Blog Archives

What's Up With Punt Distances?

9/22/2023

As part of an effort to improve the realism of historical replays in Football Mogul, I recently calculated the average punt distance for the last 72 seasons:

There is a general upward trend, which I think can be explained by improvements in technique and training (similar to the improvements we've seen by field goal kickers). But there are a couple things that I can't explain:

A sharp but temporary increase from 1959-1965. The average punt during these 7 seasons was 42.6 yards, about two yards per punt higher than the previous 7 seasons. It then dropped sharply in 1966, dipping below 40 for most of the 1970s.
A drop from 43.4 to 41.9 between the 1998 and 1999 seasons. It took almost a decade for the average punt length to get back to the level it was at in 1998.

I can't think of any rules changes or shifts in strategy that would cause these changes. If you have any theories, let me know on Facebook or by commenting here.

4 Comments

Football Mogul's New Simulation Engine

9/15/2023

0 Comments

Football Mogul 24 has a "new simulation engine" with "normalized player ratings for true-to-life depiction of historical eras". But what do these words mean?

Well ... it means I found some flaws in the way the game simulated historical seasons, so I rewrote a lot of the code to produce more realistic results. The best way to see the changes is to look at the numbers.

On the right are:

Stats from a simulation of the 1965 season using Football Mogul 23.
Actual totals from the 1965 NFL season.
Stats from a simulation of the 1965 season using Football Mogul 24.

Below that are the same stats for the 1995 season. In both examples, the offensive and defensive stats are more realistic, and I was even able to improve field goal accuracy rates to better match historical results.

I achieved these improvements by creating a "baseline" performance level at each position for each season. Then I use player ratings to adjust a player's performance up or down from those levels.

So, an average QB in 1995 will have a completion percentage a few points higher than an average QB in 1965. It also means that if you moved Troy Aikman from 1995 to 1965, his completion percentage will probably drop.

Update: The day after I wrote this, two people emailed to ask how I calculated the league averages shown in the tables above. As you may have guessed, I used Football Mogul. For the first six rows, I went to the Standings Page and clicked on the column headers to select these stats. League averages can be seen along the bottom (see screenshot).

Standings Page

The last three (FG%, Rush TDs and Pass TDs) aren't shown on the Standings Page. But they were easy to find with a cool little feature I added this year:

First, go to Sortable Stats and select "All Active Players", "This Season" and "All Positions". And this is where the new feature comes in: click on the column header for any counting stat like Field Goal Attempts or Pass TDs. The text in the upper right will update to show the total of all entries in that column.

Sortable Stats

This screen doesn't calculate the league-wide FG%, but it was easy for me to type the totals into a calculator to get the league's overall field goal success rate.

0 Comments

Sports Mogul blog

What's Up With Punt Distances?

Football Mogul's New Simulation Engine

Archives

Categories

Company Links

Franchises

About

Support