Sarge

Thanks as always for doing this. There will definitely be some DEs moving to DT to shore up talent gaps which is why I didn't go too hard at the position. These are always great for a second lense on my roster.

Subscriber Request! ///////////////////////////////// Salt Lake City, UT As red and white confetti fell from the rafters, Utah’s finest celebrated in the middle of the field as they hoisted their coach onto several players’ shoulders. The Utes, led by Coach SageBow close the season 7-6 with a resounding 40-21 victory over Coach Kgreene, Paul and the Tulane Green Wave. The atmosphere at SoFi stadium for the Sriracha Bowl was electric and deservingly so as Troy Young won the MVP award and finished with 287 all purpose yards, 5 total touchdowns, and singlehandedly dispatched the Green Wave. There was no way to stop the red from running all over PMS and Tulane’s bowl game dreams. Reports have surfaced that the AD of Utah has definitive intentions of extending the ball coach after the up and down season as the program over the last three years has been trending upwards. This is especially important as it’d bring stability and long term security for players and coaching staff alike after this inaugural season in their new conference. Conference play was as middle of the road as the entirety of the schedule but it’s definitely a bright spot. The Big 12 is one of the most competitive conferences in all of college football and the upper echelon teams need to be weary of a resurgent Utah program on the rise. Initially, it seemed Coach SageBow thought that Holden was ready for the big lights, letting him uncork it over 30 times in the first two games but with back to back crushing losses, a one point to Syracuse and another close one to Utah State, the curtains fell on Holden’s arm as it was relegated to hand-off duties as Young became the focal point of the offense. Despite the losses piling up, there was a lot of optimism built in the program after the TCU game as 2-3 Utes took TCU to the absolute brink, coming up four points short. This would later be evident as they played typically great Houston to within one point and absolutely dismantled a ranked Arizona State squad in an absolute thumping. From that ASU game forward, Utah would turn its season around from being 2-5 to finishing it out 4-1, the lone loss coming to Colorado and earning its bowl berth with a win over BYU. A lot could be said about Utah’s offensive firepower behind Young and Holden’s rushing attack, but what most people don’t talk about is Utah’s defense. Utah finished #4 in the conference in points allowed, Total Yards allowed, and 5th in sacks despite having one of the worst turnover margins (-1) in the conference. Coach SageBow has a lot to look forward to and there should be plenty of optimism heading into next season with the roster, which we’ll cover here: Notable Departures: A OVR - Sr RB Troy Young (Speed): 2,192 Rushing Yards, 23 Rushing Touchdowns, 8.45 YPC 261 Receiving Yards, 3 Receiving Touchdowns Troy Young gave NFL scouts a lot to consider with his pure running ability, ELITE speed, strength, and football IQ. It will be hard to argue against Young falling past the third round regardless of how deep the RB class is. Likely Replacement: B+ OVR – (So) Joe Lopez (Power): 476 Rushing yards, 2 Rushing Touchdowns, 6.26 YPC A four star recruit out of the state of Georgia, Lopez is a completely different build from Young but what he lacks in gamebreaking speed, he makes up for with his exceptional strength, ball security and pass blocking. A OVR - Sr FS JC Gentry (Run Stopper): 66 Tackles, 4.5 Tackles for Loss, 1.5 Sacks An absolute hammer that filled the box and the stat sheet all year, Gentry has to be a high target for NFL GMs looking to add a complete safety with serviceable coverage skills and elite tackling ability. Gentry led the team in tackles and consistently got linebackers and his other DBs in the right spot at the line of scrimmage. It’s going to be a significant loss for a secondary that doesn’t have a thumper like Gentry ready and waiting. Likely Replacement: B OVR – Sr FS Lenny Durant (Zone Coverage) OR B OVR Fr FS Vincent Chatham 4 Tackles (Durant) Lenny has colossal shoes to fill and is a completely different mold of player. If he doesn’t prove that he deserves to be on the field, it’s likely we’ll see Chatham as a Redshirt Freshman take the field and own the starting spot there. What Chatham lacks in development he’s well ahead of the curve in forcing the QB to put the ball in his hands and flipping the field for the Utes. Look Ahead to 2025: The Utes have done a fantastic job with gradually improving year after year and this one is no exception, but they are losing a LOT of seniors this year to the draft or post football lives to where there might be legitimate concerns from Coach Sage and his roster next year as Utah continues its new journey in the loaded Big 12. Passing Yards - 1420 - Returning production - 96% Passing Touchdowns - 10 - Returning production - 100% Rushing Yards - 4,498 - returning production - 50% Rushing Touchdowns - 43 - returning production - 55% Receiving Yards - 1420 - returning production - 66% Receiving Touchdowns - 10 - returning production - 20% Sacks - 41 - returning sack production - 54% TFLs - 62 - returning TFL production - 58% Interceptions - 10 - Returning INT production - 30% Holden is a obvious boon for the offensive side of the ball as he is essentially the bulk of the returning rushing yards and essentially all of the passing production. The biggest concerns here are where will the turnovers generate from in the secondary and the Sack/TFL numbers will be tough to reproduce. Projected 2025 Depth Chart: Rising stars to look out for next season: DT Norman Burton OT Andreas Shields CB Michael Summers DE Gilberto Torres Recruiting: Utah (at the moment) looks positioned to finish #12, and no worse than owning a top 15 class in the country. They got themselves a huge commitment from OLB Steve Rogers, a 5* Coverage type out of New York with tremendous upside and could possibly find himself forcing the issue and trying to fend off a redshirt with his immense talent. Heir-apparent quarterback 4* William Short also comes in with the 2024 class, who will most likely take a redshirt to maximize his starting time in the future. Ultimately, Utah finished its recruiting class with one 5*, eight 4*s, ten 3*s, and six 2*s that’ll likely turn into some decent depth pieces. I think the arrow is pointing up for the Utes and with the right development plan and scheme, they’ll be an even more difficult out sooner than people think. This wraps up our recap of the Utah Utes and their fantastic season! Thanks for reading and see you again soon. Thanks for @SageBow for the small pieces of info!

It's so wild to see only 3 quarterbacks going in the first and two theoretically being drafted behind entrenched starters. This is the year to get your franchise quarterback imo because there's 4-5 absolute studs and QB is going to either go on a run at the top of the first or there will be incredible value in the second.

The committee has two weeks left to produce the playoffs roster. Who's your Darkhorses to make the playoffs and or win the national championship? NFL is entering the last third of the season and playoffs picture is beginning to take shape with the LA Rams already securing a spot. What are you thoughts on sleeper playoff teams or Darkhorses down the stretch in the NFL?

Alright coaches. It’s almost been a full calendar year (outside of sim) since I last dropped my first gameplan guide. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight of knowing all these changes were coming to the sim before I dropped it so with all the dynamic engine changes Rocketcan put under the hood and Tuscan helped bring to life on the interface for us gameplanning junkies, let’s give another guide to gameplanning. NOTE: I am not the end all be all at gameplanning. I’m only writing this because… A) I think it could be helpful to new coaches who need a jumping point in the sim B) I think it could be helpful to existing coaches to give them a different perspective C) It’s very understandable that not everyone wants their own processes put out into the public and all their own secrets to gameplanning made available so I am more than happy to provide in order to help the community. NOTE 2: I don’t have a ton of experience with rushing heavy schemes but I firmly believe that they’re an untapped area that can still be HIGHLY effective in our CFB/NFL sim. I once again need to reiterate that gameplanning is MY favorite thing and recruiting is other peoples’ favorite thing. If you have any questions about the guide please don’t hesitate to reach out to me in the discord via either of #simNFL, #simCFB, or #mentor-help NOTE 3: I will be redacting some info from my gameplan since we’re mid-season!! Okay, so we have our next game coming up. What’s your workflow Coach Sarge? The first thing I do in no particular order is open up: My Depth Chart My Opponent’s Depth Chart Sarge’s Gameplanning Guide My Opponent’s Last 2-3 games (to include preseason in NFL or ‘scrimmages’ in college if we’re at Week 0 or Week 1) Additionally, I like to use a tool @alexfall862 introduced that allows you to take an exported game report of an opponent, it parses it and consolidates key information such as frequency of plays ran for offensives. THIS IS ONLY 70%-ish of the FIGHT. We need to reference gameflow when digesting this information which I’ll cover later. P.S. - @Piercewise1 has a similar tool you can use as well that does pivot tables for data you're looking for!! Order of how I work: 1. Reference Opponent Depth Chart 2. Reference Opponent Last 2-3 Games 3. My Depth Chart 4. My Gameplan 5. Agonize 6. Save Gameplan You’re going to follow along with me while I gameplan for an opponent. STEP 1 Previously before Scheme Fits and their penalties (can be found on the interface under your gameplan options on the left), how an opponent configured their Depth Chart was an important piece. It’s still important, but less so because some players may or may not be scheme fits for your own scheme as well as your opponent’s. It’s still necessary to identify what your opponent is fielding. Here, we’ll use: https://www.simfba.com/topic/5973-106-simfba-scheme-changes-part-1-new-schemes-personnel-and-scheme-fits/#comment-20976 This is Dev Diary #106 that covers what player archetypes meet with scheme bonus and malus effects. USE THIS AS REFERENCE INSTEAD OF CHANGING YOUR OWN SCHEME ON THE INTERFACE SO THAT YOU DON’T ACCIDENTALLY SAVE YOUR GAMEPLAN AND INCUR A PENALTY FOR SCHEME CHANGING. There’s only certain positions I personally think are critical in the gameplanning process when looking at your opponent’s depthchart: Opponent DL OVR Opponent OL OVR/Archetype QB OVR/Archetype RB OVR WR OVR/Archetype CB OVR What do we know about our Opponent’s DL? We don’t know opposing defensive schemes unfortunately but it doesn’t matter too much in my opinion as long as we look at starting edges and at least two deep at DT. The immediate thing that jumps to me is that he’s playing a DE at DT. While there is a negligible amount of drop-off there for out of position penalties (there is a dev diary I published covering them), there’s still a small one that exists. So, his best player on his front four is probably going to perform the same as his other linemates. The opponent essentially has on average an all B DLine (but credit to them for starting very young players to get them snaps). We note that. What do we know about our Opponent’s OL? I won’t insult intelligence here by posting another picture for all the other positions. The opponent has a good blend of pass and run blocking guys making it tough for me just on paper to decipher what they’re going to do offensively. That’s okay! We have other tools later! Their Center is Balanced and the others are 2 run blocking and 2 pass blocking. All B OVR. What do we know about our Opponent’s QB? So, I have my own gameplan open, and if I click on defense, it will indicate the offense my opponent is running. Here we can see that my opponent runs a West Coast Offense. Referencing the DD106, and referencing the opposing Depth Chart we can see that their starter is a Balanced QB, so he does not receive a bonus or malus running the offense. He should be able to pilot the offense adequately and is a young QB with B OVR. It’s good info. What do we know about our Opponent’s RB? The opponent’s RB is an A- and a stud, but his receiving archetype is the same situation as the QB. Not a bonus or malus. We just need to keep an eye on his elite ability to catch the ball since he’s an A+ in catching at his position and a B+ if playing as a WR. (We’ll cover that here in a sec) What do we know about our Opponent’s WRs? The opponent has two problem children at WR which are an A OVR Route Runner and the RB. When you move a player out of position, depending on their archetype they’ll incur varying amounts of penalties from small, medium and finally large. The RB is a Receiving RB playing the #4 WR in 4 wide sets so we know he’ll take a small penalty but still be great since all his attributes are almost as good as their A OVR WR who’s a traditional WR. We also need to be aware that their A OVR WR is #2 on the depth chart and this could influence our CB matchups. What do we know about our Opponent’s CBs? The entire CB room is extremely young and he’s swapping from formerly running Man cover guys to Zone. Thery’re all B OVRs but nothing jumps out at me. SARGE. WHAT THE HELL DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS INFO? Glad you asked. Set it aside because we’re going even DEEPER. I referenced a tool Nebraska/Denver Broncos Coach alexfalls produced. He released a rough copy, but it may have gotten lost in the ether. He’ll be releasing a full updated version soon. This application isn’t an advantage, it’s just digesting the information from Play-By-Plays for you and making it into easy-to-read trends so that you’re not going line by line in the Play-By-Play of old games (like I used to do). STEP 2 Let’s navigate to the Schedule page. Then keep the schedule filter on “Team”. We’re going to select our opponent. Now, I’m only going to look at the last game for the sake of this guide and build my gameplan using its information. First, I’m going to export the game results and then open it using Alex’s tool. The only thing I’ve been referencing lately is the opponent’s offensive trends since I run my offense a particular way and I don’t look at the defense TOO much. My opponent has a tendency to favor Right side Outside runs but that’s not the big eye popper for me. It’s the Pass to Run tendency. He passed ~75% of the time. That’s good info. Additionally, lots of play action because opponents don’t want to get burned by their A- RB. STEP 3 Now, we’re very much deep into the season so I’m not tinkering with my depth chart as much. The biggest note I’ll give here is pay attention to your defensive schemes and who’s getting a bonus/malus. Thoughts you should be having as you make depth chart changes for a specific matchup: Is the trade off worth it? Lets say my defense is a BAD SCHEME FIT for a Run Stopper OLB, but my opponent runs the ball a lot and his Run Stopping ability is the highest in the LB room. Is the trade off for him taking a slight malus in performance worth having a guy more effective at stopping the run? Should I try to get a better matchup for my WR against weaker CBs? How does that affect target share and how much that WR is on the field? i.e. – If you move your best WR to WR3 to try to matchup with a weaker corner, not every formation runs three wide receivers and you could hamstring yourself. Additional depth chart notes: Try to cater your scheme to your stars. If you have an A OVR QB/RB, they will essentially elevate the rest of your team if they’re getting a scheme bonus on top of them already being an A OVR player. Or, on the flip side, if your QB for example is young and a C or B OVR, try to give them a boost by running them in a good scheme fit offense. This can be applied to all positions if you like, not just the flashy ones. Gameplan/DC to your strengths or do it to cover your weaknesses!! STEP 4 Time to address our gameplan. I’ve redacted a lot of information from my gameplan because I’m releasing this mid-season but fear not! I will give you a lot of what I use for guiding principles. 4A. Offensive Formations Every scheme has specific scheme fits for player archetypes whether they be good or bad. Something else to keep in mind is the min-max for play-types you’d like to run. If you have a stud running back, you’re going to hamstring his ability to have the ball in his hands often if you run Air Raid or Verticals for example. The biggest thing in my opinion we need to keep in mind is how do I get as many of my best players on the field at the same time? You can run up to as many as all five formations or as few as two and split the ratio 50/50. If you do only run two formations, they both must be evenly split. You cannot run any formation higher than 50 so there’s also that. I highly suggest if you want to run a player as the focal point of your offense, whether it be a stud QB, RB, WR or even TE, you tailor your scheme to fit them. ALSO ALSO, make sure you check your QB’s Shotgun rating/preference. DD#108 covers information on QB Shotgun ratings. https://www.simfba.com/topic/6000-108-simfba-scheme-changes-part-2-new-attributes/#comment-20919 4B. Offensive Distributions Here we can see all our players and how they stack onto the field by way of our depth chart. Things to note: If your TE is also lining up at WR in a particular formation, you MUST make sure their target distribution is the SAME. i.e. TE1 Billy Joe you have for 5, you must set WR Billy Joe also to 5. Make sure you are selecting a route bonus for your pass catchers and CATER them to the types of routes they run the most.. i.e. – Speed receivers have specific attributes that are checked for LONG passes, so you’d want to specify “Long” for your Speed WRs typically. Running Backs aren’t running elaborate pass patterns out of the backfield so Quick or Short would generally be used for them. Running distributions are BEST CASE SCENARIO. Just because you’ve elected to run the ball 50% of the time in your Offensive Formations and set your RB to a high carry share doesn’t mean they’ll always get that because of game flow (if you’re down), injuries, stamina, etc. Run Type Distributions super important! Each type of run is catered to RBs of specific archetypes. Additionally, if your best run blockers are on the outside, you likely want to run to the outside and vice-versa. Sometimes it’s wise to play a SLIGHTLY worse RB whose archetype fits your OL layout AND run types. Option Distributions (I am readily admitting I’m not smart enough on it yet and need to sit down and talk with people who run option offenses.) Pass Type Distributions are IMPORTANT. There’s no sense in running the max amount of long passes if all your WRs are slow as hell like Red Zone Threats or Possession guys. Additionally, if your QB doesn’t have the arm it doesn’t make sense to force the issue either. Screens are your blitz beating tool and Play Action is incredibly helpful for obvious reasons. RPOs are a great tool if your QB has an excellent FBIQ because it is a PART of what determines if your QB made the correct read or not. 4C. General Offense Notes Try to find the weakest part of a defense and try to attack it. I know it sounds obvious but I think we tend to forget about it when gameplanning. If a team’s left side of their DL is weaker than the right, run at them. If their LBs are the worst part of their defense, get your TE to abuse them. 4D. Defense Defense is one of the things I love the most and I consider it my strong suit as opposed to running an offense. While we don’t have as many fine details as the offensive side of the ball, the tools we have are all pretty powerful. Things to consider when gameplanning Defensively: Defensive Scheme should benefit your position group that you treasure most. So if you love your DL and LBs, cater your scheme around it. If you think your secondary is generational, run a scheme that benefits it OR buff your weaker DL and LB to make yourself more balanced. CHECK YOUR OPPONENT’S OPPOSING OFFENSIVE SCHEME. Make sure your formation provides enough dudes to cover the opposing WRs! If they’re running 12 personnel, there’s no sense in lining up in a Dime package. I TYPICALLY aggressively blitz obvious passing formations. I understand that there’s inherent risk in that but it’s just something I do. If you send out 3-5 WRs at me, I’m sending the house at you. A great guide that breaks down blitzing and how many blitzers are sent can be found in @Rocketcan's old gameplan guide https://www.simfba.com/topic/1926-simcfb-gameplan-guide/#comment-6206 Ignore most of the early stuff because of updates to the sim and skip down to Blitzing. RUN TO PASS. THE LOWER THE NUMBER MEANS THE MORE YOU WANT TO DEFEND THE PASS RUN TO PASS. THE LOWER THE NUMBER MEANS THE MORE YOU WANT TO DEFEND THE PASS RUN TO PASS. THE LOWER THE NUMBER MEANS THE MORE YOU WANT TO DEFEND THE PASS RUN TO PASS. THE LOWER THE NUMBER MEANS THE MORE YOU WANT TO DEFEND THE PASS RUN TO PASS. THE LOWER THE NUMBER MEANS THE MORE YOU WANT TO DEFEND THE PASS - Focus Plays: 1 play gives you a large bonus to the one play with no maluses. 2 plays gives you a small bonus to those two plays and no maluses, and 3 plays gives you a small bonus to those 3 plays, but maluses to all other plays (UNLESS YOU ARE COMING OFF OF A BYE WEEK) - Pitch and Dive focus I don’t have enough experience on personally. Best advice I can give is if you think a QB is going to keep the ball most of the time in an option offense, turn up the Dive and vice versa if you think he’s gonna pitch it to the RB more often. -Double Team I don’t use because I don’t think it’s worth allowing other WRs to run rampant and break the game open. Other coaches are too good at gameplanning AND recruiting to allow the WR2 or WR3 to kill the defense. It’s not worth the risk to me. - Don’t be afraid to blitz safeties and corners! You especially need to reference the defensive formations you’ll be in. For example, 4-3 Heavy runs an extra safety inside the box instead of a linebacker. - Obvious last thing but make sure your coverages for your Linebackers and Corners match their archetype. If you have a Ballhawk CB/SS/FS or Field General/Speed LB just check what coverage they are best at in their attributes. STEP 5 Look at your gameplan, cry, tweak, cry some more, pray if you want, cry, tweak, look at gameplan. STEP 6 Save and hope. ////////////////////// I'll try to keep this updated as the game updates! Please feel free to post questions in here or @ me on discord. Also feel free to discuss gameplanning philosophies here and I hope this guide was helpful to someone! Let me know your thoughts! - Coach Sarge

@Rocketcan, week 8 Tennessee @ UGA, 1QTR, Tennessee gets an injured OT and I proceed to sack the QB a record 23 times. I did have a lot of sliders set up for blitzing but it's worth looking into whether the injury was conducive to all the sacks or if blitzing needs balancing. @tsweezy

Post proposals here for the early declaration of Juniors and RS Juniors. Tagging @TuscanSota @Rocketcan @smackemz @subsequent @Kirby for posterity. Please keep proposals in mind that Tuscan or whoever else literally has to create something and there's already a current system in place. Please reference the dev diary for Early Declares before proposing. An ideal proposal maintains the initial system and likely expands on it.

I love smack. Please treat us the same way you treat WVU.

Landrum is winning the heisman barring injury. Landrum is probably going first overall. 10 new ranked times in the top 25. Carolina gets 10 wins this season. NYJ finishes with a record worthy of a top 5 pick, which ends up in the hands of Carolina.

55 13 14 2 11:05 Carolina Panthers 0 0 3 Denver Broncos XP N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 0 Man Man Man 70385 0 0 0 40 K Michael Rogers's extra point attempt is good. 56 14 14 2 11:05 Carolina Panthers 0 0 35 Carolina Panthers Kickoff N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 0 Man Man Man 70385 69984 0 0 84 K Michael Rogers kicks for 64 yards. Fielded at the 1 yardline by RB Hue Khan. RB Hue Khan returns the ball 16 yards. TOUCHDOWN! 57 14 20 2 10:57 Denver Broncos 0 0 3 Carolina Panthers XP N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 0 Man Man Man 4999 0 0 0 40 K Elih Obada's extra point attempt is good. 58 14 21 2 10:57 Denver Broncos 0 0 35 Denver Broncos Kickoff N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 0 Man Man Man 4999 62531 0 0 86 K Elih Obada kicks for 66 yards. Fielded deep in the endzone by WR Jose Maldonado. WR Jose Maldonado returns the ball 14 yards. Denver got a touchdown for a 16 yard return that started at the 1 in the 2nd Quarter.

This will be an ongoing topic that will highlight an individual player selected by a coach who is a subscriber in the discord! Here we'll shine a spot light on some known (and maybe unknown) players around the college football landscape. Let's jump on in! Stanford Cardinals - Coach: @Ricky Campbell Vontae Knebel Jr. is heading into his senior year and is heralded as one of the best running back prospects in the upcoming draft and lovers of former Hawaii standout and now NFL rookie Richard Bianchi might want to take a look at the numbers Vontae Knebel has put up and prepare to blush. 2023 Highlights (National Ranking): Rushing Yards (1,854): 12th Rushing TDs (17): T9th Receiving Yards (538): Top 30 among RBs Total Touchdowns (19) 2,392 All-Purpose yards 6.55 yards per touch (Total Yards / receptions+carries) Last season (2023), Vontae Knebel was #12 in the nation in total rushing yards. #1 thru #11 all played more games than him, the average being at least 2 more games than Vontae played in given Stanford's luck last season and barely missing a bowl as the team went 5-7. If you think that's incredible for a Junior, try looking at his true Sophmore year stats. 2022 Highlights (National Ranking): Rushing Yards (2,671): 2nd Rushing TDs (23): T3rd Receiving Yards (564): Top 25 among RBs Total Touchdowns (27) 3,235 All-Purpose yards 6.28 yards per touch (Total Yards / receptions+carries) Knebel has been carrying (literally and metaphorically) the Stanford Cardinal on his back for two entire seaons and you'd be hard pressed to find a more impressive player at the running back position in 2024. Last year in 2023 Knebel took on less of a workload at the discrestion of the coaches but it didn't affect his numbers whatsoever. Both in 2022 and 2023 the leader of Stanford's offense was a first down machine and was as guaranteed as anyone in the country to give five yards as he averaged 5.83 yards per carry both seasons! Of note in Vontae's development is that his fumbles in 2022, 12, dropped (no pun intended) dramatically to 4 between rushing and receiving duties combined. Ball security wasn't the issue in 2023 but more of the lack of sustained drives as the program moved on to a new Quarterback. With his senior season coming up, Vontae Knebel has his eyes forward on bringing Stanford back to bowl season and more in their new conference. If you weren't familiar with his work, you are now.

This was awesome to read. Thanks to all the other coaches that answered! Can't wait for the kickoff.

Username: Sarge Team Requesting For: Georgia Bulldogs / Carolina Panthers Announcer: Yes? (Verne Lundquist?) Tier Subscription (on Discord): Tier Two

Georgia/BGSU will be game of the year

Spencer Strider would like a word.