Why 9 Minute Quarters Work Best In Madden

[tommycoa]

This is a better way to look at 9 minute quarters.

1st quarter:

Has three acts.
Each three minute block is an act.
Three acts accumulate 30 plays.
If you skip cutscenes, you get 3 plays a minute. But if there’s no stoppage of play—penalty, injury timeout, or incompletion, there could be up to 5. Freak occurrences may cause more, but it’s rare. I usually see 30 plays in the first quarter.

2nd Quarter:

Has Four Acts.
First three minutes
Six minutes to Four Minutes.
Four minutes to Two minutes.
Two minutes until half.

The first 7 minutes gives you 21-25 plays on average.

The final 2 minutes are harder to average because teams go into hurry up, there’s 6 timeouts that almost always get used, and We get a flood of plays and there’s lots of variables and that’s why there’s a wider median. The last 2 minutes of the half averages anywhere from 12-24 plays, and 18 average, we’ll say. This is very unpredictable. Depends on how close the game is.

The third quarter is a mirror of the the 1st—3 acts. And the second a mirror of the fourth, except the fourth quarter maybe has 5 acts. With the final minute being the last act or the climax.

That’s 15 acts. Nice symmetrical number that adheres to standard storytelling techniques, because after all, a ball game is a story that unfolds. Quarters are chapters and these acts are the scenes that make the chapter.

1st quarter-30 plays

2nd quarter-43 plays

3rd quarter 30 plays

4th quarter 43 plays

That’s a 146 plays. Give or take.

Now the problem with 7 minute quarters is, it’s harder to break 7 minutes into proper acts. The 9 minute mold congeals with the 15 minute act.

This is the best I can explain it.

[shockl3y]

Accelerated clock on or off? And if on, what do you run it down to?

[SyncereBlackout]

Quote: Originally Posted by shockl3y

Accelerated clock on or off? And if on, what do you run it down to?

This is the most important question. Plus the run pass mix. I find that I’ll get 20 more plays in on 9 qtr. so I go 8


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[underdog13]

Quote: Originally Posted by SyncereBlackout

This is the most important question. Plus the run pass mix. I find that I’ll get 20 more plays in on 9 qtr. so I go 8 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I always go off with acceleration clock

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[tommycoa]

Quote: Originally Posted by underdog13

I always go off with acceleration clock Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Accelerated clock off. CPU QBs snap the ball anywhere from 28 seconds to 21 seconds, depending on auidibles and motion.

[mkharsh33]

does this have any impact on penalties? I like the thinking here...

[boxboy99]

Agree, except after trying 9 I decided to run at 8 instead for 2 reasons.

1) Shorten the game a tad. They are taking over and hour and a quarter.

2) I'm targeting 120 snaps and was getting between 130-140. Since some Madden stats get inflated even with sliders, I'd prefer to be on the lower side of the play count average.

I'm enjoying it though and tweaking sliders each game in my dynasty.

[tommycoa]

Quote: Originally Posted by mkharsh33

does this have any impact on penalties? I like the thinking here...

Quarter length doesn’t affect penalties at all from what I can tell.

As far as plays per game, it should be 130-145. 120 total plays would be between two power running teams.

If you get penalties right, the game will regulate itself and not allow so much yardage. You want 7-13 penalties a game. Without penalties, the game is running off a stricter script. Penalties throws the script out of whack. Or so has been the case on 17 and 18.