Wow, schemes and positions may be important afterall

Pretty neat little thing I tried out last night. I had this theory that if a player was bad, he was just bad. Come to find out, I changed the scheme around (In terms of the type of guys I want at each position - for DE it was pass rusher, run stuffer etc.) and suddenly my defensive line came alive. It was like a whole new team. I then saw that Cameron Wake was only about a 83 strength and he was a pure speed rusher. I moved him to the LE position, and moved Odrick to the RE position. Which is where they both played last year. Cameron Wake become a relentless force. It seems as if the LE position is obviously built for speed rushers in my scheme.

What happened AFTER the game is what really amazed me. Heading into the game, Cameron Wake was an 81 OVR LE. After the game against H4RDCOR3 JT, I was going to upgrade my players and Cameron Wake had now jumped to 97 overall. Something about that wasn't right. So I've been scouring the web all morning since I woke up. Why would a guys overall change immediately after one game like that? Turns out after searching several different sites, there's no answer. There are, however, many theories on it. The most common one I've come to takes me to the settings that are changeable at any time in the schemes page. When you change the type of player you wish each position to be, it seems that it gives them a ratings boost of some sort once they are in the game. After Wake had the dominant game, his overall went up because he performed at the level his raw ratings allowed him to.

So basically what I'm getting at here comes back to something that most guys not new to Madden say, the overall rating of a player doesn't matter one single bit. Especially now. If what I have been reading is true, there is NO point in even looking at the overall rating of the players. It seems like this Madden is completely built on the Schemes feature. I was astounded how much better Wake got. I think even those not struggling with their teams should take a look at this whole deal, it's pretty amazing. Now, he only had one sack, but I could tell the difference in the amount of pressure I was getting from the left side of my D-Line. It was improved big time.


Perhaps I could figure the same out for my quarterback problem I've been having.


By the way, if you read this H4RDCOR3, that was an awesome game. I threw those two picks early and thought I was done for when you took the second one in the first quarter back for a touchdown. My quarterback was throwing ducks right out of the gate. I had a pass underneath to Reggie Bush at one point that for some reason ended up 20 yards down field in your linebackers hands later in the game. I was sure we were going to overtime, that's why with a little under 1 minute left I thought I would just run out of the shotgun with a draw play and hope for a home run. I got it, and it was awesome.

Wake is a 93 overall by default (according to the Madden 13 ratings reveal excel spreadsheet EA put up). Its been known since the beginning that individual position schemes change what the overall shows up as, you likely just didn't check his overall after changing the scheme to speed rusher.

Also the LE gets to face RTs that are typically not as good as LTs, so they are more likely to be effective from that side (speed rusher or otherwise).

He was an 83 overall before the game. I only know that because I still had to look at it when I swapped Odrick over. Then he was a 97 overall.

Dude every player has a certain play type specific to them. Depending on their play type and your teams scheme their overall with be higher or lower depending on how well they fit your teams scheme. Overalls are all based on what your teams scheme is.

I think what he was saying was that his player changed after the game, not right when he changed the scheme. It wasn't that he was surprised the overall changed, just how it happened.

Even if thats the case, I think he is missing something. In the appropriate scheme Wake should be rated in the 90s, so it definitely seems like it is because of the scheme switch, not anything he did in the game to make it change afterwards. I honestly think his rating switched when he switched the scheme and he only didn't notice it because he only looked at him on the RE screen of the depth chart (which I'd guess he only switched LE to speed rusher).