Madden 27

To stick with the metaphor...  Water never taught anyone how to swim, nor has water ever rescued anyone that leapt into the deep end without knowing how to swim, and lastly we must stay in our lane when we swim.    

That said, I believe there is a very tiny portion of "90%" of the football fan base that wants to put in the effort to learn the differences between real life football and video game football so they can be successful at the Madden game.  

• Good thing:  There are lifeguards and coaches to show you how to swim.
• Bad thing:  The rest of the 90%, would rather you drown with them.   

In the meantime...  Some players will continue play Madden successfully using legitimate football concepts that the non-swimmers say cannot be done. I'll relate several personal experiences over my Madden playing career...

In Madden 2003, non-swimmers started the rumor that A-Gap blitzes were glitches and only shotgun formations gave players a chance.  I stopped running shotgun.  23 years into the experiment, and I'm pleased to announce that I've kept an above average win percentage ( >.500) every year for the past 22 against all the the A-Gap pressures you can expect to see in Online H2H Regs (that's where I live).  I've learned to enjoy making A-Gap blitz heavy opponents quit because their gimmick backfires, mostly because non-swimmers still tell me what I'm doing is impossible from under center.  

In Madden 2004, non-swimmers called a perfectly NFL legal tactic combining motion, compression, a pass route, and snap timing the "motion glitch" because that combination of concepts used that particular way had never been used in a real NFL game before .  More importantly, the tactic was designed to beat players with a vanilla defensive repertoire.  In 2011 a real NFL team added a play fake to the "motion glitch" concept and not only was it successful, but played out IDENTICALLY to how the 'motion glitch' worked in Madden 2004 seven years earlier (2011 Season - Week 4.  Lions vs Cowboys ~ 12:30 in 3rd Qtr).  They almost scored.  It was close enough to throw a challenge flag.  Weeks later, the Lions "PA Motion Glitch" against the Panthers for a messily 3 yards.  No one would run the combination of concepts that make up the 'motion glitch' in real life again until the Chiefs in Week 1 of the 2022 season, then twice in the Super Bowl that same season for the same reason it worked on Madden 2004 almost 20 years later.  Non-swimmers sayers still like to use the term 'motion glitch', though...  

When Madden 10 was out, there was a rumor started by "non-swimmers" that it was impossible to throw a pass to a WR before he made his cut.  Non-Swimmers, believed that the pass could only be thrown in the direction a receiver was running when the ball was released.  After I made several videos demonstrating throwing a pass before a receiver cut to the spot he would be after he made his break, these same non-swimmers tried to reason that what I was REALLY doing was using the left stick to lead the pass.  So I made another video where I held the controller with only my right thumb on the Square button and delivered a pass to a receiver running a 12-yard out before he made his cut and delivered the ball to a spot along his route AFTER the cut.  Even though, my video series addressed every concern non-swimmers had and proved their hypothesis false, some chose to ignore it, others successfully sought to have me banned from their community.

I could do this all day...  I used to be horrible at Madden.  But as you can probably tell, I'm also relentless. 

Last point, anyone looking for ways to solve football problems using football solutions on the football video game called Madden can do just that, but you can't learn it from a non-swimmer.  

Later