Can anybody point me towards some general forum posts on increasing offensive or defensive play familiarity? Do you just have to make a gameplan with only three or four plays picked out, even though I'm assuming the team would just get thrashed? It seems like picking the full 40 offensive or 30 defensive plays would prevent the players from getting better at them, and the familiarity level is pretty low on most of my playbook (is that because I have a new head coach this season?)

I haven't looked at my players' intelligence, so I don't know if they aren't smart enough to pick them up quickly, or because they are mostly lower skilled players and just can't execute them effectively. Obviously the Monarchs aren't going to be too competitive in the short term, but I'm hoping to whip them into shape a few seasons down the road. Thanks for any help.

Intelligence influences how fast a player learns plays. They learn by repeating plays.

Some owners try using limited plays in games to speed up the learning process, but as you suspect, it causes loses due to play overuse. It's better to pick your top 40 plays, and let them learn them naturally.

I've completely changed my offense mid season, and it only takes a few games to start seeing improvements. You might even pull out a couple surprise wins, when your opponent is planning for plays you no longer use.

https://moguls.myfootballnow.com/community/3/5207?page=1#31657

The creator himself answers some of your questions.

Thank you both for the replies. I didn't know that the familiarity goes up the most during training camp. Since I installed a new head coach this year I thought maybe it was just a lot of brand new plays and that was why the familiarity was so low.

I do swap out plays if they don't seem very effective, but I figured replacing them with another low familiarity play wouldn't be much of an upgrade. When I'm scouting opponents and a lot of *their* plays have near 100% familiarity I thought maybe they've had the same coaches for a decade and that's why the team knew the plays inside and out.

This is going to be a long rebuild, but hopefully getting to a lot of 60+ familiarity plays and better players eventually will be a push in the right direction.

If you believe in the importance of play familiarity, then one big thing is continuity. Keep the same coach, so you have the same playbook. Then re-sign your veteran players who know the playbook well. And always remember to set your scout team. As Bill said, it's a long process.

Good advice. Since the team is so bad I'm throwing all kinds of stuff up against the wall to see what sticks. Don't want to jinx it, but at least I'm not giving up 70 yard TDs every game lately - maybe there is a little improvement even though I'm still losing. Still pretty clueless setting up a defensive gameplan and most drives stall out at the 30 - not out of the woods by a long shot!