With more NFL teams leaning towards a fast-paced offense geared towards achieving more offensive plays it’s making it very difficult for the APBA gamer to keep up. Last season, the Patriots in the off-season visited Chip Kelly in Oregon to study his “fast-break” system and increased their plays from scrimmage by an average of 6.8 per game (in 2011 – 67.6 plays from scrimmage compared to 74.4 in 2012). Not only is the NFL a “copycat” league but with Chip Kelly now implementing his system in Philadelphia it’s going to get more difficult to keep up. Why should this be a concern of the APBA gamer you might ask? The jumping off point for achieving statistical accuracy begins with coming as close as possible to “matching” the total plays from scrimmage. Without this, overall yardage will not be as close resulting in a negative trickle-down effect. I’m currently 3 to 4 plays below the actual average in my 2011 NFL replay using current timing rules (half-plays for incomplete passes, out of bounds plays, injuries, change of possessions, etc.) and it will be even harder keeping pace in the future.
To mitigate this problem, the APBA gamer should have the ability to implement a “hurry-up offense” mode once or twice per game. When implemented, each play would be timed as a “half-play” regardless of the result. The “hurry-up offense” mode should not exceed six consecutive plays. I believe this would go a long way with keeping up with the torrid pace of today’s professional game. Thoughts?
As I was reading your write up I thought the exact same thing, that using half play reagardless is the way to go. One question and one suggestion. The question is will out of bounds plays be a half play as well? The suggestion, in a hurry up I believe you have to limit the plays you call. You plays will not be called the same way as in a huddle. So for example in the hurry up if you call a medium pass perhaps each subswequent play has to be a pass. Vice versa for a run, you call an inside run the next play you call in the hurry up has to be a run. Thoughts?
Shanon,
I believe even “OB” plays need to have some time reduction since time actually came off the clock. For the realism aspect, your suggestion for calling two plays versus one makes perfect sense. My whole goal regarding this is to increase amount of plays because it will be nearly impossible to replicate the speed of the coming season without it.
Sorry for the mispellings.
Makes perfect sense, and a good way to implement that aspect. I’ve been meaning to test a kind of hurry-up mode in face-to-face play, basically treating the game like “lightning chess.” Use an actual 40-second play clock and allow the offense to announce a hurry-up/no-huddle immediately, which means no defensive substitutions. With this, I’d want to use multiple preset “roster cards” to put into play rather than shuffling individual cards between plays. Would you be up for testing some of these concepts in Canton? Would love to add a workshop aspect to the event with some real takeaways for everyone.
I would help you in anyway that I can. My wife and I were discussing the upcoming convention last night and I told her that it would only be appropriate if I rolled a game with my idol, Joe Namath. Since I will be doing a AFL/NFL replay of 1967 next, I think I will be bringing the 1967 Bills/Jets to kick off the season. Very fitting for the Hall of Fame!
I had a couple of ideas…
First for ‘regular years’ how about not recording time for extra points?
Second, maybe for ‘hurry up offenses’ (well, how do we figure out which temas qualify for that, but that is another matter).. maybe just do not record time for short passes that are shorter than 10 yards and/or do not record time for short passes and running plays less than ten yards that are followed by a time out.
Not saying that this is ‘realistic’, but may yield the correct results…
Ron,
In accordance with current rules, extra points are not timed. You bring up a good point, the same rule that applies to after the 26th play of the first half and fourth quarter could be applied for “hurry-up offenses” throughout the game. Whatever the solution, I think we all in agreement that a change needs to occur.
So Greg, where are you leaning? What are you going to employ? And, what teams will you run this with? And, how will you determine when to run it? Love the fact that you try to find solutions for the game as the NFL changes
Mark,
I’m leaning with all gains under 9 yards will be annotated as a “half play” and only be able to run it for a max of 6 straight plays. If I was replaying the 2012 season, I would only use this with New England’s base offense .But watch how many teams this year incorporate it. I try to “bring up” the topics for discussion and am lucky enough to have alot of smart people to lean on.
Talking about smart people, I really wish Phill Molloy would chime in.
I would adopt manual timing in lieu of the default-30-second-full-play APBA timing. I already do this inside the 2-minute warning now (see https://app.box.com/s/0p3wz0t0fcniqb3ouseg). You could just fiddle with this system to adopt it to use in general play when the offense goes to a no-huddle.