The Madden patch that’s now live on XBOX 360 and PS3 addresses the following areas:

1. Changed default quarter length of online leagues to 5 minutes.
2. Solved a very rare stability issue that occured when using a couple of playbooks.
3. Eliminated a button mashing glitch during high latency online games.
4. Eliminated a stability issue that sometimes occured while viewing the player HUB in online leagues.
5. Fixed a tricky disc eject glitch that occured at specific points of online games.
6. Kick Return Tuning - made improvements to help reduce frequent long kick returns.
7. Safety Tuning - eliminated issue where safeties in deep zone coverage would sometimes not react to a run to their side.
8. The game skill slider for interceptions was tuned to amplify it’s affect.

So, one of the new feature’s of NFL Head Coach in the ability to create a play and export it into Madden 09. If you have the Collector’s Edition, you can try this now. Otherwise you’ll have to wait until the Stand-A-Lone release of Head Coach.

This process isn’t super intuitive, but is not difficult.  I’ve included a short video below showing this process in action.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

There are a couple of things that you will want to be aware of:

1) I couldn’t find an option to create a Corner route, just Post Corner.  Will have to look further at that. 

2) When you import the play into Madden, you can find it in your playbook under a formation called “Head Coach”

3) You have to put the player in motion yourself, it is not an automotion situation. However, I think where you drew up the motion defines where he actually goes in Madden, but I haven’t tested this to be sure.

4) I was unable to Hot Route my motion player, but I could Hot Route other receivers.

As you all know one of the most important decisions that must be made each year is which playbook you are going to run. With so many choices in the game, it can take a while to sift though everything to find the one that you want.

We’ve done what we can to make it easy for you by putting together all of the team playbooks with diagrams in one easy-to-read Ebook file. And best of all, it’s available for free. You can download it now at

http://www.maddentips.com/playbooks

Thanks & Enjoy! 

If your opponents cannot score, you will not lose. Much emphasis is put on having an explosive offense by many ballers. The top flight players, however, are not only prolific point scorers, but very solid defenders. In the majority of cases with evenly matched teams/players, most football games are not “won”, but are lost by the players making the most mistakes.

When on defense, you have four major objectives that would be beneficial to always keep in mind:

Your first objective is to prevent a score. Big hits are great, sacks are great, but if you keep your opponent out of the end zone, you will win games. Don’t get hung up on stats. If your opponent throws for 400 yards and never gets in the end zone, you will beat him easily.

Prevent your opponent from breaking off long sustained drives. This will tire out your defense and you will get beat up in the fourth quarter. Limit your opponent to only minimal gains on 1st & 2nd down, forcing them to constantly be in 3rd and long situations. Play field position ball, force them to take possession deep in their half of the field so that they have a long way to go for the score.

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The I-Form is a basic set that many have used when playing Madden. This is because it’s a set that allows you to run and pass. When you have West Coast-like personnel on your team, you can use sets like this to move the ball extremely well.

Over time, the I-Form has been changed to other sets that perform the same as the basic-I Form, but the players are set up differently. In the screenshot, this is the Strong I-Form. The same personnel, but a different set-up.

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Roster Update # 1 – Release Day (Through 8/4)

Transactions

HB Cedric Benson – Released to Free Agents

HB Kevin Jones – Signs with Bears

CB Blue Adams – Released by Bengals (Removed)

HB Kenny Irons – Released by Bengals

HB DeDe Dorsey – Added to Bengals

LT Demetrius Bell – Released to Free Agents

LB Donnie Spragan – Signs with Bills

HB Mike Bell – Released by Broncos

DT Carlton Powell – Released to Free Agents (IR)

DT Kenny Peterson – Added to Broncos

FB Peyton Hillis – Added to Broncos

FS John Lynch – Released by Broncos

C LeCharles Bentley – Released by Browns

QB Ken Dorsey – Released to Free Agents

C Marvin Philip – Added to Browns

WR Kevin Kasper – Added to Browns

LB Ryan Nece – Added to Bucs

TE Troy Bienemann – Released by Cardinals

RT Kelly Butler – Signs with Cardinals

LG Jasper Harvey – Added to Cardinals

LG Scott Peters – Removed (IR)

HB Marcel Shipp – Released by Cardinals

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You need to be able to disguise your pass coverage if you plan on having a successful attack against your opponent’s offense. We don’t want the offense to be able to pre-read our defensive coverage and determine if we are in man or zone. We also need to be able to hide if we are in press coverage or not. This year in Madden 09, we can call defenses that have our men in press coverage without having to call press. This is like an auto delay bump-n-run. We will take a look at disguising coverage in general by going over some things we noticed that defensive players do when in man or zone coverage, and finding ways to use those tells to confuse our opponent’s pre-read. 

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The best way to expose four man fronts is by working the outside. You have way too many people in the middle to work that hard. You can pound with the FB Dive, but you need an outside run game to help open up FB running plays.

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Probably not quite what EA SPORTS had in mind when they put Brett Favre on the cover of Madden NFL 09.  No matter what team he is one though, Favre is worthy of a Madden cover.  Here’s a couple of screens of Favre from Madden 09 in his new team’s gear.

Here’s Favre’s key stats for Madden 09:

OVR - 95
SPD - 60
AWR - 88
THP - 98
THA - 92 

The key to buliding a solid running game is knowing how run to against all fronts. A Front is the setup of the line and linebackers in front of your offensive line. Each front has a weakness. The key here is knowning what running plays take advanage of these weakness. This is a 3 man front. The key to beating this is counters, traps, and “A” gap running plays. The 3 man fronts are good against outside running plays. The key is to beat the middle up and use misdirection.

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