A Few More Defensive Tips

More on Action PC Football Defense

A Few More Defensive Tips

The cool thing about Action PC Football is that you can use real football strategy to call plays.

This isn’t like the Madden games, where there are a few plays that always seem to work on both offense and defense. Here you have to think about the information you’ve been given and the play that your opponent is most likely to call.

If you watch a lot of football and pay attention, you’ll start to see how coaches in college and the NFL tend to think. And, of course, you can also consult books, blogs, and YouTube videos on the subject to learn a bit more.

This post on Kinetex is an excellent starting point. In fact, it can give you a few hints as to what you might want to call in certain situations:

Let’s go through each of these one by one and explain them in an Action PC Football context.

“11 personnel” is quite common in the modern game. You’re up against one running back, one tight end, and three wide receivers.

This is where you typically want to call a nickle defense - perhaps a 4-2 or even a 3-3, depending on how many men you want to rush at the front.

Remember, of course, that there’s still a chance that the offense will run. You don’t necessarily want to sell out completely for the pass just because there are three wideouts (and, frequently, a wide tight end). In fact, if you watch a lot of modern games — particularly NFL games — you’ll see teams run from this formation all the time.

“21 personnel” is what most of us who play with seasons from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s are usually dealing with. This is the old Pro Set formation, with two running backs, two wideouts, and a tight end on one side or the other. The tight end is usually going to block.

You can get away with a base defense in this case because the passing threat isn’t quite as large as it is when you’re facing three wide receivers. Of course, if it’s an obvious passing situation, you still might want to call a nickle defense.

And, of course, there’s not really much sense in calling for a running defense when there is no running back. Still, you might want to keep a man back to spy on the quarterback just in case.

Now — mixing things up can also be effective. You might want to call a nickle package if they’ve got good receivers at tight end or even running back, for example. You might want to play tight even if it’s not a situation calling for a long pass if you suspect the quarterback will dump it off to the running back.

And, if you’ve got an amazing defense — like the 1991 Eagles — you might want to play extremely aggressively and try to force the computer into making decisions it doesn’t want to make.

Let me know what you think!