How To Read The Defense

Madden Bible Presents : How to read the defense in Madden 10!

I think at one point or another we all come to this road block. We may have played football in high school, college, pro/semi-pro etc but HOW do we read defense IN Madden? First and for most we need to look to see if our opponent calls bump n’ run. We will know that they did because the DB’s will be squared up with our offensive WR’s. If our opponent does this we can’t exactly get a 100% tell pre snap.

Now, if they do not call bump n’ run pre-snap then we will see different looks from the defense. Cover 2 the DB’s will be closer to the WR at the LOS. The deep safeties will be back deep at equal depths. If it is Cover 3 then the DB’s will be lined up OFF the WR’s on the LOS. One of our safeties will be playing deep while another one of our DB’s will slowly begin to creep forward into the box. Finally if it is cover 4 we will see the DB”s playing off of the DB’s and also see our deep safeties playing at equal depths. If it is man to man we will get the same look as we do with cover 2.

Unfortunately, Madden isn’t that simple. Typically our opponent will call bump n’ run every play and will manually re-position its defenders. This almost always removes any pre snap tell we can have fortunately we have a little tactic we can use to combat that.

If we come out in a compressed set…shotgun tight (snug’s flipped) we can get a read on what the defense is in. It’s very important to read the defenders as the play call screen breaks to the game play screen. We will want to watch the defenders if they are sliding IN, we know it is zone. If they do not slide and lineup across from the WR it is man. That’s one the best and easiest tells we can get pre-snap.

However again what makes a great madden player great is the ability to change on the fly. I know when I play and someone does this to me, I will come out in a play to show them zone/man etc then I will immediately audible once they get there read. I do this because it makes them uncomfortable with what there doing. Ok so now on to the final way to read the defense.

AFTER THE SNAP! I know genius right? We first want to look for bump N’ run. If we see bump n’ run we know a few different things. It is either a cover 2 or it is man to man (keep in mind this is barring any manual adjustments to the defense). Our next read is right to the safeties. We want to key in on what they do. If they both drop back and split the deep half of the field we know its cover 2. If one drops in and one drops deep we know its cover man to man cover 1 of some sort. If we see no safeties deep it is a man to man cover 0 ( I don’t know many people that play a cover 0 zone)

Now if we don’t see a bump we know that its a cover 3 or cover 4. To tell if it’s a cover 3 we look at the safeties again if one drops in its cover 3 if they both drop deep and split it’s a cover 4.

Also note that you can use motion to read man or zone. Or you can flip your play in certain formations to get the same read. It’s a little quicker!

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