Open Letter to the Development Team

Open Letter to the Madden Development Team:

I write this letter with the hope that these shared opinions and ideas will help you make a better game.

I’m an avid MUT (All Madden Seasons player) and the focus of this letter will be wholly on competitive gameplay.

The timing of this letter is a byproduct of current MUT gameplay, and prior to the anticipated October patch that will almost certainly improve the game’s contemporary state, but likely not address many of the issues I will write about.

First off, what’s working:

In my opinion, Madden 23 has the best competitive gameplay I’ve ever experienced during my 25+ year playing history, and I agree this is the most polished Madden we’ve seen in a long time.

This is due largely to defensive improvements in pass rush, coverage logic, contains, skill-based passing, and an overall reduction in playbook size and scope to reduce the likelihood outlier player input causing unintended results in any of these areas.

In addition to these game play improvements, MUT content started out very strong in the diversification and inclusion of all 32 teams and theme teams. I enjoyed this very much as the early weeks of MUT were extremely competitive for my 100% Browns theme team.

I also found the new types of strategy cards and rebalancing of AP requirements to be well received and contribute favorability to diverse team building and the neutralization of META gameplay to at least make the game playable and challenging while not running the same plays over an over again with the same personnel groupings on offense and defense.

Well done! All of these factors contributed to a great first month of Madden. Probably the best first month I’ve ever experienced.

What’s not working?

Times have changed since the first month of gameplay. My Browns theme team is no longer competitive in most All-Madden seasons’ games (and by default the MCS). My entire team is under key thresholds in nearly every category, and regardless of scheme or player ability my players simply can not block or tackle the average opponent’s players, let alone try to cover them in one-on-one situations or defeat man coverage even using man beating routes. It’s a lot like trying to field a handful of practice squad players against the All-Madden team. It’s needlessly frustrating.

But it’s not only the lack of Browns players that contributes to this, it’s the way the game plays in general, and I’ve attempted to list in order of impact the mechanics that contribute the most to the problems I have with the game, as well as listing possible solutions to help provide additional context.

1. Offensive Line – Run Blocking. There really must be a pass through all of the running plays to improve how the offensive line handles defensive line adjustments, bear fronts, 3-3-5 wide, and dollar formations.

My teams has post ups on my center and both guards and even when I double team the NT in dollar I get instant shedded at least 40% of the time on just about every running play in existence. There are exceptions, but there are really an unacceptable number of use cases that are allowing stupid defenses to block smart offenses. This one use case though is contributing to probably the majority of the mayhem however.

Other uses cases are mostly from Bear Fronts where the DL is pinched. They should be great at clogging up the middle on interior runs but they should really stink on stuff outside the tackles. This doesn’t happen currently, and instead they cause real problems that mostly result in the offensive line dumbing out on any runs. There really just needs to be a simple inventory of defensive formations versus running plays, looking at where the weakness in the defense is and then figuring out why the offensive lineman can’t effectively block on these plays and fixing that.

Block shedding is fine, but what this is way beyond that, it’s like the offensive line just doesn’t even get a block on certain players.

From my point of view this is really just a coding fix on your side. I don’t think it’s working as intended, and therefore no additional features or changes need to be made here. 

You just have to go into the run blocking logic and remove these use cases from existence.

This is priority number one because it impacts so much of the rest of the game. The chess match can’t properly function when this is going on.

2. Offensive Line – Pass Blocking.

Overall, I like pass blocking much more than the way it was working last year. But it still has major flaws. The biggest complaint I have is that it’s rarely clear if the adjustments I made to the offensive blocking scheme actually worked, or if my defensive opponent simply used a dumb meta contain blitz to make the AI not work.

And in a game where my margin of error is already so slim in the passing game, this gets really frustrating because essentially, I already can’t throw because of the way Man defense works. I can’t run because of the way the run blocking works. And the end result is that I just get the same META defenses thrown in my face over and over again regardless of what I do.

So my proposal is actually that you start fixing this by providing some kind of visual representation of where the blocking failed, showing also if it was a block shed, a blitz, or whatever. That way people can learn from their mistakes easier.

Like it’s one thing to say “Ok, block that stupid guy with a double team, make him the mike, and slide all my lineman towards him because he’s the guy that keeps sacking me in 2.4 seconds!” But it’s another thing entirely to know that’s never going to work if after I’m sacked there’s visual representation showing everything I did SHOULD HAVE WORKED and was accepted by the AI, but it didn’t because the game is broken. Or maybe even show the correct blocking needed to stop that from happening again.

I know we’re not there yet. But in my mind the pass blocking shouldn’t be a mystery. It should be totally obvious after the play is over why something worked or didn’t work. I mean the whole idea of pass blocking is that you put your bigs on bigs and your have enough people to block the number of people that are rushing or you get the ball off before the rush gets there. So we really just need to pin point where those outliers are failing that model, fix them, and then provide players with visual feedback showing why they got sacked or pressured so everyone understands how to adjust within the rules of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to baby the community at all, but Madden has a long history of pass blocking not working properly so having this visual feedback for maybe at least practice mode would be really appreciated.

I’d also like to see more tools in the tool box that allow WR’s, TE’s, and RB’s to block in different ways. The key here would be not allowing people to abuse this like they have in the past. Removing the TE from blocking in most situations for bunch was a great stop gap, but it’s not football, so I’d like to find a way to get back to a balanced reality.

Eventually I’d like see the defense have more ways to rush on the interior of the line, perform stunts and games that are designed to get free blockers. But that seems like light years away from where we’re at today. So in the meantime, maybe just getting the fundamentals down would be best.

3. Man Coverage being perfectly balanced statistically, but not balanced at all from a practical standpoint.

In football, if your injured pop warner WR is lined up against Deion Sanders in his prime, the expectation that he will beat man coverage (regardless of the route concept in use) would understandable be ZERO. And Madden 23 provides that level of sophistication and attention to detail in spades.

For example, my best WR is Amari Cooper with an OVR rating of 87. He’s good. But not even close to good enough to beat any of the best MUT defensive backs in man coverage. It doesn’t really matter what route is run, how good I may be at free form passing, or even what coverage is being played. If it’s man to man he’s essentially locked down for the entire ball game. Sure, he may catch a pass or two, but the risk of throwing him the ball on even the simplest of throws is exponentially high through almost no action by the defense other than putting a ridiculously superior player on the other side of the ball and selecting “man” coverage.

Again, while this may be understandable, it’s just not very much fun to play against. The only real option being to A) Not throw the ball, B) Take your chances and hope the defensive AI doesn’t automatically intercept the throw, C) break out your wallet and buy the latest and greatest WR to even the playing field, or D) and this is one of the reasons I’m writing this letter versus playing the game, stop playing and do something else with your life that is more satisfying, less frustrating, and may result in a productive past time.

For my part, I keep trying to play against these all-man defenses using my impossibly under manned team, but I wish this wasn’t something I had to deal with ever again and I have a number of solutions that I believe would help right size the competitive balance of this game beyond just buying “the best” cards.

A. Man defense may be as simple has lining up people one on one and just following them around, but offenses are trickier than that in real life and have a way of hiding players or getting the defense out of position that is not captured well in Madden 23.

I propose we make it a little more complicated to get man defense to work properly based on the formation the defense is trying to guard against. I know banjo coverage is in the game and used against bunch formations, but why are we giving that to the defense as a free adjustment? Why are we not making them call that when they line up? I think the more proper adjustments you have to make on defense to get the AI to play properly the better it will be for teams that can motion and shift. It would create more situations where joe average player isn’t just going to be able to run man all game because they will find themselves getting out schemed even against inferior competition like NMS teams. And I think that’s really super healthy for the game.

To be clear, I’m not saying this should only be a Banjo/Bunch thing. There are probably at least a few more situational adjustments for man/match coverages that could be used to make defense more challenging, and I’d really like you guys to explore this type of game play for future Maddens.

B. I think designed pick plays have to be in the game to exploit poor coverage alignment. So you’d have plays like X Pivot, where clearly the double slants are meant to pick off the interior DB’s so the TE can get open against man coverage to the outside. Pretty standard play in the NFL. The problem however is that the WR’s running the double slants are just running normal slants and so it’s really not “designed” the way it’s supposed to be. What you have is a lot of random chaos and sometimes it works great but most of the time it just doesn’t do what you want it to do even though you may be running it against the exact defense it’s intended to burn.

My proposed solution is to create a series of routes and categorize them as picks that are not really intended to be thrown to. Then give the defense a way to counter those types of plays (Probably with a Banjo call). But then provide additional routes (like whip routes) that would just shred banjo coverage, creating a rock, paper, scissors kind of “chess match” so that there’s always a way to cover something but you in turn give up something else that’s been called to counter it.

One of the problems we have in the current game is that hot routes often negate this type of play because the defense can’t globally adjust and be right against all the routes on the field. For example, if someone used the above-mentioned pick routes and then hot routed in a whip route somewhere. This too would have to be balanced. But the general idea here is to get away from just buying an expensive card and playing man all day. The defensive players really must be forced to think about what they’re doing.

C. Current Coaching Adjustments for DB’s needs improvement.

I don’t think it’s helpful to globally set your DB’s to cover Speed, OVR, or Route Running. I think that was a good first pass years ago, but we need something much more sophisticated for today’s Madden that allows more pinpoint accuracy for who which DB’s we’re putting on which receivers.

What I propose is creating a new feature that lists the offensives receivers and allows the defense to place DB’s against specific receivers. I believe in the NFL they call this “traveling” and it’s a skill! Not all DB’s travel. And so this is something you could add to the attributes of players, a “traveling skill” that will help further differentiate one corner versus another.

Deion Sanders didn’t do a lot of traveling. In fact, most corners don’t. They play a specific side of the field. And I think that should be captured in Madden to help make playing man coverage more of a thoughtful experience than it currently is. You may have Deion, and he may really lock down the left side of the field, but what are you going to do when someone moves Moss to the right side of the field? Is Deion going to travel? If he is, he’s going to be slightly less effective. And furthermore, what happens when Deion has to stop the run? Does that also impact his ability to play the pass? Because Deion wasn’t really known for his tackling ability, when he was with Dallas, he barely tackled anyone! I think it’s factors like this what would make man to man defense much more interestingly complex yet still fun and viable to the casual player because it would really take a lot of knowledge and understanding on the offensive side of the ball to take advantage of matchups like this. Which is where I think we should strive to be from a competitive standpoint.

D. Lastly, I want to talk about how man defense plays balls over their head. It’s really difficult to throw a fade route over the top of a DB that is +10 points better than your WR in every major category and not get an interception or an incomplete pass. This means that my opponent can play press man all day and virtually assure themselves that they can cut off nearly the entire route tree from 4 of my 5 receiving options. Again, they’re doing this without even thinking about there being a risk involved (because there’s very little risk involved).

This has to stop. And I think the way it stops is that you have to make inside and outside shade more impactful. Currently the META is to use inside shade for DB’s taking away the slant route, and leaving the face route open because it’s just so freaking hard to complete consistently.

I think that’s if a DB is playing inside shade, that fade route has to be easier to complete. There just has to be something that is going to get those corners to back up or require help over the top if they’re playing inside shade. You just can’t let them do it in cover 1 or cover 0 and get away with it all game.

It really ruins the chess match because it’s just so dominant. However, I think it would be too easy to just make inside shade an automatic fade route win (which it’s not really that way currently, at least for my players), and I’d like to keep that style of play viable just not as dominant.

So, here’s what I propose. Create an ability that makes WR’s better at double moves. Make it work a lot like Run Off Elite, so there’s a counter ability on the DB side too. This will take needed AP away from the rest of the defense if players want that kind of dominate in your face man to man defense. It means that you can still shut down a WR like this, but it will cost you, and maybe your pass rush can’t get home anymore, or maybe another WR will be more effective now. It also means that someone like me running a theme team may be able to get that ability to augment my lack of straight-line speed.

4. Improve the way contains work.

Contains have been greatly improved, but there’s still a lot of work to do. My main concern about contains is that they really mess up both the run and pass blocking as we know them today.

Where this is most annoying is on designed roll outs. It’s completely understandable if the defense has contains on the field and probably also pass commits, that my offenses designed QB rollout gets destroyed, usually resulting in a hurried throw or a sack. But what makes me go crazy is when my opponent is able to effectively use that same approach for the entire game and there’s almost nothing the offense can do against it.

What should be happening in a situation where someone is running DE or LB contains (and especially when also pass committing), is there should be a natural lane opening up between the offensive tackles and the guards that is SUPER EASY TO RUN THROUGH. This is where your draw plays, your off-tackle plays and just about anything inside the tackle box should get infinitely easier to run. But that’s not what happens because of the previously mentioned poor blocking mechanics and because these scenarios just don’t seem to have been accounted for in the original design of Madden.

I think there are probably too example concepts I can provide to you that should explain where the goal should be.

Example 1: Lamar Jackson. Certainly, as a defense you should consider trying to contain Lamar Jackson to keep him from moving outside the pocket where he’s the most dangerous. But as you do this, you should also be giving up something in return. And that something is easier runs in-between the tackle box. Be it a quick handoff on a read option, a QB power run, a counter play, or a draw, this is where the Ravens offense should (or at least try to) make you pay for trying to contain their star QB!

Yes, contains should work better against outside runs (not so much cutback though), designed rolls outs, and scrambling to the outside. But they should not be particularly helpful against inside running.

Example 2: Nick Chubb and the Wide Zone Offense.

Similarly, the offenses’ ability to run stretch or toss plays to the outside should be challenged by defensives that are running contains. However, this does not mean that natural holes should not form that allow designed inside zone or power plays to simply kick out those containing DE’s and LB’s and create an alley that can be exploited by good running. This sometimes happens, but it’s much rarer than it should be, and what usually happens is the blocking is all jumbled up and even though the o-line has double teams on key defenders the outside pursuit is what destroys the plays. This just doesn’t make any sense because usually the outside defenders are DB’s or players that should be out of position to make a play since the offensive blocking should easily be able to use their leverage against them and push them outside the running alley.

This is where pulling logic will also need to be adjusted so that the pulling lineman continues to logically remove players in the running alley and not somewhere else.

But what I propose is an update to the coaching adjustments to make the defense commit to what they’re actually trying to stop. Are they trying to stop the QB from getting outside the pocket or the running back from running outside the tackles? What exactly is the purpose of the contains? Because it really matters to the way we approach blocking and the way the offense and defense interact with each other.

What I would love to see is for the defense to call Aggressive, Balanced, or Conservative contains on the coaching adjustment screen.

Aggressive Contains would go after the QB and generally ignore the running back. This means that on play action passes the DE’s and LB’s in contain would just go straight for the QB. You wouldn’t even need to pass commit for this to work for your contain players! However, you would be giving up on draw plays, counters, and inside runs almost completely because on those plays your contain players would just follow the QB who would no longer have the ball.

On Conservative contains the players would just follow the running back and ignore the QB.

On Balanced, contain players would rely greatly on their play recognition and awareness skills, HOWEVER, unlike other Maddens this logic would be enhanced to consider down and distance, and historical play calling by the offense.

So, if someone had been successfully running the ball on your all day long and then ran a counter play action pass versus your balanced contains, you’re highly likely to effectively see your containing players just follow the running back wherever he goes! Leaving the QB wide open on bootlegs and designed rollouts.

This would change so much about the way play calling works and doesn’t work. It would also open up MUT so that many more types of play styles would be viable and many more types of archetypes and abilities would have value.

5. Cumulative Running Impact. Finally, and by no means less important than the other items listed above, I’d like to mention that running the ball currently has no cumulative impact on the defense. I think that’s horribly wrong, and as a former offensive lineman, I would be surprised if Clint thought this was being accurately portrayed in competitive play.

After watching over 30 years of football, if there’s one thing, I have seen happen countless times it’s that by the 4th quarter the other teams defense is tired in a way that the offense is not. And most of the time that has to do with the number of possessions, the time of possession, and the types of plays that were run during those possessions. I know there’s legitimate debate about how running the football impacts the passing game, but what I don’t think is in doubt is that if you’re a defensive player that had to stop Nick Chubb and the Browns offensive line on 30+ running plays, you’re not going to tackle or run as well as when you started the game. And that’s really what I’m looking for here, is some kind of mechanic that rewards running offensives with a cumulative impact to the defense. So that in the 3rd and 4th quarters, it gets EASIER to run, it gets EASIER to throw play action passes, it gets EASIER to sustain drives, because of all that work you put into doing it throughout the rest of the game.

And so if you’re one of these META guys that scores ever 3 plays, that’s great, but what is that doing to your defense against a guy like me? What is that doing to your odds of winning a close game where you have to be able to get the ball back to win? And what are your chances going to look like when my defense is fresh because they’ve only been on the field for like 6 plays and you’re trying to score with no timeouts and 33 seconds on the clock? Who’s got the advantage now? Who probably should’ve had linebackers on the field now?

I think this fundamental reality in football has been overlooked and under supported for years, and it would be a great day in Madden world if you could fix this. Because this is a major part of what football is and what the chess match is. It doesn’t mean that running will become the only way to win, it just means that there will be more balance in the way the game is played and the way you secure a win.

Thank you for reading and considering my opinions and ideas.

WereRobber