Week 3 - Review

[Mario ADK]

My pennies:

Paris 16 at Orlando 30
Paris on a long, long journey this season....

Austria 19 at Rhein 13
ADK did not get into gear this time. Dull game with no highlights...

Ohio 29 at Sacramento 17
Not a big surprise for me, Ohio is still going strong... But they needed a wild 4Q to win...

Frankfurt 13 at Berlin 13 (ot)
Surprise, surprise. Berlin even had the chance to win with a long FG but they will be sathisfied with the tie anyway....

Raleigh-Durham 27 at Mexico 24
Is Raleigh for real? Must have been a nice game to watch....

Amsterdam 16 at Barcelona 19 (ot)
Barcelona keeps itself in the PO-race with a surprising win...

Birmingham 13 at Montreal 24
What ever happend to Birmingham? Montreal wins convincingly...

London 13 at Scottish 16
"Jason, it was not your fault, the London franchise simply sucks, regradless whoever is on the control-panel...." Still scratching my head about Scotlands secrets.....

New York 17 at San Antonio 23
BIG game, BIG win for San Antonio. NY is slowly getting into trouble, but we got 11 more games....       

Any  other opinions?

[jcompton-Orlando]

Raleigh-Durham is 3-0.

My brain is broken.

[velcro]

My pennies:

Ohio 29 at Sacramento 17
Not a big surprise for me, Ohio is still going strong... But they needed a wild 4Q to win...

Wear them down with the running game, Long runs of 39 (TD), 44 (TD) and 78 racked up the yardage. Just as importantly 7 sacks kept forcing the Sacremento Offense off the field. Still not enough production by the Ohio WRs though.

[Mario ADK]

My brain is broken.

Oh, i see you´re just the same 

Scotland is still the best kept secret in town. i have no clue why they are winning and winning and winning.

But they are.

You shouldn´t have left London. It is a shame.

[Mark-skyhawks]

I would tell you why both the Munro's are 3-0 but it's a family secret

AND

I am still trying to figure it out aswell 

[jcompton-Orlando]

You shouldn´t have left London. It is a shame.

Well. I definitely would have run the team differently than Paul has, but given my performance in recent years I have a hard time seeing how I could have done a better job. The Monarchs would probably be losing with Symons and Payton, at least now those guys are on winning teams. But I guess you'd enjoy watching the train wreck more.

[Mario ADK]

But I guess you'd enjoy watching the train wreck more.

No.
It has always been a good rivalry, and "rivalry" means two teams that are pretty even. right now they are not and there is no "classic theme" in a "FWL-Classic" in week 5 between an (possibly) 4-0 and a 0-4 team....

I´d rather see both teams head-to-head....

[Jon-NewYork]

Hi guys,

Looking at some of the posts, people are talking about the ways teams are run and the great performance of other teams. Is there much the GM can do to influence his team apart from trading players and ranking the starting line-up, I mean can we choose a 3-4 or 4-3 defence, can we go heavy on a running or a passing game, over load with WR's etc?

Just curious as I can't seem to find anything about this!

Cheers!

PS I guess I'm getting booed by the NY fans when we get back to NY for the next game!!!

[Marco_Frankfurt]

Of course you can do more :-)

You can choose the offensive playbook that will be used. You can find them and the differences here:

http://www.fwl.org.uk/gameplans.pdf

(they are basically playbooks of the NFL teams back then, when the game was released and some very one sided
pass or such playbooks)

Defensive gamplans we are not allowed to change. the basic playbook all teams use has a few 3-4 plays
but most are 4-3

you can also set the way your team plays within the playbook. you can distribute 10 points
for each block (offense rush, offense pass, defense rush, defense pass).
In theory you can controle things like INTs and the way plays will be called.
However in reality it is more influenced by the game itself (who scores first, how your opponent
plays and so on) Here is the list (empty ) I use to tell Paul how my team should play.

          Offense      Defense

Rush Aggressive      0      0      
Rush Balanced      0      0      
Rush Conservativ                   0      0      

Pass Aggressive      0      0      
Pass Balanced      0      0   
Pass Conservativ                   0      0   

In gereneral it means
aggressive - more risk and also more potential gain
conservative - safety first
balanced - a mix of it

[velcro]

As in the NFL all teams use a variety of defenses. As the game used is based on the 97 version of the game, there are a number of defenses in use:

Regular Defenses:
3-4 and 4-3, also the Flex Defense and a 4-4 appears sometimes

Specialised defenses:
4-6, Nickel, Dime and Goal-line.

i've been trying to summarise this in a suitable way for a while but as tey it hasn't worked ot right. When that happens maybe more control can be given to the defensive gameplans.

cheers
Ross

[Jon-NewYork]

Cheers for that, looks like I'll be reading up tonight!

Thanks

Jon

[Mario ADK]

Marco, i do not get your point.

Isn´t it the rule that we are "allowed" only to use the pre-defines gameplans according to the list?
Are we allowed to create our own "gameplan"? i thought Paul does not want this in order not to have too much administration?

[jcompton-Orlando]

Hi guys,

Looking at some of the posts, people are talking about the ways teams are run and the great performance of other teams. Is there much the GM can do to influence his team apart from trading players and ranking the starting line-up, I mean can we choose a 3-4 or 4-3 defence, can we go heavy on a running or a passing game, over load with WR's etc?

I was mostly referring to the personnel moves Paul made.

As for the rest of the discussion... I found gameplans to be about as useful as a hole in the head. I didn't start using them until my team started sucking on a regular basis, and it continued to suck on a regular basis. But then, I wasn't very good at this whole thing either.

[Marco_Frankfurt]

Marco, i do not get your point.

Isn´t it the rule that we are "allowed" only to use the pre-defines gameplans according to the list?
Are we allowed to create our own "gameplan"? i thought Paul does not want this in order not to have too much administration?

No, sorry if I did confuse anyone.

Of course we can only use the complete playbooks and profiles from i.e. one NFL team
(well theoretically you could use lets say Tampa Bay for the first half and Arizona for the second half,
but I dont think that will be a good idea )

The other issue are the points where you set your teams playing tendencies.
aggresive vs conservativ
this works with any playbook/profile

[velcro]

The other issue are the points where you set your teams playing tendencies.
aggresive vs conservativ
this works with any playbook/profile

Actually this is an either or situation. The aggressive vs Conservative thing allows the computer to choose a gameplan and profile for each half based on those stats OR you can specify a gameplan.

The reason behind this was to try and create more variety in the players used and not have everyone chasing the same types of player. For instance a West Coast Offense team needs better IN rather than St for the QB....

And to confirm  you can pick from the standard gameplans but you cannot design your own, not because of the admin - but simply becasue this league has neve required people to have a copy of the software.

[Aztecs]

I discovered something the hard way in a head to head league a long time ago.  If you try to put points in this area called "Team Profile" and turn off the "computer control", your gameplan/coaching profile will not work.

Offense      Defense

Rush Aggressive      0      0     
Rush Balanced      0      0     
Rush Conservativ                   0      0     

Pass Aggressive      0      0     
Pass Balanced      0      0   
Pass Conservativ                   0      0 

 I found when I did this, that none of the plays available were the ones I had put in my gameplan, which caused a lot of grief, since I had to actually call plays during the game.  They were just random plays I had never seen before.  When I set this to back to "Computer Control" my gameplan came back.

So, if you want to use, say, Tampa Bay's offensive gameplan and coaching profile, you cannot load the "Team Profile" for Rush Conservative, ect.

[joshroberts1987]

A bit late I know, but Orlando match reaction! Great to get our first win under our belts, hopefully can get a streak going. If the Oline can hold strong we feel we have the ttols to do well and move forward this season!

[Paul-London]

Marco, i do not get your point.

Isn´t it the rule that we are "allowed" only to use the pre-defines gameplans according to the list?
Are we allowed to create our own "gameplan"? i thought Paul does not want this in order not to have too much administration?

You can change your team profile, the whole RA 7, RB 3, RC 0 type of thing, i personally think this doesnt do a lot but some people like to use it.

As for gameplans because Ross created that excellent doc/pdf we finally allowed people to choose offensive gameplans a few seasons back.  This makes a big difference, eg a Packers/Niners offense features a ton of passes to the HB and other offenses feature more passes to TE's etc

As for defensive gameplans as soon as Ross (no pressure !) has done a document similar to the offensive one we will then allow defensive gameplans.  The reason we dont right now is that the people without the software would be at a huge disadvantage as people with the software can try lots of defensive gameplans etc, people with no knowledge/no software will be at a bit disadvantage

You cant create your own gameplan whatsoever.  In many old leagues when people actually played the games they created MANY plays which couldnt be stopped.  If you know the software that well you could create plays which would practically always result in huge gains.  So you can ONLY use ones pre-defined and cant make up your own plans.

For newbies REMEMBER the software (even though called FB Pro 97) is based on the 1996 NFL Season so basically some good gameplans are the ones from successful offensive teams from the 1996 season.