Frustrations with Man Align

[Hooe]

Long thread warning.

This thread exists as an exercise of my frustration with the Man Align feature in Madden NFL with respect to zone coverage calls.

We know now that Madden NFL 23 is designed to feature more spot drop zone coverage calls. That in mind, the ability to disguise zone coverage calls using man alignment to make the play look like man coverage may prove useful. However, in Madden 22 (and based on my time with the beta, Madden 23 as well) there are some unexplained rules and unexpected behaviors regarding how zone assignment swaps are handled using man align which can put your defenders in very compromised positions if you aren't careful. Knowledge of these behaviors and issues may prove useful in making sure you don't deploy your players into compromised assignments.

For example, let's look at Ace Wing Pair vs 4-3 Over Walk - Cover 3 Sky. The default alignment looks familiar: the cornerbacks bookend either side of the formation in their deep third assignments, and the Will covers the slot receiver to impede his release.


Now, I turn on Man Align and call the exact same plays.


Trevon Diggs, the left boundary corner, kicks over to cap the slot receiver, as we would expect. However, Diggs is now in a deep third assignment while the single-high free safety is now nonsensically covering the curl flat. This alignment and play is wildly unsafe against the bubble screen or a pop pass up the seam to the Y tight end. Additionally, the run fits are now just bad, the deep center safety now has the A-gap for some reason when he shouldn't be in the run fit at all.

My working theory here is that Madden has very simple rules for altering zone assignments for completing Man Align, and (as far as I can tell after extensive testing) some specific swaps are not allowed:

- no linebacker or defensive lineman (by default position assignment in the formation, not the player's listed position) may swap into any deep zone assignment (Deep Half, Outside Third, Inside Third, Outside Quarter, Inside Quarter).
- no inside linebacker may swap into any hard flat assignment (Hard Flat, Cloud Flat, Quarter Flat, Soft Squat)

Basically, whatever defensive hot routes that position is limited to, that is all that player may swap to for that given play.

Those rules in place, the game does what it can to rotate the coverage to something that makes vague sense? I can get not wanting to rotate box players into deep zones by default, but this is just weird.

Watch what happens when we call Cover 3 Cloud instead of Cover 3 Sky, though:



This alignment is significantly improved. Diggs can reroute the slot defender and drop into his curl flat, The run fit is still... kinda silly (it works out a little better if you add a LB Shift Right). Importantly, the deep center field player is no longer looking run-first and thus is no longer susceptible to playaction. This is better.

(Side note: why can't I find Cover 3 Cloud in 4-3 Under? According to Madden-School that specific play isn't in any of the 32 NFL defensive playbooks. Baffling omission lol.)

Now, I call Cover 3 Cloud with Man Align, and I additionally set Cornerback Matchups coaching adjustment to By Overall:



wut

We see here that Man Align and CB Matchup coaching adjustment are not on speaking terms. The assignments of Diggs and fellow cornerback Anthony Brown would be correct if Man Align were not enabled. Man Align failed to take into account that Digg's original assignment from the play art - the Hard Flat - had been swapped because of Man Align. It's as if the coaching adjustment overrides Man Align, speaking to assignment swaps out of the huddle. Brown's run fit assignment is also just nonsense, but everything about his assignment on this play is nonsense so that is at least consistent.

One more example for completeness: Gun Trips TE vs Cover 3 Sky and Cover 3 Cloud, using the same adjustments described above in the same order:





The same issues persist. This doesn't even get into other weird things that can happen using other formations or other zone coverage calls, but Cover 3 Sky / Cover 3 Cloud against an unbalanced passing formation with a reduced weakside receiver split makes the problems very obvious to see.

Maybe someone from Tiburon sees this and this can shine some light on their efforts to triage this issue sometime during Madden 23's life cycle, if this isn't cleaned up by release anyway (I did see a bug logged about zone alignment weirdness in the M23 beta forum). In the meantime, for Madden players, I offer a few recommendations:

- When calling zone coverage, do not use Man Align and the Cornerback Matchups coaching adjustment at the same time. Use only one or the other. The two functions very obviously do not talk to each other.
- When using Man Align, do not call Cover 3 Sky / Cover 3 Match against literally any unbalanced passing set by the offense; you are only safe from zone assignment swap issues in situations where Man Align makes no changes anyway (ex. Nickel Normal vs Gun Doubles Offset). Be careful also with Cover 3 Buzz Match; I've had inconsistent results with this call so far, until I figure out a consistent behavior I am not documenting it.
- If you want to use Man Align - and I think you should want to use Man Align more in Madden 23 to disguise coverages - add Cover 3 Cloud into your playbook to use against unbalanced passing looks. It actually aligns correctly and will be useful for keeping the offense guessing.
- When using Man Align, a pre-snap control mechanic worth noting: calling Base Align (on PS5: Triangle, D-Pad right) twice in a row will reset the defensive alignment to the default alignment rules, regardless what alignment setting you have configured in Coaching Adjustments. Keep this panic button tattoo'd to your brain while using Man Align in case you see something unexpected, it could save you a timeout or a touchdown.

[YaBarber]

Re: Frustrations with Man Align

This is such a glaring issue that's been in Madden.

I think that the biggest reason why this happens is because the team never properly aligned the defense in Madden to compliment the offense, but instead they're just 2 different entities on the same field.

In real life, coaches are constantly teaching their players how they want them to align themselves based on virtually any potential offensive formation they might see, as well as what player has what assignment based on the defensive call vs each of these formations.

In Madden, however, it seems to be just programmed as if whatever defensive formation is called is going against a balanced offensive set with similar personnel groupings. Rather than having a preset alignment for every formation both in base alignment (the real one, not the fake base align set in Madden) and man alignment.

Another issue goes hand in hand with the above paragraph. Base alignment in Madden shouldn't even exist. No team in the history of football has ever lined up vs an offense without accounting for the offensive formation that is currently on the field. But of course, in Madden they give you a sandbox version where you can do whatever you want rather than what actually makes football sense.

There should be a preset alignment for every defensive formation vs every offensive formation, as well as what would be the alignment in a man align look vs every offensive formation.

- This is what is also wrong with playbooks and play calling in Madden. Playbooks in Madden are filled with all of the exact same basic plays out of different defensive formations. There is no variety to what you can call because they also give you sandbox options presnap to essentially create whatever play you want before your opponent snaps the ball. Which is completely backwards (Bring back Create-A-Play, for the love of all that is good). Presnap adjustments made by the defense should be very minimal tweaks at the very most, like focusing on a player, or alerting everyone about a tendency, or potential play-call, or maybe adjusting/swapping a player's responsibilities with another player presnap. The play "creation" should already be a thing within the play-call itself at the play-call menu. We should have all of the toggles available in the play-call screen without having to worry about it pre-snap. And we should have 4x the amount of variation to each play-call itself based on how we want to combat the offense.

For example:

Your opponent loves to call the concept Stick.
Trips: Y - Stick route A - Out/Flat route Z - Go route

In Madden you call cover 3 and in order to combat this concept you have to manually do the underneath adjustment to put the curl flat defenders into hard flats to account for the out route, and you would most likely user the hook/curl defender because they don't play the stick correctly and simply leave him open rather than matching. Or you would have to hot route that defender to a specific responsibility to take that man (And you can't hot route to 3rec hook in Madden).

Backside, however, let's say they have a Dig route coming behind by the X receiver and a flat route by the RB. In normal cover 3, that overhang defender has curl flat and the CB has deep 3rd. Based on how Madden typically has defense play out, that backside Dig will eventually be open in that first window when the flat defender crashes down to guard the RB.

What I would want to see is what they kind of already have at a very basic level (Cov 2/3 Hard Flats or Cov 3 Sky or the Invert calls they have in M23 now) but at a much more advanced level.

Why can't I have a preset playcall with the strong side of the defense in hard flats with a 3rec hook matching the #3 WR/TE, and backside the original hook/curl defender is in a vertical/hook responsibility to take away backside in breaking routes? Instead, I have to physically create that play myself which can also sometimes be impossible to do.

That's just a random specific example just to give a clear idea of what I mean. I know that having such specific play-calls would potentially clutter the playbook with how they are setup in Madden right now, but I just need a better system in place rather than having to do 12 different things before every single play just to get my defense to play how I want.

In college/pro football, defenses have much more in-depth responsibilities based on each play and offensive formation/tendency. But in Madden we just have set spots for defenders to drop unless it is a matching call and those don't work properly all the time. If we had the ability to simply call defenses with a specific setup already designed, that alone would help how the game is played.

- The way zones play in Madden are also unrealistic, but that's something I'll get into another time in another thread.

[patsfan1993]

Re: Frustrations with Man Align

These are two great posts. I wish we had this high of a level of strategy and playcall in Madden.

[Jr.]

Re: Frustrations with Man Align

Is this issue from using the man align pre-snap adjustment, adjusting from the playcall menu, or both?

I'm guessing it's both

Sent from my SM-G970U using Operation Sports mobile app

[Hooe]

Frustrations with Man Align

Is this issue from using the man align pre-snap adjustment, adjusting from the playcall menu, or both?

I'm guessing it's both

Sent from my SM-G970U using Operation Sports mobile app

The specific behaviors I describe above affect both the Man Align coaching adjustment at play call and the pre-snap Man Align command.

I have additionally noticed that using Man Align pre-snap has a tendency to royally screw up the Coach Cam play art. The actual assignments performed post-snap line up with what you would expect Man Align to do and you are generally safer than what the busted play art shows, but you will see things like criss-crossed hook zone assignments and opposite-field curl flat assignments in the play art. It is quite alarming the first time you see it lol.

[YaBarber]

Re: Frustrations with Man Align

I have additionally noticed that using Man Align pre-snap has a tendency to royally screw up the Coach Cam play art. The actual assignments performed post-snap line up with what you would expect Man Align to do and you are generally safer than what the busted play art shows, but you will see things like criss-crossed hook zone assignments and opposite-field curl flat assignments in the play art. It is quite alarming the first time you see it lol.

Yup. In the beta though I noticed that whatever the play art showed is what played out. But yeah, in M22, play art in general would glitch out so much that you couldn't really tell what was going to happen in some cases.

[Jr.]

Re: Frustrations with Man Align

The specific behaviors I describe above affect both the Man Align coaching adjustment at play call and the pre-snap Man Align command.

I have additionally noticed that using Man Align pre-snap has a tendency to royally screw up the Coach Cam play art. The actual assignments performed post-snap line up with what you would expect Man Align to do and you are generally safer than what the busted play art shows, but you will see things like criss-crossed hook zone assignments and opposite-field curl flat assignments in the play art. It is quite alarming the first time you see it lol.

Yeah that's why I asked. I used the pre-snap adjustment a few times last cycle and had to burn a timeout out of panic because of what the play art was showing. This is great info, good to know it can be used in certain situations to help disguise the defense

[Richie71]

Re: Frustrations with Man Align

The was always a weird one. The game puts players in the right place, but the playart is incorrect. It's effectively a bug, and should have been an easy fix, as the actual logic is there and correct.