Offseason Madden 13 Thoughts - rudyjuly2's Blog

rudyjuly2's Blog

Offseason Madden 13 Thoughts

Posted on October 28, 2012 at 12:15 PM.

My first season was with the Miami Dolphins in Madden 13 and it ended with a loss in the playoffs. Here are my thoughts on the offseason in Madden 13 as I experienced it.

FREE AGENCY

I like the way free agency was handled. Not quite enough young players escape a team's grasp although teams tend to have more salary cap room in early years due to no salary cap penalties being installed with the first roster. Before you get to free agency you can negotiate with your own players before they get there. There is also a franchise tag price listed for each player and you can use it to keep one player you want. If you cut off negotiations during the year or low balled a player so they cut off negotiations with you, you will NOT be able to sign him before they hit free agency. I like this - burn a bridge and the phone calls are over.

Free agency is much improved this year imo. The e-bay bidding system of last year was crazy. You could always win a bid if you wanted to but it was so frenetic that you couldn't even see who was available until they were gone a lot of the times. I didn't like it. This year free agency takes place over a few weeks. There is no time limit. You sort by position or overall and can make bids on each player available. It tells you how many bids are on that player and you can see which teams you are fighting over that player with. The player has an interest meter in your team. Sometimes a player will sign right away, others will take awhile. I got most of the players I wanted but man the prices get can get high. I ended up signing Eben Britton at LG (82 overall) at $5 million a year. That was about $2 million a year more than he was originally asking for. I also signed an OLB DeAndre Levy for about $5 million a year. He was squeezing me and I stopped increasing my offer but still got him. I wonder if I got suckered. Overall this area felt fun.

THE DRAFT

Scouting
Before I talk about the draft I need to talk about the scouting points. There are nowhere near enough points given the lack of info you have on the players. All you get is height and weight and projected draft position of the player. In real life you get 40 times at the combine, 225 bench press etc, college stats but none of that is available here. You really feel like you are flying in the dark in the draft. I guess that�s what they want.

You get enough points during the year that you can scout 1 position really well. You can probably get the overall generic rating of 10-15 players (that costs 2000 points which is a week�s worth) but gives you no other attributes. Want speed? For a WR that�s 500 points to get a generic grade. In the end I had the WR position scouted pretty well and a few TEs and LBs but that�s it. Turns out I didn�t scout WR good enough. I had a low draft pick so I didn�t scout the #7 overall projected guy. Whoops � I�ll get into that later. Overall you will be able to scout one position well or two half decent but not much more. It�s flying in the dark other than that.

Some of the draft stories you hear during the season do affect the draft. Tyler Swoosh, a SS out of Alabama, was a late round pick/undrafted kid at the beginning of the year. An injury put him in the starting lineup and I scouted him a little as a late pick. By the draft he was a projected 1st rounder and went in the Top 5 I believe. I have to think the guys featured in those stories are probably good picks. Not sure though.

The Draft
Despite not having enough points I did enjoy the draft. You can advance by one pick, advance to your next pick, or advance by round. I liked seeing the picks show up on the scrolling board and the tweets that accompany them. Skip Bayless would rip into some bad picks, you would get tweets about guys falling and being good pickups and cpu teams would trade up and down to get the guys they like.

I had scouted WRs pretty good and I liked one first rounder, a second rounder and mid third rounder (out of Michigan). They had B overall grades. A couple second rounders had C grades and I was steering away from them. But this #7 overall projected WR was sliding in the draft. I didn�t scout him other than his speed (94) � I didn�t have an overall generic grade. The Steelers rebuked my attempt to move up for him but at #17 I got the Falcons to give me the pick for the #27 and a high 3rd rounder. I took the kid but at the end of the draft he was only rated a 71 overall. I was disappointed.

I had two late second rounders (they must have patched in the 2nd round pick for Vernon Davis to the Colts along with my own). When it came time to pick at the bottom of round two, the two WRs I had liked (with grades in round 2 and 3) were there but there were also some other interesting players. You have the option to trade down and I looked at the offers. I had a bunch of teams offering 2014 first round picks so I took the Vikings offer for my late second rounder. They took the one FS I was eyeing and then soon after, before my next pick in the second round, the second round WR was taken. I didn�t really want to take (or think I needed another WR) after getting the guy in the first round so I passed on the 3rd round WR (from Michigan) and he went 2nd overall in the third round. After the draft I checked on both of those WRs I had scouted well and they were rated 80 and 78 overall! I was pissed after seeing that and me moving up for Mr. 71 in the middle of the first! The rest of my draft was best player available and I thought I had a nice RB at the end of round three but the bum is a 60 overall. Oh well. I will learn to trust my overall scouting more next time and push for them instead of guys I don�t know. I didn�t want to reach on those two kids but in the end I would have been better off.

Overall the offseason was fun but I think EA needs to give us a little more info on each college prospect so we�re not so in the dark on guys we have no info on (which is the vast majority of players).