I have always been a football fan but when I was in college I lived in the Football dorm and it changed how I saw the game forever. (Back story, I lived in those dorms because I'm a big guy and the coach wanted me to play for the team. I told him yeah because I noticed that at registration all of the Football players were able to skip in line. I never did play because I loved Basketball more than Football at the time).
Anyway, when you live around Football players 24/7 you start to learn facets of the game that you never knew about. You learn what every position is doing on every play and why they are doing it.Now when I watch Football it is more like a game of chess than a brutal grudge match. The real excitement in the game comes from watching the linemen and not the skilled positions.
On another side note, you would think that all of this football knowledge would help actual players when playing Madden (That was all that was played in those dorms. Hours and hours of Madden). It does but only to a certain extent. Football players take Madden too literally and try to play it as a simulation. They forget the video game part. I would use that to my advantage all of the time.
There a few things that are starting to bleed from the madden into the real life game. Time management is one of them. I can't remember who it was but a few years ago a player was running for the ends zone and had a huge lead on the defense, 1 yard from the end zone he started running sideways draining as much clock as possible, assuring no come back from the opposite team.
I saw I believe Leon Washington for the Jaguars pull a similar stunt once, the D seemed to be giving him a free TD at the end of the game but he preferred to just take a knee right before the end zone. With the new Canadian Football rule requiring contact to end the play the D lost a few seconds not reacting fast enough (first year it was implemented I believe) thinking he was down.
The game is also teaching much better strategy to players, getting them to understand more than their position.
It was Brian Westbrook for the Eagles on Dec 1, 2007. He actually just dropped at the 1 because the Cowboys had no timeouts left and the game was effectively over with a 1st down. I believe in the post game interview he acknowledged that he did it because that's how he wastes the opponents time in Madden games.
Maurice Jones-Drew did the same thing in 2009 against the Jets.
Oh yeah, the Maddenization of the modern football game is everywhere. I especially love when on (I think ESPN Sunday Morning Countdown) they use Madden players to illustrate the play but they are scaled to real proportions. The first time I saw that I giggled like a school girl. I started playing Madden in 92 after years of Tecmo Bowl and I never thought I would see it blow up as big as it is now.
Any football player who was in college after 95 has been exposed to Madden in a big way. So even though I am surprised how big it has gotten when it comes to integration in the NFL, I really shouldn't be.
It's more of what works in the game but doesn't work in real life. In Madden an old glitch that has since been fixed is that whenever the Quarterback would break the pocket, the receivers would break their route. And when they broke their route the receivers would go to the same spot every single time (towards the sideline). But at the same time, the DB's would get confuse which would then leave the receiver wide open. This would happen EVERY SINGLE TIME. So you would have wide open receivers no matter if the defense was in zone or in man.
Every football player knows that the db's would be looking for this in real life and would step up and stop the play after one or two times of this happening. But in the old versions of Madden the corner back would not learn and you had an open man every time. The only way to stop this was to have a team with a good blitzing line backer or defensive end and hope he gets to the QB in time. (This glitch made McNabb almost unstoppable in several versions of Madden.)
Another problem in the old Maddens was that if you had the tight end lined up on the left and had him go up five yards and then had him cut left quickly then if the defense was in man he would get the ball every time. And when the defense was in zone he would probably get the ball 70% of the time. In real life a highly skilled LB would be able to stop a sub par TE on this play. Just by being faster. But in the world of Madden the worst TE would get a completion against anyone.
These and the other tricks I would use were effective in Madden versions 97-03. The AI is much better now but there are still glitches. I just don't play it enough anymore to have figured them out. Others have though.
Anyway, when you live around Football players 24/7 you start to learn facets of the game that you never knew about. You learn what every position is doing on every play and why they are doing it.Now when I watch Football it is more like a game of chess than a brutal grudge match. The real excitement in the game comes from watching the linemen and not the skilled positions.
On another side note, you would think that all of this football knowledge would help actual players when playing Madden (That was all that was played in those dorms. Hours and hours of Madden). It does but only to a certain extent. Football players take Madden too literally and try to play it as a simulation. They forget the video game part. I would use that to my advantage all of the time.