Man or Zone Coverage

[DSonTL]

I’m normally fairly zone based. But I’m curious to know does this Madden favor more zone or man defense? I’ve noticed I. H2H game guys have far more success vs my scheme in man.. than zone.. and this is even with subpar personnel


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[SilverBullet19]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

man to man has been improved a lot in M19. In the past, it was a weak point. For that reason, I too used zone. Now, I find a good mix to be a key.

Zone is great on 3rd and long situations for sure. I will often use man on 1st down because it seems to be better stopping a run as well, like cover 1 or a blitz.

[Vanilla_Gorilla]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

Both coverage styles were actually pretty great in the game...….then the patch hit.

[Detroit Tigers]

Man or Zone Coverage

I tend to run with a very loose notion of zone against run plays and man against pass plays.

I can handle it if a guy get beats straight up; it’s infuriating when someone is running wide freaking open because he’s splitting a seam in the coverage or because he found a soft spot somewhere. Zone plays look good on the playcall sheet but against the pass, 90% of the time I’d rather just run cover-2 man or some kind of man blitz.

Against the run I like zone because I feel like by the time the RB gets the handoff everyone is gonna ditch their zone to play the run, opposed to following someone down the field.

[SilverBullet19]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

Both coverage styles were actually pretty great in the game...….then the patch hit.

True, I've fixed it with sliders. Namely Armor & Sword's, they were the best to solve the insane blown coverage and robo QB's, just minor tweaks to them on my part.

[novadolla]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

They both suck. Your best bet is to hope your opponent either overthrows a pass or the drop animations kick in, or a fumble. Other than that, coverage is terrible. Mcv you can tell your guys to shade inside, while they do take a step inside you will still be killed by inside routes. I would love if the game does what i tell it to do. Or when you play overtop but your flat defenders still gets pulled down into the flat before the ball is even thrown giving up deep passes on flood concepts

[LionsFan01]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

Zone is actually pretty effective this year I think. In years past it was pretty much useless because defenders wouldn't react unless the ball was thrown literally right at them. But this year I can use a mix of both man and zone and run an effective defense. The one thing I'll say about zone though is cover 2 gets destroyed sometimes against vertical routes. Safeties in cover 2 are slow to react to outside WR's running fly routes and CPU QB's can drop it in perfectly. I definitely lean more towards cover 3 this year. But with the right sliders I don't think there's a need to lean heavily in one direction when it comes to man versus zone.

[novadolla]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

Zone is actually pretty effective this year I think. In years past it was pretty much useless because defenders wouldn't react unless the ball was thrown literally right at them. But this year I can use a mix of both man and zone and run an effective defense. The one thing I'll say about zone though is cover 2 gets destroyed sometimes against vertical routes. Safeties in cover 2 are slow to react to outside WR's running fly routes and CPU QB's can drop it in perfectly. I definitely lean more towards cover 3 this year. But with the right sliders I don't think there's a need to lean heavily in one direction when it comes to man versus zone.

Sliders are not an option vs humans, game might be perfect for those who play offline, for folks who play online vs other users, its a whole different experience

[Jagsfan24]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

I like man coverage more, but this year I tend to use zone more because my guys seem to react slow on cut routes when in man

[timhere1970]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

I love man this year altgough i do mix in zone. Both seem effective and booth give up big plays occasionally. It also matters who is on the field, do you have man, zone or balanced corners. I am playing to my players strengths more than i ever remeber. Setting up sets for specific purposes and use plays from the set where my guys are playing mostly to their strengths. Using formations subs a lot. Doesn't do any good to have two pass rushing outside linebackers in the game if one is dropping in coverage most of the time. I also turn off auto flip plays to keep my guys doing their job.

[stinkubus]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

You can use either to good effect. No matter what anyone might try to tell you coverage ratings matter a great deal. It would behoove you to review your roster and see what your secondary is better at. Special attention should be paid to players who are rated 90 or above; this is a threshold that allows them to jump routes.

Another thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that extensive, manual movement of your players, pre-snap, is a must. Default alignments do not leave them in a good position. This is especially true of safeties in deep blue zones. At default depths the gap between themselves and the underneath coverage is far too large. There will often be 20+ yards of separation within seconds of the snap.

You don't need to worry about getting beaten deep unless you have a very slow player in your secondary. A speed differential of 7-8 is typically required for a WR to burn a DB who is backed off 7-10 yards. If this is the case I would do whatever it took to ensure they weren't ever in deep coverage.

A final word of advice: do not, and I repreat DO NOT press. If you have a blitz which requires you to call press to get a blitzer in the proper spot you absolutely, positively must back up your outside CBs or you will get torched by the AI and users alike.

All of the above applies to games played with default settings. If you are using custom sliders YMMV.

[SilverBullet19]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

You can use either to good effect. No matter what anyone might try to tell you coverage ratings matter a great deal. It would behoove you to review your roster and see what your secondary is better at. Special attention should be paid to players who are rated 90 or above; this is a threshold that allows them to jump routes.

Another thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that extensive, manual movement of your players, pre-snap, is a must. Default alignments do not leave them in a good position. This is especially true of safeties in deep blue zones. At default depths the gap between themselves and the underneath coverage is far too large. There will often be 20+ yards of separation within seconds of the snap.

You don't need to worry about getting beaten deep unless you have a very slow player in your secondary. A speed differential of 7-8 is typically required for a WR to burn a DB who is backed off 7-10 yards. If this is the case I would do whatever it took to ensure they weren't ever in deep coverage.

A final word of advice: do not, and I repreat DO NOT press. If you have a blitz which requires you to call press to get a blitzer in the proper spot you absolutely, positively must back up your outside CBs or you will get torched by the AI and users alike.

All of the above applies to games played with default settings. If you are using custom sliders YMMV.

All good points but I’ll disagree with press. I actually press a lot to get a jam at the line. I almost never get beat deep. It’s a risk for sure, but rare


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[Aestis]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

Could just be our CFM sliders, but press works fine. It's still a bit riskier than it should be IRL, but if you pick your matchups and understand when you have safety help, you can either press all DBs or back off a bad matchup. But it's absolutely effective.

[Aestis]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

But I do 100% agree with stinkbus on deep blues.

Very sad to see, but in beta & right at release, deep blues received a total overhaul. When there was only 1 WR deep, the deep defender would attack/double/bracket the route. They wouldn't just drop to nowhere like in M17/M18. They behaved like actual human defenders. Example C2 Man, lone WR to the left on a deep out.. the deep half defender would actually come up and double that deep out. Or a deep post vs a deep middle third, the defender would match the post rather than just keep dropping so the deep post is wide open.

But a patch a while back completely un-did all this progress. I guess guys wanted to throw deep regardless of the coverage and were having trouble. So now deep blues are only a tiny hair smarter than they were in M18. This is part of the reason I user safety.

[SilverBullet19]

Re: Man or Zone Coverage

But I do 100% agree with stinkbus on deep blues.

Very sad to see, but in beta & right at release, deep blues received a total overhaul. When there was only 1 WR deep, the deep defender would attack/double/bracket the route. They wouldn't just drop to nowhere like in M17/M18. They behaved like actual human defenders. Example C2 Man, lone WR to the left on a deep out.. the deep half defender would actually come up and double that deep out. Or a deep post vs a deep middle third, the defender would match the post rather than just keep dropping so the deep post is wide open.

But a patch a while back completely un-did all this progress. I guess guys wanted to throw deep regardless of the coverage and were having trouble. So now deep blues are only a tiny hair smarter than they were in M18. This is part of the reason I user safety.

Yeah deep coverage took a hit. I can’t seem to run quarters anymore without giving up at least 15 yards. That’s even with the cover sticks adjustment. Before the patch I was thriving with it


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