The Beginner's Guide to online Football Leagues

This document is intended to assist people who are getting started with online football leagues based on the "Football Pro" series by Sierra Online, Inc.

I played through my first (complete) season and managed to finish with an 8-8 record and a wildcard playoff berth. By no means am I claiming to be an expert coach or an authority on online leagues, I am just offering some tips that helped me move from a league whipping-boy to be at least competitive and capable of winning a few games. Its always more fun to win than lose.

Getting Started

Evaluating your talent: Once you are join a league you will probably inherit a team with existing players. It should be noted that it is not necessary to have the QB or RB with the highest attributes to have a good passing or running game. A good coach will often take a mediocre QB and have him end up with a rating of 120 or more just because he knows how to write great plays and disect defenses. You can follow the links at the bottom of this page to find lots of information on how the various attributes affect play.

If your league has a salary cap, choose your big money players wisely and don't overlook the importance of good defensive players, especially linebackers.

Making your PPP (Plans/Profiles/Plays)

Plans: Your game plan is the what contains all of your plays. If you are in a league that allows custom plays, this is where the plays that you wish to use get stored. Often, the sim leagues (home sim or commish sim) have very specific requirements for how and where to store your plans and plays on your computer, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. One of the most frustrating thing in online leagues is when you work all week on your plays and your game profile and it doesn't get used because you didn't store them in the right directory or you didn't name them correctly.

Many leagues have minimum requirements for the number of unique plays that your game plans must have (offense and defense). The game allows you to have up to 64 plays in your game plan. Do not make the mistake of thinking you must fill up your plan with as many plays as possible. Its better to have a small number of very effective plays than to water your playbook down with alot of really bad plays. Start by putting the minimum number of unique plays allowed by your league in the plan and work hard on refining those plays until they are effective in a variety of situations.

Plays: This is an area where I am most definitely not an expert. I will only offer a few play making tips that helped me alot this year. If your online league does not allow custom play making, then this is of little or no value.

Stock plays suck - for the most part. There are a few stock plays that are pretty good, but don't go into a custom play league thinking you will get by with mostly stock game plans. You may get lucky against other new coaches, but experienced online coaches will rip you apart with ease. If you don't have the time or interest in designing plays, join a stock play league, its better for everyone.

• Eliminate Fumbles When you see the results from your games, check to see if you are fumbling the ball alot. Most fumbles are caused by poorly designed pitches to RB's, usually on wide sweep runs to the outside. When designing your plays pay special attention to the separation that develops between the QB and the RB before the pitch occurs, if its too great, fumbles occur. Also, make sure that the RB is behind the QB when the pitch/hand off occurs, otherwise the possibility of a fumble is greater AND it may get counted as a passing play due to flaws in the program itself.
• Eliminate Penalties: If your team is highly penalized, check the logs and see if any of your plays consistently result in penalties such as ineligable man downfield, or illegal formations, or defensive holding (for defensive plays). The offensive linemen and OL logic in FBPro is not very good and if you have a particularly "stupid" (i.e. low IN/DI rating) lineman then he will often generate alot of penalties for you. These can be eliminated by taking care not to give that player very complicated logic. "Move to" or "lead to" logic for blockers may result in the "ineligable man downfield" penalty for some linemen. Illegal formation penalties should be caught in the play editor but sometimes they slip through. Defensive holding penalties are often the result of a DB with low IN/DI being given a bump-at-the-line assignment. Less disciplined DB's will often get flagged for the holding or, worse, defensive pass interference. Use that logic wisely.
• Eliminate Sacks: In FBPro it is not uncommon for teams to get 10 or 20 sacks per game. Usually this is because the coach that is getting sacked has not learned the basic rules of FBPro pass blocking. #1 - give the Guards .2 second delay logic before giving them the "block pass", or give them a slight "move to" logic to the inside (towards the center). #2 - Keep extra blockers in to help out on long plays. The FBPro QB's rarely have the time or necessary intelligence to check-off 5 or 6 receivers before they will have too much pressure and either leave the pocket on a scramble or fall to a sack. Keep a strong RB or FB (or 2) in the backfield with a slight delay logic (.2 - .5 seconds) before giving them the block-pass logic. The 5 reciever set is not seen that often in the NFL and it should not be used in an FBPro league unless you are very good and know how and when to use it. These simple rules will help your team eliminate alot of unnecessary sacks. Very effective pass plays can be designed with only 3 or 4 receivers.
• Eliminate Interceptions: I still haven't completely figures this problem out, but I have some suggestions. Timed passes often work great in practice but result in INTs in real games. This is because in practice the players are playing at full potential, no fatigue has been factored in. When a game is simmed, fatigue is a factor and players slow down, considerably in some situations. Be aware of this as you are designing your plays and draw the timed pass line behind where you would normally want it to be because your receiver may not be as fast in the game as he is in practice. Another way to avoid INT's is to have good pass protection (see above), and don't make all your WRs go to the same area, that will just result in all the DB's also going there and it becomes a free-for-all going for the ball.
• Use the Shotgun Formation: This is good advice for passes and for almost all running plays. Good defenses will often nail the QB before he can even hand the ball off if he is lined up "under center". Move him back a few yards, but make sure that other players going in motion or shifting position do not run into him.

Defense

• Don't run all M2M or all Zone defenses: Other coaches will pick up on this and rip you apart with the right offensive plays to counter these.
• Don't blitz every play, don't ignore the blitz completely: Teams that blitz every play often get burned bad when a good coach picks up on this fact. However, the blitz is not to be ignored, the QB must be pressured and strong pressure, even if it doesn't result in a sack, can cause the QB to fumble and throw interceptions.

Preparation

All the best coaches, to some degree, do their homework against their opponents. At the least, you can study his statistics and see if he tends to favor the run or the pass. If you have access to old log files and one of the many log analyzer programs available, you can see his tendencies and what the team likes to run in each situation. If you have a access to alot of highlights, you can see what plays are working for him and prepare accordingly. If the opponent scores alot on outside runs, then you should shift your defense to be prepared for that. If he throws timed passes you can play more bump-at-the-line logic. If he blitzes alot, keep more blockers in and run quick passes (etc, etc...).

Once your profile is established, tweaking it weekly is pretty easy (except for the bugs in the crappy profile editor in FBP97). Don't become predictable by always using the same profile each week, don't be afraid to mix things up and try some trick plays occasionally if the opponent is much stronger and will probably not expect it.

Summary

Links

• Chris Milliken's Defensive Tutorial
• Carl Michalik's guide to play making
• WAFL Play Design Clinic
• FBPro Central