Pun City On The Defensive

Tecmo Super Bowl is often just as fun when one is on the defensive side of the ball as when one is playing offense. Three consecutive sacks setting up 4th and 42 for the offense, winning in overtime on a safety, forcing 3 fumbles in a game, all of which were brought back for touchdowns. These are great reasons for Pun City often preferring the defensive side of the ball.
This blog came to several conclusions when analyzing Tecmo defensive statistics. First off, the computer rules the Interception rankings, while Pun City rules the other metrics, mainly sack-related. There are a number of reasons behind these. Let us examine:

-Interceptions occur at an extremely higher incidence for the computer as opposed to Pun City. There are a bunch of reasons for this. Among quarterbacks with at least one attempt, the overall average number of attempts per season for each was 181.92. Pun City's average was 125.49. Pun City's average is so low because Pun City completes more passes on average (72.9% to 58.6%). More complete passes leads to more yards and less need for more passes. As we explored previously, Pun City's QBs get injured at a much higher rate than the computer, so a higher percentage of throws were made by backups. Backups aren't as good and therefore throw more interceptions. The computer isn't as good and therefore throws more interceptions. The computer plays the computer for almost all games. Pun City plays the computer for all games, but is hampered for a couple other reasons.

-Computer QBs hang on to the ball longer and are less prone to running. This leads to a ton more sacks for Pun City as compared to the computer. This also means less throws actually get made against Pun City, meaning less interceptable balls.

-Pun City normally calls running plays when defending against the computer (for a number of reasons). Anecdotally, this blog has seen evidence implying that calling pass plays leads to a higher chance of interceptions.

-Pun City calls more plays accurately than the computer. For whatever reason, the computer doesn't guess plays right very often. Even when it does, Pun City can sometimes find the open man anyway. When a play is called accurately against the computer, there is a much higher likelihood of a sack instead of an interception.

-Pun City has a sneaking suspicion that the computer makes up some phony stats for games when it plays against itself. Through 8 weeks of the attempted 8-8 season where Pun City is playing every game, the most interception return yards for one player is at 17. Interception returns both for and against Pun City are very challenging to get any significant yards on. Very suspicious that the totals just happen to be pretty high when Pun City isn't involved in the game.

So, the lessons are: humans get more sacks, computers get more interceptions.

Tecmo doesn't keep track of some awesome statistics that wouldn't be necessary in real life (due to their rarity), but are a good measure on the game. Safeties, Blocked Extra Points, and Fumble Recoveries for Touchdowns are some that Pun City can manually track without a great deal of extra effort.

A final note is the statistic of "Points Prevented." Pun City invented this stat and based it only off of Blocked FGs and Blocked Extra Points. The number is the sum of the points that would have been accumulated had the kick gone through the uprights as opposed to being blocked by the player in question. It's kind of a cool way to see how helpful a player was outside of his normal defensive statistics. With that, here we go:

Records Set By Pun City:

• Sacks: Lawrence Taylor, 99
• Fumble Recovery TDs: Tim McKyer and Lemuel Stinson, 3
• Safeties: Lawrence Taylor, 34
• Blocked Extra Points: Derrick Thomas, 8
• Blocked Field Goals: Lawrence Taylor, 4
• Points Scored: Lawrence Taylor, 68
• Points Prevented: Lawrence Taylor, 17

Records Set By The Computer:

• Interceptions: Dave Waymer, 16
• Interception Return Yards: Richard Johnson, 250
• Interception Return Avg (min. 2 Interceptions): Eugene Robinson, 55.3
• Interception TDs: 24 tied with 2

Hopefully that post was worth the wait, sorry for the delays on it. Until next time, hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut.....