:INT ratios are lower on medium and long passes
INT/100 passes is much higher on medium and long passes
Clean%, which we looked at before, is much lower on medium and long passes

While it's justifiable that TD:INT ratio and INT/100 would be lower, the fact that the adjusted net yards per attempt is so low on medium and long passes, that there is no reason to ever use them. If you can't be rewarded for a play, what's the point?

Even the median per completed pass for medium and long passes is low. Why gamble on a medium pass with a median completion of 10 yards when there are short passes that will get you 7-10 per completion and are much safer?



If anyone is wondering, [MANY/A] is a metric I created for the Big Data league to reflect how detrimental sacks are. It's based on adjusted net yards per attempt, except every sack on a play is worth an addition -10 yards to the adjusted net yards. This reflects that a sack in 4.6 is basically a loss of another down because there are not enough rebound plays.
Last edited at 12/06/2021 8:16 pm

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By setherick
12/09/2021 7:15 pm
Just bumping this thread for no reason. There are four teams in my league averaging 200 or more passing yards per game and only six averaging 6 or more YPA.

In the NFL, there are currently 28 of 32 averaging 200 yards or more and 27 of 32 averaging 6 or more YPA: https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/team-stats?category=passing&sort=p_ydsg&season=2021&seasonType=reg&sortOrder=desc

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By setherick
12/14/2021 1:08 pm
Here's a good example of 4.6 QB'ing: https://bigdata.myfootballnow.com/player/2154

Before anyone says it, let's get this out of the way. This QB is not good. However, in an allocation draft year, he should be serviceable with 72 IN, 67 Accuracy, 62 Arm, 82 Lookoff, and 50 FoV.

In 4.6, he threw 0 TDs and 44 INTs through 15 games.

But, Seth, you say surely it was the game plan. Nope. See for yourselves in this thread by looking at the passing offense by team spreadsheet and filtering to LAN: https://bigdata.myfootballnow.com/forums/1/61?page=1#275

The owner threw a mix of medium passes and short passes. The medium passes of course led to 150 sacks on the year, so there is plenty that could be addressed in game planning and OL, but the overall point is that in 4.6 you can expect a lot more of these 0 TD QBs throwing 40 INTs than you can on QBs throwing 40 TDs.

Re: 4.6 Passing Issues by the Data

By raymattison21
12/14/2021 3:54 pm
I saw some play overuse last game. He has no speed /real weapons to throw to either and his oline is young. Really the whole offense is young. The low ratings and low experience Combined with familiarity and play overuse did it. I bet they do much better in a few seasons with similar players but no overuse..... maybe a true weapon or two. His drops are high as well ...like my young 55 accuracy QB. 4.6 is So sensitive to accuracy modifiers like pressure and tight coverage ....maybe even fatigue.