Major Madden 2005 issue
 

Well, not major.

Has anyone given thought to the idea of playing with a left-handed quarterback in the game? The scrambling is different, I'll have to watch a different blindside...

I wish someone had consulted me before making this deal.

I've used Vick here and there and having a lefty takes a little getting used to.

If, for the purpose of authenticity I start Brunell, it's going to affect my awesomeness. I demand answers from Cerrato!

I've been playing Madden 2004 since Nov. 03 & I've just started my 4th season. So many players have retired, moved on, or just got to pricey.

Skins still on the team:

QB - Ramsey
HB - none
FB - Bryan Johnson, ROCK!
TE - none

O-Line - Samuels, Dockery, Jansen

D-Line - Zellner, Upshaw
D-Back - Bailey, Smoots, Ohalete, Bowen, Bauman, & Arrington.

Key F/A signings:

QB - Brad Banks (great speed with his feet, poor strength in his arm)

HB - Travis Henry, Dominick Davis (Traded Trung & a 2nd rd pick for Henry, got Henry at his rookie low price salary. Resigning is gonna be impossible ($30 mil 6 yr asking. So I drafted a HB (Pleasant) with my other 2nd rd pick I collected in another veteran move.)

WR - Calico (It's his 1st season in DC & in Preseason he really turned some heads with his blazing speed & great hands..!) Otherwise, I have kept the same WR that OBC assebled. Jacobs has developed nicely, & Mccants has become my slot monster. Coles burns almost any DB on a post. Usually run him on curls & slants, LB can't cover his cuts.

O-Line - Woody (He's was a tough player to acquire, but he's been worth the price. I was just about to deal him off after 2 seasons, but I realized I had no real backup to fill his position, so I drafted a true center with my 3rd pick in the draft & when Woodys' contract is up 'Lopps' will replace him, thus saving money & cutting cap costs.

D-line - no one really special (3-4 D only requires 1 DT)

D-Backs - Trotter was dealt due to salary cap issues, so I picked up Al Wilson who has been incredible against the pass, against the run he's been okay. Armstead was released this last offseason & replaced by a 2nd year player Lee Robinson (Madden 2004 generated player) Robinson has talent, but is still developing. His ability as a run stopper thrusted him into my starting line up. So far he's living up to his abilities.

K - Hall (he just gets better season after season :) Thanks Jets)

P - Hanson (I brought him in during F/A signings & he's great, but age has started to deplete his power & accuracy.)

There's my Madden 2004 experience so far, loving every min, hour, & day my wife doesn't bitch at me to shut that damn game off..!! LOL

Questions I have:
Has anyone had to deal with major HoldOuts yet...? (I have had a few & they have really screwed up my cap usage.)

Also, has anyone had to deal with Cap penalties yet...?
I screwed up last season & got nailed with a 5.24 mil cap penaly. OUCH!! Luckily I was rebuilding a few positions so I was signing backs & rookies, so the blow caused only minimal damage. I'll have to wait till next season to sign a F/A 5 star DT.

To be cont......

Just to throw this out... Who do you think will be the lucky player to get the cover of Madden 2005 and be out for the season this year ?

haha, 'lucky'

Lets just hope it isnt a redskin!

With any luck it will be Champ Bailey! :)

Better not be Portis.

Maybe it will be Jamal Lewis..? Oh wait, the picture will be taken behind bars..! LOL

I bet it's either manning or ahman green.

It won't be Manning, he has a deal with that xbox NFL game

what about Ray Lewis or has he been the cover player before or how about tom brady? I bet there is a slight chance though that it might be Portis 2 unfortunately.

Yeah. I've been hearing Lewis or unfortunately maybe even Portis. Gil Brandt of NFL.com says that Larry Fitzgerald has been offered a bunch of money to be in the game, [url]http://www.nfl.com/draft/story/7104324[/url], but I don't think he means on the cover itself?

What about McNair?

wasn't mcnair on the cover a few years ago? I know eddie george was and thought mcnair has been as well.

does anyone else who has played or owns madden 2004 hope they make signing players more flexible? where as players are willing to restructure contracts or contracts that r back loaded, you can't do any of that in madden. plus some of the crappier players demand starter money especially qbs, rbs, and wrs.

5 :1 it will be tom brady

[QUOTE=DA Hogs]5 :1 it will be tom brady[/QUOTE]

it'd make sense since he has been the superbowl mvp twice in the last 3 years and that's pretty hard to compare someone 2.

[QUOTE=skinsfanthru&thru]does anyone else who has played or owns madden 2004 hope they make signing players more flexible? where as players are willing to restructure contracts or contracts that r back loaded, you can't do any of that in madden. plus some of the crappier players demand starter money especially qbs, rbs, and wrs.[/QUOTE]
Well they finally added signing bonuses to '04 so at least they're headed in the right direction.

yeah, I just hate having to delete my custom made character after his 7yr contract expires because he winds up wanting $10mil a year partway through the next contract. add to that i have to pay my wr's that r 4th and 5th on the depth chart close to a mil a year unless I draft someone. I mean a mil for a guy who may not even have a rating over 60? same with the qbs except they r even worse and want even more money.

LaVar Arrington
 

How come in all madden games hes known as Lolb #51?

Because he never signed up with the players association. He finally did this year, so he'll be on there like any other player.

Can anyone tell me what playbook to use in 2004 that most resembles Joe Gibb's playbook?






[QUOTE=mook157]How come in all madden games hes known as Lolb #51?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=mook157]How come in all madden games hes known as Lolb #51?[/QUOTE]

I've found out if you change his name from linebacker #51 to Lavar Arrington, change his # to 56, and make him from Penn State, the broadcasters actually say his name which I thought was pretty cool but I wonder if Arrington knows about that.

[QUOTE=PeteyPablo]Because he never signed up with the players association. He finally did this year, so he'll be on there like any other player.

Can anyone tell me what playbook to use in 2004 that most resembles Joe Gibb's playbook?[/QUOTE]

[COLOR=DarkRed]I'm not 100% on this, but I remember someone saying that Gibb's offense would be close to what the Colts run..[/COLOR]

yeah of course he knows. the reason they couldn't put his name on there had something to do with his old contract, thats why now they sale Arrington appearel on the site.

from what I've heard Priest Holmes will be the coverman next year. They can't have portis on the cover, because he wouldn't be in a skins jersey, but a broncos so that would just look stupid

[QUOTE=redskins56][COLOR=DarkRed]I'm not 100% on this, but I remember someone saying that Gibb's offense would be close to what the Colts run..[/COLOR][/QUOTE]


I thought I had heard that former assistant, who now is the Vikings offensive cord., of his was running an offense built upon Gibbs' there.

All in all Madden 2004 has resolved issues I've been hung up on in the past. Still wish the game played more realistic. I'm still not big on the running game. I don't like the way D's bounce off the RB's or the way the RB's go down with little effort sometimes.

I've played ESPN Football it looks awesome & plays okay. The best thing about it is that the running game is very realistic. If a D players fails to wrap up the back, he will run through the tackle. Very cool. Something I hope Madden fixes next ver. 2005.

Madden should definitely take a look at ESPN for it's presentation style.

Madden definitely needs more tweaking in the gameplay dept. I hate how dumb the computer is, they bail on the run so easily. But they always have at least one drive per game where no matter what you do they can't be stopped.

Pounding the ball takes patience, and I've found that unless you have an elite back, it's tough to have a consistent running game.

[QUOTE=skinsfanthru&thru]I thought I had heard that former assistant, who now is the Vikings offensive cord., of his was running an offense built upon Gibbs' there.[/QUOTE]
I've been spending a lot of time this offseason re-building the rosters and trying to compile an offensive playbook similar to what I think Gibbs will be running.

I was reading about Viking O-coordinator Scott Linehan's background, but I wasn't able to draw a definite correlation between him and the Coryell-Gibbs offense. There might be a fuzzy relationship there, though. I do know that Mike Tice, the Vikings' head coach, was a tight end for Joe Gibbs in '89. I'm not sure how much he might have learned about Gibbs' offense in one year, but he's definitely inclined towards using tight ends as blockers and H-backs-- hence the emergence of Jimmy Kleinsasser as a premiere blocking TE/H-back.

I've looked through all the offenses, even the generic "Run-heavy", "Run-balanced", etc playbooks, and none of them are entirely reflective of a true Gibbs-style one-back offense. The closest thing I've found is the Colts' singleback, or "Ace" sets. I built the bulk of my patchwork "Gibbs" playbook using the Colts' singleback looks, with the rest pieced together from the Panthers' one-back, two-tight end sets. The Panthers' O-coordinator, Dan Henning, was a Gibbs assistant during two of the Skins' Super Bowl runs.

What's been most difficult is finding a Posse-esque "bunch" set with the trips bunched on the weak side, a look Gibbs often used to confuse defensive coverage schemes. Ironically, I found such a set in the Gregg Williams playbook, though there aren't many plays to choose from.

I've actually had a lot of fun creating "Gibbsian" plays to bring these playbooks a Hog-friendly running game. I've thrown in a lot of counter plays with pulling blockers, and the counter-trey I created has been wreaking havoc in practice. Portis is absolutely devastating in this offense. If the real offense works even half as well as my computer-generated facsimile, the Skins' offense over the next few years will rival anything Mike Martz fielded in St. Louis... ahhh, to dream!

One thing you will want to pay attention to when creating running plays for this offense is the blocking trajectories of the wide receivers. It can take a lot of tweaking to get the wideouts directed into blocking schemes that create effective running lanes-- regardless of the defensive look-- especially in the trips sets. But it's a lot of fun to tweak the plays and practice them until you find that magical combination of blocking scenarios.

To sum up, I think you'll find the best approach is to steal some of the singleback sets and plays from teams like the Colts and Panthers, but leave yourself enough free playbook space to create your own plays. I've found that there are very few running plays in the Madden-generated singleback playbooks that do justice to the original Gibbs-style running game. In order to effectively run-block in the singleback offense, you really have to get creative with the blocking schemes, and it seems like few of the pre-built Madden plays possess such creativity.

It sounds like a lot of work, but if you truly enjoy Madden, you can really have a lot of fun-- and learn a lot about the one-back offense-- by taking the time to build your own Gibbs offense from scratch.

I just got mine, I'm in the process of getting my rosters up to date for 2004-05. This game rocks! :httr:

Try Generic West Coast
 

There are a number of plays in the single back formation in the generic West Coast offense that look similar to some of the plays that Gibbs used to run...the biggest problems I have found is finding the right kind of players to run the offense...right now the game is built around the Spurrier style...the TE's can't run block, none of the backs are true power runners. Coles and Gardner do look good as far as posse style receivers go with Gardner going over the middle and Coles running the deep pattern. All I need is a change-up Receiver al-la Ricky Sanders when they are both covered. The defense is actually not bad...although you need at least one more DB to run Greg Williams's defense...I don't like Matt Bowden's TAK rating though...I feel it should be much higher...he's well known as one of the hardest hitting safties in the league. Ohalete does a good job...he even ran down Warrick Dunn on a play from behind of course I am trying to decide wiether or not to trade Champ Bailey like the 'Skins did to get Portis because I don't know if Portis's ratings in the game reflect the kind of season he had this past year...ie will he be as good in the game as in real life...almost thinking of recreating Riggo at age 32 to hold the fort for a couple of years until I can draft a true power runner. If anyone knows of a website that might have some of Gibb's plays listed online so I can put them into the game that would be great....HTTR.

Rob from Norfolk

Just a update, I'm pretty sure its gonna be New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady who is on the Cover of Madden 2005

[QUOTE=smootsmack]Yeah. I've been hearing Lewis or unfortunately maybe even Portis. Gil Brandt of NFL.com says that Larry Fitzgerald has been offered a bunch of money to be in the game, [url]http://www.nfl.com/draft/story/7104324[/url], but I don't think he means on the cover itself?

What about McNair?[/QUOTE]


Larry is already in "my" game....just bring him up from ncaa..lol

what's the farthest anyone has played the game in franchise/owner mode? 15-20 years? I'm just wondering to see if any other stadium upgrades appear with the advancement of technology like the light beam goal posts I unlocked a season or so ago. I'm pretty sure all of the actual NFL players are either very close to retiring or already have and its not all too much fun w/o some familar faces and names on the team and I can't find any sites that have a list of the stadium upgrades.

[QUOTE=skinsfanthru&thru]what's the farthest anyone has played the game in franchise/owner mode? 15-20 years? I'm just wondering to see if any other stadium upgrades appear with the advancement of technology like the light beam goal posts I unlocked a season or so ago. I'm pretty sure all of the actual NFL players are either very close to retiring or already have and its not all too much fun w/o some familar faces and names on the team and I can't find any sites that have a list of the stadium upgrades.[/QUOTE]

I've seen "Personal Food Replicators", and "Holographic Replays". It would be cool if these items, once purchased, enhanced gameplay or functionality. Sadly, they do not.

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