Orangebird's offline New Mexico dynasty

[Orangebird]

So I've done enough messing around with the game, stuff within dynasty, etc and now that we have The Big Patch I think I'm ready to try my first serious offline rebuild.

New Mexico feels like an appealing choice to me for a couple reasons

1. The Mountain West feels like it provides a nice amount of variety for the locations/team prestige/etc, our road games will include UNLV at the Raiders' stadium, Boise's smurf turf and sunny San Diego State.
2. New Mexico has an annual in-state OOC rivalry game which I always think is fun
3. I don't want a total rebuild so I was looking for a team that had speedy QB, agile RB or a trustworthy WR/TE who's a sophomore or younger to give me a good foundation and Devon Dampier checks that box for UNM, a 74 ovr QB who already has 85 speed/90 accel as a redshirt freshman. (He appeared in 9 games last year so either I don't understand eligibility or EA made an error, either way I have him for 3 years)
4. New Mexico hasn't made a bowl since 2016, so this is still taking over a team that doesn't have much of an irl foundation of success that I figure is interesting

No idea how much detail I'll put into this but figure I'll at least make this thread and figure out the rest later

 

[Orangebird]

So I like the idea of the HC being an actual guy and because I like the Utah State playbook, our Lobos HC will be Anthony Tucker. He got a promotion from USU's OC to being on the MissSt staff this offseason, so it seems like a coach who could've gotten a HC job this year if you want to run a veer-and-shoot playbook. My coordinators are automatically assigned so I can't come up with any irl plots for them but that's my realistic alternate universe UNM head coach to match the playbook I'll run.

 

[Orangebird]

Alright time to actually, really start this lol

We're starting in the recruiting skill tree but only to accomplish one thing: unlock the scouting perk for every position. I can't imagine we'll be getting anything above 3-stars for at least a few years, so I think there's plenty of value in knowing the 3-stars we get will be the gems, who have a higher ceiling than the normal 3-stars. It doesn't mean all of them will hit their ceiling, but I think it's still a good way to maximize our limited recruiting hours.

Once we get the scouting speed perk at every position we'll move on to the motivator tree, with the goal of having everyone position, where tier 3 includes an offseason training boost. The ideal way to run a 1-star program on this, I reckon, is to find as many gems as possible and then make sure you use the perk that helps the gems reach their full potential so our 3-stars are better than any other MW program's 3-stars (besides Boise probably lol)

 

[Orangebird]

I honestly didn't think I'd pull this off but we somehow have an initial board of 35 3-stars in our pipeline that have us in their opening top ten, turns out being a program near Texas and California might be helpful!

 

[Orangebird]

So the plan with our first 450 hours will be take all the 3-stars, sort them by national ranking and scout all of them until we run out of hours, scholarship offers I'm gonna try to save until the next round, want to know who our gems are don't want to burn 175 of our 450 hours on offering all 35 guys right away

 

[Orangebird]

Well that allowed us to scout exactly 9 prospects fully and one prospect to 4/5, 2 gems, 1 bust, everyone else normal, the two gems will become our main two targets while we try to further scout our list lol

 

[Orangebird]

Let's meet the Lobos! Here you can see the top of our roster, which includes just 3 people above 80 ovr

 

[Orangebird]

And a closer look at our RB duo. Given wear-and-tear, having two viable RBs seems like it'll be useful here. Sanders having the shifty ability and Henry having the spin move ability should be helpful in the open field.

 

[Orangebird]

Our other member of the 80+ club, certainly not going to complain about an OL with the option ability given we'll be hoping to run a decent option of both read and speed option this year

 

[Orangebird]

Okay so we started the year with an FCS game, we won comfortably which is good lol (the actual FCS is Montana State and New Mexico is underdog for it but oh well lol)

 

[Orangebird]

Now let's meet our first FBS opponent, the Arizona Wildcats. While UofA did lose their HC as a result of the ensuing carousel from Saban retiring, they kept their QB and top WR from last year's roster and have one of the game's best QB/WR1 situations (they should have that irl too lol). For the sake of realism I'm hoping McMillan torches our secondary but we'll try our best to prevent that from happening at least!

 

[Orangebird]

Slightly closer than it looked (we had a late TD and failed to get the onside kick). This will almost certainly be closer than the irl result but the ratings gap was still obvious playing, any dime/nickel looks to stop the pass just got instantly gashed because UofA has the edge on the line and horizontal plays like jet sweep and speed option definitely felt less effective than usual. Also in a spectacular moment of Heisman difficulty plot armor, an AI defender roughed the punter on Zona's only punt when the game was still in the balance lol

 

[Orangebird]

Also TMac was totally quiet, 3-for-14 with 0 drops so I think he legit only had 3 targets lol, their leading receiver was a 77 ovr TE with 7-for-88 somehow

 

[Orangebird]

Next up is Auburn! Another buy game for the Lobos, we'll be heading to Alabama for a team that should be taking us quite seriously after their defeat last year against our rivals, New Mexico State

 

[Orangebird]

Well, it was going well until we threw a pick six going into halftime and Auburn scored to start the second half lol. Felt like a reasonable way to expect a G5 vs P5 to go, the G5 isn't so lacking in talent it can't move the ball but it makes mistakes that will absolutely be punished by a stronger team.

 

[Dr. Shats Basoon]

nothing like a good old back breaking pick 6er before the half

 

[Orangebird]

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

 

[Orangebird]

LOL well I guess that won't embed properly if it's just a clip

 

[Dr. Shats Basoon]

I’ve seen that movie plenty of times

 

[Orangebird]

Mountain West play begins with Fresno State! Fresno actually upset Michigan in week 1 lol so they're off to an excellent start but star HB Malik Sherrod will be out for this game with an injury. Fresno is pretty consistently a solid program in this conference and it'd be a nice statement if we can upset them.

 

[Orangebird]

Close loss that could've been a win with better execution, they picked off a bubble screen that I thought would be a safe throw on the final drive of the game lol, think I'm pretty pleased with how Heisman diff vs a higher ovr isn't impossible but makes you really feel like you gotta play a virtually perfect game to pull off an upset

 

[Orangebird]

Kinda put this on the backburner but I'd like to remain ahead of schedule for irl UNM so let's meet NMSU before our big rivalry game!

 

[Dr. Shats Basoon]

Go aggies

 

[Orangebird]

A delightful game, I threw a pick-six trying to ice the game with 4:50 left but then rebounded to put together a game-winning drive and we made a FG as time expired, nice to play our first game that felt even after an FCS cupcake, two P5 teams and Fresno who is one of the best teams in the conference

 

[Orangebird]

We are now behind schedule for irl New Mexico, but let's catch up by seeing how default Heisman AI runs the triple option!

 

[Orangebird]

The computer is very bad at running the triple option!

 

[Orangebird]

We're heading to Utah State! The lore for this dynasty is I hired Utah State's former OC to use their playbook, so this game will feature identical offenses lol

 

[Orangebird]

Another game-winning field goal! Let me tell you, Heisman difficulty no-huddle veer-and-shoot is insufferable to face, as you can see they scored 34 points while facing a 3rd down exactly 6 times lmfao. Also they kept calling read options with Spencer Petras, unaware of how slow Spencer Petras is.

 

[Orangebird]

We have another road game, this time against Travis' beloved Rams. Tory Horton seems like he'll be a huge problem for us, but the Heisman AI doesn't really spam its WR1 in my experience...but hey maybe that'll change.

 

[Orangebird]

I have no idea why CSU was completely unable to run the ball, I wasn't doing anything special there but we're now 5-3 and still only have 1 loss in Mountain West play

 

[Orangebird]

Nothing else going on today so let's see if we can move to 6-3 and clinch a bowl against Wyoming! Definitely a unit that seems stronger on defense so we'll have to see how well we move the ball.

 

[Orangebird]

Can't say I was expecting this one to be a shootout but folks...Wyoming had some play action crosser thing that even when I tried to cover it kept going for like 20 yards every time. We are bowl eligible baybeeeeee

 

[Orangebird]

A trip to sunny San Diego (at night) awaits us! Sean Lewis' year one squad doesn't look too impressive so let's see how our Lobos handle it.