Love this, remember, this is v.1. Post your inside tricks

Having grown up on the board game in the 80s and remember the day I spent tearing the cards apart but promising not to look at the cards so I would know who to draft against my friends, I am loving this v.1 football.

Anyone remember the 1000 yard rusher in the 80s for the Chiefs while Christian Okoye was there?

Anyway, from my experience with the football cards and HAL as a baseball manager, here are some tricks I have noticed:

1. Passing Attempts, Rushing Attempts, Receptions mean EVERYTHING for your offense if you want to avoid injuries.
Want to go with the run n shoot strongly favor passing, better have a QB that chucked it 640 times (and that is just 40 attempts a game). Want to go Smash Mouth, better have multiple RBs with HIGH rushing attempts. the A0 designation will still get hurt bc the antilogarithm is built on usage.

2. Real football knowledge only can help so much.
You have to remember, HAL is a mix between Rich Kotite, Jim Harbaugh, Herman Edwards, and John Madden....meaning the dude is schizophrenic. You HAVE to account for boneheaded WTF are you thinking calls. I highly suggest trying to take the decision making out of HAL's hands by NOT doing the "middle of the road approach." Picking the key normal, double team normal, normal offense, ect.....can get you more dumb HAL decisions.

3. ALWAYS look at you opponent each weak and adjust at least your Defensive strategy.
Much of the games success is built on one team going one way while the other goes the other way. Stopping the run is mega important bc a missed call on the Defense with Pass while the O runs....means big time gashing. HOWEVER, even the best RB's have sht to gain when pass/run is picked correctly. SO, regardless of who you are playing, it really is not wise to go heavy PASS or heavy RUN defense. When you pick more RUN defense, there are still INT and INC passes you can deal with. When you pick PASS and HAl runs....gooooooooood luck

4. How to get the Defense your playing to stay in Nickle
This is my sweet spot I am gaining stats on. I have two 6-2 teams and a 1-0 team (both sets used) with his strategy. I run:
run n shoot
favor running game
throw fewer bombs

I only spend on QB (high attempts), RB (high rushing attempts, high receptions), 2 FL and 2 SE (all high receptions). ALL 6 should be A0 is you can. The the rest of the money goes to the 4 "team" players (o-line, d-line, lbs, dbs). FB and TE are the lowest cost blockers, whatever is left over takes care of a "solid" but not spectacular special teams. Essentially with 4 wr on the field, HAL will always go Nickle. With favoring running game, I am consistently doing the 30 rushes for 150-200 yards with 20-30 passing attempts....even with teams Keying on the running game.

Thoughts?

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1469672 (this one is strongly favoring pass, only 1 game in, quite the battle v Brees)

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1469425
http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1469100

ps i just moved to the strategy 4 or 5 games ago. It took a few games to realize russel wilson will still get hurt if you try to chuck it 50 times a game.

This is good information

Thanks for your insight

Thanks for sharing some tips and positive feedback on the game.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the good advice/insight. I too started on the Board Game years ago. So glad they came out with the online game. My First SOM 365 set did not bode well. The Second Set did much better, missed the Playoffs on the last game of the season. Love this game. I would also like to see REPLAY LIKE IN BASEBALL and more Stats.

Tim Klucinec

If you plan on starting C and D injury players make sure your backups are rated F. If you have D rated running backs and one lone C rated running back that is just there for fill a spot, he will get the most carries no matter who you start.

Thanks Palmtana! It would be good for strat to start a strategy thread for the online football game. This is a great post!

I gave the game a rest for a while after the initial disillusionment (no visible defensive cards, and so on). I will come back to it later this fall (in October) to see what I can do.

thanks guys for the insight. My first team just drafted and can use any help I can get. Have given up on the baseball so need the football to keep me interested in strat online