Best and Worst Run Franchises in HC09

[Shamhat1915]

I was looking into starting a new career, and couldn't decide on a team. So, it got me thinking: what is the worst run team in Head Coach 09? And, on the flip side, which teams are run the best?

Now, there really is no easy way of determining this. I mean, many variables go into each season as it is simmed. However, I decided to put something together to give some idea as to this. I am running three seperate 10-year careers. Every team has their full staff in place, and the CPU has full reigns over all aspects of the game, even my teams personell decisions. This way, everything is full CPU determined.

Now, it's not perfect, but it's already giving some idea. I'm halfway through the second simmed season, and I'm already seeing some patterns. The obvious teams are always near the top, such as New England and Indy, but I see some fluxuation from other teams. Of surprise to me is the fact that Carolina has not passed 7 wins in a season yet, and always seems to hover around 3 wins a year.

On another note, it seems that Dallas has the most fluxuation of any team. They've won as many as 14 games in a season, and then won as few as 1. And the Chargers seem to average around 8 wins a season.

All in all, this has been an interesting little experiment for me so far. I'll post the full conclusions when I finish getting all thirty years simmed. For now, I would just like to know what you have all seen in your careers, or if what I've seen seems to be the norm.

[burnum]

From my experience with the game, I'd say the worst run teams include the Jets, Raiders and Carolina. The best run teams are certainly the Colts, Patriots, Bucs (as long as they have Gruden) and whichever team gets Gary Hammermill as their HC.

Also, an overachieving team (a team that performs better in the game than in real life) is the Bills. They consistently make the playoffs in most savegames (due to their good Cover 2 defense). On the opposite side, the Steelers seem to be underachieving in the game (probably because of their run-heavy offensive playbook).

[Skarecrow]

I agree on Hammermill. The miami dolphins are a bottom-10 team every year in my leagues, unless they get hammermill, in which case they win their division every year and make it deep into the playoffs. He's done the same for the perennial "also-ran" arizona cardinals in another franchise of mine. They gained jack english the same year they got hammermill, and turned into a team that was nearly a lock for the conference championship game each year.

Everybody knows the colts are overpowered in the game. It's not uncommon for me to see them still racking up 15-1 or 16-0 records even 4 and 5 seasons into a franchise. The patriots start out nearly as strong but for some reason they often fade quickly into a 2nd tier team, not sure why. The Tampa Bay Buccs are of course way way overpowered. Those are the three juggernauts. The other strong teams tend to rotate depending on coaches.

My league's list of of "must suck to be that city's fans" teams, on average, tends to see most often:
Jets
Raiders
Dolphins
Ravens
Falcons
Panthers
Redskins

The two worst are probably the Panthers and the Raiders. The panthers I understand. The one I just don't get is the Raiders because they usually have a lot of talent, picking in the top 3, and picking well, each draft class.

[jlech1805]

I would rate in tiers:

I've found that you can change playbooks for all teams which helps a lot. The Chargers and Steelers are great examples where they are so-so because they are run heavy. The game favors passing teams. Additionally teams like the Vikings and Ravens can be really strong if they have good QBs. I've found that no matter how bad my teams are I will beat the 4-5 tier teams nearly 95% of the time. This was boring to me so what i usually do is release all their good players and put them on teams in the first 3 tiers. This makes the game harder against the best teams and speeds up the turnover of bad coaches

Team Tier
bucs 1
colts 1
pats 1
giants 2
eagles 2
cowboys 2
vikings 3
packers 3
saints 3
seahawks 3
rams 3
jags 3
titans 3
bills 3
chargers 3
broncos 3
49ers 4
cardinals 4
texans 4
steelers 4
ravens 4
bengals 4
browns 4
bears 5
lions 5
redskins 5
falcons 5
panthers 5
jets 5
dolphins 5
chiefs 5
raiders 5

[rdnk]

I might put the Broncos up a notch, they make the playoffs every year with Marshall breaking records.

I'd also put the Chargers down a notch; Norv kills every team he goes to. I've never seen much success with the Packers or the Rams either.

As great as Gary Hammermill is, I've never seen any team have success with General Sanders. Maybe if the sliders were adjusted, he could be good, but a run heavy playbook is generally crap for CPUs. Tampa 2 is also a good sign; it allows Buffalo and Minnesota to be more competitive then they should be; although the Lions still suck with the Tampa 2 and will likely lose it after the 1st year. The Bengals made the Superbowl once against me, so that might kick them up a notch; they are usually the best team in the AFC North. I've seen the Chiefs make the playoffs a few times if they keep Edwards and his Tampa 2.

I've seen the Colts and Pats fade if they don't get a QB to replace Manning and Brady. Honestly, it is more fun when they do fade, as the Colts going to the AFC title game (w/ Josh Johnson) or the Pats with Dane Morrow every year is lame. I like to see the Jags, Broncos, Titans ect. come out of the AFC.

[burnum]

Yep, passing offenses and Cover 2 defenses is the way to be successful in the game. Changing sliders won't help a lot because (as far as I know) they only affect real gameplay (when you actually play the games). When you sim or super-sim games the sliders have no effect to my knowledge.

Even after 5 years this game is still so great. I would pay for a roster update to make it up-to-date again but, unfortunately, it probably will never happen.

[Shamhat1915]

I would gladly pay for a roster update myself. Hell, I would provide the funds for it myself if I could. This game is still my favorite.

Back to the topic at hand, though, I do have some more observations. I just completed the second 10-year stint, and have noticed something about coaches General Sanders and Gary Hammermill. Those two coaches are only successfull with certain personell. Hammermill took over the Raiders for three years in one career, but only won 10 games in that time and was fired. He was then hired by Baltimore and made Flacco the MVP almost every year and won at least 11 games every season.

General Sanders never had the same success as Hammermill, but I noticed that every team he took over improved their record by at least 5 games. And this was regardless of whether he took over as head coach or was hired as a coordinator.

On to other teams, it's become clear to me that the worst teams are the Panthers and the Jets. Neither team has won more than 7 games in a season. Every other team has been above .500 at least once in these first 20 years, and both New York and Carolina has an 0-16 season to their resume.

On a side not from something jlech1805 said, what playbooks do you believe are best suited to each team that could use a new one? I mean, each playbook has different strengths, but if you were to switch them all up, what teams would get which playbooks?

[jlech1805]

I am actually working on a franchise where I not only switch up the playbooks but shift the talent to the elite teams.

For example i switched the Pats and Colts to Miraldi Tech playbook and they each throw for nearly 70 TDs with almost 4 1,000 WRs.

Vince Young becomes a monster in the spread option which heavily uses the TE as a weapon.

These are the playbooks I used on O, I don't remember every team's assignment off the top of my head. I've noticed that the run pass splits differ based on success and coordinators. Meaning if i switch every team to the same playbook they wont have the same exact run pass mix.

NO - Passing HB RECs
TB - Balanced
PHI - High passing, HB high RECs
DAL - Passing / Balanced
SEA - West Coast can produce 3 1,000 WRs
DEN - Good Running Game, WR1 (Marshall) dominates
IND - Decent Balance - Great Passing #s
NE - Decent Balance - Great Passing #s
CIN - 2 1,000 WRs solid run game
CLE - Power running, great QB #s
Spread Option - 80% Passing works with mobile QBs, TE ridiculous #s
Miraldi Tech - 90% passing, unreal passing #s
Michigan Spread - Hammermill's O