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?