I'd like to see a learning curve introduced according to scheme fit, familiarity, and difficulty of playbook. For instance, a linebacker who played Sam in college shouldn't be able to come in and play Mike in the pros without skipping a beat. Same with an ILB in a 3-4 scheme switching to MLB in a 4-3. Or a qb in a spread scheme in college like so many college systems being able to come in as a rookie and have immaculate footwork under center. Moving onto free agency, a player shouldn't be able to come in mid season and have a full understanding of a playbook with 200 plays in it, unless of course, they have played in that system before, be it with the same coordinator or within the same coaching tree. Coaches should have an offensive or defensive specialty with their coordinators (which also need to exist) there to either boost their specialty, call plays ( which needs a major overhaul. If every time you come out in a certain formation, you run the same play and the defense never figures it out, are the even looking at film? Are they paying any attention to the game at all?), or to completely run the other side of the ball. With a coaching change, the play book should be restricted until the players become familiar over time, keeping a drastic change from being at all successful. Like switching from a 1 gapping 4-3 under cover 3 press scheme to a blitz heavy 3-4 man scheme. Or on offense, going from a power blocking or gap blocking scheme to a zone blocking scheme. There should be some variety of penalty for asking players unfamiliar with the scheme to do too much. For instance, blown coverages or poor run fits on defense. Or on offense, wrong routes for receivers on occasion, mislabeled route combos for qbs, and missed blocking assignments or incorrectly ran run plays for linemen and running backs. I think this would make the game more true to real life and be more thought provoking when choosing free agents or picking who is truly the best player available in the draft. In the real world, there are still superstars who are far and away better than the rest, but the talent gap isn't nearly as broad as what madden makes it out to be. Any player can be serviceable when they are put into a position to succeed and the coach plays to his strengths and he is smart enough to pick up the playbook and disciplined enough to do his job. So in conclusion, I think there should be a major emphasis put on coaching. A coach is so much more than a playbook, but that is about all the coach is in madden. There is no personality in playcalling, whether the are. A move the sticks type, round it up the middle type, or go for it all and ask questions later type. The playbook and the xp scheme should be tied to each other and not so simplistic, who changes schemes but not the playbook? And what does it even do besides give more xp and make teams move on from players in favor of "scheme fits" that really aren't anyways. There needs to be a reboot of positional descriptions such as EDGE, IDL, NT, off ball Lb, single high safety, box safety, etc. Etc. All the teams are without personality and they're like the same team. Coaches have none. Players at least have traits to give them a little personality, but I think there needs to be more. So, to recap, game needs a major coaching reboot. Give any player the chance to succeed and *gasp* fail. Give entire teams the chance to fail through poor decisions. And sometimes need a complete overhaul. Give some personality to the game through coaching, playcalling, and quarterback play too I suppose. Make it so you can put a player in position to succeed but that can't exist unless there is a situation in which that player can be put into a position to fail. Change up the positional descriptions to match the times. ROLB and LOLB? Doesn't exist. It's SAM and WILL now. They're all just LBs coming out of college though. They get those terms only once they are withing the scheme. Don't get me started on the intricacies of coverage. Rules of pattern matching and whatnot. I could go on all day but I'm gonna stop right here
