Preliminary disclaimer as always: These are my notes on advanced defensive game planning. Use them as you will. Most importantly, if you disagree, post it here for everyone to debate about.

In this thread, we're going to narrow in on making the most efficient use of the Scouting features and Rules when on a time budget. (I have an extreme time budget, and I know that most of you do as well. These are more or less tips for how to game plan without sinking too much time into it.)

Basic Defensive Game Planning
This thread assumes that you have read this thread: https://paydirt.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3581?page=1

What we will do now is revise the Rules section of the Basic game planning thread. It's still a valuable thread for getting started, so we're not going to revise the whole thing.

Base Game Plan
It's imperative that before continuing you develop a base defensive game plan that you are comfortable with. You're either going to be running this base game plan or falling back to it continuously throughout the game. You need to know when you're blitzing, when you're dropping to cover, and what sets you are using before you start.

Pro Tip before Starting to Advance Game Plan
Before you start your first advanced game plan, here's a pro tip. Open up Notepad, plain Notepad will do since ++ will be overkill here. Now, assuming you're using Windows, press Windows Key + Right Arrow. When the options for the left half of the screen come up, select your browser. Now hover over where the two halves of the screen meet and drag the browser right so that it shrinks the Notepad down to just enough space to write down notes. You will need this. Trust me.

Let's begin.

First Rule - All Passes All the Time
There are three offensive sets that only pass the ball - 005, 014, and 104. The first rule you should create, if you don't already have it built out, is one that goes Dime/Quarter against these sets and keys Pass for all downs, all scores, all game. Your opponent is never going to run out of those sets. The great thing is that you DO NOT NEED to carry more than one or two dime/quarter defensive plays in your playbook because you WILL NEVER BE called for overuse against these offensive sets for running the same dime/quarter play. This was a compromise that JDB put in after we pointed out how easy it would be to exploit overuse by running a spread offense all game.

Scout Offense
A few client releases ago, JDB introduce the ability to sort by offensive set when using the Scout Offense feature. So what I typically do is start by scouting ALL offensive plays and select the ones for scouting that I want my team to gain knowledge in. And then I start going through each set. I typically set the games back to 4 and the number of times used to 1 to filter out the noise.

Here's where your scratch Notepad comes in. Write down the personnel set that you are Scouting and make your notes in the Notepad.

The 113 and 203 Personnel Sets
The first two sets that I look at were kind of covered in the Basic thread. When scouting the 113 and 203, I'm looking for one specific thing: do teams run out of these sets?

If my opponent runs, and especially if he runs the HB Counter, I want to know when he is running out of the set. I will quickly open another tab and look at the last game that my opponent played and keyword search for specific plays. In my experience, most people that run out of these sets typically do so on 1st or 2nd down, and sometimes, 3-Short.

If my opponent does run out of those sets, and I can quickly find the pattern for when he runs, I'm going to create a rule that goes to Normal Defensive Backfield so that I have all of my LBs on the field at once. I'm also probably going to Blitz 1 or 2, but stay in a Neutral key. I'm only going to do this for the downs where my opponent is most likely to run these plays.

Remember that your Base Defense is going to default Nickle against the 113 and 203. So it's better to have the rule here to go back to the normal backfield.

If my opponent doesn't run, Base Defense.

The 122 Set
This set is special. It only has one really good running play, but that play is a gouger if you're not prepared for it. It also has three passing plays that will destroy your team if you're not ready for them.

If my opponent runs the medium and long passes heavily out of this set, here's what I've been building in response: Nickle 3-Deep Man with M2M on the WR1, 2, and 3. This effectively double covers the WRs and the TE1. This means that the HB will be likely uncovered, but it's worth it since good teams will wreck your secondary passing the medium and long passing plays.

If your opponent runs heavily out of this set, Base Defense is fine.

The 212
Not spending much time with this since you'll be in Base Defense most of the time against it. If you see your opponent doing something silly with it, add a rule to counter it, but don't forget to remove the rule later.

Goal line sets - 221, 230, 311
There are two goal line defensive plays you should keep in your playbook and that is all: Attack #3 (or 1 or 2 doesn't really matter which, 3 is my favorite for reasons) and the 3-Deep Man. The 3-Deep Man play is the only Cover 5 GL defensive play.

The first thing you need to do is override the line up and move the LB that plays behind the DT to the LDE2 spot and bring your FS into the LB spot. That puts your three LBs and Safeties on the field at once instead of bringing in a second LDE, which is not going to help you.

The reason for the override has to do with when teams pass. If your opponent strictly runs out of one of the GL sets, you build a rule that will counter with your Attack #3. If they run and pass, then you build a rule that counters with your 3-Deep Man. If they strictly pass, then you have options: counter with the 3-Deep Man defensive play or run a Normal/Nickle defensive backfield against the set.

Bonus pro tip: I've seen a lot more people running the 311 PA Bomb without running any other plays out of the 311. This is silly, and not just because I hate the play, but because it's really easy to counter. Almost every defensive playbook has the Normal Defensive backfield Double WR1. This play is a Man Secondary, Blitz 1 play. Want to know why I have that memorized? Because I've built so many rules to cover just this one play.

Blitz the Run
Most players have known for a long time that the Blitz 2 is the way to go, but I don't know how many of them have figured out the why. Blitzing in MFN right now is essentially run blitzing in that the LBs attack the gaps. When you know your opponent is most likely to run, Blitz 2 with abandon. Your LBs will fill the gap, and hopefully, your DL will hold up the OL.

To Drop Cover or to Blitz?
You have to answer this question for yourself. I build my defenses with the idea that I'm going to blitz the run and drop cover on the pass. I need LBs that are fast with OK cover skills. Also, remember that your LBs are in more pass coverage than you think if you're having them on the field for the 113 and 203 sets.

Zone defensive plays
Hey wait did you just mention the 3 Deep Man? I sure did. When doing advanced game planning, you have the opportunity to mix in more zone defensive plays. Here's where I've found these the most effective.

1. Opponent throws short out of a specific set most of the time. - Here's where having a good set of zone defensive plays that you can swap in is nice. Zone "works" by putting defenders in the passing

2. Opponent runs heavily out of a set, but occasionally throws a pass. - A lot of the blitz 2 plays are in zone schemes. If your opponent is running most of the time out of a specific set, don't forget to include these blitz 2 plays.

3. Opponent throws a lot of short passes out of the 113 or 203 when NOT running the ball in those sets. - This is a good time to crank up the zone blitz. You get the run blitz while still covering the passing lanes. As long as their is no threat of your opponent going over the top, you're good.

Conclusion
In general, it takes me between 5 and 10 minutes to put together a defensive game plan for each opponent. It can take me more if I want to swap defensive plays in and out of my playbook, but in general 5 to 10 minutes.

I was wondering about that and now I know...glad to hear that the Dime/Quarter defenses can't be hit with the over-use. I'll need to make slight adjustments after hearing this.

Keep in mind that if you overuse Dime/Quarter defenses against other sets - 113 or 203 for example - you can get hit with an overuse penalty. But that penalty should only apply against the 113 or 203 sets.

I tend to keep 2-5 dime/quarter defenses depending on how frequently I think they'll be called. Not just because of overuse, but to vary my coverage and blitz schemes.

Okay, thank you for the assistance. Valuable information. I'm in the right window then with the amount of plays I have since they can be exploited if I have too few of them from the sets you listed. (3 WR sets) Really cool stuff in these notes.

Where do you do a keyword search in the game that your opponent played last do you do it in the log the play-by-play or where

Yes, in the game log. You can also download these and sort on plays or downs to get a fuller picture of what your opponent does.

nope don't see it. of course I am not that good with pc's anyway anymore