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The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

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Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#91

Post by dhyasama »

neutronicus wrote: post #89
philwelch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that's the rule, but my question is: how the hell does play-action even work? Can't the defense read the line instead of watching for a handoff?

Play-action works on two levels: 1. The linebackers and safeties forget to watch the linemen, and watch the backfield. This isn't exactly dumb, because it's easy to take a bad angle on a runningback if you're paying too much attention to the linemen. 2. The linemen take one hard step forward, but not enough to get downfield, and then pass set. One thing to remember about the NFL is that every single step matters. A l…

Spot on. It's about deception and freezing a defender for a split second. Players at this level are very well matched physically and very few players can simply out run or overpower someone. You need to deceive defenders to get yourself that 1/2 step of space to gain an extra yard or two.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#92

Post by adestefan »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #35

I used to watch NHL hockey when I was a kid. Then I started going to college hockey games, and that was great, but a terrible side effect is that I've never been able to enjoy TV hockey in quite the same way. Those players off the screen are really important . The advent of HDTV has done a lot to fix this for hockey, where the rink is not so huge. But it would be awesome to have full-field perspective on football.

I agree that most sports are better live. The problem is that NFL games have so many TV timeouts now that watching NFL games live gets boring. There is so much downtime, that it's not worth the $100+ for a ticket anymore.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#93

Post by adestefan »

nkassis wrote: post #61
loso wrote: post #56

I have always been a football fan but when I was in college I lived in the Football dorm and it changed how I saw the game forever. (Back story, I lived in those dorms because I'm a big guy and the coach wanted me to play for the team. I told him yeah because I noticed that at registration all of the Football players were able to skip in line. I never did play because I loved Basketball more than Football at the time…

There a few things that are starting to bleed from the madden into the real life game. Time management is one of them. I can't remember who it was but a few years ago a player was running for the ends zone and had a huge lead on the defense, 1 yard from the end zone he started running sideways draining as much clock as possible, assuring no come back from the opposite team. I saw I believe Leon Washington for the Jag…

It was Brian Westbrook for the Eagles on Dec 1, 2007. He actually just dropped at the 1 because the Cowboys had no timeouts left and the game was effectively over with a 1st down. I believe in the post game interview he acknowledged that he did it because that's how he wastes the opponents time in Madden games.

Maurice Jones-Drew did the same thing in 2009 against the Jets.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#94

Post by loso »

freshrap6 wrote: post #57
loso wrote: post #56

I have always been a football fan but when I was in college I lived in the Football dorm and it changed how I saw the game forever. (Back story, I lived in those dorms because I'm a big guy and the coach wanted me to play for the team. I told him yeah because I noticed that at registration all of the Football players were able to skip in line. I never did play because I loved Basketball more than Football at the time…

What kinds of strategies do you find that work out in real life but not in the game?

It's more of what works in the game but doesn't work in real life. In Madden an old glitch that has since been fixed is that whenever the Quarterback would break the pocket, the receivers would break their route. And when they broke their route the receivers would go to the same spot every single time (towards the sideline). But at the same time, the DB's would get confuse which would then leave the receiver wide open. This would happen EVERY SINGLE TIME. So you would have wide open receivers no matter if the defense was in zone or in man.

Every football player knows that the db's would be looking for this in real life and would step up and stop the play after one or two times of this happening. But in the old versions of Madden the corner back would not learn and you had an open man every time. The only way to stop this was to have a team with a good blitzing line backer or defensive end and hope he gets to the QB in time. (This glitch made McNabb almost unstoppable in several versions of Madden.)

Another problem in the old Maddens was that if you had the tight end lined up on the left and had him go up five yards and then had him cut left quickly then if the defense was in man he would get the ball every time. And when the defense was in zone he would probably get the ball 70% of the time. In real life a highly skilled LB would be able to stop a sub par TE on this play. Just by being faster. But in the world of Madden the worst TE would get a completion against anyone.

These and the other tricks I would use were effective in Madden versions 97-03. The AI is much better now but there are still glitches. I just don't play it enough anymore to have figured them out. Others have though.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#95

Post by loso »

nkassis wrote: post #61
loso wrote: post #56

I have always been a football fan but when I was in college I lived in the Football dorm and it changed how I saw the game forever. (Back story, I lived in those dorms because I'm a big guy and the coach wanted me to play for the team. I told him yeah because I noticed that at registration all of the Football players were able to skip in line. I never did play because I loved Basketball more than Football at the time…

There a few things that are starting to bleed from the madden into the real life game. Time management is one of them. I can't remember who it was but a few years ago a player was running for the ends zone and had a huge lead on the defense, 1 yard from the end zone he started running sideways draining as much clock as possible, assuring no come back from the opposite team. I saw I believe Leon Washington for the Jag…

Oh yeah, the Maddenization of the modern football game is everywhere. I especially love when on (I think ESPN Sunday Morning Countdown) they use Madden players to illustrate the play but they are scaled to real proportions. The first time I saw that I giggled like a school girl. I started playing Madden in 92 after years of Tecmo Bowl and I never thought I would see it blow up as big as it is now.

Any football player who was in college after 95 has been exposed to Madden in a big way. So even though I am surprised how big it has gotten when it comes to integration in the NFL, I really shouldn't be.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#96

Post by loso »

josephcooney wrote: post #70
_delirium wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically the "data", in that when you have the all-22 view, you can extract the full player-locations-at-each-time data set reasonably well using computer-vision techniques. It seems reasonable to believe that that data is potentially valuable and/or sensitive, even if they aren't 100% sure what they want to do with it yet.

That sounds plausible, but what makes NFL so special? Football broadcasts (Champions League, World Cup, etc.) generally show a half to 3/4 field view of the action, only zooming in to show the action on replays. I certainly get the sense that they're trying to show as much of the action as possible.

The NFL likes to focus on the skill positions (QB, HB, WR, LB, and DB's) more than the entire game so their camera angles reflect that. Most fans do not understand what is going on with the linemen because for the most part it is the most complex action on the field. But when the average fan watches it all they see is 300lb men running into each other.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#97

Post by curiouskat »

matwood wrote: post #88
curiouskat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NFL's lawyers stated the NFL competes in the "entertainment marketplace" ( http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?renderfor... ) and operates as a single entity, not as 32 teams. The NFL makes a large portion of its revenue from television, and ratings are higher on close, competitive games. What prevents owners from keeping the games close or trading wins/losses now to help a storyline in exchange fo…

The only way the NFL could hope to come anywhere near fixing a game is the either a) change the rules to benefit certain team makesup (as they have done to make passing/scoring easier) or b) get the refs to call fouls more against a certain team. b) is watched frequently and doesn't seem to be happening statistically a) has occurred but it's not secret and all teams know the rules. It's not really 'fixing' as much as…

All you need is the coach calling the plays and one high-paid player to have a bad day, like the quarterback. "Any given Sunday," right?

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#98

Post by philwelch »

danssig wrote: post #86
philwelch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that's the rule, but my question is: how the hell does play-action even work? Can't the defense read the line instead of watching for a handoff?

Because in play action the linemen behave as though it were a run.

No, that would be an ineligible receiver downfield. They have to stay behind the line of scrimmage until after the pass is completed. For a straight run they can just block forward.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#99

Post by w1ntermute »

adestefan wrote: post #92
mechanical_fish wrote: post #35

I used to watch NHL hockey when I was a kid. Then I started going to college hockey games, and that was great, but a terrible side effect is that I've never been able to enjoy TV hockey in quite the same way. Those players off the screen are really important . The advent of HDTV has done a lot to fix this for hockey, where the rink is not so huge. But it would be awesome to have full-field perspective on football.

I agree that most sports are better live. The problem is that NFL games have so many TV timeouts now that watching NFL games live gets boring . There is so much downtime, that it's not worth the $100+ for a ticket anymore.

You can get around this pretty easily by just using a DVR and starting the game about halfway through. Fast forward through the commercials/breaks and you'll progressively catch up as the game goes on, and hopefully finish at about the same time.

The only major issue with this is if you have friends watching separately who regularly text you about occurences in the game as it's going on. You'll also have to make sure you don't look at any NFL websites during the game.

Re: The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving

#100

Post by malbs »

I'd be willing to have a stab that the people who really don't want the public with this footage are the sports bookies offering point spreads/line betting.

The bookmakers would already have access to this footage, because it is a competitive edge over the public. If the public suddenly had access to the all 22, there might be a correction in those betting markets.

And if the bookmakers don't have access to the footage? Could be an opportunity to capitalise on their in-efficiency ;)

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