I have been debating to myself about using rules, but the more I lose by 3 scores or more by not using them, the more it seems like they are the way to successfully game plan my opponent. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to try.

Below is a chart of a recent game that I had in another league. I went into much time consuming detail of looking at the game log and charting my opp's plays by name, personnel, formation, and play type. As one can see, 27.5% of his personnel and formations is 1-1-3 and 30% of his play types is Short pass while passing 75% of the time he has the ball.



I know there are some rather extremely successful owners who live by rules, so I am asking how would one plan or make rules for this so I would not get beat so bad again.

I break my rules down by situation on offense and by defensive formation. Offensively I have rules for deep in my own end, deep red zone, 2 minute drill, 1st down, 2nd and 5 or less, 2nd down 6+, 3rd and short, 3rd and medium, 3rd and long, 4th down rules for specific situations, and rules for late 4th qtr whether ahead(run, run, run) or behind (pass, pass, pass).

I would like to get more specific offensively, but no time.

Defensively I have packages combining normal/nickel formations, nickel/dime, nickel/dime/quarter, normal/nickel/dime and separate them into down/distance. I also have red zone defense rules and a prevent package.

When I gameplan, I sort of do what you did Booger, I chart plays by formation. Based on that info, I then decide which defensive package I want to use against my opponent's 1-1-3, etc.

I also try to have my matrix match the rules as close as possible, if not, things can go haywire. This sounds complicated but it's not really. I can do a game plan in about 15 minutes if I'm not changing the plays I run. I prefer to keep the same plays each game while simply changing how I use them.

My biggest issue is when I need to change up my plays defensively. For example if I switch a 1 deep man play to a corner blitz, it messes with my rule percentages and matrix. I try to keep changes within the same group, changing a 1 deep man play to another 1 deep man, or offensively changing a short pass in the 1-1-3 to a different short pass in the 1-1-3.

I used to have more generic rules and my defensive performance suffered. I used to just have 1 generic rule for my Normal/nickel packages but sometimes the sim would have me in a 3 deep zone on a 3rd and 1 or other mismatched stuff. By getting more specific in the down/distance with my rules, all of my defenses across MFN showed improvement.

I have one rule....there are no rules.

First thing you should do is ignore the 2TE/3WR and the 1RB/3TE/1WR sets as I don't think anyone even has plays with those formations.

When I chart plays, I ignore all 4 and 5WR sets, as those are all pass plays and my defensive package is already set for those formations. For the 2RB/3TE, or goal line set, all I do is chart the run/pass split.

The rest I chart just like you did. The key is to find good plays, and what I did is look at my performance on the play card. A lot of my defensive plays were effective on 1st and 2nd down but not so much on 3rd, or vice versa. So my normal/nickel 1st/2nd down package has some different plays then my normal/nickel 3rd down set.

Speaking of charting plays, I have to get on that now. Best of luck.

And this is the downside of me having 23 teams. I could never gameplan that deep on a daily basis.

The initial set up takes awhile but once I have the plays I want to use every week, this takes me about 15 minutes each game. The downside to my approach is the time it takes to make major changes if something isn't working.

For instance this game at New England took about 30 minutes to plan for. I needed the extra time to set up my 3rd down and medium normal/nickel/dime mix, which I wanted to use vs the Patriots 2-1-2 offensive sets. The rule was already there but everything was at default percentages. I had to click on view plays, write down the DB/LB coverages and plug them into my formula.

I didn't even start game planning until right after that earlier post above.

Be careful with rules and remember the AI wil pick from the top to bittom, so make sure you have them listed accordingly.
The only times I use rules are for a specific situation, and there really aren't that many.
I won a league title without any rules.... so ?...

Seriously. I have just a couple. If a team runs 1/1/3 and 2/3 or any personnel that will make my defense counter with nickel default, I make a rule to include nickel/normal/dime and make sure there are enough plays to avoid overuse. If you don’t you will default to only one personnel and unless you have 6-8 plays you’ll get overuse before the half.