Hey guys. It has been many, many moons since I last posted here. Looking back, I think the last time I posted here was back in 2010, when I was doing tutorials for the NCAA football series for my old youtube channel. But, with Madden 17 being the best one I can even remember, I decided to come back and start actually posting. Something I have been enjoying for years is recreating collegiate offenses or themed offenses into Madden. Sometimes, this is pretty easy and doesn't require a ton of work. Other times, like this one, did require a bit of time and effort to get playable.
Thanks to a few youtubers, I was able to watch most of the offensive snaps from Baylor's 15 season and some of the 14 season. And began working on the playbook. Although I got most of it done, I wasn't fully satisfied with the formations until about the 22nd, the day before the game released. When 17 dropped, the first thing I did was download an emptybook custom offense and get busy. And here is the mostly finished result! I am still tweaking it somewhat and I ask anyone that might download this to throw me some feedback! If you don't feel like reading this wall of text, you can watch a visual playbook here. The file name is VNS05 if you want to download it.
Background
(Yeah this handsome SOB is taking over the Browns. Deal with it.)
It is critical to remember that, while this is most definately a spread offense, Baylor also runs the ball a LOT. As in, last year they were 2nd in the nation to only Georgia Southern. (Gata baby!) They were the number one offense in the NCAA, 2nd in rushing and 26th in passing (Source) while having only a middle of the road defense. (Source). They had two 1000 yard rushers and were generally hell of wheels, even when they lost Seth Russel and all their other QBs in a dumpster fire. If you have not watched their bowl game from this season, do yourself a favor and WATCH IT.
Offensive Basics
Briles showed his wishbone roots when he drempt up this crazy *** offense. If you have an equal hat count in the box, run the ball with one of your base run plays.
These run plays are: Inside Zone, Outside zone/Sweep, Power/HB Base, and Trap. (In the games I watched, I never saw Baylor run what I would consider a counter)
When the opposing team has +1 player in the box, run a double option. That could be midline, inverted veer, or the simple read option.
When the opposing team has +2 players in the box, run a triple option. This was something I did not see Baylor do in the games I watched, but that is the logical follow up and it is definitely something Briles would be familiar with.
As the opposing team is forced to commit more players to your run game, this should open up the pass game. In a big way. This is where Baylor really shines. Their QBs live and breath play action passing, something that is reflected in the playbook. Wheel routes, Iso routes, Go routes, all off play action. For the record, Russel, before he got broke, threw 29 TD passes in only 200 attempts.URL="http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/teams/stats/BAYLOR/baylor-bears"](Source)[/URL] That doesn't even make sense. Baylor is going to go deep. Conservative games? Nope, go deep. You missed? Go deep again. Wake up in the morning? Go deep. Seriously, I have been watching football for most of my life. I have never ever seen so many deep bombs thrown in one game. Baylor's players take some heat for being lazy, but if I had to run that much, I would take plays off too.
Beyond the deep passes and PA deep bombs, they run a lot of slants, sticks, and WR screens. The Bubble and PA screens have been tweaked a lot this year, so expect to see a lot of them in my gameplay. They are so deadly and are really no more than an extension of the running game for me.
The last portion of the offense is Tempo. Baylor is fast. How fast? Scary Fast. Like a play every 18 seconds fast. While you cannot really replicate this is Madden, you can tempo humans and the CPU into making mistakes at times.
The Formations
Baylor, in 15, was primarily a 10 personnel team, aligning in 10 Gun Doubles (Spread in Madden 17) at almost twice the rate as any other formation. Their other formations were usually 11 personnel, although they did use some game to game unique formations as wrinkles. They usually aligned with a TE in an H-Back or wing position though they had a lot of success with a TE and HB away from a Twins look. (What I call a weak stack) So I am trying to do most of my damage from those formations.
How does this apply to Madden 17?
Obviously, some of this will not apply to the NFL game. You cannot go out and simply out athlete people in the NFL. Especially not with the Browns. But, the same general rules to running the offense still apply. Run vs light boxes. Pass vs heavy boxes. Abuse certain match ups. Move your players around so they can be successful. A critical portion of this offense will be the PA shot plays, something that has been tuned significantly since M16. It isn't automatic anymore, but I did set all the audibles in my playbook to have one or two shot plays within an easy shift. For the record, I do try to play sim style football, but I am also trying to play true to scheme here. I am also using Flazko's Realism Sliders, which do a very good job.
So far, I have used this in two different franchise games. You can watch the first one here and the next one will be up Monday. I am working on putting together some H2H gameplay...in the games I have played I found it to be really effective against users, especailly those who want to stay in a 4-3/3-4 look against 3 or more WRs. Throw them out of that and then work them over with the interior run game. Until they bring the linebackers back in. Then throw some more. Simple head count offense.
I find this to be a very QB friendly offense if you have the QB for it. I had to actually bench RG3 in the second game of my dynasty in favor of the Kessler kid from USC, who has superior base accuracy in the box rosters and promptly threw 4 TDs against the Ravens secondary. Your mileage my vary! Either way, I hope you enjoy this playbook and playstyle.
What offense should I do next? I am leaning toward an I-Bone Renaissance.
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