Each PlayMaker Football‚Ñ¢ team consists of 30 players (22 starters and 8 alternates). Each player is rated on five abilities: Speed, Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Discipline. Ratings for each ability are expressed in Ability Points which range from 0 to 100.
You are given 7,500 Ability Points to distribute among all players on your team. You will need to distribute these points wisely, since there aren't enough to make every single player a superstar. You will need to decide if you want your team to have a strong running attack, passing attack, front line, defensive line, defensive secondary, etc; and distribute the majority of your points to those players which are crucial to your overall coaching strategy.
Distribution of Ability Points: Overall speed and athleticism are important in drafting a defense and discipline and agility are very important for offense, especially discipline for the offensive linemen. Remember that there are many different ways to play PlayMaker Football™. You can add or subtract points from the team file using the Change Ability Total option in the Edit menu to make the game more challenging and enjoyable for you and your style of play. Additionally, if you play in a league where you “draft” players between seasons and the distribution is predetermined, you will want to keep in mind how you would build a 7500 point team to help with your drafting strategy.
TEAM BREAKDOWN
The starting squad for your team consists of the following player positions:
OFFENSE
1 center
2 guards
2 tackles
1 tight end
2 receivers
1 halfback
1 fullback
1 quarterback
DEFENSE
2 tackles
2 ends
2 cornerbacks
3 linebackers
1 strong safety
1 free safety
CREATING A NEW TEAM
• Select New Team from the File menu.
• A dialogue box will appear letting you name your team. Type in a name and click OK.
The rectangles on the screen show profiles of your football players, along with position, jersey numbers, and a space for each player's name.
 
To select a player simply move the pointer to his picture and double-click. An edit window will appear, showing that player's name, position, chalkboard symbol, jersey number, and his five abilities.
When you finish working with a player simply click OK to keep your adjustments, or click Cancel to disregard any changes you made. You can always go back and alter your settings for any player, even after you've saved your team on disk.
From the player's edit window you can adjust the following parameters:
 
Name: To change a player's name click the name box. When the flashing cursor appears, simply type in any name. Use the Delete key to erase characters.
Number: Each player must have a different jersey number. Simply click the number box to advance the number. If a number is already taken it will be greyed out. Notice that only a range of numbers are possible depending on the player's position:
01-19 Quarterbacks and Kickers
20-49 Running backs and Defensive backs
50-69 Centers
60-79 Offensive Linemen
80-89 Wide Receivers and Tight Ends
50-59 Linebackers
60-99 Defensive Linemen
Symbol: When your team is displayed in the Chalkboard Editor, the players will be represented by symbols or their position abbreviations. PlayMaker Football‚Ñ¢ lets you assign your own symbols to each player so you can differentiate them. Simply click the symbol box to cycle through the available symbols.
Assigning Symbols to Players: To minimize confusion on the chalkboard, it's a good idea to assign the symbols based on positions, rather than giving each player a unique symbol.
String: First string players are the starting players on your squad, and are indicated by the "1st" symbol in the String box. Second string players are alternates which can be substituted in for special plays and situations. The "2nd" symbol appears in their String box. The following players alternate with each other:
STARTER MATCHING ALTERNATE
OFFENSE Quarterback Kicker/Punter
Fullback Receiver
Tight End Receiver
Receiver Tight End
DEFENSE Tackle Linebacker
Linebacker Cornerback
Linebacker Free Safety
Cornerback Linebacker
When an alternate is used in a play, the corresponding starter comes out.
Team Surplus: This indicates how many points are still available to the team to be distributed among the players.
ABILITIES
Each ability, (Speed, Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Discipline), is represented by a horizontal bar. When a bar is all white it is considered to be set at 0. When it is all black, it is considered to be set at 100. To adjust a player's abilities, simply point at any location within an ability bar and hold down the mouse button. Black will fill from 0 to the pointer location, and the numerical indicator to the right of the bar will adjust accordingly.
Notice that as a player's points increase, the Team Surplus decreases. If you remove points from a player, they will once again be available to the entire team.
SPEED: Determines how fast the player runs when on the field. Speed is important to defenders to have to cover a speedy receiver, and obviously, speed is important to receivers in trying to break away from slower defenders. Adjusts in increments of 25 points.
STRENGTH: Is important in a variety of situations including blocking, breaking tackles, overcoming blocks, tackling, catching, passing and kicking. Adjusts in increments of 10 points.
AGILITY: Is important in a variety of situations including breaking tackles, running with the ball, holding onto the ball, catching the ball, running effective pass patterns, covering receivers, throwing accuracy and kicking accuracy. Adjusts in increments of 20 points.
INTELLIGENCE: Is important in a variety of situations including finding open receivers, susceptibility to fakes and misdirection plays and general ball pursuit. Adjusts in increments of 20 points.
DISCIPLINE: Determines how well a player carries out his instructions and how often he might commit a penalty. A player with 0 Discipline is not very reliable and may cost the team many yards in penalties. A player with 0 Discipline is also more aggressive in getting to the ball. Adjusts in increments of 20 points.
ABILITY EFFECTS
While the best players will have points allocated to all five of their Abilities, specific player positions rely on certain abilities more than others.
The effects of Speed are immediately obvious when a player moves on the field, and you should allocate points to Speed as you feel necessary for each of your players.
Discipline affects all players equally with respect to the tendency to commit penalties. However, certain players derive other benefits from having Discipline points.
To get a good idea of what abilities, besides Speed, are most important to each player, refer to the following list of general ability effects:
QUARTERBACKS:
Strength - throwing distance
Agility - throwing accuracy
Intelligence - throwing accuracy
KICKERS:
Strength - kicking distance, punt hang time
Agility - kicking accuracy, kicking distance
Discipline - kicking accuracy
RUNNING BACKS:
Strength - breaking tackles, holding the ball
Agility - breaking tackles, catching
Discipline - ball handling
RECEIVERS:
Agility - running routes, catching
Intelligence - running routes
Discipline - catching
OFFENSIVE LINEMEN:
Speed - blocking, pass blocking
Strength - blocking, pass blocking
Agility - pass blocking
Intelligence - blocking
Discipline - blocking, pass blocking
DEFENSIVE LINEMEN:
Speed - rushing, pursuing ball
Strength - rushing, pursuing ball
Agility - blitzing
Intelligence - pursuing ball, pass rushing
Discipline - pursuing ball, pass rushing
LINEBACKERS:
Agility - resisting fakes
Intelligence - reading offense, resisting fakes
Discipline - reading offense
DEFENSIVE BACKS:
Agility - covering receiver, catching
Intelligence - covering receiver
INHERENT ABILITIES
In addition to the abilities that you assign to your players, they possess inherent abilities that make them the ideal athletes for the positions they occupy. Therefore it's always a good idea to have your down linemen performing all your heavy blocking, your receivers running pass patterns, your running backs taking handoffs, your linebackers responding to the Read Offense command (see Chalkboard Editor), your cornerbacks covering receivers, etc.
Here is a list of talents each player inherently possesses in order of priority, as well as inherent speed ratings for each player:
OFFENSE
QUARTERBACK: Throwing, scanning receivers. Medium speed.
HALFBACK: Running, catching. Fast speed.
FULLBACK: Running, blocking, catching. Medium speed.
TIGHT END: Catching, blocking, running. Medium speed.
RECEIVERS: Catching, running. Fast speed.
LINEMEN: Blocking. Slow speed.
KICKER: Kicking. Medium speed.
DEFENSE
FREE SAFETY: Catching. Fast speed.
STRONG SAFETY: Catching, tackling. Fast Speed.
CORNERBACKS: Catching. Fast speed.
LINEBACKERS: Tackling, reacting to offense, catching. Medium speed.
LINEMEN: Evading blocks, tackling. Slow speed.
SAVING A TEAM
When you are finished setting up your team you can save it to disk. You don't have to use all of the ability points, you can always come back to a saved team and alter your settings.
• Select Save Team from the File menu to save your team on disk.
PRINTING A TEAM
PlayMaker Football‚Ñ¢ allows you to print the ability ratings of all players on your team as a handy reference. When printing, always make sure your printer is turned on and loaded with paper.
• To print a team, select Print Team from the File menu.
PASSWORD PROTECTION
Selecting Protect Team in the File menu will allow you to assign a secret password to your team so other players can't see who your strong and weak players are before a game. Just don't forget your password!
TOTAL ABILITY POINTS
You are able to change the total amount of ability points that are available to your team by selecting the Change Ability Total option in the Edit window. The standard amount of ability points allocated to a team is 7,500. This number can be decreased to zero or increased to a maximum of 15,000.
Any additional points added will be placed in the surplus pool of ability points for that team, and you are free to allocate the points to the players in any way you wish. When reducing the total number of points from a team, only points that are available in the surplus pool can be taken away.
