GWJ2STAR Season 3 - Week 2

Welcome to Week 2!
Remember to visit dynasty.easports.com to publish your own stories.

=============== Buffalo Bulls (0-0) ===============
Last week the Bulls were idle.
This week, the Bulls travel to Athens to face the #12 Georgia Bulldogs (0-0).
In recruiting news, the following Buffalo targets have announced their decisions:
- (***) LG Steve Culp has committed to Navy
- (***) LG Desmond Rich has committed to Texas A&M

=============== Eastern Michigan Eagles (0-1) ===============
Last week, Eastern Michigan lost 42-21 against Michigan State (1-0).
This week, the Eagles travel to West Lafayette to face the Purdue Boilermakers (1-0).

=============== Marshall Thundering Herd (0-1) ===============
Last week, Marshall lost 33-13 against Purdue (1-0).
This week, the Thundering Herd will host #14 West Virginia (0-0).
In recruiting news, the following Marshall targets have announced their decisions:
- (***) WR Jared Hall has committed to Temple
- (***) WR James Barnett has committed to Marshall
- (***) CB Rick Johnson has committed to Marshall

=============== Northern Illinois Huskies (0-0) ===============
Last week the Huskies were idle.
This week, the Huskies will host #15 Iowa (0-0).
In recruiting news, the following Northern Illinois targets have announced their decisions:
- (***) C John Williams has committed to Wisconsin

=============== San Diego State Aztecs (0-1) ===============
Last week, San Diego State lost 41-20 against Cincinnati (1-0).
This week, the Aztecs will host Army (0-0).
In recruiting news, the following San Diego State targets have announced their decisions:
- (***) HB Jason Whitmore has committed to San Diego State

=============== SMU Mustangs (0-1) ===============
Last week, SMU lost 40-38 against Baylor (1-0).
This week, the Mustangs will host #17 TCU (0-0).
In recruiting news, the following SMU targets have announced their decisions:
- (***) RT Bryan McFadden has committed to UTEP
- (****) FS Curtis Higdon has committed to SMU

=============== UTEP Miners (1-0) ===============
Last week, UTEP won 24-14 against New Mexico (0-1).
This week, the Miners travel to Madison to face the #4 Wisconsin Badgers (0-0).
In recruiting news, the following UTEP targets have announced their decisions:
- (***) RT Bryan McFadden has committed to UTEP
- (****) WR Perry Walker has committed to UTEP
- (***) DT Chris Nichols has committed to UTEP
- (***) DT Ralph Morris has committed to UTEP

The slider monitoring continues.

EMU wins against Purdue. Purdue's RB's looked like Michael Ingrams, trucking people with ease but it wasn't enough. Player of the Game was Devon Davis with 7 tackles(5 tfl) 3 sacks and a FF

I'll repost this here:

Leroy,

In anticipation of our game in Week 3, if the league rolls today/tonight, I'd be available (my wife is gone). If not, tomorrow early would work or Monday evening.

I am on Hawaii time, so you'd have to subtract 5 from Michigan (I think). I get off work Monday at 5:30 HI time.

I went to Georgia and got creamed. Part of it was the broken tackle phenomenon, part of it was that I probably played a lousy game, and part of it was I stopped caring when my quarterback couldn't get a pass off to save his life. Granted, my offensive line isn't great, but they blocked fine on runs, for the most part. But, when I was forced to throw, I'd have a large, angry man mauling my poor little quarterback before he could say "For Boogle." Sometimes, I got a pass off before Jerry Davis's head got eaten, but many other times I didn't, and if I got sacked before third down, I was screwed.

General impressions on the sliders:
1. Broken tackles are too easy. I had the two tackle settings on conservative, too.
2. Way too many fumbles, for both sides. There were probably ten total, although most of those were recovered by the team that already had the ball. On one play, my defensive end forced a fumble, a linebacker recovered it, and then HE fumbled, and Georgia got the ball back. Unfortunately, it didn't save a replay.
3. Interceptions are too low. A bad pass should get picked. I didn't really feel this needed changing, but it is what it is. Part of the problem is that catching a tipped ball is impossible, but neither my guys nor the computer would go for interceptions, even in obvious cases.
4. Running game felt good to me. If I had blockers where I wanted to run, I could run there. If they overloaded that side, I wasn't going to make headway, and I should have flipped the play or audible out.
5. It seemed like there DBs could make plays on balls, even when they were clearly beaten. An example: my receiver cleanly beat their DB on an attempted bump, and was running a fly route. I threw the ball about 15 yards downfield, and my guy had about 8 yards of separation at the time. Their DB recovered and swatted it away. It shouldn't have happened.

As a side note, the new sliders make me more likely to chase stats, I think. I don't have a shot to get any kind of decent ranking, because my team isn't good enough to realistically compete with the big boys. We aren't going to be playing this dynasty long enough for my team to get good, so I might as well try to win individual awards. I still like the game and like the human opponents, but the sliders don't make my games against the computer more fun. I'm not going to quit, but I'm not excited to play my games. I'd rather have bye weeks and just recruit guys.

Airric-Good timing then, I begin a new shift this week where I can probably play you during the week. We'll see when the week rolls.

Counselor-I instant replayed 5 plays where 2 D-lineman shed their blocks on my O-lineman with the identical move and get free passes before I could even get 3 steps from center. No chance to get a good throw off. It was like synchronized QB murdering.

NIU loses to Iowa, 42-23. I led at the half 17-14. I could have won, but I threw 3 INTs as I threw for 400+ yards passing. Two of the three were reasonable INTs. The other was CPU assisted. I couldn't run the ball, but that may not be unexpected.

Iowa had some huge runs with many broken tackles. I'm not sure they were unfair given I was trying to strip at the end. Some probably were. If there's a consensus to turn down opposing HB skill, I could go for it, but it probably won't be too much of a problem against MAC teams.

Oh, and this makes us ready to roll.

Sorry about the game Sloth. Leroy, if it gets rolled tonight I'll check to see if you're online!

lol, i went to bed on that last post.

Well, at least the quick quick play is still with us.

I've been doing errands and cleaning for my wife's book club. If I am the last game, I will try to get it in tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest. Then we will be on to week three.

I take on #17 TCU, so I expect to see some of that unbalance myself this week.

Thanks for holding us up, Commish. :p

Jayhawker wrote:

Well, at least the quick quick play is still with us.

I've been doing errands and cleaning for my wife's book club. If I am the last game, I will try to get it in tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest. Then we will be on to week three.

I take on #17 TCU, so I expect to see some of that unbalance myself this week.

Wait; the system sent me a message saying *I* was holding us up... Stupid EA blaming me for nothing.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I'm also (willingly) down to my 3rd string QB. My starter got hurt in the first game and is out for three or four more weeks. I've been using my 3rd stringer because his speed and accuracy ratings are higher than the 2nd string guy, and his overall is only 2 points less.

So, I almost beat the #4 ranked team in their house with my 3rd QB, and I don't consider myself to be very good at this game. I think if we can get the talent to come to us then we can compete with the big boys on these sliders.

Well, I just took my spanking. It actually came out closer than it really was, as TCU knocks SMU to 0-2 in a 40-30 win.

James for TCU went crazy and picked up over 300 yards. In the interest of fairness, I uploaded all of his longest runs, concentrating on ones iwth broken tackles.

There is a n issue, for sure. I will also mention that I really screwed up by using the 4-2-5, as I often do against spread teams. I think it left pretty darn vulnerable to the run, and TCU definitely played this as a run first offense. So spending most of the day in nickel and guessing pass most of the first half got me into a ton of trouble. It didn't help that TCU turned all three of my first half turnovers into points.

It was a winnable game, but the margin for error was pretty small. And I erred. A lot.

Offensively, I ran the ball really well, as Line went for 118 on 19 carries. Plus my freshman back-up picked up another 28 on five. Line is a beast, but his stamina just bites. I think I really need to watch his carries late in drives. I think his stamina is leading to fumbles.

Passing was tough. I'd like some feedback here. I think some routes are just gone. I really worked last season to find good routes form my outside receivers, and came up a good gameplan, as Beans could probably tell you. But the pass coverage is super tight. I suspect it may get easier as the competition decreases.

I think the Robo QB are gone. Pachall was good, but just 12 of 20 for 174 yards. I would really like to see what I might have pulled off had I ran a straight 4-3.

Also, I will increase the CPU kickers. I had the CPU miss another XP and fairly easy FG. Of course, I missed what should have been a makeable 48 yarder, and failed on a tow point conversion.

I will roll it here in a minute.

Oooohoohohohhh...now that he gets run over by the AI, it's a problem. I see how it is Jay!!! :p

Leroy, I will look online at 6:00pm my time (11 yours). If not, we can meet up another time this week!

Leroyog wrote:

Oooohoohohohhh...now that he gets run over by the AI, it's a problem. I see how it is Jay!!! :p

I actually don't think it is a huge problem. I think there are strategic things I could do. That's why I mentioned that the 4-2-5 was a blunder. And blunders should have painful consequences.

But I can't talk about his in good faith without putting up the same videos I'd like to see you guys to put so that we can have a meeting of the minds.

And yeah, I know you were kidding. Jerk!

If we are going to change any sliders, I need folks to hold off a bit on playing their games, so we all play with the same settings.

Well, except for me. I'm going to reset it to Freshman, or whatever the easiest level is, for all my games the rest of the way, but bump them right back up immediately when I am done. Then I am going to make fun of the rest of you for playing so bad.

It was a winnable game, but the margin for error was pretty small. And I erred. A lot.

My game was similar. Part of it is going to be getting used to the behavior of the pass coverage. I threw three INTs, two of which I thought I would have no trouble getting the ball past the defenders. The defenders reacted abruptly. In one of those cases, my WR was a bit slow coming out of his break, so I was operating assuming he'd be better.

So, do we have a consensus of what we do with the settings?

Leroyog wrote:

There is NOTHING I can do better strategically than meeting a guy in the backfield with a DT and a LB and watching them get tossed like toddlers.

Well, you could try not recruiting toddlers.

There is NOTHING I can do better strategically than meeting a guy in the backfield with a DT and a LB and watching them get tossed like toddlers.

Airric, I can't play tonight. I have friends coming over for the Red Wings game. BUT...11pm is doable on Tuesday

LMAO!!!

If they are anything like Bailey Carrier, this RB would have gone down.

Bailey Carrier will be a 2020 Heisman trophy winner. He's my 4 year old cousin and an excellent tackler.

League was rolled on Monday. My bad. Counselor is the only guy left.