Hey everyone - Remember these promises:



Turns out that neither one of them was completely accurate.

I've been running an almost full zone defense in my 0.4.1 leagues, and I'm about to pull it. Here's why:

1) Tackling pursuit angles are still awful. My defenders repeatedly take bad angles on pursuit, they run past ball carriers for no reason, and they get eaten by phantom blocks (they will be in behind a blocker and the blocker will suddenly jump back in front of them and engage).

2) Zone coverage in general is still awful. Zone defenders repeatedly misread their zone assignments and players in them.

You don't see these things as often in M2M defenses, but that doesn't mean that M2M is any better. Here's why you don't see it in M2M:

1) Going man up on a WR means that the defender doesn't have any decisions that he has to make. He should just stay on his man.

2) Having defenders man up mean that there are fewer times when a defender has to pursue, contain, tackle, which is essential for a zone defense.

The short summary here is never use zone plays, especially if you're a new player and you're just learning how to game plan. Just set up a M2M defense and basically don't game plan because in the end it won't matter. If you have good M2M players (basically if you have all 100 SP defenders), you'll be fine. There is no point in having a strategy on defense. None.

Also, you're still better blitzing 2 than relying on your DL to defend the run in run key because OL are now way overpowered on run blocking. But that's another story. Basically, remember all those things that made 0.4 so "fun". They are worse in 4.1.

The hot reads kill the blitzes. Just flip a coin and see who wins. Oh, wait, just play man & blitz. Whichever team contains the hot reads will win the game......or whichever doesn't contain will lose!!

Or perhaps you want to run the ball down your opponents throat? That's probably your best bet. The O-line just moves the D-line to the side. If you have blitzing LB's, you might be successful defending. Then you have to worry about the pass! Remember the hot reads?

Who said blitz, blitz, blitz and pass, pass, pass was no fun? My first impressions is that this isn't either. Offense is way overpowered.

PLEASE figure out a way to make the long passes ineffective. They should only work 5-10% of the time NOT 30-50%.

Yes, I am venting. I'll get over it. This is still my favorite game to play. JDB, despite my rant, you do a wonderful job with this game and I am grateful.