[Hooe]

A few thoughts:

Call your defense with purpose. Don't mix up your calls just because you can, make sure you know what each defense does and does not do and call it according to what you anticipate your opponent doing. For example, if you're playing against the Falcons, you probably don't want to call too many coverages which will leave Julio Jones with a one-on-one matchup on the perimeter (Cover 4 Quarters, Cover 3 Sky / Match, Cover 1, Cover 0). If the offense calls a lot of 3x1 formations with an awesome WR as the lone receiver, consider calling Cover 6 to bracket that lone receiver. In Franchise, if you know you're going up against an offense which calls a particular passing concept a lot (which you'd see in Weekly Training), don't call pass defenses which are vulnerable to that concept.

Understand how your defensive front affects your coverage. For example, if you call a 4-3 Normal Cover 3 Sky and the offense comes out in Singleback Doubles (and let's assume the offense hasn't flipped the play, so the tight end is on the offense's right-hand side and the slot receiver is on the offense's left-hand side), your defense is going to align with your weakside linebacker over top of the slot receiver due to how the how the defense is set up to stop the run. If you come out with 4-3 Under Cover 3 Sky vs Singleback Doubles, your free safety will be over top of that slot receiver instead (due to differences in the run fits of 4-3 Under vs 4-3 Normal). Obviously, putting a safety on a wide receiver is a better matchup for your defense.

Pressure the quarterback. Making a quarterback throwing an inaccurate pass in Madden generally requires that he be under pressure. If you're sending four and not getting to him, you probably need to send more, especially on early downs to try and force the offense into one-dimensional play calls.