I have been debating to myself about using rules, but the more I lose by 3 scores or more by not using them, the more it seems like they are the way to successfully game plan my opponent. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to try.

Below is a chart of a recent game that I had in another league. I went into much time consuming detail of looking at the game log and charting my opp's plays by name, personnel, formation, and play type. As one can see, 27.5% of his personnel and formations is 1-1-3 and 30% of his play types is Short pass while passing 75% of the time he has the ball.



I know there are some rather extremely successful owners who live by rules, so I am asking how would one plan or make rules for this so I would not get beat so bad again.

i think you would key Short Pass in the Play type then put 1-1-3 in the personnel then you would have to have it set to like only 2 quarters or a certain time period of the game so you dont get hit by the overuse play penalty.

I'm by no means an expert when using rules, but I'll chime in.

setherick had a great write up on basic defensive game planning (https://mfn73.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3581?page=1#23686) that I have taken to heart and adapted to my teams. This is what he said about rules:



I usually have 1 offensive rule: a 2-minute drill, and 2 defensive rules for each of my teams: 1 for pass formations and 1 for run formations.

For the 005, 014 and 104 formations there are no run plays so you can conveniently set up a rule to key only pass and use your best pass defenses against those. Other formations are not so straight forward.

In the example you put above this team seems to run mostly passes from the 113 set. You could set up a rule for that particular team that says whenever they use that formation you play pass. I would say probably 50% Neutral, 50% Pass and 0% Run. They also seem to run most often when in the 212 formation so you could do the same thing as well, but slanted toward the run.

Making rules like this is only for that team so you would want to deactivate them after that game and create new ones for your new opponent. I usually name them "TEMP - [formation][team name]." It helps me know which ones are temporary and which I always have turned on.

I've had to experiment a lot with rules and find things that work.

A one game sample size can be deceptive, but there is an easy way to get a bigger sample size and build some rules off of that. In Gameplanning > Scout Offense, filter by Personnel and make sure the "Minimum times used" is set to 1. I prefer to look at an opponents last 16 games to see their trends.

If the info you've shown holds up over a big sampling, a few things jump out at me. They only pass out of the 1/1/3 set, so I'd make a rule to always run pass key against that personnel set. Depending on the coverage skills of your LBs, you can go with a Nickle defense or switch to Dime/Quarter since you won't have to worry about the run.

These same things apply to the 1RB/4WR, 1TE/4WR, and 5WR sets, but that always applies cause there are zero running plays out of those formations ever.

Each game, I always use the Scout Offense area to filter through there formations and see where I can find any sort of advantage. I always tweak my defense's run pass key every game to match up with the opponents tendencies.

Whenever I scout, I use Times Used
32 games - to determine their favorite plays
Current number of season games - to determine if they changed their game plan over the season...for example going from a balanced team to an all run team
Last 5 games - to determine if they found something and are on a streak
Last game - to determine how they played their last game

I typically use 4 games when scouting. Why? Because most people are not changing their plays every single game. Also, numbers are easily divisible by 4 so you know how many times per game your opponent is running a specific play. So if they use the HB counter, but have only run it 7 times in the last 4 games, you might consider going base defensive (which would be nickle in this case) against the set.

A few things that I didn't see mentioned above against this particular opponent. These assume running a cover 5 defense.

1) You could blitz 2 heavily against the 212 set because the owner mostly runs out of this set. Neutral key tho. No need getting burned on a PA pass because your CBs cheated toward the line.

2) Against the 221 set, you'd want to run the only cover 5 GL defensive play in the playbook. The reason why is because your opponent throws those stupid deep passes out of it. If you run any defense other than the cover 5 play you're going to get gouged eventually. That is if you're running any GL defensive plays. I use the cover 5 one and the Attack 3 depending on if my opponent runs or passes out of the set.

3) Against the 122, you'd want to run a nickle scheme in the pass key. In this instance, I've been taking to running the 3 Deep Man Nickle plays where you have a man on the WR1, 2, and 3. This effectively doubles the two WRs and the TE1 on the play.

I saw your PM, but I figured I'd just respond here.

Thnx for the response

What order do the rules decisions go in ?
is it down, time distance or what?

As I understand it, it works from top down in priority.

Yes - starting at the top, first rule to apply is used.