Gameplay

[rhombic21]

I still see some weird things with zone coverage. Not sure if it's ratings related or what, but sometimes it looks like the linebackers and hook zone players do not do a very good job deciding when to gain depth and stay with a vertical route. Doesn't seem to happen 100% of the time, but it happens enough make you wonder what the player is doing. For example, that play right before the end of the Nevada-Indiana video, the defense looks to be in some kind of Cover 2, and the MLB completely turns the TE loose down the middle of the field, which probably should have been a TD. Despite the efforts to improve zone, it still looks to me like it will largely be necessary to user control either an MLB or Safety to ensure that you don't give up some cheap passes over the middle.

So far, I actually am pretty pleased with what I've seen (and experienced in the demo) with the pass rush/pass blocking. There's probably still a little too much of the "all or nothing" element to it, but I like that you don't see nearly as many instances where DL end up being completely irrelevant, and it seems like you get a lot more coverage sacks than there were last year because the DL stay on their feet and stay active to try and get to the QB, and there isn't nearly as much suction which makes it harder for the OL to hold up for extreme lengths of time. Last year you basically either got a free runner to the QB on a blitz or didn't get any pressure at all, and this year it seems like you can still get some decent pressure, even if the offense accounts for everybody initially. 4 and 5 man rushes seem to have more teeth to them, which is really nice in combination with the improved (though imperfect) coverage which takes away a lot of those easy quick throws that were always open last year. Also, it seems like stunts and cross blitzes work a lot better due to the lack of suctioning. Basically angles seem to matter a lot more because linemen aren't able to warp into position to make the block, and because players can disengage a lot better when they have an angle to get to the ball.

I am also pretty pleased with what I see in terms of QB accuracy and WR catching. I always felt like WRs have caught too many passes in traffic, and this year it seems like the defense is a lot better at knocking passes out and getting incompletions even if the WR gets his hands on the pass initially. Last year it felt like any pass that hit a WR in the hands was going to be caught, even if the guy got his head taken off immediately after touching the ball. QB accuracy might still be a little too high, but it seems to at least be a little less forgiving than it was last year, particularly on passes more than 15 yards downfield. Last year you could basically fire the ball on a rope down the seams and into that area between the LBs and safeties and expect even mediocre QBs to thread the needle. Seems to be less the case this year.

I like that the Pistol and Shotgun Option offenses seem to be more fully developed than in the past. With custom playbooks I think that we are finally past the point of being seriously constrained by the default playbooks, at least on offense. Defensively it looks like they added a bunch of good things, particularly as far as zone coverages are concerned, but they also seem to have removed a lot of the man to man blitzes that worked well last year (i.e. Nickel Strong NB Blitz). I will be interested to see how that plays out as the year goes on. I'm not sure that the defense has quite all of the tools that they need to keep up with the expansion of the offensive playbooks (i.e. the ability to run a truly balanced offense from Shotgun).

I am not terribly impressed with the computer at this point, both in terms of playcalling and in terms of executing the plays. I will be really interested to see some videos of online play to get a feel for how the game plays in USER v USER matches.