Release date of August 23rd. Madden 16 was August 25th.

Play it 5 days early with EA Access on Xbox One

We need to care who’s on the cover because influences the game. I wanted a defensive player like Von Miller on the cover because usually they focus on gameplay for the guy who’s on the cover and pass rushing with the pocket forming needs serious help.

But let’s move forward

Expect a bigger focus on the size of the player making a difference. It’s a fine line between stats and a players height and weight as to what a player does. I don’t know how they’ll re-do trucking, tackling and hit stick but it would only make sense they do something so a 220 back with 99 trucking can’t truck stick a 340 pound Damon Harrison.

They said in their blog which I’ll link below that different player sizes now will allow different animations. I like this development because for years and especially in 16 we’ve heard a lot of people complain about animations. The biggest being how any WR can replicate Odell’s famous leaning back catch.

But going into 17 it seems they upped the running game. It was said that if you put the difficulty on Rookie the game will do it for you. They took the biggest complaint this year in the passing game, the pre-determined animations on aggressive catches and put in into another facet of the game. I fear the game is turning more and more into a Metal Gear Solid cut scene with quick time events taking place between picking plays, taking a lot of the control away from players.

You know I’ve always wanted a proper football simulation similar to “Football Manager” on the PC for Soccer. But I never thought Madden would turn into that simulation.

Now I’m not an expert on game design, but what I think makes a good game is something that I feel I have complete control over the avatar and that my moves on the controller quickly and faithfully are replicated on field. If a system comes in with new “Path Assist” that helps me navigate and anticipate downfield, I worry that it could take some control away from me and move me randomly towards a hole I wasn’t planning on going.

You know the most frustrating part of Madden on defense for me is? It’s when you are holding down Y because you want to intercept passes and the game takes control of your player away from you when you aren’t even near the ball to intercept it. You do a stumbling animation like you just hopped off the drunk bus at full speed in college.

This is what I worry the new Path Assist will become. And you might say, turn it off, do it yourself. But what if it’s like the other assists Madden has where it’s just more effective than manual moving because of the animations you get with the assists? Say I could read holes and run like Problem Wright with the assists on. Why not play with it on? I guess we’ll see if it’s any good but why would EA put it in the game if it isn’t any good? They don’t introduce mechanics for us to ignore them.

I may be a little harsh there with the criticism, but a lot of the hard core players want full control over their players on the field and not to feel like every interaction comes down to a Random Number Generator in the game deciding their fate.

But let’s move on.

They talk in the blog about the spin and juke and how the elusiveness of the smaller guys will have them play a lot different than the big guys like gronk who truck over dudes and stiff arm them. Then we get a cinematic of gronk spinning and juking around tackles.

But the hurdle looks sweet. That’s something bigger guys definitely do because smaller DBs almost always go for the ankles on large runners like TE’s and full backs. If Madden 17 is able to make it where a 180 pound DB can’t take down Gronk without going low, the hurdle is back baby! Can’t wait.

Again, it’ll all come down to how Madden balances things. These could either be issues or non-starters because of how well they are balanced. My guess is that something is going to be overpowered at the beginning of the year and they’ll have to adjust the sliders a few weeks in.

Also talked about in the blog is gap play and improved zone coverages. And for you man children out there like me, no, gap play is not when you hide from your mom in the clothes racks at The Gap.

But I’m very excited about these changes. If you don’t know what football Gap play is, it’s where each defender is assigned a gap to defend against the run. I wonder if they’ll be able to properly create 2 gap run defenders like some teams run. You don’t see it as much in today’s NFL but Nose Tackles are usually responsible for 2 gaps in a 3-4 if they are playing head up on the center.  So this is really neat, we’ll see how the run game plays next year with that and force defenders setting the edge like they are assigned in real life.

And I guess that leads me into my next point of pass defense and pass rush. So with these new force defenders setting the edge on runs we can expect them to drive the outside shoulder of the tackle. I hope this means against the pass a proper pocket is formed where speed rushers try and run around offensive tackles to get to the QB. In Madden 16, if you don’t have QB contains on, guys can easily drop back 10 yards and scramble around edges. You don’t see that as much in the NFL because QBs sit in the pocket that is formed by speed rushers trying to get around the edge and the tackles trying to push them wide. If you see an NFL QB taking more than a 5 or 7 step drop, they’ll get killed by edge rushers running right around the tackles.

But count me as optimistic that we’ll see some improvements on it next year. They didn’t specifically mention that they are trying to create a more realistic pocket, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get it.

Next, another area they said they are looking at is Zone coverages. They are adding 8 new zone concepts never before seen in Madden. Now I’m not sure what these zones are so I can’t really talk about them. But I think what people want is for defenders to act smarter to routes coming through their zones. Like if a safety is in a deep blue, don’t let a long developing shot play get behind you. And that’s exactly what they say next, defenders will have more awareness and threats to each zone and can pattern match receivers. This is what I’m pumped about. No longer will you have a guy acting stupid if you put him in a purple and the corner route just goes a bit too deep for him. I hope he can recognize the pattern and stay with it. It’ll be interesting to see how play rec and awareness factors into the game next year and if low end guys will still forget how to cover corners like almost all of them do in 16.

Next, they said they focused on special teams with icing the kicker which was a feature in NCAA. Unfortunately studies have shown no effect on a kicker after a timeout. What they should have focused on was punting and how the ball always rolls forward like it’s a round basketball instead of a funky shaped abject that bounces around like a drunk on the dance floor. Maybe a rugby style kick and pooch punt will be in 17. Maybe, although I doubt anyone would notice changes to the punting game because no one in Madden punts.

In the trailer, the first scene is a fake field goal and they even talk about new special team fakes. Fake field goals don’t happen much in real life and if they happen a bunch in Madden people are gonna bitch. So I talked earlier about how they don’t add features for us to ignore. I really hope this is a feature people ignore. If fake field goals make big impact on gameplay it’s a mistake for Madden.

And since we can’t block field goals without getting kicked out of official EA tournaments, as they’ve posted, why even come out in a field goal set? Just come out in base defenses to stop it.

And as to the overall large re-vamp of special teams, I really couldn’t care less. Nobody picks up a football game to play special teams. Special teams to football is like yard work to home ownership, it’s a necessary evil when playing games. I liked that kicks were automatic as nobody likes kickers deciding games or really anything involved with that part of football.

Competitive Madden 17 – They didn’t mention it. I’m hoping we get a better ladder in MUT and season structure for salary cap mode. I’m not going to talk about this as I’ve mentioned it before in videos and have put out a video on what I want improved in Madden 17 already.

Connected franchise mode. They said they are putting a focus on it for 17. I’m cautiously optimistic about what that means. Do we get a better story for our players that we pick like NBA 2k or is the draft and owner mode being updated? Maybe both but only time will tell. They’ve bragged about CFM improvements for years and only slight improvements or side-provements as I like to call it have happened because I like to make up words.

Armsleves and other aesthetics. -I know it’s important to get things right but the feedback I’ve seen online, there are some people who just bitch and bitch about it. I’ve seen hundreds of comments on it. Seriously guys, if you want to dress men in different clothes, go buy a ken doll. Gameplay and features are number 1 in Madden.

Loyalty rewards – Just get MHC since you can sell them for coins. You won’t be able to sell 85 overall Gronk but there is a set you can complete to give you a 90 overall gronk in Madden 16 and an 85 overall Gronk in Madden 15.

So overall I really love that the Madden developers are listening to the hardcore audience on what needs fixing and after reading the blog I am quite hyped about Madden 17 being the best one yet. Madden 16 was a very good improvement on 15 and let’s hope it keeps going in the future.

Before I start I’m going to say, read the blog linked below. The things I say won’t make a lot of sense unless you already have a grip on what this is going to be. Please go read the blog now.

My thoughts on Salary cap mode

It’s for the MUT Middle class. Because you need to own these players in your binder, the poor players who don’t have much time or coins won’t be able to get into a fair game right away like they are able to in Draft Champions.

It’s clear to me EA knows how to cater to different markets to bring in the entirety of the football loving world. Except females of course. But that’s because it’s football.

So the poor are catered to in draft champions, the rich in MUT and now the middle class with this mode.

And as to the rich, they will keep playing MUT. That is true unless they find themselves wanting to get into the competitive scene in Madden. As you guys have heard me talk about many times, this salary cap mode is the ultimate form of competitive madden. No Seahawks vs. Seahawks the entire tournament, no random luck deciding whether you get to pass the ball with John Elway or Mark Sanchez, you now get a more leveled playing field but with almost limitless customization. This is what competitive madden will be in the future. Or at least I pray. I talked about this more last year in my “Can Madden be a Competitive Esport video” which I’ll link below.

And I mention in that video about EA’s competitive sports division. I can totally see another big live event taking place this summer with this new mode. I would lube yourselves up and get ready to grind if you want to get in the tourney.

A couple more things mentioned in the blog. They mentioned that players will be given a salary cap number based on stats not overalls. First, as TexasBoy has mentioned plenty of times and now EA has confirmed, overalls don’t matter. Look at the underlying stats. I hope EA re-does their algorithm for overalls in 17 to match overalls to what they think actually matters in how players play on the field.

But this will be hella interesting to see what EA starts to rank more heavily. I’m guessing they are going to back off on awareness for some positions like RB and QB.

But the more they weight awareness or other meaningless stats, the better opportunity we have to find budget ballers for the mode. Stay tuned to the channel for more on finding these players and what EA is signaling for what matters more at different positions.

The thing that stood out to me was the seasons structure. It’s terrible. For something like draft champions where you want badges and rewards it works fine. But I want to see a little variety in my game modes. Not being able to change around the roster between games to fit a shifting meta is a bad idea from a game development standpoint. The great part about this mode is your ability to tinker with the rosters to find the right balance. You aren’t allowed to in draft champions for obvious reasons, since you play out your draft.

My solution is to implement a different ladder. I know I talk about Hearthstone a lot on this channel but they get a lot of things right. Since this looks like the competitive mode for Madden, have the ladder count down ranks from 50-1 with guys moving up and down based on wins and losses and then legend ranks after that where a Elo style ranking of guys would come in. EA could then transparently take the top 64 players in the legend rank at the end of the season for their tournament.

This solves my gripe because games will be played transparently against players near your rank and you can sub out guys between games. The rewards can be given out either per win or per milestone or both. Like 3000 yards passing in a season gets you a pro pack. And so on.

And, I understand the need to charge for the mode, to balance out the economy so that way you aren’t giving rewards out for free. I’m not going to offer any alternate solutions here like using the MUT contracts on players because I think that’s a bad idea, I think they should make it free because you are looking for a low barrier to entry to find the best players in Madden. We already have to buy the players and put them in our binders, that should be enough of an investment.

So, moving forward. What does this mean for MUT? Well, until we see the full inventory of players and what their salary cap numbers are it is hard to tell. Will this new mode cause a rise in the price of golds and elites? I don’t know. The budget ballers we have now won’t go up in price like we think. Cause EA said Za’darius Smith will now be priced according to his stats and not his overall.

But is the market flooded enough with high golds and base elite range players that they won’t take a huge bump with the new game mode? Only time will tell. I’m guessing this new demand for these players will cause a slight bump but it’ll be spread amongst so many different players that it’s going to be tough to make large profits. The best way to turn a buck is to find a mistake by EA in rating a player and buying a ton of that player.

But I assume with new players releasing through the summer that the cap numbers will adjust themselves relatively often. Maybe once a week? If they don’t re-adjust themselves we’ll run into long term issues with the program as the newer players generally have better stats like Speed. Since speed is OP, the newer cards will just be flat out better than the older ones. It isn’t as much an issue with madden 16 as there is only a little over 4 months of it left but moving into 17 I could see it being a bigger issue.

They can handle it one of three ways. The first two are to either reduce the old cards cost as the season goes along or raise the cap occasionally to fit in the new ones. Of those two I like raising the cap monthly as the season progresses the best.

The third option is to not adjust the cap at all through the season and let players figure it out themselves with the new cards. At this point I assume EA will go forward this way but that is speculation.

The biggest key to making coins off this new mode will be identifying if EA screwed up and isn’t weighing a key category enough or weighing it too much. Like Blockshed for CBs or on the other side, awareness for defensive players. I’ll be particularly interested in how they rank strength compared to base MUT. We’ll see how the BCA players turn out with that one.

And another point to be made is that it looks like positional worth has been taken into account so QBs cost more than Left ends and so on.

But 1,000 points divided by 34 spots means each player needs to average 29.4 points. High overall cards can easily double that or triple it for Golden ticket Johnny Manziel.

Roster breakdowns: 34 spots
QB1 – fine
HB1 – Only 1 HB, I know they turned down fatigue and injuries off but my god, you are almost forced into a backup here if you plan on running the ball even 50% of the time. And that’s a big bugaboo for me. They are essentially forcing us into it’s use like Call of duty modern warfare forced us into using juggernaut or stopping power perks to be competitive.
FB1 – Forget what I said, stash your HB 2 here. Unless you run in the I-form or strong close or HB dives/tosses on the goal line. What am I talking about. Of course you do. Time to freak out again by the lack of depth at HB.
WR – 4 of them. Solid depth. No complaints here.
TE – 2. Makes sense. But why more TE’s than HBs? I think a lot of players use HBs more than TEs. Seriously a pain in the ass there.
O-line – 1 of each. I’m fine with this decision. But I think Stamina will be underrated for this position.
1 LE and 2 RE, essentially 3 DEs. – Good decision
2 DTs. Fine
1 LOLB and 1 ROLB
2 MLBs.
4 CBs
1 FS
2 SS
1 k
1 P
2 Flex Players to use as you wish.

So 16 on defense and 14 on offense, 1 kicker and 1 punter. Interesting that they provide more depth on defense. I don’t have a problem with it though. The only thing I want is an HB2.

The biggest concern I have with this mode, as with any madden gameplay is the cheese. If you can custom pick your run blocking TEs and Tackles then I assume someone can cheese more effectively than draft champions. But that’ll be the meta. If everyone starts quick toss cheesing, people will bring better run stuffers. And if everyone brings run stoppers, you should bring speedy WRs to beat them deep.

But we’ll talk more though strategy at a later date because this video is getting lengthy and we’ll really need to dive into the weeds there. We’ll talk about player prices and how to construct and spend on your roster. This is like draft champions on steroids. Nice work EA. I love the new mode.

EA Blog: https://www.easports.com/madden-nfl/news/2016/mut-salary

Can Madden become a competitive E-Sport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDOegIou45U

How to (generally) read coverages pre and post snap.

Cover 2 – Two high safeties, CBs either on line of scrimmage facing in towards ball or 5 yards off line of scrimmage. Flooding one side of field wins for offense.

Cover 2 man – Two high safeties. CBs are pressed to line facing WR. Release, quick cuts and speed win.

Cover 3 – One high Free Safety, CBs are 8 yards off ball facing in towards ball. Flooding one side of field or throwing short win.

Cover 1 man – Very similar look to cover 3. Rarely run online though. Need to read after snap if they mix it in. Quick cuts/speed win.

Cover 4 – 2 deep safeties, CBs 8 yards off ball facing towards ball. Flooding one side of field wins. Also switch routes deep.

Cover 0 – All out blitz, no safety deep. Throw drag/slant, quick pass to fast HB on arrow route.

If they base align, then you have to read the safeties and defense’s movement after the snap. Safeties stay high and CBs low, cover 2. If the DBs follow individual WRs, man. If one safety drops to the box, cover 3. If CBs and Safeties drop, cover 4.

Today we are going to talk through making some coins off the position hero market shifting through it’s launch week and who I think the best players are to speculate on going forward.

And I’m sorry for the length ahead of time but there is a lot of information to get you all so you can both understand how we are making coins as well as the cheat sheet since I’ve already done the research.

Sponsor: Trying to scrounge you up some coins before Golden tickets hit in 2 to 3 weeks. Need mad pro pack stacks.

So a few weeks ago I talked through a strategy on how to make coins on position heroes involving a twitter account that was leaking information

Unfortunately for us that has been shut down.

But today’s video is how to make money on the sets without speculation or prior knowledge.

First of all, make sure you’re up when the server changes over. Take a look at the set. Find the most rare player in the set. It’ll be a 74 overall gold or the highest rated card, in that order. Buy whatever that card is. Even if it gets to 100k. And really it doesn’t even matter if you are on when it switches over as our money is made through the week.

The collectable is really expensive at the beginning, and this is the key to success, people calculate what it costs to do the set and price accordingly. Well lucky for us the collectable goes down in price dramatically through the week. But when something falls in a set, something else goes up in price.

So, let’s talk about the Position Heroes so far

TE –  (released 2-14) Go and look at muthead. RTTP Delanie Walker 89 overall peaked on the Saturday feb 20, the Saturday following his PH release. Second highest rated card didn’t move much at all through the week. A dud investment.

LOLB (2-14) Price spiked on Justin Houston 89 overall then went down some before hitting it’s peak the weekend following his set. It’s lower now than it’s peak, last weekend.

And if you look at the other cards required for the LOLB set, Ryan Kerrigan spike the day/morning of the release and has only gone down back to his pre-PH set price. A bust for our method.

And especially with the solos that give out free players, I don’t see the low overall elites/golds being worth our time. Best I guess is if you have them sell within the first 30 minutes of server changeover or whenever EA posts their blog.

FB – (2-21)

CB (2-21) – Hard to draw conclusions on these sets because of the 74 overall gold in the CB set and the wonkiness of the Full Back class. But looking at Phillip Gaines, he was 100k+ through the first day before getting to 300k by that night. He then went down in price for a couple days before spiking back up the next weekend. It’s due to more people being on and doings set during the weekend.

WR – (2-28) Funny thing happened today with the WR’s. We were expecting 74’s or 89 overalls to be in the set as the rare cards. But EA curved us with the 90 overall Antonio Brown and no 74s. So the 89 Dez and 89 RTTP Maclin which are both in the set and thought to have been a good investment haven’t really moved much. Dez is up a little but Maclin has flatlined. Dude’s dead.

I’d sell your lower overall base elite WR’s and CB’s as soon as possible for those that invested into them.

The money shot here seems to be that 90 overall Antonio Brown. His buy now price is 98k as of this recording. I expect it to be 150 next Saturday after the collectables flood packs through this week. Again, take all my advice with a grain of salt. If you lose your shirt I’m not buying you a new one.

He’s only going up in price and by next weekend you will all see a return on investment. Like a high end prostitute, it takes quite a bit of currency to get into him, but the payoff will be worth it.

FS (2-28) Also released today and same goes for Weddle as Brown

So who are the candidates to buy and hold? And all of these are very risky bets. If the 74 overall golds get added back, this is pointless speculation. But with the highest risks come the highest rewards.

So as we’ve seen the most rare or highest overalls get the biggest bump in coin value. As expected in any market. So, let’s go through the highest overalls from the base set or Road to the Playoffs to try and determine which cards are winners. I will post this information on my website gutfoxx.com so you can all reference it at any time. I’ll link it in the description.

QB Rodgers 91 38k, Brady 90 38k, No 89 overall QB (up in the air, money on Brady)

HB Lynch 90 40k, Le’Veon Bell 89 35k, DeMarco Murray 89 26k, (tough to call, money on Bell)

WR – Calvin Johnson – 89, (2 months est. hold time)

LT – Joe Thomas 90 70k, (Good bet)

LG – Evan Mathis 89 – 40k (Best bet)

C Rodney Hudson 89 RTTP 70k, Nick Mangold 89 35k (IDK, money on Mangold)

RG – Marshal Yanda 90 62k

RT – Sebastian Vollmer 89 54k (another best one)

LE – JJ Watt 91 68k, 91 Campbell RTTP 91 41k, Cameron Wake 88 6k (I don’t know, I’d guess Campbell)

RE – RTTP Ansah 89 83k, Robert Quinn 88 8k (Ansah is the Answer)

DT – Ndamukong Suh 89 40k (good bet to be a winner)

MLB – RTTP Shazier 89 42k, Luke Kuechly 89 52k (50/50 too tough to call)

ROLB – Terrell Suggs 88 9k (Only low priced potential high rewards choice, I’d say our speculation winner) (Could also mean the return of a 74 gold for this set since no real “rare” cards, Shaun Phillips 74 overall sitting at about 6.5k could pay off handsomely. Mike Neal 73 overall but 11k could be a winner too)

CB – Richard Sherman 89 73k, (2 months est. hold time)

SS – RTTP Chung 89 12k, Kam Chancellor 90 71k, (I don’t think it’ll be Kam. So process of elimination means Chung)

And once again take all of these guess with a grain of salt. All we can do is diversify our investments and hope the wins are greater than the losses.