I recently watched
this Youtube video by Deuce Close about "the cheesiest defense in Madden 22". (I preface my entire post with the following: none of this is intended as a criticism of Deuce Close, I think he does a great job uncovering and explaining nuanced behaviors of the game for the entry-level Madden competitive player). I wanted to call out a number things that specifically jumped out at me in this video:
1 - the stock three-man drop-eight rush is, as one might expect, totally inept. Jalen Hurts has a clean pocket from 2:23 to 2:50 - fully twenty seven seconds in the pocket.
2 - by making three adjustments starting at 3:16 - add Edge Threat to the defensive end, user that DE, use a speed rush move to the outside - suddenly this same play creates tremendous pressure. The only counter to this apparently is to add Edge Protector to the opposing offensive tackle in question.
3 - at 6:33, Deuce reveals another "neat" behavior about Madden 22 - on any play where the defense uses Run Commit while sending three or fewer rushers to the quarterback, the Run Commit is canceled when the offense is actually running any type of play that is
not a run play, but when the offense actually does use a run play then the Run Commit stays on.
4 - at 8:06, Deuce shows to make sure to rush exactly three players when performing the always-right Run Commit behavior he detailed in point 3; when two or fewer rushers are on against a run play, the OL starts getting free pancakes (if I recall correctly, this was a band-aid EA added to counteract people basing out of Dime and Quarter defenses in competitive play)
5 - at 8:42, Deuce shows how with this same setup, if there are four or more rushers, Run Commit behaves like it is designed to; the defense crashes when Run Commit is called, even when the offense calls a pass play.
6 - at 11:29, Deuce shows how that, unlike what was demonstrated in point 1, a three-man rush can win if you hot route a fourth defender into a blitz but then user that defender in coverage (and presumably actually play coverage instead of blitzing).
My question following all these observations: what the heck is up with this layer cake of band-aids and weird very specific behaviors? I assume at one point in older generations of Madden there was a very good reason for each of these behaviors to exist, but as it stands today this is a spectacular mess. It's creating really unpredictable behavior from play to play for anyone who doesn't have specific knowledge of these edge cases, and it also artificially raises the skill ceiling of the game. There's no reason a three man rush should behave so radically differently depending on the pre-snap assignment of a single off-ball defender with no consideration to what's actually happening post-snap. There's no reason why Run Commit should silently abort in any circumstance. There's no reason why the offensive linemen should get free pancake blocks against the same defenders in some situations but not others based on the defensive player presnap assignments.
None of this makes any sense to me.