What is PA?

Play action

No, this is what I said.


The right defense shuts down the run regardless of the key because players immediately switch to run defense when the ball is handed off.

Biting on a play fake inevitably leads to 70 yard TDs out of the 212 PA FB Flats.

The bigger point that was overlooked is defenses start keying correctly for a play after it is run three times. And most people only keep 20-25 plays active, which means that every game inevitably becomes keyed correctly without having to set a key before the game.

Therefore, it's better to start in Pass Key to prevent the homerun throw off the PA. You're still not going to see that much of a difference against running plays, and the bonus you get from Pass Key will not really be that great anyway since the game inevitably breaks down to plays vs play for player alignment anyway.

Everything else is dictated by the downfield passing nerf that prevents you from going over the top.

Yep. Thats the part I disagree with.

JDB in the original implementation:

<<< "Pass" means that your secondary plays deeper, blitzers will never bite on play action, and man-to-man coverage gets a small boost. A pass defense is not designed to stop dink-and-dunk plays, but is instead designed to stop the longer pass play. >>>

Pass Key was always designed to stop downfield passing which was completely nerfed in 4.5. (Talk to Ray if you want to know why.)

So if we realize that Pass Keying doesn't impact Short Passes, what we're left with is that Pass Keying means that your defense doesn't bite on the PA pass.

As I said, you're welcome to disagree, but it's how the code works.

So you are saying any statistical evidence that using 100% pass key has resulted in higher rankings in pass defense coupled with worse rankings in run defense over the course of 50+ seasons across 6 leagues is all coincidental because you say so?

I'd like to see how you're collecting your statistical evidence. Keying isn't included in the downloadable CSV, which is a shame.

If you're going by the Team Stats page, there are any number of explanations of why stats vary by league.

What I know for sure is that if you use the plays that are the most effective against the run on downs when a team is most likely to run, you can key Pass against all plays. That's exactly how I game plan the run (now, after IoT and I discussed it over the summer), and consistently rank in the top 10 against the run. Even my Champions team, which is pretty awful, ranks 2nd defensively against the run.

This game is becoming more fun by the second!

4.5 would have actually been awesome if long passes weren't taken away...