On Strat-O-Matic Football rosters and schedules…
Since it came up again on the Forum:
Question came up why Dick James (who led the team in ints with 3) is not listed as a cornerback for the 1959 Washington Redskins. Most DBs of that era were strapping guys who played in run support; James was 5 feet 9 and 179 pounds, most sources including PJ Troup have seven DBs listed as starters for the four defensive backfield positions and James is not one of them.
I think I got it right in that Ben Scotti Gary Glick, Doyle Nix, and Dick Haley all had 8 or more starts, and Richie McCabe and Chuck Cichowski both started some. Bill Stits played for two teams in 1959. but In general I try to place at least two sub DBs on the card so the team is playable, but I don’t try to have every player who made a play carded. That’s a baseball thing, in football we are trying to get playable rosters over some arbitrary goal of completeness.
Simply put, there is no requirement that I’ve heard that stipulates every player who made a play needs to be carded at every position. This action has not been performed for most if not all seasons we have made; it would be a heckuva data check to have to try this for all the seasons we have carded. The effort would not be, in the parlance, a piece of cake.
In the case of the 1959 Redskins they were manifestly horrible against the pass, turning the Fifties quarterbacks they faced into 1976 Bert Jones on the aggregate, so it should be obvious that any additional backs that were uncarded should be zeros.
A few observations….
SOM rosters, like the game itself, are an abstraction. While every effort is made to have them be 100 percent accurate what I see on the internet is not always the best interpretation. To me nothing beats film, or contemporary accounts from newspapers of the time; there’s less of a filter there.
Even in the case of data I have, I still have been known to flip defenders or receivers on occasion when I know they did this to promote positional balance across a season. You don’t need to do this for 1980 with all those teams, but sometimes you need to make a split end a flanker to balance the position across only twelve teams. I’ve made TEs TE/SEs where it made sense to card as such, and I’ve made HBs SE/FLKR as well to fill out positions. I try to be consistent, and it helps to have worked surrounding seasons.
In short SOM Football rosters are not intended nor were they ever intended to be archival repositories of NFL History, they were intended to support our gameplay. And as such some hard decisions need to be made to make that work.
Same with schedules. One of the quirks of the league utility is the play next week feature. On occasion (although it is thankfully rare) some games need to be moved a day one way or the other in the schedule to make this feature work. I would say this happens once or twice in a season when it happens at all, and maybe in every other season or so in the Seventies. People post on these all the time, and the answer usually is we tried the historical schedule and the autoplay threw an error. So we had to adjust this timeline somewhat. The SOM schedule is not meant to be the NFL historical record, it is meant to ensure teams play the right opponents and the right games, hopefully in the right order. (That I don’t think I ever changed.)
Same with QB schedules. Now I get into a lot of trouble when I mention I don’t go with the starter as the starter in our file 100 pct of the time. In the case where attempts are split I might look at the season and the fraction of attempts the QBs had. We can’t rotate QBs by drive so my goal would be to realistically split the work by the right opponents for each QB on the roster. I make QBs versus their opponents and vice versa, so the QB schedule is absolutely critical especially in a smaller season.
A good example might be the late Fifties Giants where they used Don Heinrich as a “starter” in 10 games but he would usually play part of the first quarter to give Charley Conerly a better look at the defense from the sidelines. Heinrich usually only had a small fraction of attempts, so I might give him starts in the games where he has the most attempts. This scheduling of a QB “starter” is not reflective of NFL history, but it’s reflective that Conerly actually played the most in most of these games. In order for the results of seasons to work you have to give Conerly the starts he needs to get attempts against the defenses he faced. Thankfully gamers can change the Quarterback schedule, but it still causes some angst.
Hope this helps. Fred
James led the defense in interceptions you nenard. But oh yea, lets put in the punter as a DB. The only time that player was carded as a DB btw. The three previous years, James was carded as a 4 DB, a 5 FS, and a 4 FS. And his grade would be based on his performance and not the team being bad. An obvious choice would be to make him a 4 FS just like the starter is rated.
ReplyDeleteYou did a bad job with 1957. The Lions do not win the West as much as they should. Replays show a flaw. Sacks are a problem. They threw the ball 361 times and had 210 yards lost by sacks. Their opponents threw the ball 290 times with 255 yards lost by sacks +45 yards in sacks. They are often -25-50 yards.
And what is the deal with the 49ers only having 1 backup on the d line? And he's a starting LBer??? Ever hear of famous playoff game that year? It was between the Lions and 49ers where the Niners blew a big lead and lost. Easy to see who the backups are as the starters are numbered 72, 73, 74, 75. On the games highlight film, you can see number 70,76, and 78 on the D line that game. Dahms, Gonzaga, and Cross More proof you do not have the thought process to take it too the next level.
1959 for James 1957 for the other comments
DeleteChichowski played in 1 game in 1959 and was not the punter
Delete“And what is the deal with the 49ers only having 1 backup on the d line? And he's a starting LBer??? ”
DeleteThe names you mention are clearly offensive linemen.
So Neft And Cohen listed Henke, Herchman, Nomellini, Tonef and Powell as lineman with Powell as OE, DE and LB.
TJ Troup mentioned those four linemen and said Powell moved from DE to linebacker but could not hold his starting job. All true. But ESPN had Rubke also in during the season as a 5th lineman in their holdover 5-2, a position Marv Matuszak also played. Shoehorning this team into the 4-3, what you find is both Powell and Rubke are 4 pass rush 0 rated linebackers, so you could play either. By all written accounts that’s how the season played. Now in that playoff game the Niners took a lot of injuries, to the point where they had a lot of guys playing out of position, which is why the Lions 🦁 savaged them in the second half. So I’m not as inclined to believe film on this. I also had a book somewhere on the 57 Niners; because they were the first team I did. So stupid as I might be, I do know how to read.
Master file I have lists Sam Baker (which is correct) as Redskin Punter in 1959. If your setup is jumbled you might restore default lineups.
ReplyDeleteAs far as 1957, the Lions were sixth in scoring and seventh in defensive scoring at 251-231. They did get certain SOM breaks- the defensive lineup has some nifty sixes at the right spots, and their runners tie together nicely. San Francisco finished 8-4 while being about even on scoring. So they, too get some nifty pluses, Joe Perry and Hugh McElhenny and Tittle have nice cards. LA is a very good 6/6 team. The Colts on paper were the best in the West so you kind of have to work with that. For any of these teams to win outright without a playoff is going to be a challenge, which pretty much squares with how it turned out. 1957 was one of the last seasons I did with a hand layout in excel first (also true for the 1983 and 1984 USFL) and I replayed it that way with Mike Kane, which was a blast. Because of that I still think it has the best “feel” of any of those old seasons. You have to draw the distinction between capability - how the team should be able to play in a variety of scenarios vs. results in a given replay or in real life, which is deterministic simulation- the results in one scenario. You will rarely get the same conditions game to game that the teams faced in real life. And rules, of course, can really change play results.
If anything, I’m glad I don’t get feedback the Lions are too tough. It’s a pretty good squad, and they can pretty much match up with most of the contenders well.
The Lions should have been cheesed up a bit. When they fall behind they throw too many ints. A problem that happens back in those interception prone seasons
DeleteIt kind of astounds me as a Lions fan that I would be getting feedback that a Lions team I carded was actually not carded well enough. Thats actually high praise!
DeleteSecret to cutting Lions 🦁 ints same as most teams that year- it’s modeled a lot off of 1972 a running season with some turnovers. You have to work Rote into the rotation, because he throws fewer ints, and some times you just gotta swallow your pride, run a draw on third and fifteen and kick it away. Just like they did. The proper style is “opportunistic conservatism.”
Team performance has always impacted individual ratings in this game. That’s even a disclaimer in the original rule booklet. Yup, page 11- “it must be noted that numerical ability ratings for offensive linemen and defensive players are arbitrary ratings and in many instances are based on a teams performance as well as an individual’s ability. Thus a player’s low numerical ability rating might be the result of his team’s performance rather than his own performance”. Since the 1959 Redskins spent the year making every QB they faced look like Johnny Unitas, I think some downgrading is a fair cop.
ReplyDeleteAnd Kurt- get a life, seriously. We all love this game, some more than others. You gotta let it go or find something else to do with your time. What you have to understand is my seasons were my designs. And so what I say, goes. I don’t have to take your inputs- it’s not a democracy. If they ask me questions I give them the answers and buddy, that’s that.
in other words don't question you. lol When you make an error, you should correct that error. It isn't about me, it's always been about the game and improving the game. The plethora or errors that I find, way too many to list, and are later corrected is proof of that. Maybe if you actually played the stock game and interacted with those who do play stock, you'd understand it better
ReplyDeleteOr you could just be wrong.
DeleteOn 1957 Lions sacks- just looked and they look okay. I forget if I used 8 yards a sack or 7 but they have 22 points up front and two blockers who can rate 4 out of the backfield. The points are at the tackles. Thats about right. On defense Krouse subbed in gives them 32 points up front and they have Schmidt, with no coverage responsibility as a 12. The other LBs also can get sacks, ten outside points. Thats a pretty solid representation of a 3 pass rush in the old set, which is where they land based on their opponents.
ReplyDeleteI don’t care much for individual (single value) results like “sacks” from replays because o can set the sliders to get any result I want to there. The issue to me is what else happens when you try that. For that reason I tested against a number of scenarios using average gain per play on offense and defense and turnovers per ball control play. Those are harder to game. If you play the run more you get more fumbles but less sacks or interceptions. If you blitz a lot subs you get more sacks but you might also give up more big plays. We’ve gone around and around on this, but you don’t chase single results from replays in carding because it’s should be obvious you can change a replays results simply by changing usage or the default ruleset.
To put it another way, the game co doesn’t do that either. They trust the model to work. And so do I.