Well the thing is, while I love to talk football with friends and I liek the point of this thread, it
is in the Madden forum, and Madden doesn't do
football justice.
I would
like to talk about how to play against the spread and compresion formations defensively as I am more a defensively minded player myself. However, one thing to keep in mind is that despite all the talk, you cannot go in and recreate a lot of it in Madden and enjoy the game.
Scheme wise, I like to attack 3WR set offenses with a base 3-4 and the use of a
lot of zone blitzes and man/zone combos. I prefer to use confusion/deception in order to apply pressure on the QB and force mistakes.
It is really nice against a compression formation, in my opinion, to come out in a base 3-4 look with, say, a cover 3 zone blitz package that may have one CB blitzing and leaving the other CB and two safties in a deep three, and have my SS come up into the box [in madden the "show blitz" feature] to pack in on the receivers and [in madden the "show man" feature] to make the offense think I am initially in man coverage only to have my defenders drop back into zone. This is just an example.
Defensively you have to mix it up all the time. Forexample, on another play I will come out in man in the 3-4 and still [in madden use the "show blitz"] by forcing my SS into the box and only rush three and play double on one of your recivers. There are some general rules to defense that should always hold true.
- Don't play defense defensively. Attack.
- Respect, but do not fear the other team's offense. Be prepared to keep at least one defender deep on almost every play when facing players like Randy Moss, Jerry Rice, Issac Bruce, or Reggie Bush, Reggie Wayne, etc.
- Disguise you coverages and blitzes as often as possible. One sucessful way to do this is on a 1st or 2ed down send a blitz and do not disguise it at all, then on a crucial 3rd down later in the game, show them that same look, even though you are comming somewhere else.
- Keep everything in front of you. Against the ever growing pass happy offenses in the NFL, often times the most sucessful defenses Keep plays in front of them and froce short passes and attempt to wrap up the ball carrier right away in stead of giving up big plays. It is hard to sustain a drive in the NFL, so forcing offenses to go the length of the field with a lot of plays is often better than it sounds.
Two of the things that teams have done to contain Peyton Manning are these:
1.) Manning tends to snap the ball inside 10 seconds. Call two defensive plays in the huddle. Your real play and your fake play. Come out and set up in your fake play, let manning make adjustments, and the audible into your real play when there is 10 seconds left on the play clock. The chargers did this just last year in the Play offs against Manning and in the 2ed half he started snaping the ball with 12 or 15 left, so the chargers adjusted as well. It's a chess match that you can't relax on.
2.) Every defensive play has a weakness. Know what they are. Also know that Manning will find the weakness in your scheme more often than not. Try and call your plays to "force" Manning to go to the weak point inthe Scheme and "force" where those weak points are to take advantage of tempo. This is tough to do, but the Patriots in the past forced short throws in the middle where their talented linebackers could clean up and/or lay a big hit instead of letting things go to the outside and the sidelines where their slower oldert line backers wouldn't have to chase all over the field.
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Was this ahat you were lookign for?