Weekly Preparation, Part Two: The Art of Balance

By Alex McLain

In Part One we discussed some of the difficulties of the Weekly Preparation feature in ESPN NFL 2K5, as well as some of the initial research you’ll need to do to properly prepare for organizing each week’s activities. Here, in Part Two, we’ll discuss some more specific strategies and focus on the dos and don’ts of your weekly preparation. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s just skip the preamble and jump straight into it, shall we?

A Running Theme
Creating a theme of sorts for each day is not only helpful for weekly consistency’s sake, but it keeps you organized as well. Need to know what position drills your QB is up to this week? It will make things faster if you already know your position drills are done on Tuesday.

Team meetings are crucial.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the themes I’ve set for each day.

• Monday is my film day. After all, you play Sunday and you don’t want to overexert your players the day after they’ve given their all. The weekly team meeting and coaches’ film session happens Monday as well, though that is out of necessity. The team meeting and coaches’ film session is only available on Mondays.
• Tuesday is workout day, so nearly all weight room and aerobic sessions take place on Tuesday. I figure it’s better to work them really hard earlier in the week so they’re not tired on game day.
• Wednesday, I run most of my position drills (e.g. QB routes and progressions drill, HB gauntlet drill).
• Thursday and Friday are mostly scrimmages and 7-on-7 drills (they focus on skill positions) with a smattering of random activities to fill out the team needs. Also, if I’m going to give the team any time off, I do so towards the end of the week.

Shaking Things Up

When you get to week two you’ll notice that everything you set up for week one is still filling out your list. It’s tempting—especially if your team improved the first week—to leave well enough alone. Keep in mind that each workout and drill usually only helps one aspect of a player’s game. You don’t want your HB getting faster and faster each week at the expense of all his other skills. Make sure you keep everyone well rounded. Have them focus on a different skill set each week, and then if you have any leftover time you can overlap workouts and drills from previous weeks.

Gotta love the tackling/stripping-the-ball drill.

You Can’t Improve ‘Em All

Not everyone is going to get better every week, and even those that do improve do so in different amounts. It’s important to try and achieve a balanced schedule, but depending on the upcoming match-up, you’re often going to need to focus on certain players and positions at the expense of others. Don’t worry about it. Just be sure to note the positions that declined during the week and give them extra attention the following week if you can.

It’s in the Stars

Like it or not, it’s usually up to your star players to win or lose you a game in the clutch. Focusing on your stars during weekly preparation may seem to perpetuate the skill gap between them and the rest of the team, but that’s usually necessary. Unless you’re playing a remarkably balanced team, always try to make sure your best players are at least as good as they were last week.

Let’s see if the weight room leg work paid off.

Morale and Focus

There’s a meter during Weekly Preparation that demonstrates how high your team morale and focus is. These are two different but very important items. Ideally, you’ll want to have both of them a fair bit into the green (good) portion of the meter. Chances are you’ll never see both of them topped out; after-all, great team moral usually means time off which is the perfect opportunity for your players to lose focus. At the same time, if you work your team too hard they’ll become disgruntled. Make sure to watch the intensity of your workouts. Each workout, drill, scrimmage, or alternate methodology has a different intensity (or number of sets) you can assign them. Nothing will dispirit a team more than being overworked.

In the end, the key to Weekly Preparation is the ability to read and respond to a situation. The needs of your team change from week to week. You’ll need to watch your injuries, scout your opposing team, recognize what went wrong in the last game you played, remember which players declined, shake up the skill sets your team works on, and so much more. However, as long as you’re willing to take stock each week and spend a few minutes mapping out a general game plan, Weekly Preparation will become one of the most engrossing and rewarding elements of ESPN NFL 2K5.

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