If you know me, which you probably do, you’ll be more than aware of my affinity for games of a management nature. Whether it’s taking the Carthaginians to glory in the latest iteration of Civilization or pondering for hours over whether to play 442 again in Football Manager I’m never happier when confronted by a spreadsheet masquerading as a game.

The latest web-based spreadsheet-oriented good times have come my way in the form of Gridiron³, an American Football management game with a fair amount of depth. Having taken over the command of a previously abandoned team I’ve found myself unable, so far, to achieve that first elusive win so, for the benefit of other players, I concocted this article based on my experiences. Its relevance to you, SAM-site regular, may be slim to say the least but I’m reposting it anyway to avoid people griping at me for not updating often enough. Enjoy. Or not.

Congratulations Coach! You’ve made your way through the perils of the waiting list and have been fortunate enough to take control of a team in the middle of the season.

How excited you must feel at this fantastic opportunity to shape an existing franchise in your own image and take it forward to future glories!

The good news is that the future starts right now! You have a few short days to pull together your initial lineup and plan to go up against whatever the league cares to throw at them. It’s a thrilling time to be sure, and you can’t wait to get stuck into the cut and thrust of your league as you aim to bask in the awe of more experienced coaches as you dominate everyone from the off!

As is traditional however, with every piece of good news there is some bad news to go along with it. Ask yourself why, exactly was your team left with nobody at the helm? Could it be that a coach became so bored of dominating all comers that they simply sighed and moved on? Or could it be that the halfwit who was in charge before your tenure began had dug themselves into a hole best described as “deep” and you’ve now been gifted the chance to not only take the team to glory, but have a fabulous wealth of adversity to overcome in order to do so?

Not to appear insensitive – after all, your predecessor could very easily have been shuffled off the mortal coil by a rogue bus, thus it would be poor karma to speak ill of them, but you may find yourself privately using some colourful language with reference to some of the “strategic” choices they made before your arrival.

This article is based off my own experiences to date, having taken over a team charitably described as “a unique fixer-upper opportunity” at the midpoint of the season with a 0-5 record. Hopefully you will find yourself experiencing few of the challenges listed below, and tackle them with more effectiveness than I have managed to date.

1. How do you play this game then?
You’re confident of a swift ascent of the learning curve upon initial arrival through the gilded gates of team ownership. After all you’ve previously played as many American Football simulations as you could get your hands on; everything from Madden to Goalline Blitz, maybe the sport itself is on your resume. This is not to mention the sheer years of time you may have spent on Championship Manager, Football Manager and every other “manager” game under the sun. You’re tough, you’re a veteran, you know football.

Upon encountering the formidable selection of rules, rule updates, guides and articles (the chaps here are nothing if not prolific) you get stuck in, and some time later emerge with some idea of what you should be focusing on. So, we’ve a rudimentary understanding of the game, let’s see what we have to play with.

2. How are we doing?
Chances are your team has a losing record. Greater chances are that your team has so far failed to win a single game this season. This naturally puts you in the position of hoping that morale does not factor heavily in the performance of your team, and a quick glance at the rules (or a lengthy glance if you didn’t thrash through the lot at step one) seems to confirm that these animatronic football players don’t appear to suffer mood swings. That at least is something, but let’s try to turn this season around.

3. Who are we missing?
A cursory glance at your roster will very likely reveal that several of your well paid, professional and hardened players are injured. Badly. Due to your predecessor’s wisdom at fielding the best players it’s also highly likely that your best players will be among those who are currently a little way from what one might describe as “match fit”. No matter! That’s what backups are for, right?

4. Okay, so I’m missing a few starters, my backups will have to do…
At this point there are two possibilities in your fortunes when taking over a team; you’ve either picked up a veteran franchise who have had several seasons of pulling together an elite roster of players for you to plug holes with, or, you’ve taken over the reigns of a team formed this season in which case any shortcomings of the former boss will quickly become clear. (Note at this point, there are pros and cons of gaining both a team in an established league and one in a virgin conference, my experience comes from the latter so there may be a smidgen of bias presence).

Regardless of the age of your franchise there’s a very good possibility that your backups are made up of old men who lack talent and kids who lack talent. With a fresh franchise however, they’ll all lack experience.

If you’ve got as exciting a beginning as me you’ll quickly figure out that the former skipper elected to invest all their time and energy into prestige positions – with 3 quarterbacks of the same level, any one of whom could start, a decent halfback, a stud receiver and very little else. Of course not! Nobody could possibly need an offensive lineman at a level higher than 7 could they? By the way, do I really need more than 3 cornerbacks? Offenses win games, right?

5. Free agency will save me!
If you’ve inherited a team that’s been around for a while, this is distinctly possible – at least possible in the sense that you can pick up a few has-beens and never-will-be’s to fill holes in your roster. If however, you’ve taken over a team in their first season, it really won’t, as that there free agency market will be as empty as the playbook of the coach at the helm before you.

6. What scheme have we played to date?
When the former owner of your franchise went on permanent leave it’s highly likely the team will have simply continued to exercise the instructions they were last given, which will not have been stellar. What this means in practise is that your offense will have played a lot of pro-form and defense a great deal of 3-4 in default stance. Naturally, these formations are utterly interchangeable with whatever your preference isn’t in terms of formation, but the global law is that it will have been something you’d rather not use.

7. Why don’t I have any staff?
Answer : because hiring staff is for wimps! There is an alternative answer here, and you can decypher it by unravelling the following sentence – “predecessor moron your a was”.

No problem, let’s head to the want ads and see who’s available. Okay, so there’s nobody available, apart from a dozen eager looking special teams coaches who must be the best out there as they’re level 1! Hire two of them to be on the safe side. Then after the next turn, try to hire them again because you’ll make a mess of it the first time out and end up with no staff.

Is 100 MPs a week too high a price to pay for a rookie special teams coach? Who knows? Let’s try it anyway!

8. Let’s get some training going here!
“Who needs staff anyway? Right, let’s make my starting (fit) running back up his ball carrying a little… oh, it doesn’t work like that. Where’s that rulebook again?” followed by “What the hell’s a CSV?” and “Awesome, it was 4 and is now 5… is that a good thing?”

It’s at this point you’ll wish you read the rules more thoroughly the first time. Not that the first time reading will help you enormously, but by the 5th or 6th attempt it may start to sink in. If you’re anything like me, you’ll figure that any time a player actually gains a level it’s “a result” and that nuances of training can be worried about later. Try not to be like me.

9. My first gameplan. It’s awesome.
Without going into hectic amounts of detail you’ll gradually, over several hours, pull together your first gameplan, and after repeatedly checking what you’ve done with the rulebook and other sources at your disposal you’ll be pretty convinced you’ve put a healthy, albeit inept, team up for the forthcoming game with a gameplan that is at least legal. That niggling doubt you have in the back of your head about your 4th down strategy? Yes, that one. Don’t ignore it, go back and check it again.

At this point I should compare once again the differences between joining an established league versus a new one, because let’s face it while you’re going to be a tactical novice no matter which you join, at least in joining a new league the other coaches don’t have (potentially) seasons upon seasons worth of experience for you to contend with. No, instead, you’ll be up against coaches who worked out 2 games ago that their plan wouldn’t go for a field goal longer than 20 yards, and have figured out a selection of plays and players who at least accomplish something. You’ve still got this fabulous awakening to come.

10. That uniform has got to go!
Finally! Something positive I can do to get this franchise pointing the right way! Despite your inevitable plans to change the city and name of the team come season end, you can at least have them playing in a more intimidating uniform in the interim. You feel good about your new purple and yellow uniforms. Your squad look at you adoringly. Your mark is well and truly made.

11. The wait.
So, you’ve set up your roster, built a compelling gameplan (twice, as you timed out when putting the finishing touches to it first time around), put in a bid for some excessively awesome Special Teams coaches and most importantly you’ve changed the uniform. You’ll feel pleased with the uniform change. That’s the bit that matters most.

With all this done, you now only have to wait for 6 short days to pass before something happens! I suggest you go make a cup of tea.

12. The first result is in!
I’ve never been a skip-to-the-end kinda guy, so I chose to watch my first (and indeed every) game in play by play fashion. I find that this way gives you time for a lot more cursing of your players, their ineptitude, the luck of your opponents and the silent shame when you realise that the nagging doubt about your 4th down strategy was right on the money when you punt from the opposing team’s 12 yard line.

They say that you learn far more from failure than you do success, and this is likely to be to be the case with your first game. Failure, that is. Learning from it is going to be down to you.

To summarise, this article may come across as complaining somewhat about the hand that I’ve been dealt in taking over the now 0-8 team in the freshman Delta League. Other coaches who have been dropped in at the deep end may also have to struggle with the initial state of their team, but I’d be very surprised if their reaction is any different to my own – I’m loving it! The mountain that the team has to climb is purely going to make the sense of achievement that much greater when (not if!) our first victory comes.Better yet, there’s going to be a team out there to who we will take this victory from who may have to deal with a certain amount of childish gloating as a result. I promise to work it out of my system quickly.

Meanwhile, does anyone have an offensive line to spare?

Hostile Takeover - Rookie Gridiron3 Observations, 9.0 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

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