Hello and welcome to the SimFBA community! We’re thrilled to have you as one of our users. This document will walk you through all the basics of running your new football team, from requesting an available team to recruiting to setting a depth chart and gameplan. We also have a very active Discord which is a great place to hang out with other owners and ask any questions you have.

Our site runs sims for both college and pro football. College teams are run by a single user and there are many teams available, so that’s what we’ll be covering here. Pro teams are almost all claimed but can have multiple users on “staff”, so your best bet to get involved in the pro sim is to find owners who are looking for additional help with their franchise.

Step 1: Request a team

You can find a list of all current owners and their teams here. Any team not crossed out is available. Once you’ve decided on a team, follow the instructions here and post your answers in the appropriate forum. Your conference commissioner will be along shortly to approve your application. When they do they will also ask you to apply for the team on the interface. The interface will be the hub through which you do steps 2-4.

Step 2: Set your depth chart

Once you’re set up on the interface, you can view your roster to see the names, positions, school year, and overall letter grade for all your players. You can click on any column to sort by that column, or click on a player name to get a pop-up with their letter grade for all applicable skills. There’s also an Export button to see everything in a .csv table.

If you’re joining in the off-season, you will have the option to redshirt up to 15 players. Redshirted players cannot be placed on depth charts for the upcoming season, but will not use up a year of eligibility and will still have a small chance to improve. Any player who hasn’t already been redshirted once (i.e. anyone who does not have parentheses around their year) is eligible for this designation.

On the depth chart, you can see the assigned starters for each position and change them however you like. You can even try players at positions outside their assigned one, and their grades will change to match the new position. Letter grades are relative to position group: a wide receiver with C speed is average compared to all other WRs, while a lineman with A speed is faster than most other lineman. That doesn’t mean the lineman is faster than the receiver.

Once you click Save Depth Chart, your work is done; the sim will use these roles for your next game and all future games. You don’t need to revisit this screen unless you want to make a change.

Step 3: Set your gameplan

Offense

Currently there are 4 offensive schemes: Double Wing, Spread Option, Pro, and Air Raid. Each one uses 3 different formations, and you decide how often your team should use each. You can also set the Run/Pass Ratio to tell the sim how often to run or pass (higher = more running), though your choice of scheme may limit that number - you can’t run 80% of the time if you choose Air Raid, for example. The positions used in each offensive formation can be found here, but ignore the defenses listed (they are out of date).  

There are detailed Dev Diaries you can read about the exact way the sim handles passing, running, and catching, but for now we’ll cover a few offensive basics and let you work out the rest. There is a bit of trial & error to finding the right gameplan for your team, and that is part of the process of being a coach!

Running Distribution covers who should carry the ball on a run play: the QB, halfback (BK1), fullback (BK2), or second halfback (BK3, Double Wing only). These percentages may be limited by your scheme choice.

Primary HB Percentage covers how often your BK1 is the starting halfback (vs a backup). Set this number higher to keep your primary back in the game, or lower to use more of a run-by-committee approach.

Run Type Distribution covers how you run the ball. Most will use the run blocking score of the offensive lineman on that side, but Power can use lineman from the other side as well (to simulate a pulling guard, etc).

Pass Type Distribution covers where the ball should be thrown. Quick passes are near the line of scrimmage, screen passes are the same but switch the focus to backs, and the rest should be self-explanatory. Play action passes require longer pass blocking but gain a bonus when the defense plays the run.

Defense

There are currently two defensive schemes: 4-3 and 3-4. Both have a base formation and nickel & dime variations that remove a linebacker and add a defensive back (nickel = 5 DBs, dime = 6 DBs). You decide how often to play the run vs the pass (higher = play the run more), and you can also set the amount and type of blitzes you want. Details on blitzing can be found here. Finally, you can set your different position groups to use man or zone coverage.

It’s worth saying again that gameplanning is an ongoing process, and finding the right numbers to play to your team’s strengths (and expose your opponent’s weaknesses) will take time. The sim is relatively new and constantly getting upgrades, so don’t worry about being too far behind the curve.

You can make minor changes to your gameplan as the season goes along. However, if you completely change schemes (like going from Pro to Air Raid) your entire offense or defense will suffer a penalty for several weeks as they learn the new scheme. If you absolutely must change schemes mid-season, wait until your team has a week off to minimize this negative impact.  

As with the depth chart, your work is done once you save your gameplan on the interface. Depth Charts and Gameplans must be completed by 11:59 PM on Wednesday nights to be used in the upcoming week’s games. To clarify the above: scheme changes must be announced by Monday; your gameplan must be saved on the interface by Wednesday.

Step 4: Recruiting

Every year the sim generates hundreds of high school seniors, and users compete to get these potential new stars to sign with their program. The Recruiting Overview shows the names and positions of all these “croots”, along with a Star rating from 1-5, an Overall grade, a Potential grade, and any Affinities (more on that last one in a bit). You can use the filters at the top to focus on certain positions, certain star levels, etc. If you see a player you’re interested in, click the green plus sign and he will be added to your recruiting board. No one can see your board except you.

A note on grades: “Overall” is the recruit’s current ability, while “Potential” represents the chance that a recruit will improve from their current state over time. A player with A Potential will get better faster, but that doesn’t mean they are destined to become an “A” Overall player. Similarly, a B overall player with C- Potential isn’t “overperforming”, but simply will improve slower than average.

Recruiting takes place over 20 weeks (real time). Every week a team gets 50 points to assign to recruits they are interested in; you can place anywhere from 1-20 points on a single player, and you can place points on as many players as you want. You also have a number of scholarships you can offer; a player must get a scholarship offer to sign with your team. Scholarship offers are public knowledge (in the News section of the Interface, it will say a player has “received an offer” from that school), but points are hidden. You can revoke a scholarship at any time, but you will not have the option to re-offer one to the same recruit; he will never sign with you once you’ve revoked his scholarship.

Two factors impact the actual number of points that get applied to each recruit: a team’s Recruiting Efficiency Score (RES) and Affinities. RES is a number between 0.8 and 1.0 determined by on-field performance; win games, go to bowls, etc and that number will go up. It affects all points and refreshes every week. Affinities are bonuses to schools that meet certain criteria: large crowds, academics, religious schools, service academies, etc. If a school and a recruit have a matching affinity, you will get a bonus on any points spent on that player. You can read more about affinities here.

Close to Home is a special affinity that every school can use when they recruit in a certain geographic area. See this article for details on how that works. Note that the bonus only applies if a recruit has the Close to Home affinity as well.

Wednesdays at 11:59 AM,, recruiting closes and the points from all teams are applied to players. Points are recorded each week and accumulate over time. Starting in week 4, if a player’s cumulative points from all teams passes a certain threshold, they will commit to one school based on a % chance. The threshold changes weekly depending on the number of interested teams (more teams, higher threshold, so the recruit will take longer to decide) and the week (later week, lower threshold, recruits will start signing for fewer points). On week 20, all remaining recruits with any points will sign.

A team’s chances on a deciding player depend on how many points they’ve spent compared to other teams. While you can’t see the exact numbers, you can click on the Info button for any recruit to get a general idea of each team’s chances. If one team has a majority of the total points on a recruit they are a Strong Favorite; a team within 50% of the leader’s points is considered In Contention; a team under that threshold is Unlikely. Mathematically a recruit can only have one Strong Favorite (if they have one at all) but could have multiple teams In Contention. Once a recruit has decided, their final percentages are revealed.

Teams can sign up to 25 players each year.

Step 5: Scheduling & Game Day

Every year you will have the option to schedule a number of Out of Conference (OOC) games. The exact number will depend on your conference affiliation. You can coordinate with other users to schedule games against their teams, or work with the commissioners to schedule AI-controlled teams from their conference.

Games are posted on Thursdays, Fridays, and 4 different Saturday time slots. A discussion post is published each week with every upcoming game and its time slot. There’s a spoiler tag for every game’s scoring and stat summary, and a second tag where you can see the play-by-play results.

SimFBA’s engine is made entirely in-house, with no third-party software. It undergoes continuous development to better generate realistic games, but remains a work in progress. If you see odd results, report them in the appropriate thread. The administrators welcome constructive feedback and are open about how the sim works and the improvements they want to make.

Tips & Final Thoughts  

The biggest factors for how much a player improves (and how fast) are their Potential grade and their snap count (i.e. playing time). Putting depth players on special teams is a great way to ensure they get the snaps they need to progress. See this Dev Diary for details.

Scouting your next opponent? Do a search for their school name and put “SFA” as the member. This will exclusively search the posted games for their team.

Remember: depth chart and gameplan are due Wednesday, recruiting points are due Saturday.

Our hope is that the more time you are able to put into this sim, the more fun you’ll have. Just an hour a week is enough time to spend your recruiting points, tweak your gameplan, and check out the game results on the weekend. But we also have users that write media, submit polls, even record weekly shows! Whatever your availability, we hope you dive in with both feet and enjoy the sim as much as we do. Welcome!