How can I start a new player out right?

[Ralsar]

I have a friend who picked up NCAA Football this year and has never played a football video game before. He does know football pretty well though.

What kind of work in practice would be most beneficial to start? If you were to train someone new what skills should be developed first?

And yes I already told him he needed to buy the playbook/filmroom from here.

[mad_bomber]

Find a team and playbook that fits his preferred style of play. Does he prefer to run the option, west coast, spread offense, balanced attack, etc. Once you've established a philisophical preference go into practice mode and spend a few hours getting familiar with the plays by running them without the defense present. This helps you to understand the timing involved with the play. Next run the play against a live defense. I suggest picking one simple defensive play to run your plays against in the beginnning. For example you may choose to pick 4-3 Dog Gold as the defense to practice each of your offensive plays against. From there you can start running your plays against other defensive formations and plays. As you run your plays against other defensive formations learn how to recognize if the play you have called is a bad play based on the way the defense is aligned. You may have a run play called at the line and the defense has nine men in the box. Well obviously you'll want to consider changing the play to something that you feel has a better chance of dealing with that particular defensive look. The final step is learning how to read the post snap coverages and how they dictate where you can and can't go with the ball. This will help you deal with most of the common coverage schemes in the game and it'll give you confidence in attacking them, especially since you put the time and effort into practicing against them. I'd recommend doing this before stepping the first foot on the field to play an actual game. This is what I usually do anytime I get a new football game whether it's Madden, ESPN, NCAA, etc.