Warrior General Games

Punting Minor Project
Results

Method:
-All players trained and applied points in their respective minor to 60 (confidence to 70).
-At this point, players added points to punting until 49.
-Data recorded is for 9 games, including preseason, of season 8. The builds started at:
Minor: 60
Confidence: 30
Punting: 30

And ended at
Minor: 62
Confidence: 33
Punting: 49

For confidence, the build was 70 confidence to 73
For punting, I continued to add punting well into the 70s.

Naturally, the confidence build was the "best" in theory, and the punting build was the "worst" because he was spending at such a high cost. Keep that in mind when comparing results from minors to these majors.

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First, each punter punted between 108 and 139 times. Very similar amounts, and high sample size.

Punting average
Strength 24.6
Confidence 24.1
Jumping 23.8
Speed 23.1
Agility 20.9
Vision 20.7
Punting 20.6

Comments: Who cares. They played in different leagues. Many had touchbacks, others didn't. Many had huge bounces in some games, others never had such a poor returner to punt to. I have thus reweighted the result.


Weighted Punting Average:
I wrote down every punt. If it was over 30 yards, I watched to see if there was any bouncing and subtracted this amount from the punt. If it was a touchback, I followed the trajectory of the ball and did not penalize 20 yards. If the ball was a coffin corner under 10 yards, I counted the punt as 20 yards (below average, but not as extreme as a potential -1 yard punt).

What this means: The following numbers reflect a punters POWER in kicking the ball. On average, how far does the ball travel in the air, basically.

Punting 24.6
Strength 24.59
Confidence 24.46
Jumping 22.87
Speed 21.91
Vision 21.65
Agility 20.96

Strength's value was high across the board. Strength had a lot of bounces, but in general was just launching the ball a lot more than expected. Speed vision and agility performed pretty crummy across the entire season, with long stretches of 16-19 length punts. The jumping punter had a high average from the start of the season, the charts were filled with 25+ yard punts long before I even started to add punting to the build.

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Inside the 40:

Every punter had between 18 and 44 "inside 40" attempts. This was when a punter had the opportunity to punt from inside the opponents 40. I tracked how many coffin corner ATTEMPTS were made, as well as how many touchbacks were recorded.

Below are the %s for coffin corner attempts.

Strength 0.36
Punting 0.34
Vision 0.26
Jumping 0.25
Confidence 0.18
Agility 0.10
Speed 0.06

Below are the %s for touchbacks recorded

Punting 0.48
Confidence 0.39
Jumping 0.29
Strength 0.18
Vision 0.16
Speed 0.06
Agility 0.05


Some things are implicit here. Punters improved as I added punting throughout the season, especially in coffin corner attempts. Another thing I noted was that confidence attempted by FAR the most long-range coffin corner punts. However he was very unsuccessful. In fact, a large portion of his touchbacks were actually failed coffin corner attempts, and thus NOT covered in the first part.

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In long form, my conclusions were:

Punting: This build performed the best. He had great punting distance, coffin corner attempts, but was unable to get the ball in the corner with his lack of both confidence and vision. Despite being the lowest valued build with far less value (75 punting and 10 minors, compared to for example 60 strength and 50 punting), he had the highest weighted average. The reason his overall average was so low was his incredible touchback percentage.

Confidence: This build had the best build, with 70 in the respective stat instead of 60 for the other minors. However the other builds had the benefit of 30 confidence, and confidence only 10 in the minors. How you balance this, I'm not sure. In any case, the confidence punter attempted but failed a lot of coffin corners. He had 6 coffin corners and 13 touchbacks, but half of those touchbacks were in the corner of the endzone. The confidence punter even had a coffin corner attempt from 47 yards out.

Strength: Strength shocked me the most. Booming kicks, tons of coffin corners, and an average as high as punting and confidence. He also had 134 punts. Strength was also doing INCREDIBLE by the end of the season once having 50 punting with 62 strength. He had no regard for the endzone, just booted it right in a lot of the time.

Vision: Vision struggled without confidence. Vision had a high CC to TB ratio, which was good compared to confidence. This ratio was only matched by Strength's ratio. The punting quality was no better than speed and agility, either.

Agility: No noticeable results. Inside the 40 in 21 attempts, only 2 were coffin corners and one touchback. Little ability for large punts.

Speed: No noticeable results. Same as agility to be honest.

Jumping: A bit of a weird result here, with a decent punting average. I recalculated it a million times, and then looked at my charts and noticed that in every game, jumping had great distances. The coffin corners were actually pretty good as well. I was decently surprised at the jumping results.

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As a very quick analysis:

Punting: everything
Confidence: ATTEMPT a coffin corner
Vision: coffin corner QUALITY
Strength: punting power
Jumping: good support
Agility: meh
Speed: meh

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Of note:

Stamina didn't play an issue. Punters did not wane, ever. Despite 15+ punts per game and ending with 30 energy, they did not tire and kick shorter at the end of the game.

You can only get a round number length punt, but on a touchback you can get a half yard.

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Data table. Sorry for the formatting, but you can read across.

Punts In 40 CC TB CC% TB% Average Net Ave
Strength 134 28 10 5 0.36 0.18 24.6 24.59
Speed 108 18 1 1 0.06 0.06 23.1 21.91
Agility 128 21 2 1 0.1 0.05 20.9 20.96
Jumping 139 24 6 7 0.25 0.29 23.8 22.87
Vision 110 38 10 6 0.26 0.16 20.7 21.65
Confidence 135 33 6 13 0.18 0.39 24.1 24.46
Punting 109 44 15 21 0.34 0.48 20.6 24.6

Very nice

Its going to take me awhile to analyze this but I think this shows to all punters that punting is by far the most important stat, however without conf/vision it will not execute corners ( our original hypothesis ) and without strength, it will not have good power ( was debated ).

The biggest news here is now we know agility is probably bunk, jumping is what we thought agility was ( the minor support stat ), vision is for the quality and not quantity of corners, conf rolls give you the chance at the corner ( almost always the best possible thing for the punter ) and all that training of agility should be thrown into jumping.

Thank you for doing this. If testers started doing this regularly there wouldn't be such a divide and animosity between them and the playerbase.

so does that de-bunk your guide starting at step 5 where you begin training agi-vision?

Originally posted by zomgmike
so does that de-bunk your guide starting at step 5 where you begin training agi-vision?

I'd certainly change some things about my guide, yes. Strength certainly APPEARS to do more than I ever gave it credit for.

And Bort has had a direct quote saying jumping helps punting. He must have been serious


TBH, the results make sense, if you look at why the things are or aren't minors.


Punting: everything (duh)
Strength: power (logical)
Confidence: able to kick that CC when it matters (makes sense)
Vision: able to kick it well (makes sense)
Jumping: a punter jumps when they kick the ball... Bort may have exaggerated this logic in his formulas

Speed, Agility, Tackling: The P still needs to get down field and make a tackle.. these really play together well, more than the common "agility = mechanics" thing that really doesn't make sense but is a pretty way for us to explain potential results.


What gets me is why agility is in the punting bar, and that strength isn't. But those really are weird, and don't necessarily reflect the formulas used in the game.


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In no way would I take one test (over 100 samples, but still - low level, no control, etc.) as a strict way of saying strength > jumping > agility.

I am willing to test on my punter softcapping jumping though. I have a 1st place, 2nd place, and now back in 1st place with my punter in WEBBB1, basically blowing everybody out of the water if it weren't for a few negative yard punts every now and then. Anyway, the first minor I brought up was jumping to 30. I was planning on doing agility to 48, but maybe I'll take one for the team and try jumping and see if anything happens.

wow, you put alot of work into that. very nice

very well put together too, appreciate it

what would you suggest training in place of agi/vis when i begin pumping points into conf?

The adage I tried to follow when I started building my punter was that "power is nothing without control" and when CCs were introduced I found I wasn't having much luck with them, and that touchbacks were still a problem. This analysis does a lot to address some of the myths that have developed over the seasons. Thank you very much for going through all the effort.

The result I found most curious was the Inside the 40 and Strength. It seems that somehow a power punter had the brains to try and make CCs, when you would think that high Punting and say Vision would be the most logical influencers about whether or not to attempt a CC. What's odder still is that the guy with the highest Punting score made the most TBs from inside the 40, and the power punter was middle of the pack (in fact he could well be in the bottom of the pack, as both the Agile and Speed punters didn't really get much inside the 40 action).

In my case I abandoned my Strength equipment and CE in favor of punting gear, and then did the big Confidence boost at the start of the season with a lot of banked SP. I'm planning to put points back into Strength now that Conf > Str with the expectation that it will give me added distance and better CCs. Hang time is a big issue with me, as with the way return men are turning and weaving this year, it seems better to have ball land in a crowd than give the return man space to do his thing. For that it would seem like Jumping would provide the best return.

Originally posted by zomgmike
what would you suggest training in place of agi/vis when i begin pumping points into conf?

The three logical things are agility + vision, stength + jumping, and speed + stamina. Speed + stamina should definitely be last. If you punt long-range a lot, I'd do jumping + strength and cap strength. If you punt close a lot and want to increase coffin corners, I'd still do vision + agility.

I wouldn't do vision + jumping, just because it leaves strength in the dark for later and the punting training cycles are generally very long (train from 12 all the way to 30 for the pair)

I also want to thank you for all the hard work and effort you put into this project/experiment of yours. Looking at your post and looking at my dot, I believe I will start working on jumping.

Originally posted by Octowned
Originally posted by zomgmike

what would you suggest training in place of agi/vis when i begin pumping points into conf?

The three logical things are agility + vision, stength + jumping, and speed + stamina. Speed + stamina should definitely be last. If you punt long-range a lot, I'd do jumping + strength and cap strength. If you punt close a lot and want to increase coffin corners, I'd still do vision + agility.

I wouldn't do vision + jumping, just because it leaves strength in the dark for later and the punting training cycles are generally very long (train from 12 all the way to 30 for the pair)

my team i am on is not looking to be competetive until probably after season 9. that is the reason i was asking. i will most likely proceed with the str+jump then move to agi+vision like you said though.

The legend of Octowned continues... Great work, well summarised.

While I'm surprised by some of the results, they are pretty consistent with what you and others already thought. I still think there is some sort of "balance" element involved, as well.

As to jumping, the punter that is always my best (currently about 48yards/punt) has jumping of 26.76. Just don't get that one yet. His strength is a little past the first cap, but not that much.

I don't get jumping, either, to be honest.

I've seen enough the last few weeks to trust strength over agility, though.

Great work, Octowned.