While the simulated games get much attention, our game is primarily a GM game with it's focus off the field. We're mostly about team building with the draft and free agency. A GM is mostly involved in putting the team together, not during on-the-field calls. Our game simulator is fairly simple and mostly just serves the purpose to putting some value toward determining who built the best roster. Both the strength of player grades and their performance on the NFL field each week are important in determining a sim game winner. You just put the best roster you can together, and let the sim coach do his job on the field, where hopefully if you put a good team together you'll win more of your games.
Our game simulator starts like an NFL game would, and goes one play at a time just like a real NFL game until the game ends. There is programming for basic coaching common sense. If you're team is down by 14 points in the 4th quarter, it's likely going to be calling more passes while playing catch up. If you're up by 21 points, it'll gradually lean more heavily to running out the clock. If you're facing 3rd-and-10, it'll call passes more often -- compared to more runs called in short-yardage situation. If the game situation is fairly neutral (for example, score is 0 to 0 in the middle of the first quarter and it's 1st and 10), then the play calls are going to skew more toward what your players do best, and working toward getting your sim players their expected stats.
We upload both NFL game box scores as well as player grades into the game simulator. A skill position player's expected stats get adjusted based upon the grades of the supporting cast and opposing defense. You'll be able to see exactly how that played out at the bottom of your sim game box scores. For example:
In this example, if a RB for CAR had a 4.0 average per rush in his NFL game, our sim expects him to be a 3.5 yards per carry back in the sim today because the opposing front 7 is 0.5 stronger than his offensive line grade average. Denver RBs get no adjustment to their NFL game average because the OL vs. front 7 grades are the same. The CAR QB in this example would get a maximum -15% decrease on their completion percentage because their WRs and OL have much lower grades than the DEN front 7 and secondary. The Denver QB gets a 12% increase to their NFL game completion percentage (taking him from 50% for example to 62% expected) because of his better supporting cast grades. There is a maximum cap of +/- 15% for QBs and +/- 1.5 average for RBs. A maximum deduction against a QB will also increase their expected # of interceptions.Carolina Offensive Line Grade (5.8) vs. Denver Front Seven (6.3) = -0.5 in the trenches
Denver Offensive Line (6.1) vs. Carolina Front Seven (6.1) = 0 adjustments to running averages
Carolina QB Completion % Impacts (x.1): WR (5.3) + OL (5.8) - Denver F7 (6.3) - SEC (6.3) = -0.15
Denver QB Completion % Impacts (x.1): WR (6.9) + OL (6.1) - Carolina F7 (6.1) - SEC (5.7) = 0.12
So say it's 1st and 10 at the 25 to start the game. What's the call sim coach? Let's say in this neutral situation you have stronger passing stats than rushing stats on your sim team for this week, the coach will tend to lean more passing toward the team strengths in neutral situations to work toward those numbers. So a pass is called. Is it complete or incomplete? That's determined by your QB's adjusted completion percentage. Throughout the game, if his in-game completion percentage is higher than his expected number, it's more likely his next pass will be incomplete to work toward his expected percentage. So say it's complete, who gets the reception? That's determined by looking at your receiver game stats and trying to get those guys their stats. The length of the pass completion is determined by a combination of the QB's average per pass and the receiver's average per catch, with the QB numbers being more important in that calculation. When a player gets the ball, he also has the chance for his uploaded longest play from his NFL game to hit for a big play.
You'll notice that TOUCHDOWNS from NFL games aren't as important here as fantasy football. In fantasy, you get your fantasy points when a RB dives 1-yard into the endzone. Here, we don't just add up scores from everybody. We play it up and down the field, one play at a time. If a RB has a TD in his game update, that really only comes into play once the team gets near the goal line. We don't turn his 1-yard TD dive in reality into an 80 yard TD run to start the game. His TD only becomes important if you drive near the goal line, and then it become an automatic score opportunity for your runners in scoring position. Same for QBs, if they had a TD in their game update and haven't thrown that TD in the sim yet, once they're in the red zone they'll get that TD pass automatically once they call their next pass in that scoring position. If a player hasn't reached their expected TDs yet, it starts to compensate by increasing their averages/percentages as it gets later in the game.
If a QB has an odd 3-for-3 passing game update, and he's your starter here, we don't have him go 30-for-30 based upon that 100% completion percentage. We give him that 100% for his first handful of throws, and then it defaults to more neutral stat line for the rest of the game based upon his grade. Same with players who are healthy but don't get NFL game stats (like a backup QB in reality who you start here, or a starting QB who sits out the last regular season game when his team already clinched a playoff spot). In those cases, the player gets a neutral default game update that's fairly mediocre (worse for lower rated players, better for higher grade players), but can always go up or down by 15% based upon the strength of his team/opposition. So if he comes in with a default 50% default completion percentage, that could be a strong 65% performance if he's got a max grade advantage.
Our home-made game simulator has been fine-tuned over the years to where it gives out fairly reasonable results, as more and more odd cases are corrected over time. We don't ever re-sim games if you see anything odd. Odd things happen in reality too. That's just the breaks. But send me a PM if you see something super strange that should be considered for future programming fixes.