Madden Game Four: At home against the 0-4 Bears - ennepetal's Blog

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Madden Game Four: At home against the 0-4 Bears

Posted on November 16, 2008 at 05:13 PM.

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I'm sure the Bears lack of wins is due to the QB situation which, at the opening of the season, seemed like it could doom the Bears.

I've decided to move Kevin Smith to the starter role.

Early on, that seems like a good move. On his first carry, he manages a seven-yard gain. Madden seems unmoved, however, and decides to go back to the PA pass game. With Jon Kitna (and me) at the helm, that results in little more.

Fortunately, either the My Skills gods or just the sheer horribleness that is Kyle Orton gives me an early interception to the Bears 12, opening up the door for a Smith rushing TD. I'm unable to do anything with Orton's second pick of the first quarter, however.

I think it is safe to say there appears to be an inordinate amount of interceptions thrown by the computer QBs against player-controlled defenses. The Lions shouldn't be having this much success against even the fairly-poor offenses they face in the first four games.

I am also fed up with the difficulty on offense. I know I'm not good at the game, but to manage a mere 15 yards in the quarter and have the AI make up for it by giving me turnovers (again, I'm making assumptions about the My Skill feature) is a little stupid.

The lack of O on the Lions' behalf plus a decent punt return leads to an Orton TD pass to Devin Hester. Ugh.

After one quarter, it's 7-7 despite the relative ineptitude of both offenses.

******

At halftime, I can't help but wonder what the goal of the My Skills design was. I would have assumed it was meant to handicap your skills on individual plays, but it seems like what really happens is that the AI prefers to make up for things with big plays and turnovers. I struggle on offense, so the computer makes Orton throw now three picks in one half, while otherwise playing really well completing 9 of 14 for 125 yards.

Then, Robbie Gould misses a relatively routine FG attempt.

On the next play, Roy Williams makes a reception for about eight yards, but gets blown up by Brian Urlacher and drops the ball, setting up a short drive for a successful FG attempt by Gould.

The Lions are now up to 53 yards of offense to the Bears 160.

It all just seems counter-intuitive to football if you scratch the surface even a little. Sure, a 10-7 Bears lead at halftime gives you the feeling that you have an even match, but if you look at how the scores were set up, it just really doesn't feel like football. If I can't go more than a few dozen yards in a half and struggle to stop the passing game, then the game shouldn't be close. Don't make it artificially close with turnovers. That's not fun and I'm not sure who on the design team thought it would be, but they should ask around next time they make these decisions.

I'm not wanting to be irritated with this game, but it's starting to grind my nerves that I'm having close games score-wise, while the statistics are really plain stupid.

************

Another quarter, another interception. That's four so far. I know Orton blows, but come on!

Of course, I can do nothing with it, missing on a 52-yard FG attempt even though it's Hanson and it's indoors.

Then, Orton doesn't blow, leading the Bears on a scoring drive to take a 7 point lead. The capping play was one where my LOLB was, for some reason, assigned to the slot receiver, despite being lined up a good ten yards away from him. Before I could make the appropriate changes, the ball gets snapped and thrown directly to him for the score. Doh!

Once down, however, My Skills goes to work. Kitna hits fullback Jerome Felton in the flat for what should have been a fairly productive gain, but turned into a 59-yard touchdown.

By the way, the Madden play calling needs to be called out. It would be easy enough to assign situations to plays (I have to believe) so there is some sense to it. On my opening possession of the half, first play call was for a PA pass. That happens too often. The irony was that Cris Collinsworth praises the call because that's why you establish the run.

Thanks to Madden, however, we've NOT established the run. He rarely calls for running plays.

So, the first possession was three pass plays, two of which were play action, followed by a punt. At the end of three quarters, Detroit has attempted to rush exactly nine times. Ironically, the Lions really do try too infrequently to run the ball in real life, but that's because they suck at it and then find themselves down big early in the game. This is not the case here. These games are all close.

By the way, Smith was doing a decent job running the ball, but then got injured and will miss five weeks. Back to Rudi, which gives me no joy.

***********

The fourth quarter gave me the best football of the day, really.

The Bears managed to drive down for a 24-yard FG to take a 20-17 lead and then shut down the Lions offense. When the Lions had the Bears at a 3rd and 7 deep in their own territory at the two-minute warning, Matt Forte took the ball right up the middle and broke about six tackles to bust out an 82 yard TD run.

Now THAT is Detroit Lions football.

Also Detroit Lions football was Jon Kitna throwing an interception on the ensuing drive. With a few timeouts the Lions get the ball again for a two-minute drill where a TD toss to Shaun McDonald is called back for a hold (there is maybe just a tad too much holding called in this game in general, especially since virtually nothing else is ever called).

Hence, the Lions lose again while the Bears post their first win of the season: 27-17