SIM 101

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Goodell
Posts: 3780
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:44 am

SIM 101

Post by Goodell »

Here's a little more information about how we sim our games, especially for those who are new to game play here. Our game simulator is custom-made, and it's a constant work-in-progress as we discover issues and try to tweak the programming to improve results the next time. We play the same schedule as the NFL teams each week.

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:
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
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.

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.
Official Statement from the Commissioner's Office
Goodell
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Re: SIM 101

Post by Goodell »

There are also a limited number of plays in a game simulation. Say you have a great backfield with 3 different feature running backs for their NFL teams who each had 20 rushes for 2 TDs each for their NFL team last weekend, as well as a QB who had 50 passes with 3 TDs. Well in the sim, you likely won't have 60 rush plays and 50 passes for all of them, and probably won't get close to the endzone 9 times. We don't add up all the NFL stats like fantasy football, we just run one play at a time, and better NFL stats help toward better sim results. The sim works toward getting your players their stats within reason, but sim stats are often a bit different from the real stats.

Game situations have a lot to do with sim vs. real stat differences. If you're way behind in the sim game, the sim coach is going to call more passes. Well that's probably bad for your RB1 who had 30 NFL rushes where he'll definitely get less runs if his sim team has gone into passing mode.

If a QB had 3 interceptions on his 40 passes in the NFL game, but only ended up throwing 20 times in the sim game he likely won't get to all 3 interceptions in the sim. The game simulator will start to force turnovers if they haven't happened as the game gets close to ending, but only if the sim attempts are close to the real attempts. It won't throw 3 picks no matter what, even just on 3 throws. It doesn't start the game with 3 straight interceptions to ensure he gives up 3 picks. The odds of picks just go up and up as the game goes along if a player hasn't reached their expected numbers. Throw half the passes, and it's likely half the opportunities for interceptions that result.

Turnovers are very impacted by attempts, while TDs are exclusively determined by field position and opportunities you get within the redzone. So just know that you can't add up 3 TDs from your QB and 2 TDS from your RBs. You get none of those if you don't have a team that can move the ball into position to score those. But if you get in position, those imported TDs from NFL games become automatic scores on plays within the redzone.
Official Statement from the Commissioner's Office
Goodell
Posts: 3780
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:44 am

Re: SIM 101

Post by Goodell »

Bye weeks will come up later in the season, but you don't have to worry so much about bye weeks like fantasy football. In the game simulation, even if you have a player on a real bye week in the NFL, if they're on a different sim team here who plays that week he'll play here.

Since he doesn't have any game updates (as he's on a bye), we use an average game from his season so far as his game update.

So don't bench a guy if he has a bye week as you do in fantasy football. If his sim team's playing, he's playing with his team mates and we'll use an average game for him. We upload average games for all players in the depth charts if they're on bye weeks but playing in the sim.
Official Statement from the Commissioner's Office
bpboguta1483
Posts: 128
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Re: SIM 101

Post by bpboguta1483 »

For this week on my roster I noticed both Kendall Langford and Pat Sims were listed as questionable, and it knocked my front 7 down from a 6 to a 5.7, my question is once the game is simmed, will it raise my averages back to a 6 or how is that going to work?
Goodell
Posts: 3780
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:44 am

Re: SIM 101

Post by Goodell »

bpboguta1483 wrote:For this week on my roster I noticed both Kendall Langford and Pat Sims were listed as questionable, and it knocked my front 7 down from a 6 to a 5.7, my question is once the game is simmed, will it raise my averages back to a 6 or how is that going to work?
Injury status of a player impacts their worth (explained further below). The only time the grade averages matter is during the game simulation when those grades impact the results on the field. Before we sim, I make sure injuries have been factored into those calculations. Once the games are simmed, I remove the injuries until next week's injury list comes out.

INJURIES
We use real NFL injuries, so if a player is marked out on the official NFL injury list they are out here also. If they're marked doubtful or questionable, they'll also have their grade adjusted here for them being less than 100% healthy/effective. We do not manually check thousands of players to see if a lineman actually played or not, but we just use their NFL injury status to modify their worth for a particular game. If a player is officially out or on IR/PUP/NFI/Retired, their grade for that game is 0 as they aren't healthy to play. If a player is "questionable" that's 85% of their original grade (15% less). For "doubtful" that's 75% of their original grade (25% lower grade).

For skill position players (QB, RB, WR/TE) who have their game stats uploaded, we do pay more attention to who actually played or not for game stats we upload. If a player is officially out or doubtful and didn't have any game stats, we mark them for 0 stats expected in our sim also. If a skill position player was injured during a game before halftime and didn't return (missing over half the game), we try to mark those (when we catch them) for in-game injury which should help limit that player's game stats to the half of action they played and not have the sim expand their role much more beyond that if they were hurt and missed over half the real game.
Official Statement from the Commissioner's Office
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