Is The Computer Cheating?

Concerning play calling in Action PC Football

Is The Computer Cheating?

I came across an odd thing while playing a game the other day.

Take a look at this play:

Just so you know — Sutton is Vince Sutton, Alabama’s 1984 quarterback who had a fairly decent season. Carruth is Paul Carruth, Alabama’s best running back in 1984.

The part that surprised me here is that Sutton was able to throw a medium hitch pass to the running back.

Sure, we were looking for the run. But Alabama was in the pro set formation. I’ve got a hard time imagining how Carruth ran a medium hitch route from behind the quarterback and through the line to get open like this.

This is what the hitch route looks like:

As you can see, Action PC Football’s help file doesn’t even include a diagram of this route for the running backs.

However, it turns out that you can call a pass like this for the running back:

Woods and Crawford were both running backs with Vanderbilt in 1984.

I suppose that the computer wasn’t technically cheating in this particular case, though it is a bit odd.

As crazy as that was, this play then came up:

We’re looking at the same running back, but this time it was a medium fly pattern. That looks like this:

It’s a pretty straightforward route, sure. However, getting the running backs to go 10 to 15 yards out is going to take a bit of time. Again — I’m having a hard time visualizing this.

The fun part here is that the human coach cannot make this play call:

I’m pretty certain that the computer is taking advantage of something odd in the game engine here. This just doesn’t pass the smell test for me.

Now, there’s one more thing to note. The only way you can choose the running back as the receiver for this sort of play is to choose the passing play first. If you choose the running back first, you’ll only have the option to make a screen or short pass:

This is a lot more realistic, by the way. You don’t generally see 15 yard passes to the running back, since the quarterback usually doesn’t have that much time. And that was especially true in 1984.

I honestly think this is either a bug or poor programming. And, as we’ll see tomorrow, it leads to some ridiculous results.