Enderz
08-20-2009, 04:24 PM
I've been noticing that the stats in my offline franchise have been way off using 7 min quarters and a 20 second accelerated play clock (APC).
It was a slow afternoon at work so I pulled some stats off NFL.com to try and figure out what combination of quarter length and accelerated clock you might need to get realistic stats (and how long those games might take you to actually play).
In 2008 here were the NFL average game stats:
Plays from Scrimmage = 62 (+/- 5)
No. of Kickoffs = 9.5
No. of Punts = 8.5
No. of FG's = 3.9
No. of PAT's = 4.6
Total No. of Plays = 88.5
There were also an average of 5.6 penalties per game, but there was no way to separate out which ones overlapped or were in addition to the play counts listed above. I also did not account for overtime games. Since these play totals include overtime plays, the actual average number of plays per game in regulation might be lower by 1 or 2. Given these two differences (one that would increase the avg and one that would decrease it) I just went with the 88.5 number.
If there are 88.5 plays per game and a regulation game lasts 3600 seconds (60 min/game * 60 seconds/min) that comes out to an average of 40.1 seconds of game clock per play. This includes all of the time between the end of one play and the end of the next.
One of the reasons we've always been able to get realistic stats (roughly equating to running a realistic number of plays per game) without playing full 15 minute quarters is that play calling in a video game is so much faster than in real life.
By picking your play quickly and getting the snap off before the clock had gotten to 15-20 seconds just about every play (compared to 0-10 in the real NFL) you could pack a realistic number of plays into 7 minute quarters (essentially averaging closer to 20 seconds per play rather than the NFL’s 40). But if you use accelerated play clock and are (or plays someone) who likes to call a lot of audibles at the LOS you will probably end up averaging closer to 30 or 40 seconds per play resulting in a lot fewer plays per game.
Put together the following tables to estimate the effects of various play calling styles, quarter lengths, and APC settings on the number of plays per game and elapsed time per game.
With APC set to 20 seconds:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_G9-swvho1C4/So3WKI97BlI/AAAAAAAAAKA/wYv9Je5AAQk/s720/JFL_ACP_7.jpg
With APC set to 15 seconds:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_G9-swvho1C4/So3YARA1_CI/AAAAAAAAAKM/yd_q2hInSG4/s720/JFL_ACP_15.jpg
So the bottom line seems to be that in order to get more realistic stats we might want to consider going with 14 min quarters with a 20 sec APC (assuming none of us are slow play callers).
This would give us roughly 90 plays per game (equivalent to the NFL) and games would take about an hour (40-45 min of clock time and 15-20 mins of non-clock time based on the original 28 min clock time games taking about 45-50 min to play).
What do you guys think? Has anyone tried using higher quarter lengths with the APC to see what the play counts and other stats look like?
It was a slow afternoon at work so I pulled some stats off NFL.com to try and figure out what combination of quarter length and accelerated clock you might need to get realistic stats (and how long those games might take you to actually play).
In 2008 here were the NFL average game stats:
Plays from Scrimmage = 62 (+/- 5)
No. of Kickoffs = 9.5
No. of Punts = 8.5
No. of FG's = 3.9
No. of PAT's = 4.6
Total No. of Plays = 88.5
There were also an average of 5.6 penalties per game, but there was no way to separate out which ones overlapped or were in addition to the play counts listed above. I also did not account for overtime games. Since these play totals include overtime plays, the actual average number of plays per game in regulation might be lower by 1 or 2. Given these two differences (one that would increase the avg and one that would decrease it) I just went with the 88.5 number.
If there are 88.5 plays per game and a regulation game lasts 3600 seconds (60 min/game * 60 seconds/min) that comes out to an average of 40.1 seconds of game clock per play. This includes all of the time between the end of one play and the end of the next.
One of the reasons we've always been able to get realistic stats (roughly equating to running a realistic number of plays per game) without playing full 15 minute quarters is that play calling in a video game is so much faster than in real life.
By picking your play quickly and getting the snap off before the clock had gotten to 15-20 seconds just about every play (compared to 0-10 in the real NFL) you could pack a realistic number of plays into 7 minute quarters (essentially averaging closer to 20 seconds per play rather than the NFL’s 40). But if you use accelerated play clock and are (or plays someone) who likes to call a lot of audibles at the LOS you will probably end up averaging closer to 30 or 40 seconds per play resulting in a lot fewer plays per game.
Put together the following tables to estimate the effects of various play calling styles, quarter lengths, and APC settings on the number of plays per game and elapsed time per game.
With APC set to 20 seconds:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_G9-swvho1C4/So3WKI97BlI/AAAAAAAAAKA/wYv9Je5AAQk/s720/JFL_ACP_7.jpg
With APC set to 15 seconds:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_G9-swvho1C4/So3YARA1_CI/AAAAAAAAAKM/yd_q2hInSG4/s720/JFL_ACP_15.jpg
So the bottom line seems to be that in order to get more realistic stats we might want to consider going with 14 min quarters with a 20 sec APC (assuming none of us are slow play callers).
This would give us roughly 90 plays per game (equivalent to the NFL) and games would take about an hour (40-45 min of clock time and 15-20 mins of non-clock time based on the original 28 min clock time games taking about 45-50 min to play).
What do you guys think? Has anyone tried using higher quarter lengths with the APC to see what the play counts and other stats look like?