Defending Annoying Plays

Some ideas

Defending Annoying Plays

If you play a lot of Action PC Football, you’ll start getting annoyed by the small things.

There are two types of offensive plays that drive me nuts:

• Designed quarterback runs that plow through my run defense

• Dumping the ball off to the running back

These drive me nuts because they tend to be successful even if I’ve set up what seems to be the “right” defense. In other words — I chose a run defense, but because the quarterback ran a bootleg my defenders were out of position, leading to a huge gain. Or I chose a pass defense on an obvious passing down, and the quarterback then decided to dump the ball off to the running back, who was able to run through the vacated midfield for a big gain.

There are ways to defend against these. But you need to understand what your options are.

Defending against the quarterback run

The key here is to think about what is going on.

If you’re playing a run defense, you’re going to have linebackers playing closer up to the line. They’re going to anticipate that the play will go in a specific direction based on the blocking in front of them.

Now, if you think you know who will run and choose a guy to key, your defenders will pay a lot more attention to that player than anybody else.

If the offensive coach knows you’re going to do this, he could theoretically call a bootleg. That’s a fake handoff to the running back — usually to the one you’re keying — followed by a quarterback run that goes against the blocking.

The easy way to prevent against this is actually pretty simple. Use a QB Spy.

This is an option on the bottom right hand of the play calling screen:

This option allows you to assign a specific linebacker to “stay home” and look for a possible quarterback run. It’s effective against mobile quarterbacks, and is particularly helpful if you’re up against a quarterback who loves to scramble.

You want to be careful about which linebacker you choose, of course. Keep in mind that you’re using up one of your linebackers for this purpose. You won’t be able to have him effectively blitz at the same time he’s spying — and the defense will be a tad weaker at the position he is stationed at.

You can also try to blitz when you call a running play. This sometimes has the effect of completely blowing up the run — something the 1985 Chicago Bears did frequently in real life. Of course, if you pick the wrong side of the line to apply pressure, you might wind up giving their running back or quarterback a huge hole in the defense. Proceed with caution.

And, of course, a final option is to tell your free safety to offer run support:

Be careful here, too. If they call a pass and catch you off guard, there will be nobody left in the backfield to help cover their receivers.

Breaking Up The Running Back Pass

This one just feels bad when it happens. You choose the right defense, contain their tight ends and wide receivers, and they still manage to get a huge gain.

The best way to deal with this possible threat is to double team the running back. You can do this by choosing one of the running backs from the “doubled” section:

Note that this is different than keying the player. You’re putting another defensive back on this guy to defend against the pass; the “keyed” option is specific to defending against the run.

Make sure to count your linebackers, too. If you’re up against 2 wide receivers and a tight end, and you’ve got a total of 5 men on the line, you’re only going to have 3 linebackers to spend. If you then stick two of them on a running back and one more on the blitz, you’re literally going to have nobody in your backfield to protect against a long pass.

It’s not particularly easy at first, but it becomes a lot easier once you get the hang of it. Experiment, and don’t be afraid to make a silly mistake.