Intro
I'm starting this thread as a definitive guide to offensive and defensive game planning. More or less, I don't want to maintain a number of threads.

This will build off of the following threads, so if you have not read them, start here:

Basic Offensive Game Planning: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3885
Advanced Offensive Game Planning - Passing Zones, Levels, Spacing: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/4659

Basic Defensive Game Planning: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3581
Advanced Defensive Game Planning: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3791
Advanced Defensive Game Planning – Cover 3 Zone: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3933
Advanced Defensive Game Planning – Tab Driven M2M: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/4170

Other important threads to know:
GP Adjustment: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/4214
Mad Seth's Guide to Creative Roster Engineering: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/4277
Position Attributes: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/2443?page=7#27277

Version 0.4.2 threads of questionable value when 0.4.3 is released:
Thoughts on short passing: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/3579?page=1
Quick and dirty guide to throwing to the TE: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/4308?page=1
QB Accuracy (with Maths): https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/1/2290?page=1


Base Game Plan: A Definition
Throughout this whole guide, you're going to see me use the word base game plan a lot. When I do this, I'm specifically referring to the play matrix. If you don't understand the mechanics of the play matrix, both on offense and defense, this guide is going to do you very little good. Your game plan will fall back to the matrix consistently throughout a game, so you need to know what you are calling and when you are calling it and what personnel sets you are going to use to call it.

Some things that your base game plan is going to rely on:

Short – Medium – Long
If you haven't read it, find the official blog post on Short, Medium, and Long and memorize what they mean. This will help you decide when you want to use the category and when you want to use yardage.

GP Adjustment
You can find this in your Misc tab in the game planning section of your team menu. Set this to between 12-35. I go into a lot more detail about this in one of the threads linked above. If you haven't read it, do so.

The Rules Engine
You can win with a solid base game plan alone. It is possible. But it requires patience to get your game plan just right and great personnel. So to win without having great personnel, you need to use rules to override the base game plan. This requires knowing how the rule engine works.

The rule engine evaluates rules top-down where the first rule that evaluates as true is used. MEMORIZE this: Put your MOST SPECIFIC rule first.

Here's an example of how I set up offensive rules:

1) GL rules
2) Third and short rules
3) Fourth and short rules
4) Third and long rules
5) 2 minute drill rules
6) 4Q clock draining rules

Note how the more specific rules are at the top. There are only specific times when my team will be in GL offense. Contrarily, my team is going to run a 2 minute drill in the second quarter of every game, so it can go near the bottom. This does mean that if I get a 3 or 4 and short during that 2 minute drill that the more specific rule will be called. I'm fine with that.

For your defensive rules, I recommend splitting them up by personnel set and then by situation. So something like this:

1) Situational blitzes for the 104, 014, and 005 sets
2) Rules for the 104, 014, and 005 sets without a blitz
3) 4Q Prevent rules
4) Situational blitzes for other sets
5) Etc.

At any given time, I have a potential of 15-30 rules that can be used to override my base game plan. I used to use more, but I've cut back. And I modify my defensive rules each game based on my opponents tendencies.

And, no, it's not really that time consuming once you have it set up.

Base Offensive Game Plan
This is IMPORTANT. Your team is going to run your base offense the majority of the game. I'm serious here. You want your team to run your base offense the majority of the game. Here's why.

The key to your base offensive game plan should be consistency. You want your team to average between 4-5 yards per play. If you average between 4-5 yards per play, you can make a lot of first downs without needing to have big plays.

Here's how you're going to do this.

Focus the Matrix on High Percentage Plays
You want your base game plan to always fall back to the highest percentage plays you have for a specific down and distance category. Remember the goal is 4-5 yards per play, so as you build your playbook be looking for those plays that average at or above that and then review some of your previous games. If those plays are averaging that because they are boom/bust plays, they probably aren't worth it. But if you can consistently get 4-5 yards on those plays no matter what the defense throws at them, that's your base game plan.

Offensive Goals
I have two goals for my offense for each game:

1) 20 first downs
2) 35 minutes of possession time
3) (bonus) 50% 3rd down completion [I find this is the hardest, and I **** at achieving it.]

Notice that I don't set a goal for yards or points because frankly I don't care. If I can get 20 first downs and I control the ball for 35 minutes, I'm probably going to win even if I only manage to get 200 yards of offense and 10 points. There are the occasional times when I get beaten, and beaten badly, by a team that has a lot of big plays, but that is rare.

Situational Offensive Rules
You will want to then modify your base offensive game plan with rules. Your offensive rules should be wholly situational football. Those times when you cannot rely on the Short, Medium, and Long categories to call the sets of plays that you want to call.

For example, I use multiple third down rules based on distance so that I can split categories. The Short category is incredibly misleading. There is a major difference between a 3-1 and a 3-3, but both fall in the Short category most of the time. So I have a rule to split that category so I can run or pass more based on the flow of the game and the distance I actually need to go for that first down.

Base Defensive Playbook
Just blitz 2 every play. It works so well for everyone.

The above is of course a joke. Unlike your base offense, your team will probably rarely run your base defense because of how you are going to build out your defensive rules. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

You want your base defense to be those plays where you're not going to get caught with your pants down. That means looking for those high percentage plays where your team can successfully defend the pass or the run.

Short – Medium – Long On Defense?
Short, Medium, and Long on defense are controlled by your opponents GP setting and their ability to move the ball against you. If you are shutting them down consistently, then their play distances will lengthen based on their GP setting. You're not going to be able to control any of this in the game. This will become more important in a minute.

Defaulting Sets
Your base defense is going to default personnel sets to match up with your opponent's offensive personnel set. Here are the matchups so you don't have to go look them up:

Dime/Quarter ? 104, 014, 005
Nickle ? 113, 203
Normal ? 122, 212
Goal Line ? 221, 230, 311

This is going to get really important right now below.

Defensive Rules Based on Personnel and Situation
The most important thing about defensive rules is breaking them down by personnel group that you are defending. The goal of defensive rules is to defeat the base defense defaulting of personnel and control the flow of the game more effectively. You don't, for instance, want to call a Nickle defense against a 113 or 203 when your opponent is most likely to run.

To Distance Category or Not to Distance Category?
In my defensive rule build, I use both distance categories and specific distances depending on what I want the rule to do. When you want a wide sweeping rule, use a category. This gives you the flexibility to call the rule based on how your opponent is moving the ball (note the GP adjustment above).

However, when you want to call a specific set of plays only once in a while, you should use the specific distance in your rule. For instance, I use some zone plays, but I only call them when my opponent is facing a specific down and distance. Similarly, I use some exotic blitzes, but I call them in the same way. I don't put these plays in my base defensive game plan, and I don't want them called with a distance category and risk over calling them.

- - - - - -

I'll probably be adding more to this thread. This was just a first attempt to start bringing a lot of these ideas together and building on the pieces that you have already seen. Let me know what you want me to focus on.

the link on Advanced Offense GP keeps sending me to the Advanced Defense GP.

It does. Tribewriter PM'ed me about it earlier. I haven't fixed it yet. Mostly because now I don't remember what thread I was going link.

UPDATE: I removed the Advanced Offensive link because I can't find my thread, which means I may never have posted it after all and I reimaged my computer recently and lost everything MFN related that wasn't saved to my dropbox.

I added three additional threads, which may only be valuable for 0.4.2.

UPDATE 2: Oh, I know what I did. I confused the advanced offensive post with the GP adjustment guide since the GP one was going to be the advanced offensive guide, but I never finalized it.

nevermind

Nope. That falls into the quick guide so people will get off my PMs category. ;)

Added a new offensive game planning thread to the list of threads: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/3/4659

Reading through the primer on V4.3 passing left me with some unanswered questions:

1. How do you know the identity of the primary receiver on a particular play? On HB Flat, I assume it is the HB. But who is it on, for instance, Parallell Slants? I don't see anything on the assignments tab that indicates the primary receiver.

2. Since passes within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage are ineffective, does that mean we should not be throwing to the RB and FB at all? Or, do we only use plays where the RB or FB go into a pattern of more than 5 yards? That will eliminate a lot of offensive plays for some of us.

3. In the 113 HB Flare, for instance, how do you know the TE and slot WR won't end up in the same zone and level? The instructions state this, but the play diagram doesn't tell us this. I am wondering how to apply this assumption to every other passing play.

I am always appreciative of setherick sharing his knowledge. My only concern is that not everyone shares the depth of knowledge to be able to apply his advice across the gameplanning spectrum.

1) You know the primary receiver the same way you have always known the primary receiver. It's the receiver running the route distance of the play. If there are multiple players running the route, then primary receiver is weighted something like this: WR1 -> WR2 -> TE1 / WR3 -> HB -> FB. This is purely anecdotal since JDB has never confirmed it, but enough game play suggests this to be true.

2) I would only throw to the RB and FB on a limited number of plays. This is a major change from 0.4.2, and not a good one. I'm still trying to figure out if there is a pattern to this BS, but RBs and FBs come to a dead stop a lot of the time when they come to make a pass. This is somehow related to the nerf that JDB introduced that causes QBs to not throw the ball accurately to wide open WRs. Since RBs and FBs are usually wide open, they get hit by this nerf a lot. (The nerf was introduced to stop vertical, all long pass offenses. But it disproportionately affects RB passing for some reason.) From what I can tell, the 113 HB Flare works, but the 203 WR Quick Out does not even though the RB runs the same route on the play. The 212 PA FB Flat and 212 Short Attack also seem to work most of the time. Not sure what else does. (And even those plays will get hit by the nerf.)

3) On that specific play, the TE is going to continue running vertically and quickly cross the boundary between Level 2 and Level 3. If the QB doesn't throw to him, he keeps running straight down the field. The WR3 is going to continue to run at an angle across Level 2. By the time the WR3 gets to the boundary between the Middle Zone and Right Zone, the TE will be way down the field and the WR1 will be way down the field as well. The WR3 should have an open field to cut across. (The QB is going to throw it long before the WR3 reaches midfield anyway.)

It ends up looking something like this where the red circles are the places where the QB is most likely to throw the ball.



UPDATE

The 212 FB Flat is actually a good play to talk about spacing and player movement. The TE here is going to cut straight across the field. It looks like the TE and HB are going to end up in the same spot, but this isn't true at all. The QB is going to throw the ball about the time the TE reaches the red circle. By that point, the HB is behind the TE and moving in the other direction.

I don't mean to be obtuse, but please elaborate.

For a short passing play, this would be a route listed at ~< 8 yards on the play card.
For a long play, this would be ~> 15 yards.

The play call itself is controlled by the GP adjusted distance of the play. If you're running a GP of 0, which is what I recommend for most owners (especially novice owners), then it's the distances listed on the official blog.