A few reflections on The Great Purge

[Rich-League Officer]

In the future, I would like to submit that a better way would be to put the playmakers on notice that submitting a new play requires deleting of an existing play.

This is generally a good idea, and the reason I submitted lists of my own plays asking for them to be deleted.

I have been asking playmakers for YEARS to stop sending in new plays but instead edit your current plays.
That request has been ignored. Coaches love sending in new plays, not use them, forget about them and then send more new ones in.
I would have no problem with a swap of new for old.

[Dean-Atlanta]

This is a straw man argument. NO ONE is advocating burdening anyone with 1700 useless plays. Remember, I start this all by urging Charlie to delete some of my plays. But the point is to purge to delete the GARBAGE plays, and we still saved plenty of garbage plays that give up 8-12 yards per play to passing and 7-8 yards to rushing, on average, because some team called those plays once or twice before realizing they are 'TRASH and quit using them.

This season, with each PPP I submit I am going to track in a spread sheet which plays I put in game plans, and which ones get called. This data should be interresting.

[Mitch-Oilers]

I think deleting plays that haven't been called over several seasons makes the most sense to me. That's because play effectiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Here's what I mean:

The effectiveness of a play will always be up for debate because we don't all use the play categories in the same scenarios, particularly on defense.

The best example is PM defenses. Some teams use PMs heavy on 1st and 2nd down. The PM plays used in those scenarios will likely need some sort of balance between slowing down both the run and the pass. However, if teams use PM mostly on 3rd and 6+, they likely only focus on how well the PM play does against the pass.

What one coach may consider an effective play, the other coach may look at it as ineffective based on their style of play.

The only way to get a sense of which plays that these coaches don't like are seeing which plays get called and which ones do not get called.

[Dean-Atlanta]

The only way to get a sense of which plays that these coaches don't like are seeing which plays get called and which ones do not get called.

That is flawed, because not all plays included in a game plan are called, especially in less often called categories such as RR or PS. Some team minimize how often they call those categories in their profiles. For example, you can identify SIX solid RR plays based on sim data or whatever method you use, and put those in your game plan. In the game this weekend, becuase you do not call RR very often, only TWO of those RR plays get called. This does not mean those two are better RR plays or the other 4 suck. It only means those two were randomly called by FBPro in your game.

If that is the standard by which we purged, we are purging randomly and not for good reason. This is not smart nor is it effective. And it hit the less used categories harder, and they less used for a reason, they are weaker categories, and should be decimated less by purges. Only the more heavy categories should be purged for non-calls, and only those are approaching the 520 limit and have any need to be purged from time to time.

We do a disservice to the league to purge good plays from already too weak categories because teams use them less, and use the same few plays in those categories.

Just saying, let's be smarter next time, and clean up the play pool using a scalpel rather than a sledge hammer.

[Mitch-Oilers]

@Dean - if you were making a decision to purge plays based on 1 or 2 weeks with of data, yes, plays may not be called that are actually in a gameplan. However, over a 3 year period, if those plays and play categories are used regularly, the plays are very likely to be called atleast once.

There isn't a process that isn't flawed.