Building the Perfect Strat-O-Matic NEC Football Cards, for Fun.

It’s generally accepted that Strat-O-Matic Football is one of the most accurate ways to simulate a football game. As long as your calls are appropriate, the players and outcomes generally follow the percentages of their real life counterparts. For example, I like to play as the 1993 Steelers. Throw to Eric Green? It’ll go better than throwing to Jeff Graham.

Just like in real life. Trust me on that.

So in an effort to find new and, well, fun ways to predict NEC games this season, I’ve been hard at work devising formulas to make reasonable facsimiles of NEC football players in Strat-O-Matic. It’s harder than you’d think.

Players like Ethan Greenwood simply don’t have counterparts in the NFL, especially back in the early 90s. (Randall Cunningham is as close as you can get, and it’s not that close). By inputting scaling formulas and more “Must Run” situations, along with modifying dice rolls, I’m able to get something reasonable.

I did the same for AJ Duffy and Jack O’Connell. Not perfect, but surely the closest anyone is going to get this season.

It’s just a reminder here. Football- watching football, playing football, writing football, simulating football- well, it’s supposed to be fun. Sometimes the fun can be taken out of it by putting too much pressure on ourselves or the team. And I’m guilty of this. I used to treat my alma mater’s games as life or death. It just isn’t that serious.

You can let a lot of external forces put pressure on you, too. Especially in a job like this. Believe me, I’ve taken a lot of flak from people for what I consider to be a job pretty well done.

This season, I’m going to focus on making sure I’m having fun without looking over my shoulder or trying to prove my value.

Step one is sharing Strat-O-Matic football cards for NEC players. Because, well, that’s fun.