Front Office Football with Jag and Snoopy369

[Jaguar]

Snoop and I have been been playing a multiplayer league of Front Office Football 2007 for a couple of weeks now, and I thought it might be cool to start a thread on it. FOF is an NFL GM/coach sim game. No graphics, but very solid simulation. Worth buying if you're interested in that sort of thing.

We are playing a semi-historical league, starting with 1960's players and having the appropriate draft classes. However, we had an allocation draft to spread the players around at the beginning, and all 32 current NFL teams are in the league. (Obviously, this makes for goofy things like the Jacksonville Jaguars drafting John Hadl first overall in the 1962 draft.) We are currently in the 1965 season, so we have played five full seasons so far.

I am the Colts. He is the Bears. Of course. This thread will be an after-action report on our fictional teams' exploits.

[Jaguar]

A History of Jaguar's Indianapolis Colts, 1960-1964




As you can see, we began as a pretty solid team from the get-go. Our QB was George Shaw, in the aggregate a very average player, but with very extreme strengths and weaknesses. He was great at short passes, and he had the arm strength to rear back and throw bombs, but his mid-to-deep game was terrible. He was also terribly immobile. His scrambling rating was 1 (out of 100) and his avoid sack rating was 0. As you can imagine, he was difficult to gameplan with; in his debut game against Tennessee, he was sacked 11 times, still a league record today.

Fortunately, we had a great supporting cast for him. WR Bobby Mitchell is a great receiver, and although he rarely got much over 1000 yards, he was always very efficient. He is also the best return man in the league. Our other stars included Tony Banfield (CB) and various defensive linemen.

As you can see, it was hard to keep up good performance with such a limited QB. After our 2nd straight 8-8 season, we were able to snap up Roger Staubach in the 1964 NFL draft with the 18th overall pick. Although he was raw, Shaw played so abysmally that we decided to start him after three games. He acquitted himself pretty well in his rookie season, with an 83.6 rating.

[Jaguar]

A History of Snoopy's Chicago Bears, 1960-1964



Snoopy's Bears struggled a lot to start, but it did mean that he got to draft a franchise quarterback in 1962. His offense was obviously powered by Paul Hornung, who just retired at the end of the 1964 season. Snoopy spent his 1964 first rounder drafting Les Josephson, Hornung's replacement.

Snoopy's best draft pick was his first one ever: Mike Ditka in 1961. Ditka is an 80 overall tight end, in a game where 50 constitutes an above average starter and 75+ could be the best player in the league at the position. (Currently there are 20 players rated at 80+.)

[snoopy369]

The Washington Redskins in our league are our Atlanta Braves: make the superbowl every year 1961-1964, won only once (lost 3 in a row after winning 1961).

[Ninot]

I'd be in on something like this, if it weren't football.

But this raises an interesting question to me: is this sports, really? or other games?

[Jaguar]

Fantasy sports leagues go here.

[Jaguar]

Snoopy's 1965 was derailed pretty thoroughly by injuries. Without a herniated disk injury to Gabriel, he would be 12-4 or something. He'd still get pasted by the Redskins, though.



Here's mine.



I had an awesome season. Staubach obviously hit a second-year breakout. Furthermore, my DE Chuck Hurston, picked 27th overall in the 1965 draft over several qualified WR candidates, became the rookie of the year with 13.5 sacks and one interception. This team summary screenshot is taken from just before the conference championship, where I got pasted by the Chargers.

Some notes on which teams have been great so far:
The Redskins are in many ways the most successful franchise. They went to the Superbowl in 1961, and have been to the Superbowl every year since, losing each time. (Four straight now.) I think they are very analogous to the 1990s Bills, because they dominate the weaker conference every year, and then get destroyed by the stronger teams from the stronger conference in the Superbowl. They have Johnny Unitas, who generally puts up ridiculously studly stats. Their only competition in the NFC comes from the Cowboys, who have Sonny Jurgenson, and despite ample talent, always seem to underachieve.

The AFC has far more dominant teams, the scariest of which might be San Diego. They're led by quarterback Len Dawson and flanker Lionel Taylor, who are easily the most prolific duo in the league. Even by the slightly-inflated passing stats of FOF 2k7, Taylor's numbers are crazy. He had 2001 receiving yards in 1965. (Obviously, we're getting modern-esque stats, not 1965-like stats, another aspect of our simulation I neglected to mention.)

The Steelers have two Superbowl wins, primarily because they had Don Maynard and Raymond Berry at receiver, so almost any QB can go in and throw 30 touchdowns per year. Those receivers have aged, though, and Pittsburgh is a bad team at this point.

Miami, led by Bart Starr, Oakland, led by Jim Brown, and Buffalo, led by Earl Morrall, are all pretty solid.

My division is fairly evil because Tennessee has Fran Tarkenton and Jacksonville has John Hadl, so we have 3 of the best young QBs in the league in our division.

[Guynemer]

Looks like fun.

[Donegeal]

How much time does it take?

[Jaguar]

It depends on how detailed you go into the gameplanning and filling out the roster and stuff. Almost everything can be completely automated. As you start doing things manually, it gets slower, but once you start knowing exactly what you're doing, you speed things up again.

1965, from week 1 of regular season to Superbowl, took 2 hours.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, here is the semi-official (Jim Ginden posts there regularly) forum for FOF:

http://fof.sportplanet.gamespy.com/forums/index.php

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Jaguar
Snoopy's 1965 was derailed pretty thoroughly by injuries. Without a herniated disk injury to Gabriel, he would be 12-4 or something. He'd still get pasted by the Redskins, though.

Don't know about that, I would have not played the redskins until the NFC championship at least I actually hit a bunch of bad injuries at the end - Mike Ditka missed a few games, and every one of my WRs was hurt briefly.

I'm probably going to have a mediocre season or two (or even bad ones) for the next few years - a lot of my players are getting a bit old and I've had a bad draft the last two years beyond the first round.

One of the big problems in FOF (although it may well be MORE balanced as a result) is that FA's are very hard to come by, it's VERY rare for a big name player to go free (usually the highest rated player in a FA pool is low 60s, excepting K/P, and the bottom of the top 25 FAs is usally 48 or so...) so it's very hard to rebuild through free agency.

We also can't trade at all except between each other, because trades are automatically accepted (if put through by the commish) with the AI - meaning we could of course totally steal every good player, but that would not be fun, so instead no trades at all (in SP this is not the case, of course, the AI trades with you actually very well).

That hurts the most when you have 1/6 or something and don't like the top 5 or 10 players out there; for example, I took Ditka about 5-6 positions ahead of where he would have gone at the earliest, and would happily have traded down, but that's not possible.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ninot
I'd be in on something like this, if it weren't football.

But this raises an interesting question to me: is this sports, really? or other games?

edit: Hmm, no other sports other than football. I thought there was a baseball game, but I was wrong

[Imran Siddiqui]

There are plenty of baseball sim games, like Out of the Park Baseball and PureSim Baseball.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Don't know about that, I would have not played the redskins until the NFC championship at least I actually hit a bunch of bad injuries at the end - Mike Ditka missed a few games, and every one of my WRs was hurt briefly.

I'm probably going to have a mediocre season or two (or even bad ones) for the next few years - a lot of my players are getting a bit old and I've had a bad draft the last two years beyond the first round.

One of the big problems in FOF (although it may well be MORE balanced as a result) is that FA's are very hard to come by, it's VERY rare for a big name player to go free (usually the highest rated player in a FA pool is low 60s, excepting K/P, and the bottom of the top 25 FAs is usally 48 or so...) so it's very hard to rebuild through free agency.

I actually think this might be more realistic than it seems. Really, every year in free agency, there are a handful of good-but-not-brilliant players, and then a lot of average players that get hyped up. There's kind of a "winner's curse" where the team that bids the most on a player has assuredly bid too much. Then we assume that the players getting big contracts must actually be worth it. Remember that time the Redskins got all excited about getting Brandon Lloyd, David Patten, Adam Archuleta, and Antwaan Randle El all in one offseason? How did that work out for them?

Who was the best free agent WR this year? DJ Hackett? The truth is that the free agent pickings are often pretty mediocre.

Maybe I'll do some draft reviews for 1960-1965.