A couple of months ago I wrote a Madden blog post chronicling the difficulties of playing in “franchise mode” under the “All-Madden” skill level. At the time of that post, I was 0-5, and my closest margin of defeat was 17 points. I was hoping to improve enough to eke out at least a win or 2 by season’s end, but little did I know at that time that I was well on my way to an 0-16 season. I think my play did steadily improve as the season wore on (there were 2 or 3 games that I lost by a touchdown or less), but it still wasn’t good enough for even 1 win. In year 2 of my franchise, I fared slightly better. I got my 1st 2 wins against the CPU on All-Madden to finish the year 2-14, and hopefully with a couple draft picks and newly acquired players in the offseason I can improve on that in year 3.
Looking back at that 1st Madden blog, I mostly focused on how impossibly hard the All-Madden setting was. While that’s still true today, the second season of my franchise at least showed me that the All-Madden CPU’s can be beat, and my frame of mind has shifted more towards figuring out ways to win games rather than think about how the games are rigged. Part of the jump had to do with just getting better and applying a lot of the lessons I had learned in the previous season to this season. Obviously, if I don’t continue on that track, nothing else I do is really going to matter a whole heck of a lot. For example, even though my interceptions were way down from year one I still threw way too many of them. Maybe half of those were the “cheating CPU” type, where a CPU defender makes an impossible leaping, diving, one-handed catch, but a good number were just poor decisions on my part.
I’m hoping that aside from my own improvement in play the biggest difference from year 2 to year 3 will be in personnel. Let me just say that I think I picked literally the worst franchise you could have picked to start an All-Madden franchise with. The 2010-2011 Washington Redskins roster was an absolute mess. The years of ponying up big money for veteran free agents and trading away their draft picks left entire units (offensive and defensive line) in shambles, and even more than that caused me to have no depth at virtually every position. The cupboard was literally bare when I started out. I am admittedly pretty good at math and problem-solving, but I don’t have the time, energy, or willingness to do the due diligence of a real-life NFL capologist or GM. As a result, in both of my 1st 2 years I wound up losing the war of attrition. Any injury that occurred resulted in some mop (many times a non-real, Madden-generated player) being inserted in the lineup, and the results were usually not pretty.
Anyway, I believe I have the privilege of having the 1st overall pick in the draft for the 2nd year in a row. Unfortunately, Madden drafts (like real drafts) are a bit of a crapshoot. I picked a defensive tackle with my 1st round pick last season, and the jury is still out on him. He didn’t start, but he served as my 2nd string nose tackle and was in the game for all of my nickel packages. In year 3, I think I’m going to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3, so he will most likely see more action, but it’s quite possible that he is a bust. (I know the player ratings of my defensive linemen are fairly week, but I thought the linemen’s objective in a 3-4 was to tie up blockers to allow the linebackers to make plays. If they are all able to be blocked by 1 player, it kind of defeats the purpose. Also, the real-life switch of the Skins D to a 3-4 prompted a lot of questions about sticking square pegs into round holes…I didn’t think that would have mattered in terms of Madden, but maybe it does after all.) While he ended up being largely unimpressive, my other early round draft picks could end up improving to the point of being my team’s backbone for a few years. My 2nd round pick was a left guard, who seems to be solid. My 3rd pick, a defensive end, actually wound up starting the majority of the games and led the team in sacks I believe as well. My 4th round pick, a running back, went from being the 3rd down back to the unquestioned starter midway through the year. By the end of the season, I pretty much featured him as my all-around best player on offense, as he led the team in both carries and catches. He still only gained about 3.5 yards per carry, but I think that is about a yard improvement over the team’s overall per carry average the year before. The number of passes thrown his way was partly a function of the conservative way I still had to play on offense, as the majority of his catches were screens and dump-offs out of the backfield, but getting him the ball as much as possible gave me the best chance to win.
So, going into this offseason I think my strategy isn’t going to be so much acquiring a big-time free agent or 2 as much as trying to build up depth throughout my roster…as opposed to the year before where I was looking to fill 6 or 7 starting positions with draft picks and free agents. One position I definitely want to upgrade though is wide receiver, and depending on what type of draft class Madden spits out that might be how I use my 1st round pick (or I might make that my top free agent priority…we shall see). Going into this past season, I knew the position was an area of concern, but I felt that I could get by with a trio of similarly-rated, above average wideouts for 1 year at least…well that theory went out the window quickly because of injuries, and as a result my receiver play suffered even more. Aside from that, I would love to add depth along both lines, at linebacker, and in the defensive backfield. The one blessing of finishing back-to-back seasons with abysmal records is getting a lot of high draft picks. Hopefully, the Madden draft will be as kind, if not kinder, to my roster this season as they were the season before, and I can inch a little bit closer to 0.500 in season 3.
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