First let me get the preliminary stuff out of the way. I decided to go with Navy because in all my years of NCAA Football I have never played with them so Navy should be a fresh experience. Second, I like the idea of an independent school – I am not tied to a league as I would have been with my traditional NCAA Football favorites – North Texas, Texas, SMU, and Georgia. Navy starts the year (in NCAA 2005) ranked #88 – so there is a challenge. Finally, Navy runs an option offense, and I love me some option offense.
I am playing on All-American, 6 minute quarters, with heavily tuned sliders. I will discuss these in a later post. NCAA 2005 does have a tendency to drop too many passes, but I have found slider settings that compensate well enough to give me an enjoyable gamplay experience.
One thing I am doing different this year is not listing player names for default players. I will go with number for current roster players, and names for new players. I can go into reasons in a later post.
Week 1 was a bye week for Navy. I’ll post recaps every of other games each week to keep the flavor interesting.
- Week 1
- USC 62 – Virginia Tech 28
- USC had 511 Total Yards in a total Hokie
- Week 2
- Georgia 42 – Georgia Southern 7
- LSU 35 – Oregon State 32
Prior to getting started with my first game I had to take care of some NCAA rules violations. FS #33 (I cannot list these guys names since they are serving our country) was recommended for a 3 game suspension due to Fraud/Team Rules Infractions. At the time I did not realize that he was one of my key players (74 overall rating). I took the recommendation and told the kid to sit for three games.
1st 2nd 3rd 4th | Final Duke 0 7 0 7 | 14 Navy 10 7 7 0 | 24
Out of the game I dominated with a strong option attack, getting my primary backs (QB, HB, FB, WB) involved quickly. Duke struggled time and again with the option, and play-action passes were easily setup and completed as Duke cheated against the run. The option is a beautiful thing when implemented correctly – truly the option is the great equalizer in college football.
Duke Navy Score 14 24 1st Downs 10 15 Total Offense 160 263 Rush-Yards 12-(-5) 38-186 Comp-ATT-TD 11-36-2 8-17 Passing Yards 165 77
Obviously the passing completions to attempts for Duke were not too hot. I’ll have to give it a few more games to see if more adjustments can be (or should be) made. I have figured out how to pass, but the CPU just does not put up a good ratio.
I was actually doing very well with my passing attack (7-11) before I started experimenting towards the end of the game. I was up 24-7 and decided to get creative; I’ll have to be more cautious next time as my excitement got the better of me and resulted in an INT and two wasted series.
There was nothing really exciting to report in the game – I kept the ball on the ground and pounded the heck out of Duke’s defense. I completed just enough passes to keep Duke off balance, but I have to get better with third down conversions. My offensive line can run, but pass blocking was lackluster, as my guys up front gave up 3 sacks.
- Other interesting Navy stats/figures/numbers
- 1-10 (10%) 3rd down efficiency
- 3-4 (75%) 4th down efficiency
- 4-3-1 (100%) in the redzone (redzone-TD-FG)
- TOP 7:43 – 16:17
- Turnovers 1 – 1
