Curl and Stop Routes

[RogueHominid]

Hey, all. Since I've gotten temporary re-access to my 360, I've gone back in and taken a look at some aspects of the passing game that I had been unhappy with in my first 500 or so games .

My points of concentration were the curl and the stop routes. It seemed to me that those routes were just broken in the game. After some personnel and playcalling experiments, though, I've changed my mind. Those routes work just fine, and can be well used because online defenders don't expect you to use them.

In order to throw them, your WR needs to have the right ability combos. For short hooks, you need a guy with Possession Receiver, and you need good timing. Check it out in practice, and you can get a very good sense of when that break comes. If you throw the ball right at the break point, your guy will be open because of his superior route running ability. Having a QB with a strong arm, and using Max Passing also helps, but you can get by without the latter.

For the deeper curls, having a guy with Deep Threat and/or Quick Feet helps. While Deep Threat technically has to do with the ability to catch deep passes, it seems to also enable good deep routes, and the 50 curls fall into this category.

These findings have reinvigorated my short and intermediate passing attack, and I hope it adds some extra enjoyment to the game for those of you still playing!

Edit: Route God will work as well here.

[Pappy Knuckles]

Yeah man, those routes work just fine it's all about when you use them. My all generic offensive team forced me to learn how to use the west coast offense. Those short and intermediate routes will get you down the field for sure. Are you not rolling with your old gamertag anymore?

[kantshootrite]

Yeah they work really well especially if your passing it to a TE you can gash opponents for a good 10-15 yards.

[RogueHominid]

Yeah, the TE can be a huge weapon when you learn to work those short and intermediate routes. I think because all I ever saw out of the TE from online opponents were the corner and post routes I just got it in my head that that's all I could throw to them, but I've found my offense much more effective now that I've gone away from those routes and have incorporated the others into the mix.

And yes, buddy, I switched gamer tags. During the summer up in Providence I had major connection problems and got a fair number of disconnects because of it. That made it tough to get games online with new folks, since they thought they were cheese drops, so I just switched tags and started over.

[El Greazy 1]

Curls are one of my favorite routes to run with all my players. As stated, everyone online expects you to go deep all day so you can eat them up with short stuff all day. Then of course, when they start pulling in you can go deep on 'em.

Just get your timing down, after a while, you will be able to throw the ball even before the receiver/tight end makes his cut resulting in some nearly unstoppable plays.