Calling defense and offense plays
 

So I was told zone is broken in this year game. Is that true ? Before my bro told me to never run man defense. Use zone and blitz and blitz on second or third down plays. What are your opinion ?

And for offense do you use coach suggestion play type or formation if you choose formation how do you know what formation to use ?

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

Broken as in zone is overpowered? Either way, zone is not broken in the OP sense or the actually broken and doesn't work sense. I don't think there's a catch-all best D.

I use coach suggestions in some of my offline stuff if I want to make it harder on myself. But in "comp" games, I choose my formations on O and match to personnel on the whole with my defensive formation picks on D.

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

I have always use coach suggestion but I feel it keep calling the same plays. I want to learn formation and how to pick it especially on defense. Any tips

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

Zone is far from broken. Zone is also what you should be running the majority of the time. This is college football, and it is also 2024, nobody is lining up and running man all game long anymore. Offenses are too good these days and college kids simply aren't good enough to run man all day. Man also makes you more susceptible to the run.

While Nick Saban didn't create match concepts, he made them popular due to how much he expanded on the concepts and because of Bama's dynasty. Match defense has become the modern defense and is what most teams are in the majority of the time and what you should also be running often in this game.

Match gives you the benefit of being in a zone and allowing your guys to watch for run action while also being flexible enough to transition to man defense when needed and to protect themselves when teams try to run traditional zone beaters. Cover 3 became popular, then seams were abused, now cover 3 match allows you to run cover 3 while having rules in place to carry that seam route into man coverage taking that exploit away.

Match isn't perfect and while it can mask some weaknesses of the traditional zone coverages, it can also lead to some explosive plays when teams do go with the correct route combinations to manipulate the rules within the match coverage. Like having a post take the cover 4 safety with him to the middle of the field and running a wheel behind it that should be wide open if your OL can hold up long enough.

If you want to have a more effective defense in this game that's also ran more like a real life college defense in 2024, I'd be making your base defense either cover 3 or cover 4, running plenty of match while still mixing in some traditional spot drop zones, throw in some cover 1 when you feel like you can man up vs the other team, in obvious passing situations, still run your base cover 3 and/or 4, but mix in more 2 man under if you have the horses to run it and have the DL to get a rush with 4, and/or mix in more cover 0 looks to try and get the ball out quicker so they don't have a chance to let their routes develop making it much harder to get the yardage they need to convert the 3rd and long.

If you're doing the above and getting picked apart, start mixing in coverage shells, running some zone blitzes, bluff some blitzes, etc. You can actually fool the CPU QB's by doing those things.

tl;dr - Base your defense around cover 4 and/or 3, run match a lot, mix in some traditional zone, reserve 2 man under for passing downs, mix in cover 0 on passing downs, use cover 1 if you are wanting to man up on earlier downs

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

I haven't actually played this game yet but for me in other football games I use cover 3 a lot but the trick is to control one of the flat defenders on the side you think the offense is most likely to attack and kind of read the routes going to that side as they progress and try to take away the deepest receiver near your zone and force the QB to throw it to the shorter route or throw it somewhere else. If you're good enough at reading the routes and positioning your defender you can sometimes even cover two routes on one play. Like you can cut off the over route and flow to the under route as your other defenders pick up the man you just cut off.

Idk if that makes any sense but that's the best I can describe it.

Also sometimes controlling the safety helps but that's a little harder cuz there's usually more area the safety has to cover. If it's like a deep zone I typically won't use the safety, but if he's playing more of a middle zone sometimes you can cut off routes by lurking and reading the routes coming your way.

Either way you'll still get thrown on but in my experience you can at least make SOME plays like this.

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

I have been a fan and a former player for my whole life so I always pick my own plays and my own formations. What to pick depends not only on your matchups but down and distance. That said Cover 3 is a solid base defense and you can and should blitz on any down and distance to be unpredictable and if you have an idea of where they want to go with the ball. On offense you want a gameplan of whether you want to be more run or pass heavy and again down and distance dictates what you do more than anything else

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

Correct, I don't know what his friend is talking about. I just did a video for this post showcase 3 match, I was going to do match quarters but I didn't want to make the video too long.

https://youtu.be/TV4OMRbpPPI?si=roNJLHXHzbRKxLAC

Broken? On the contrary, math is better than it's ever been since it's introduction in Madden 17. That is part of the reason the game is harder, it's equal parts RTC and coverage playing properly. Welcome back, Mable, you were missed!

One of the areas where they're still a problem is any formation with four receivers to one side, empty quad, Shotgun bunch with the running back to the strong side, it reverts to spot drop and depends on the route can have gaping holes. Like the Texas route out of bunch with the running back to the strong side, stuff like that.

But overall as far as zone goes, it's far from broken. That said, if you play h2h, all bets are off because 90% of the people you encounter are looking to cheat, so.

But, and as Cane can attest, with the direction they are moving with cpu AI, having to play a human is becoming optional.

Re: Calling defense and offense plays
 

I don't think zone is broken, it's just used more in this game whereas in Madden you hardly used zone. I also believe each college team is different in this game, so some defenses may be able to stop a particular offense with ease (where you might think it's broken) whereas there's some offenses that thrive against zone defense.