Is Winning Everything?
A Madden 2006 Soapbox Pontification
Friday 14 October, 2005

My Madden 2005 experience gave me the perfect preparation for Madden 2006, starting with the Pro difficulty. Despite having two poor quarterbacks (starting at 78/100) because I chose my beloved Miami Dolphins and considering the emphasis on the new QB Vision and Precision Passing features in the 2006 game that rely on QB skill, I hit a perfect 16-0 season at my first attempt and won the Super Bowl. I was highly surprised. My eyebrows would have been higher than SBS's Liz Deep-Jones, and they're clearly painted on in the middle of her forehead. It was won on the back of my rookie running back Ronnie Brown, who ran for well over 2500 yards for the season, which made up for my poor receiving numbers.

You can't improve a perfect season, so I had to graduate to All-Pro. I'd flirted with it in 2005 I think, but didn't stay with it for very long. Mainly just meaningless late season games and Pro Bowls. I was prepared for the worst slappings of a lifetime.

Which is why I was so surprised when I ground out some wins. The key words however were ground out. I'm 4 wins and 1 loss for the regular season, and the wins follow a pattern. Run the football. Hope for a turnover. Don't throw an interception. If you get a lead, run the clock down. This is how you grind out a win. My stats are horrible because I'm hardly playing as much game time. Any semi-risky passing play is in danger of being intercepted. Only play action deep passes were successful early, and I've recently made a few catches on WR Out routes to the sideline and anything to my tight end (who doesn't seem to get covered too closely a lot of the time). Without my great kicking game, this strategy wouldn't work either. I'm so conservative that when I'm in field goal range, I don't want to pass the ball to avoid big-loss sacks or interceptions. Any throws go deep so interceptions aren't returned for touchdowns.

This difficulty level has produced one of my finest performances, a fist-pumping 10-7 win clinched in the last minute with two big runs for Ronnie Brown, the second for the game winning touchdown. However, the others have been less than enjoyable, because the game descends into a near-rugby stupor. That one loss came when I decided to throw the ball...and dug myself in deeper trouble. I had an early safety and was seriously considering clinging onto that 2-0 lead before I threw one interception and had my kick returner fumble a ball that led to a touchdown.

My QB Gus Frerotte's stats just plain suck. QB Rating of 20.8, 1 TD, 6 INT, 295 yards, 25/71 attempts, 5 sacks. Nearly the whole offensive line loses 1 skill point in progression, along with Frerotte and my wide receivers. It kind of sucks that if you're going badly in the game, Madden makes your players' skills worse, so it doesn't get any easier.

Is winning a game more important than enjoying the game, even in video game form? The short answer would be that I haven't given up playing it, so it must be, but if each match is won and lost on turnovers alone, maybe it isn't. Time will tell, and hopefully I only need to grind out these wins until I develop my passing game more. If I had have been 1-4 not 4-1, I would have just used this year as a development year, but now I feel compelled to go for the playoffs. Maybe that's when I'll relish these tight matches. Super Bowl time!