CPU RB Ballcarrier Logic Issues

I want to provide some pictures of what I am seeing on a routine basis to hopefully provide some clarity on the situation. It might also help show how I came to some of the conclusions that I did. This is only one play as my other images from another didn't upload from the Xbox, at least not yet, but this play shows off some of the issues well enough, I think.

Again, remember that Love is one of the highest rated backs in the game and this is on Heisman.

First up, the mesh point. 

I provided this just so you could see the initial blocking and what Love should be "seeing" in game. It's inside zone, it's blocked extremely well as he has multiple large holes visible at the moment and he has one unblocked LB to account for at the moment. A back of Love's caliber should feast in this scenario. In real life, you'd expect him to press and cause the LB to declare and make his cut off of that, potentially ripping off a big gain on the play.

As we get a few steps into the play, we see the double team is properly peeling off and taking on that LB. All other relevant blocks are being maintained and this looks like a play where only the DB's will keep Love from taking this all the way. Do note the safety (#7) is disengaging and coming free, but given where he is at, he really shouldn't be influencing anything Love does here. There's no reason to cutback on this play given the blocking we are seeing from the #70, #56, and #59. The leverage they have along with the LB going into the C gap should have Love running right up the backside of #56 for a huge gain.

Instead, he's already starting to cut hard to the right despite the leverage his blockers have here. If he could get around the #9 here and #1 can keep that edge sealed, then we probably still have a good run here.

But Love just runs straight into the LB that #56 had taken on. No gain on the play. We can see #70 actually level his LB out and had Love just ran right up the backside of $56 this would have been a massive play where he could have potentially split the 2 deep guys for a TD.

Here's Love, on the ground, paying for his decision making mishaps. We can see everyone to his left, outside of Bain (#4) is on the ground, so had he just stayed up the middle and left of where he ended up, this play was a guaranteed success. 

As you can see from the grabs, Love tries to bounce outside on the right side for about no reason. The only thing I can think of causing him to make this decision here is #7 that we noted earlier that become disengaged shortly after the give to Love. He shouldn't have influenced the play much at all, but if the radius for the pathfinding checks is too large, him being disengaged could be what is pushing Love to the right side of the play instead of up the middle.

And, if that is indeed what is happening and the radius is that large(which I don't know if it scales with the ratings or not, which could ironically be making the higher rated players more indecisive) then that would explain why it is so common for the CPU RBs to freakout and twitch dance behind the line on runs between the tackles. The checks are understandable, but if they are large and the logic is sensitive, it's going to cause issues like this and the want to to bounce every run outside. 

I want to reiterate that this play was not a one-off that drove me here. This is the consistent CPU RB play that I am seeing on Heisman. These pathfinding issues are causing RBs on Heisman to not be able to run effectively despite the 97 Run Block slider for the CPU. You can see the holes were huge, half my defense was on their backs and it was all for naught as Love's pathfinding too him straight into a defender that had no other chance of making a play here.