Madden: Any Given Sunday

 One of the ways Madden misrepresents the NFL the worst is with the talent disparity with which it displays teams. A popular adage says a team can lose 'any given sunday'. In reality the talent difference between most teams in the NFL is small. Those slight advantages in talent are easily countered by execution, coaching, taking advantage of mismatches and TURNOVERS. In Madden, the top 3-4 rated teams have nothing to fear from the other teams in the league because of the way the game interprets ratings and allows elite teams to be too good.



Look at Week 1 of this NFL season as an example. The Jets were expected by many prognosticators (and Madden ratings) to be one of the worst teams in the league, but in week 1 this so-called terrible team lost to NE (5-2) by three points. They also beat them on Sunday and actually have a winning record. Can you imagine a Madden game where the Dolphins would have beaten the Colts 24-20, the 'anointed' Falcons beat the Rams by a TD or Tampa could hold New Orleans to 16 points? I can't...and this is where the problem lies. There's a large disconnect between football's reality and Madden's version of it. This week the Broncos lost, a 1-win Steelers team beat the Ravens and the undefeated Chiefs squeaked out a 1 point win over Houston even though a backup QB started.

The teams that turn the ball over and fail to execute lose in reality, not the ones with lower ratings. How else can you explain the 49ers 29-3 loss to Seattle or KC's win over Dallas? Home field advantage is huge in the NFL but couldn't matter less in Madden. Most rivalry games are close and you can throw out the records..again: Madden ignores this.

Look at teams like Houston, Baltimore, Dallas and Atlanta? Can you explain the records of these so-called elite teams in Madden? NOPE. You could sim a thousand seasons and not get the records they have in the NFL right now, because their ratings are too good. The Falcons and Texans were specifically rated as contenders for the Superbowl. Only thing is...they're not. Could there be a better example of the importance of coaching, execution and turnovers than Kansas City? FACT: This team would never see 7-0 with the way ratings and gameplay dictate what a good team is in Madden.

Madden's weekly ratings have been a sham for some time. Adding attributes for single standout plays is quite possibly the worst idea ever. Its human nature to notice highlights and disregard lowlights. You can't raise Jerome Simpsons jumping for this play unless you lower it every time he fails to 'climb the ladder' on a high pass. BE CONSISTENT. Player performance is most accurate when charted over an entire season and the smallest sample size should be quarterly performance. Want proof? Anquan Boldin was a prime candidate for most ratings people after Week 1 [13 rec, 208 yds] his Week 2? 1 rec, 7yds. Week 3? 5 rec, 67yds. Week 4? 5 rec, 90 yds. Still look like a guy you want to give a bunch of points to? His first two weeks cancel each other out. Week 3 is below average for a starting WR rated 88 or higher and week 4 is about what you expect. AJ Green in comparison has 3 hundred yard games and 5 TDs. Peyton Manning is on the rise because of his performance this entire season, not because he threw alot of TDs in week one against the Giants. The trends are more important. A player rating should represent what he consistently does, not what he did once.

Nick Foles all but proved the idiocy of Madden's fraud-worthy weekly rating system when he threw for 80yds a week after throwing for almost 300. Foles went up after a good week and by all logic should lose all the points he gained after a horrible one. Net gain? ZERO. Its one of the reasons we have always advocated a rating system that rates every quarter of the season rather than having knee-jerk reactions to every play and acting like players should improve after a single good performance. Common sense would tell 'ratings czar' Dummy Moore to look at a larger body of work, but what can you expect? This is the same idiot who raised Dante Wesleys hitting power after this play. I was actually happy for Madden fans after seeing many of the changes that game designer Clint Oldenburg made with line play. Then I remembered that sports games generally operate as ratings tell them to and that Dummy Moore does the ratings. Net Gain? ZERO.

The saddest part of the real life parity not translating to Madden is that it would promote the use of more teams and strategy instead of "throw to player X regardless of situation and expect to prosper because he's better than player Y." Online you see the top 3-4 teams because high ratings is the most effective way to win. We're cheated out of the ability to compete with any team in the league because of this. Even the winless Bucs have half of their losses by 3 points or less. Shouldn't it be gameplans that suits the talent, execution, matchups and turnovers that decides who wins and loses? Lets not forget that the NFL's 'best team' was a Tony Romo interception away from losing to Dallas last week and lost this weekend in Indy.