Madden tutorial/strategy guides

[Sonic98]

I'm looking for a good video or at least image-based strategy guide or tutorial. I won't one with a strong emphasis on football strategy not necessarily Madden strategy, i.e call this play for this or call this play for that. Is there one that talks about things like reading coverages, breaks down plays to explain their strengths and weakness in certain situations(for example just because you're in nickle every play isn't good against certain types of passes), displays the ideal execution of certain plays and/or routes on offense and the effectiveness against certain defenses, explains what each player is doing on a play on defense and what will happen on certain coverages, how to place the ball on throws, and how to make certain throws against certain coverages or recognize throwing lanes(i.e throwing behind the coverage or between zones). I'm sure there is more, but I'm kind of going off the top of my head. Of course like I said, it would be nice to find one that's based around football strategy that incorporates this not just Madden strategy. Seems like most of the guides out there are nothing but money plays, how to cheese people, and how to take advantage of aspects of the game.

[Sausage]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

I have searched for this and have had no luck either. Have you tried the Prima Game Guide?

[Sonic98]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

I have not tried Prima yet. I was going to tried VG in the past, but I never got around to it

[PGaither84]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

I hate to pimp my own stuff, but I posted a 5 part series titled "lets talk defense" that you can find on my YouTube Channel and in My Arena. if you do watch, tell me what you think s i can make more, and make them better.

[PGaither84]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

Here is the cliff notes:

• The first rule of defense is [you do not talk about defense ] do not play defense defensively. Its your job to attack the offense.
• When playing Madden, no matter what defensive front you are in, try not to send less than 4 pass rushers at the QB, and try to avoid plays that drop defensive linemen into coverage while you do that.
• Zone defenses tend to work better against spread offensive fronts. By going Man, you are risking more players to lose their man in coverage. By going zone you force the QB to make good reads and make good throws while under pressure, assuming you are sending 4 or more pass rushers. It doesn't hurt to mix in a few "Double X/Z/Slot/man" man coverage plays from time to time.

[Sonic98]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

I'll check out your vids, but we would need less guides if EA would come up with some combination of the virtual trainer, the mini games, and the tips you get during replays as the in-game trainer. I kinda remember a feature where the walked you through a couple plays, but I don't rememebr if that's still there. Also, it would be nice to to be able to go into the trainer from regular mode or franchise without having to exit. I've always been relatively good at playing defense in Madden, but now I'm ready to just really sharpen my skills and be better able to gameplan against whatever opponent I face. I guess part of it is just practice too. You have to practice and know what all your players do on each play

[Sonic98]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

Here is the cliff notes:

• The first rule of defense is [you do not talk about defense ] do not play defense defensively. Its your job to attack the offense.
• When playing Madden, no matter what defensive front you are in, try not to send less than 4 pass rushers at the QB, and try to avoid plays that drop defensive linemen into coverage while you do that.
• Zone defenses tend to work better against spread offensive fronts. By going Man, you are risking more players to lose their man in coverage. By going zone you force the QB to make good reads and make good throws while under pressure, assuming you are sending 4 or more pass rushers. It doesn't hurt to mix in a few "Double X/Z/Slot/man" man coverage plays from time to time.

Yeah but part of it is also training and football knowledge. What I didn't mention when I was talking about a tutorial is what you can and can't call based on your personnel. That goes back to plays like calling zone blitzes because most players really can't do that anyway

[ktipton87]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

Here is the cliff notes:

• The first rule of defense is [you do not talk about defense ] do not play defense defensively. Its your job to attack the offense.
• When playing Madden, no matter what defensive front you are in, try not to send less than 4 pass rushers at the QB, and try to avoid plays that drop defensive linemen into coverage while you do that.
• Zone defenses tend to work better against spread offensive fronts. By going Man, you are risking more players to lose their man in coverage. By going zone you force the QB to make good reads and make good throws while under pressure, assuming you are sending 4 or more pass rushers. It doesn't hurt to mix in a few "Double X/Z/Slot/man" man coverage plays from time to time.

I watched all of your videos a while back and enjoyed them. So you are thinking of making more? Do you know what about yet? Perhaps any offense ones?

[PGaither84]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

I watched all of your videos a while back and enjoyed them. So you are thinking of making more? Do you know what about yet? Perhaps any offense ones?

Thinking about it. I like the idea of making football 101 videos, but I am afraid most beginners don't have the patience to learn the complexities of the game. What's worse is that madden and Football are two different things. What works in Madden doesn't always work in football, and the opposite is true as well. A great example, the spin move is used as a juke move and is abused in madden, but you rarely every see that in the NFL, and normally the spin is used to spin out of a tackle. In Madden the spin move often forces a slip animation for the defender so they can't tackle you, or you spin around the defender instead of juking them in the open field. n the other hand, likr I said in one of my videos, the point of dropping defensive linemen into coverage is to cause confusion, you really aren't going to do that to the AI or a human opponent with a bird's eye view of the field.

[Gordy748]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

Yeah but part of it is also training and football knowledge. What I didn't mention when I was talking about a tutorial is what you can and can't call based on your personnel. That goes back to plays like calling zone blitzes because most players really can't do that anyway

You can pretty much call anything you like, but some plays are relatively better depending on your players. E.g. check the man and zone coverage capabilities of your CBs. If their Man C is better overall, then overall you should use more man cover plays (PGaither's note about actual Madden play notwithstanding).

I'll concur that zones work well in Madden. I have no all-man plays and stick to Cover 1, 2 or 3 variants. I haven't always had 4+ rushers, I find that often I can squirrel my way through the OL while the QB is making his mind up. This'd never work irl but you can get a few sacks a game in Madden doing it.

Even with the latest patch, I find the long ball is easily abused, so a straight zone defense means that the WRs can simply run past my deep line to catch a ball in the open field. So often I use deep zones with man cover underneath, which generally makes long balls easier (and this is a lot different from Mad 10 where I would sit in Zone defense whenever I got more than a score up and wait for the inevitable intercept).

[Sonic98]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

Thinking about it. I like the idea of making football 101 videos, but I am afraid most beginners don't have the patience to learn the complexities of the game. What's worse is that madden and Football are two different things. What works in Madden doesn't always work in football, and the opposite is true as well. A great example, the spin move is used as a juke move and is abused in madden, but you rarely every see that in the NFL, and normally the spin is used to spin out of a tackle. In Madden the spin move often forces a slip animation for the defender so they can't tackle you, or you spin around the defender instead of juking them in the open field. n the other hand, likr I said in one of my videos, the point of dropping defensive linemen into coverage is to cause confusion, you really aren't going to do that to the AI or a human opponent with a bird's eye view of the field.

I agree when you're talking about things like the zone blitz. But there are other aspects of the game that it shouldn't be as hard for EA to analyze why it works a lot differently than real football. Yes there will be some things that will work one way in Madden and another way in real football and vice-versa, but a tutorial could break it down and tell you that just like your video does. There will be a small number of things you can't get around. You'll have the use "madden methods" rather than "football methods" to be successful at some things, but everything thing isn't that way.But some stuff like like whether you play zone or man EA should be able to fix with better AI, physics, and technique. EA just doesn't spend enough time looking at how players really play, move, and react both physically and mentally in football. They'd rather come up with ways to cover up or balance out flaws in the game. They try to teat the symptom rather than the problem.

Most of the stuff in your 5 videos I pretty much know, but lately I've been calling plays by type more than I used to. Sometimes that can make it easier to implement the concepts we been talking about

[Sonic98]

Re: Madden tutorial/strategy guides

You can pretty much call anything you like, but some plays are relatively better depending on your players. E.g. check the man and zone coverage capabilities of your CBs. If their Man C is better overall, then overall you should use more man cover plays (PGaither's note about actual Madden play notwithstanding).

I'll concur that zones work well in Madden. I have no all-man plays and stick to Cover 1, 2 or 3 variants. I haven't always had 4+ rushers, I find that often I can squirrel my way through the OL while the QB is making his mind up. This'd never work irl but you can get a few sacks a game in Madden doing it.

Even with the latest patch, I find the long ball is easily abused, so a straight zone defense means that the WRs can simply run past my deep line to catch a ball in the open field. So often I use deep zones with man cover underneath, which generally makes long balls easier (and this is a lot different from Mad 10 where I would sit in Zone defense whenever I got more than a score up and wait for the inevitable intercept).

Well that's the point I was making. Some of it depends on the skill of your players. I hear a lot of fans complaining about the types of defense there teams runs or how they execute certain plays, but they often don't understand that the skill-set of some of their players might not match a player or two on another team, so maybe you can't run the same play or run it the same way as another team. But I've seen sacks against a 3-man rush in the NFL unfortunately. But he did make a good point in his videos because thinking back when I play with teams running the 3-4 or sometimes variations of Nickle and Dime, I realize I probably wasn't paying enough attention to how many men I was sending when calling plays on defense in the past. Another thing some people don't realize that I probably made mistakes of back when I was just calling plays with less thought, is that they think just because they get in Nickle and Dime they're going to stop the pass. You still have to look at what play you're calling and what type of pass it is. A lot of plays work similar to prevent plays. They have you spread out too much or leave you open to short throws and throws over the middle.