On offense, does it choose play type first or personnel first? I'm assuming play type (Outside Run, Inside Run, Short Pass, Medium Pass, Long Pass) first, then choose personnel, then choose a play in the group.

On defense, I assume it does DB first, then LB, then play.

Is this correct?

Just trying to better understand the game.

Especially on offense (but I will eventually get to it on defense once I understand the way defense is set up), I want it to choose the play type first, as I have personnel set 100% across the board. So on 3rd and short, I want to call an inside run the majority of the time... not have a chance to be in a 5WR set (unless I have a QB sneak or QB draw play!) :)

On defense, I don't quite understand the play type groupings yet. For example there are some plays in the Zone group but there aren't any players in a zone in the play... I would group them differently, but it's probably because of the way I think. I would group in coverage type (Zone, Man, Zone/Man mix), then in defense focus (Run or Pass). So, Zone would be that everyone in coverage is in a zone. Zone/Man is there are some man to man and some zone guys (typical defense is a 2 deep man coverage, where the LBs and CBs are in man, the safeties are in deep zone). Then you can have straight man to man coverages. These are most often used to double a player or players, or even triple cover a player. Great for going against a team with one great receiver, you can triple team that receiver all day, LOL. Straight man is where most heavy blitzes would fall. Man Zone would be one blitzer (or in a 3-4, two blitzers), allowing man to man coverage plus a guy in a zone. Straight zone would have a good mix of blitzes and full out zone... this is also where you'd find the prevent defense with 2 or maybe 3 rushers and everyone else in a zone. I think this would simplify the defense and make it more situationally friendly. Just my opinion on the defense. Defense has always been my favorite part of the game, especially after Buddy Ryan coached my Eagles, and, more recently, the late great Jim Johnson.

Here's how it works:

The offense loads all the selected plays into the playbook. For each situation, each play is given a weight based on the personnel and the play type. This is exactly what you see when you look at the plays below each quadrant. Then, a play is randomly selected from this set with higher probability given to plays with higher weight; so a play with a full red bar will have twice as much chance of being chosen as a play with 50% bar.

On defense, the personnel is decided based on the offensive personnel - i.e. if there are 3 WR's, the defense will choose plays that are in a nickel. If there are no nickel plays available then it works its way down through a normal defense; if the offense is in a 1 or 0 WR set then the defense attempts to play a goal line defense, if no plays are available it works its way up to normal, nickel, dime, and quarter, until it finds a personnel set that it can choose a play from. Then it chooses a play from the available plays with that personnel, using the same weight algorithm as the offensive plays.

I appreciate your comments and will look more closely at them - I will admit that I'm the opposite as you, I grew up watching Mike Shanahan and John Elway and have a much more offensive mindset than defensive. So I am certainly open to ideas as to how to make the defensive game planning work better.