Proposed Gameplan:
Looking at their roster, the Emerald Monkeys have a couple of glaring weaknesses.
Offense:
1) Running Back: Junior Diggs is starting at level 7, which is weak enough that I’m confident that we can shut down their ground game without making it a point of emphasis. Their offensive line is good, but not spectacular or anything.
2) Left Tackle: They’re starting a level 7 LOT, which should be an exploitable weakness (so are we, but that’s a problem that we’ll need to address later). For this game, I’ve flipped R.B Kazenzakis and Chris Boynkins so the former is now our RDE and the latter is LDE. This is because I just flexed Kazenzakis up 3 levels and added +1 to all of the pass rusher skills on his custom equipment. He’s now a beast of a pass rusher, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t manage to wreak some havoc in this game.
3) No. 2 WR: Their No. 2 is level 7, and I’m confident that Barkley will pretty much dominate him. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see another interception. On the opposite side, I think Maximoff (level 12 CB) will match up with their level 11 WR just fine. I’d be comfortable playing these guys man-to-man and trying to get a consistent pass-rush to generate some interceptions. Cav Trooper, Kazenzakis, Tank, and Boynkins should be able to generate enough pressure that the offense won’t have enough time to exploit man-to-man weaknesses. Barkley and Maximoff also both have 3 points in Shutdown Coverage, which bumps up their skills significantly when playing in man-to-man. I've already bumped up the man-to-man percentage considerably on account of this, and would maybe suggest that we up it even more.
Defense:
1) Secondary: Their secondary is pretty bad- level 8s across the board, which, in season 2, just doesn’t cut it anymore. Ramping up the pass game is definitely in order for this one, especially since their DL is very good, and I doubt we’ll be able to run at it. Short-to-medium passes are going to have to win this one for us, since I doubt our offensive line will be able to keep their pass rushers at bay for long enough to make long passes work.
They also have a notable strength, which we should probably take care to scheme around:
1) Defensive Line: the fact that O-Line is our weakest link just further compounds this problem. If they win, it will probably be because they dominated the line of scrimmage. Eugene Chung is good for us, but the others really ought to think about flexing up a few levels to stay competitive with the defensive lines that we’ll be facing (Emerald City’s defensive line has an average level of 12, vs. 9 for our OL). The OL is our Achilles heel right now.
What do you guys think?
