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Is there any reason to use M2M when an OP defense like 3-2 exist?

3-2 stops outside offense if you have high OD across 1-3. Stops inside offense as well because high OD from 1-3 can keep the ball outside at the perimeter and cause opponent's to shoot last gasp 3s, and even if they get inside, they're faced with 2 of your post players. It's also literally immune to patient.

Is there any way to beat 3-2 other than having to overpower the opponent's defense? M2M is weak to mismatches like reverse patient, 2-3 can get torched by outside offenses (although I noticed after the update, if your opponent is lucky enough they can lock you up like 3-2. Doesn't happen often but still occurs).

I used to think the same as you do in previous seasons. With my utopian team I discover a team that played the whole season 59 with 3-2 defense and low salaries and he managed to be one of the if not the best team in our league (275714) . Since then I started to use 3-2 zone with both of my teams in a tone of games. But, since the changes to the GE were implemented, I now feel that 3-2 is not as powerful as it was in the lasts seasons. It’s just my point of view but now the 3-2 is weaker when the other teams has a really good ball movement. For me this was the biggest strength of this kind of defense, it used to kill all the ball movement of the other team, that’s why it could stop inside offenses and Patient.

With this I don’t mean that this 3-2 is weak by any means, just that it is not as powerful as It was. Now I’m getting better results with M2M but It’s just my opinion.

Last edited by Villodres16 at 10/30/2023 12:30:55

(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AY0ohilrvUQ&t=5s)

3-2 zone in season 61 has been much less effective than past seasons due to the game engine tweaks with passing. I think teams won’t be able to successfully run it as much all the time like they used to be able to and 3-2 now struggles a bit more defending against strong inside teams.

Thanks for sharing the video. I came across it on the BB facebook page (or was it Twitter) earlier but it seemed so long so I didn't bother to watch it, but thankfully this time I did. It's really interesting how dominant teams playing M2M while 3-2 doesn't seem to be as successful. It's also made me want to look into ISO offenses and Princeton (although I have played Princeton pretty often but to me it's only an offense to make sure my players can last 48 minutes, I have never looked into how it works xD)

However, I was wondering - since the sample only consisted of B3 games, could high passing across all positions be the key to break 3-2? Could the lack of secondaries or lack of balanced players in U21 games or lower division games affect the effectiveness of 3-2?

In my opinion, 3-2 without SB is a gamble. I wouldn't run it without at least one of my bigs having high SB.

Yes, I agree with that. I read somewhere that zone defenses increases the chances for help defense, which would increase the chances of a block. Plus with the recent trend that stresses on the importance of SB, I usually try to have players with high SB (be it my own team or the U21).

However, I was wondering - since the sample only consisted of B3 games, could high passing across all positions be the key to break 3-2? Could the lack of secondaries or lack of balanced players in U21 games or lower division games affect the effectiveness of 3-2?

Great point and yes! This is something that I’ve talked about with two different U21 managers since the video came out and your thought process that 3-2 still may be effective in lower leagues/U21 probably has some merit, but as the passing gets higher and the players get better, the zone is less effective. It’s also still a somewhat small number of games in the big scope of things and B3 is sort of like an entirely different version of BB, but the findings are interesting to see how tactics perform at the peak of BB (best teams/managers/etc).

Thanks for tuning in and giving your thoughts!