Who Are You Picking to Win the Superbowl?

[Sommerswerd]

If you can actually 1v1 all their passing options you can, but that's a big ask. Sherman is still pretty good, but he's not in his prime and I'm not sure the rest of that secondary matches up enough to do that kind of man coverage. Chiefs got stymied that way a bit against the Colts but since adjusted. We'll see, 49er pass rush IS good and if it starts winning fast enough it might be enough to carry like the Broncos pass rush carried them past the Pats in Manning's last year. I'm not favoring this to happen, but it's possible and I expect if my pick is wrong that will be why.

Sherman got torched for a TD in the Packers game. But his reputation still keeps QBs from throwing at him much. I'm very interested to see if Mahomes is willing to test out Sherman's age.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sherman got torched for a TD in the Packers game. But his reputation still keeps QBs from throwing at him much. I'm very interested to see if Mahomes is willing to test out Sherman's age.

If Sherman gets lined up in single coverage on Hill or Watkins he's gonna get hurt. Watkins is fast enough to make him give cushion and burn him underneath. Hill is fast enough to burn past him even if he gives cushion.

 

[caketastydelish]

Sherman has been a statistically great corner this year. I'm not buying it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I doubt Sherman can run side by side with Hill, but that hasn't been his game most of his career. If he's on him I doubt he allows a clean release. They still don't move Sherman around a lot though right? Could throw away from his side of field and/or run concepts like flood or curl/flat or levels to attack his side + not throw to the guy he takes.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I doubt Sherman can run side by side with Hill, but that hasn't been his game most of his career. If he's on him I doubt he allows a clean release. They still don't move Sherman around a lot though right? Could throw away from his side of field and/or run concepts like flood or curl/flat or levels to attack his side + not throw to the guy he takes.

Problem with Hill is that even without a clean release he does eventually get running...and runs away. If you don't have deep help you really can't get into press coverage on him without risking the big play.

 

[caketastydelish]

Madden simulations done by EA have the Chiefs winning 68% of the time IIRC.

That said, I am a bad madden player (by human player standards) but I’m about evenly matched with the AI on All Pro.

The computer simulations weren’t adjusting to how the 49ers would probably play IRL, but I did.

Bleed the clock as much as possible while being in possession to keep the Chiefs offense off the field. Run heavy draw plays that Shanahan typically uses.

In the end I (49ers) won 17-7.

Jimmy G only threw for 56 yards, Mahomes 225. Mahomes got a passing touchdown, and both the 49ers touchdowns were on running plays.

The 49ers were vastly superior on the ground, as I anticipate they will be IRL.

Yes I know the Chiefs stopped Derrick Henry, but Shanahans scheme is much harder to defend against.

We also held possession comfortably longer throughout the game than the Chiefs.

If this is to be a realistic prediction, the 49ers will have the ball roughly twice as long as the Chiefs. It’s also worth noting that not only does keeping the Chiefs offense off the field is extremely important in and of itself, but that will wear the Chiefs defense down. The Chiefs defensive line isn’t nearly as deep as what the 49ers have either.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Problem with Hill is that even without a clean release he does eventually get running...and runs away. If you don't have deep help you really can't get into press coverage on him without risking the big play.

Depends where you are on the field. With < 40 yards between LoS and end zone I don't think Hill builds up enough speed for separation before running out of room if he's getting mugged the first 5 yards. The other factor is that SF might be willing to take that risk if their pressure is working.

But the more sensible thing would be to just motion Hill or put him somewhere Sherman isn't, since Sherman likely won't mirror his location. If Sherman is looking to shut someone down, why not put someone less explosive there to tie him up?

SF does a bit more than the Seattle pattern match cover 3, though I don't think Andy Reid will be seeing anything super new from SF defense. IMO either SF pass rush wins, or the Chiefs offense will win.

That said, I am a bad madden player (by human player standards) but I’m about evenly matched with the AI on All Pro.

I was top 1000 for many years in a row before I got tired/frustrated of it. Madden doesn't even allow for the types of offensive/defensive adjustments the NFL does. There's no 2-gap defensive assignments for example, and you can't tell CB to play a shoulder because you know the opponent is going to run another streak/corner/flat combo for the 15th time (even though man-shading USED to be a thing, for a few maddens, it only worked in a fraction of those). OL slide protection is buggy against blitz setups. Every good player has a devastating defensive user that changes how you can run plays (I haven't played in years and would still be extremely cancerous in coverage). Despite that, deep zones in madden are complete trash and don't do anything resembling their rules for actual players in real football, so Madden is still very offense-favored if you can't get glitch pressure.

Madden doesn't even allow for competent RPO games or showcase the real reason Shanahan play action is a pain. Oh, and player attributes/ratings are lies. OVR means nothing, quite a few actual individual player attributes mean nothing, and EA has gone on record making statements about these that were proven to be blatantly false. In a game that tries to sell you cards that are valued significantly based on player attributes/ratings, I hold that EA is objectively fraudulent and likely gets a pass because of limited knowledge of how they're lying about the game mechanics + deep pockets for legal battles.

Anyway nothing you can do in Madden will be predictive of NFL games. In one of the last versions I owned, I won an online league with 32 players as Cleveland, with Johnny Manziel as the QB. My opponent in the superbowl was the Washington Redskins. While that was a great playoff run where I beat 3 AFC players who had previously beaten me in regular season and there ARE some concepts that mirror reality, Madden is too far gone. Zero respect for that trash, which is sad because were it not for the marred glitch play and flagrant deceit on teambuilding considerations there is a fun game under there. Too much **** piled on top though.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Depends where you are on the field. With < 40 yards between LoS and end zone I don't think Hill builds up enough speed for separation before running out of room if he's getting mugged the first 5 yards.

Have you seen his acceleration? I think a lot of teams have thought this exact same thing and found out the hard way that they were wrong. The guy is a freak, even by NFL standards.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Have you seen his acceleration? I think a lot of teams have thought this exact same thing and found out the hard way that they were wrong. The guy is a freak, even by NFL standards.

I have, yes. Including both times he flat out ran down his own teammate for fun (Damien Williams) on big scoring plays. It's a little different when someone of Sherman's caliper is pressing. Hill can still work off that and break on routes but it won't be trivial if he doesn't get a clean release, especially if after press Sherman immediately bails because he has help underneath. NFL defenses aren't so free, you have to pick your spots for deep ball attempts.

It's not like Mahomes doesn't know this many times better than both of us combined though.

 

[caketastydelish]

Depends where you are on the field. With < 40 yards between LoS and end zone I don't think Hill builds up enough speed for separation before running out of room if he's getting mugged the first 5 yards. The other factor is that SF might be willing to take that risk if their pressure is working.

But the more sensible thing would be to just motion Hill or put him somewhere Sherman isn't, since Sherman likely won't mirror his location. If Sherman is looking to shut someone down, why not put someone less explosive there to tie him up?

SF does a bit more than the Seattle pattern match cover 3, though I don't think Andy Reid will be seeing anything super new from SF defense. IMO either SF pass rush wins, or the Chiefs offense will win.



I was top 1000 for many years in a row before I got tired/frustrated of it. Madden doesn't even allow for the types of offensive/defensive adjustments the NFL does. There's no 2-gap defensive assignments for example, and you can't tell CB to play a shoulder because you know the opponent is going to run another streak/corner/flat combo for the 15th time (even though man-shading USED to be a thing, for a few maddens, it only worked in a fraction of those). OL slide protection is buggy against blitz setups. Every good player has a devastating defensive user that changes how you can run plays (I haven't played in years and would still be extremely cancerous in coverage). Despite that, deep zones in madden are complete trash and don't do anything resembling their rules for actual players in real football, so Madden is still very offense-favored if you can't get glitch pressure.

Madden doesn't even allow for competent RPO games or showcase the real reason Shanahan play action is a pain. Oh, and player attributes/ratings are lies. OVR means nothing, quite a few actual individual player attributes mean nothing, and EA has gone on record making statements about these that were proven to be blatantly false. In a game that tries to sell you cards that are valued significantly based on player attributes/ratings, I hold that EA is objectively fraudulent and likely gets a pass because of limited knowledge of how they're lying about the game mechanics + deep pockets for legal battles.

Anyway nothing you can do in Madden will be predictive of NFL games. In one of the last versions I owned, I won an online league with 32 players as Cleveland, with Johnny Manziel as the QB. My opponent in the superbowl was the Washington Redskins. While that was a great playoff run where I beat 3 AFC players who had previously beaten me in regular season and there ARE some concepts that mirror reality, Madden is too far gone. Zero respect for that trash, which is sad because were it not for the marred glitch play and flagrant deceit on teambuilding considerations there is a fun game under there. Too much **** piled on top though.

Madden has greatly improved RPO recently.

The problem with the rest of your criticisms is it essentially boils down to “Madden favors pass happy offense too much.” If anything that’s an advantage for the Chiefs. I ran the ball the vast majority of the time just as they passed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Madden has greatly improved RPO recently.

The problem with the rest of your criticisms is it essentially boils down to “Madden favors pass happy offense too much.” If anything that’s an advantage for the Chiefs. I ran the ball the vast majority of the time just as they passed.

No, my complaints are specific to the overcentralization of tactics in the game and glitched plays removing any semblance of real football strategy from high level Madden. Every year.

I'll give an example from one of my strongest years in Madden: Streak/wheel/flat, I think it was either '11 or madden '25 (for its 25th anniversary). Two things combined to make this cancerous garbage in madden that year:

1. Introduction of the "pass lead" mechanic, which would allow TE of any quality to always beat man coverage by simply pass leading away from whatever defender was nearby. It always worked, and beat man, cover 2, cover 3, and cover 4 w/o issue. Even if you shaded the TE to direction of passlead or spotlighted him.
2. Streak/wheel/flat. Because of the above, the user generally had to watch the TE seam/streak. In that version of Madden, cloud flats were broken. They would play identically to hard flats. So if you ran streak/wheel/flat the AI would ALWAYS play the flat, and the wheel would ALWAYS be open. Doesn't matter if you put 3 defenders to the side. Doesn't matter if you used man (wheels beat man consistently, worse if you did them off motion). Can't user that because it's a free pass to the TE with pass lead.

I played in a league that was nearly all ranked (top 1000 or better) players, with 5 in the top 100. My games against top 100 players involved both sides using streak/wheel/flat almost constantly, with a few tricks to handle anything extra we'd do like manually adding a deep zone closer to line to try to screw with wheel timing or manually pressing TE and then trying to jump wheel. Often games came down to pure RNG, because each of us only made 1-3 passes that could be anything other than completions or drops. And yes, that does mean I beat the top 100 players sometimes that way. Hot garbage. All that skill potential instead boiled down to dice rolls on CTH rating and whether someone dropped their INT or not.

In the real NFL, something like streak/wheel/flat is a variant of the flood concept, designed to beat most zone coverages by attacking 3 areas of the field vertically where two defenders have zones. Seattle's variant of cover 3 often puts 3 zones to a side of the field, and uses some zone vs man pattern match stuff (possible in current maddens, not possible back then). It would not consistently beat man either (depends on who is covering the wheel and streak, and which players are running them). And there is no such thing as throwing a pass lead 5 yards inside and literally only the offensive player can react to it w/o "user". But in Madden these things were so strong that all gameplay among good players centralized around them for the entire year. Most years, Madden has something like this. One year it was 4 verts beating nearly everything, including cover 4. Another, it was "face catching", deliberate underthrows with users animation manipulation to catch it in front of defenders in nearly every coverage. It's different each year what breaks the game that way, but at the high levels there's always only a couple viable options.

If you're just playing against the all-pro AI and not seeing what strong ranked play is like, you don't see just how mechanically broken Madden really is. It's not a matter of "pass offense is too strong". It's a matter of "defensive and offensive playcalls that are designed to counter something don't work". There are, for example, years where many plays simply weren't viable because no slide protection option would pick up the blitz, the back would ignore the free runner, and thus if you called a snap under center you'd get sacked before a slant could make its break. Time for shotgun, for everyone all the time, because under center that year was a false choice.

Madden is not a good game at competitive levels for this reason. Madden is not a good game at all because it is provably fraudulent trash that tries to capture "whales", its devs openly lie about what its mechanics are and how they work, and features are routinely stripped + re-added as "new" later.

I miss part of it, because that short period each year before the good players figure out the meta to break the engine has some real strategy involved. But not enough to go back to it and feed more $$$ to people who are willing to repeatedly lie to consumers in such a blatant fashion.

"Strength influences run blocking" my ***. GTFO with that, trash EA. Hah, you're bringing back bad memories. I think I might have explained too much already so I'll stop.

 

[caketastydelish]

I just realized that technically, Garropolo already has a ring as a result of being on the Patriots roster during a super bowl championship. Whether that counts to the fans is a different matter of course, but officially speaking, he already has one.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I just realized that technically, Garropolo already has a ring as a result of being on the Patriots roster during a super bowl championship. Whether that counts to the fans is a different matter of course, but officially speaking, he already has one.

I think it counts, he was part of the team, period. But even if you wanted to argue... it's legit even more so when you consider that he actually played games that season. Plus not only did he play, he won. So there really is no legitimate argument that his ring somehow "doesn't count".

 

[caketastydelish]

Is Osweiler a Super Bowl champ ?

 

[rah]

IMO, everyone on the team is one regardless of whether they played in the game.
The BU qb has to run the practice squad that the defense trains against. He has to be prepared to step into the game so has to know the offense.
I think it's like saying that a coach doesn't deserve to be called one since he didn't actually play.

 

[KMRblue1027]

Unless you start the Super Bowl itself people aren't gonna count it as an actual ring. It's silly but that's how it is. Wentz getting home field is literally the biggest reason the Birds won in 17. They were a different team defensively at home and the game again Atlanta they needed it. But people don't give credit for that.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I give Wentz credit

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Oddball superbowl history fact of the day that I just picked up from ESPN:

The superbowl IV winning Kansas City Chiefs have sent SIX out of eleven starters on defense to the Hall of Fame.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Oddball superbowl history fact of the day that I just picked up from ESPN:

The superbowl IV winning Kansas City Chiefs have sent SIX out of eleven starters on defense to the Hall of Fame.

Roger Craig is up for induction this year. If he makes it in then the same would be true for the 49ers back-to-back Superbowl XXIII and XXIV winning teams.

EDIT: I just noticed you said defensive starters... for the 49ers it would just be players, 2 defense and 4 offense, since Steve young wasn't a starter when they won those two Superbowls

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Roger Craig is up for induction this year. If he makes it in then the same would be true for the 49ers back-to-back Superbowl XXIII and XXIV winning teams.

Defense man, defense.

Are you saying those teams had six hall of famers on the offense (with Roger Craig) because I find that hard to believe.

Montana and Rice, Craig if he makes it...who else?