The no-huddle has been a much hated and oft debated topic among sim players for as long as I can remember. I for one was also one who hated going online to face players who did it the entire game, getting my slow defensive lineman offsides and running the same plays time after time.
Until recent years, with the exception of occasional usage in some systems like the 90's Buffalo 'K-Gun', it was something mainly absent from the NFL barring 2-minute drills and comeback situations.
But now several teams are featuring up-tempo or no-huddle tactics in their offense including the Patriots, Broncos, Ravens, Bills, Packers, Dolphins, Lions, Texans, Giants and the Eagles (who never huddle even when trying to chew the clock). Below is an excerpt from a recent article about the movement:
http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/20...empo-movement/
|
Quote: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bill Walsh actually predicted the up-tempo movement in his 1997 book titled, Finding the Winning Edge.
In a chapter called “ Determining the Future Dynamics of Offense in the NFL,” he envisions a league where teams only huddle when the clock is stopped and use single-word audibles to call out a play.
|
|
|
|
|
|
While NCAA 14 got the up-tempo/no-huddle offense right in its last version of the unfortunately deceased series the Madden series has always done a poor job of realistically representing the no-huddle. The offense gets back to the line so quickly that defensive lineman are often called for offsides. Both teams only have their audibles to choose from which leads to predictive playcalling in no-huddle instances or hot route spamming to create new plays within a matter of seconds. Running Streaks 50 yards downfield, then getting back to the line within 3 seconds for another Streak route also had seemingly no effect on offensive players' stamina. And this I believe is the larger problem sim-gamers have with the no-huddle tactic, not the fact that it is relatively new to the NFL landscape.
But finally, Madden 15 has adjusted the no-huddle for the series! For some reason I can't understand, it is an improvement but still is not implemented as deftly as NCAA 14, which had animations for players looking to the sidelines for calls (like the Eagles do) and varying speeds for getting lined up. But nevertheless, the no-huddle offense is implemented well enough to replicate the up-tempo or blur offenses being used in the NFL now. The offense can't lineup completely and snap the ball within 2 seconds causing offsides penalties. The offense AND defense have access to their full playbook with the corresponding on-field personell. The way has apparently been paved to use a realistic, sim-style offense in Madden ... versus the CPU.
Whether it is a bug or a true design decision, for some odd reason you can not set the tempo to up-tempo/no-huddle offense in head to head matchups. And when you manually go no-huddle with the Triangle button it reverts back to the horrific superspeed no-huddle with limited playcall variations from Madden's past.
Is this a bug or did they make a decision to disallow this in H2H games? If some multiplayer online CFMs don't want to allow it, why not make it an option the commissioner can set? Is it disallowed because it would 'ruin' the ranked online or MUT experience? Those can't honestly be the reasons because you can still use the unrealistic version of the no-huddle in all modes. And after reading some of the forums in the online thread it (along with going for it on 4th and running the same money plays) is apparently still a problem in ranked online games, one that has always kept me from spending my time in that part of the game.
So why is this great addition to the game this year not available in H2H games?
I hope there are some other people out there that would like to see the up-tempo additions available for H2H games. And I hope someone with contacts could try to get an answer from the devs about this or maybe even a fix if it is just a bug.