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Main - General MFN Discussion

Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By setherick
12/08/2015 10:55 pm
Desmond Howard holds the NFL record for most punt return yards in a season with 875 (1996). Long time fans will remember what he did to Denver in the SB when he played for GB.

This is relevant because just 9 games into the season in MFN-19, we have four players that have more than that and three more that are close.

Then we have these two:

44 returns, 1403 yards, 10 TDs: http://mfn19.myfootballnow.com/player/2985

38 returns, 1142 yards, 7 TDs: http://mfn19.myfootballnow.com/player/921

These numbers are (choose your own adjective).

I know we have talked about this before in other threads, but it's worth pointing out how PRs are game breaking right now.

On the bright side, the kickoff return yards are pretty on par with the NFL.

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By fumblestruck
12/09/2015 5:52 am
when I watch punt returns - it seems to me that the blocking is overpowered. There are a number of illegal block in the backs that occur. It does take a special player to be able to be the punt returner but once you have one of those players it is child's play to get scores which seems an unfair advantage.

Just my thoughts

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
12/09/2015 10:39 am
Interestingly enough the new punt algorithms resulted in much lower per-return in testing - always becomes a different animal when there are real people behind it. Thanks for your patience and definitely thank you for posting this and the QB thread - it is immensely helpful to identify where the weaknesses in the game engine are.

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By Morbid
12/09/2015 3:26 pm
I still think players should have a Special Teams rating. Some players just **** playing a reguar position but excel on ST. Perfect example is Slater on NE. He is a WR and is lucky to see 5 targets in a season at WR position but is one of the best special teams players in the league. I think by doing this it might also help balance out some teams in the league because instead of loaded your team with great backups you might be more inclined to sign ST players and that would leave more depth players for weaker teams

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By setherick
12/09/2015 3:44 pm
Morbid wrote:
I still think players should have a Special Teams rating. Some players just **** playing a reguar position but excel on ST. Perfect example is Slater on NE. He is a WR and is lucky to see 5 targets in a season at WR position but is one of the best special teams players in the league. I think by doing this it might also help balance out some teams in the league because instead of loaded your team with great backups you might be more inclined to sign ST players and that would leave more depth players for weaker teams


They already do. Gunners for instance have different primary attributes then LBs or DBs, which is why your 45/45 LB may be a 75/75 gunner.

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By DarkRogue
12/09/2015 4:31 pm
Morbid wrote:
I still think players should have a Special Teams rating. Some players just **** playing a reguar position but excel on ST. Perfect example is Slater on NE. He is a WR and is lucky to see 5 targets in a season at WR position but is one of the best special teams players in the league. I think by doing this it might also help balance out some teams in the league because instead of loaded your team with great backups you might be more inclined to sign ST players and that would leave more depth players for weaker teams


I do also wish there was a way to sort player ratings or set player ratings for special teams positions. Like a filter on the roster page to rate a player based on how good of a kick returner they are and maybe you'd be able to set weights for returners and stuff like that too.

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By Morbid
12/09/2015 4:37 pm
setherick wrote:
Morbid wrote:
I still think players should have a Special Teams rating. Some players just **** playing a reguar position but excel on ST. Perfect example is Slater on NE. He is a WR and is lucky to see 5 targets in a season at WR position but is one of the best special teams players in the league. I think by doing this it might also help balance out some teams in the league because instead of loaded your team with great backups you might be more inclined to sign ST players and that would leave more depth players for weaker teams


They already do. Gunners for instance have different primary attributes then LBs or DBs, which is why your 45/45 LB may be a 75/75 gunner.


This i already know but what I mean just because a player has high skills doesnt mean he is going to be good at special teams. Just because your a 90 LB doesnt mean you can play ST but his skill set would say he can. I want a ST skill that weighs higher then his normal skills. ST is a pure position that a lot of big name players coming out of college never played so they shouldnt automatically be good at it.

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
12/09/2015 8:14 pm
Morbid wrote:
This i already know but what I mean just because a player has high skills doesnt mean he is going to be good at special teams. Just because your a 90 LB doesnt mean you can play ST but his skill set would say he can. I want a ST skill that weighs higher then his normal skills. ST is a pure position that a lot of big name players coming out of college never played so they shouldnt automatically be good at it.


That's not a bad idea, I'd have to think about how it impacts the engine (i.e. should someone's various attributes be penalized if they don't have a high ST value, etc)

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By setherick
12/09/2015 8:20 pm
jdavidbakr wrote:
Morbid wrote:
This i already know but what I mean just because a player has high skills doesnt mean he is going to be good at special teams. Just because your a 90 LB doesnt mean you can play ST but his skill set would say he can. I want a ST skill that weighs higher then his normal skills. ST is a pure position that a lot of big name players coming out of college never played so they shouldnt automatically be good at it.


That's not a bad idea, I'd have to think about how it impacts the engine (i.e. should someone's various attributes be penalized if they don't have a high ST value, etc)


I'm not sure if I agree fully. Usually good SPT players are incredibly good at one or two things and terrible at everything else. So you have someone who is speedy and a good tackler, but can't run a route or recognize an offensive/defensive package or other similar liability. But that person is speedy and a good tackler, so gunner it is. Also, most NFL teams do not play their starters on SPT because they pay their starters millions of dollars and don't want to expose them.
Last edited at 12/09/2015 8:21 pm

Re: Punt Return Yards Gone Mad

By Chipped
12/09/2015 9:13 pm
Special teams are definitely something I neglect because it's inconvenient to properly pick players for that (I just let auto-set deal with special teams). If it was easier for me to see a player's rating at a special team position without having to do a search or put them in my depth chart, I would put a little more effort into looking at my roster for special teams.

Right now one has an advantage if he/she takes the extra step to set up special teams; however, if you wanted to make special teams more appealing to the casual player you could allow us to set a player's position as a ST player (e.g. gunner instead of CB) to make it easier for us to track his progress there or even display something like CB/gunner with a CB rating/gunner rating listing.