Playbook Question

[HeavyHitter55]

I've always wondered: What's the point of having two [seemingly] identical plays in the same formation? (Example: Cover 2 and Cover 2 Press in pretty much every defensive formation, regardless of the playbook being used).

It seems to me that there could be a lot more blitz combo's dedicated in place of all of this space being used by what seems to be repetitive plays.

[WFColonel56]

do you mean cover 3 press becuz there isnt a cover 2 press as far as I knw...but anyway I agree. Does it do anything different frm a regular cover 3 besides the CB's are in press position

[HittinAgenda]

I may be wrong about this (famous last words), but I don't think you can normally press defenders when you call a zone play (i.e. the "press" coverage audible only applies to man coverage). With Cover 2 Press and Cover 3 Press, the defenders will chuck at the line before playing their zones. The alignment is the same as you point out, but the behavior is different.

Still, if that's the only difference, then it would make sense for the strategy pad to just enable press coverage regardless of the play, thus allowing those plays to be dropped from the playbooks.

This seems like reason #23123 why there should be a Madden instruction manual somewhere.

[HittinAgenda]

Anyone have an "official" answer on this topic? I played around with it the other night, but still couldn't see much difference other than the pre-snap alignment and it looked like you could get the same effect from pressing the corners after selecting the play. Might have been my imagination, but it seemed like the LBs were bumping any underneath routes in the press plays though not showing that behavior in the regular zone plays.