looks like what Gary said (back a page) has totally stuck a fork in this game for me too. Great idea, horrendous EA execution (par for the course).

I am having a blast. It was super frustrating to watch Leinart spiral down toward 50, but when he finally hit Joe Horn on a long pass, his actual burst back up to 74. If I had been a smarter coach, I'd have told him to look for Horn from the start, and we might have had a chance.

There is something that I think is going to be hard to get past, though, and that is, your influence with the guys you want to motivate depends on your coach rating in that skill. I went defense, and I can't get Leinart to motivate no matter what I tell him. But my defense plays awesome. We only gave up 13 points, and the 7 of those were from 2 yards out. Leinart was responsible for 21 points to the other side.. so I guess the interceptions could be toned down a *little* bit.. He is a rookie though.

Anyway, now that I know the deal, I know to tell Leinart to focus on Horn. He is always ready for the games, even when the rest of the team looks flat..

It's fun for me anyway. I have enjoyed all the little things I had to do and I feel like my team is doing on the field what I prepared them to do. (And not doing what I didn't prepare them to do!)

I only wish you could squeeze in more practice when you know you need it. Cancel some dang meetings! But you can't. Your coordinator will suggest it, but you don't have the free time to give away for it in pre-season. Maybe you do during the season. I don't know how you come off a Monday night ready for some football..

Just got it in the mail from Gamefly.

try this link

We finally moved into our house and I got internet today. I picked up Head Coach on Wednesday this week, so I've had a quite a bit of time playing it without seeing what others see. Here are my impressions:

At first, it seemed like it was work instead of fun to get to the draft and games. After figuring out a bunch of things (like you can only sign players during certain times, you can swap out practice times for other things, etc.), I found that it was fun, albeit extremely easy. Of course I started out with the Raiders and I was able to pick up Kyle Turley to start as my RT and moved Robert Gallery to LT, Barry Sims to LG, and Jake Grove to C. Frustratingly, I couldn't do that all at once. Each position move was an action, so I could only move two guys during one office period. The other weird thing was that I couldn't switch a player's position if it left the position with too few players. That was weird. Anyhow, I got to the draft and because I had a full roster at the time (3 QBs, etc.) I just simmed to the next period. I found that I did not sign any of my draft picks! Unfortunately I had the autosave on so I had to re-start my career.

It took me about 3 hours to get to the draft and then another hour to get to the preseason games. Once I got to the preseason games, I found that a big issue is that I absolutely need to play my starters all game. The second game I played Vince Young (whom I drafted) for two series and he was 4 for 5 with a TD to Randy Moss. I took him out, but after the game his ratings dropped from 85 to 64! I could only conclude that because he didn't have a full game's worth of good stats his ratings dropped.

Anyhow, that wasn't a huge issue since you can always boost their ratings with 1 on 1 practice. I just read what Gary said about your coaches trust dropping if you don't take their advice. I look at it as being maybe a touch realistic, since obviously every coach could play favorites, doesn't "rate" their position group well enough, etc. If it were easy to build trust in the game, then it loses a little bit of realism.

For the most part, I am enjoying this game immensely. Then again, I also enjoyed the other Bill Cowher game, Total Control Football, immensely as well. There are some things that I would fix other than the quarter length and interceptions:

1. I understand they made this game for the consoles, but damn. Why have a scrollbar if you can't use it? The arrows are the only way to go up and down. That being said, I have also found that the keyboard is the easiest way to navigate through the menus.

2. I need to see player names, not numbers. In the roster screens, everyone is their jersey number instead of their name. So when I'm looking to trade for Michael Huff, it's about twice as long trying to look for him.

3. Players should be fully editable. If I don't think Lendale White should be #42, I should be able to change his number. This is a minor annoyance.

4. If you don't use the keyboard, this game is even more clicky than FOF if you can imagine that.

All in all, I'm having a good time playing the game. I think it has enormous potential and even with the bugs, I would recommend this game to anyone.

lol ;)

Does anyone know how the downloadable version of this game works ? (aka: what "licence system" does it use). Elicence ??

I am scared to death that it uses Elicences and that it might mess up with my currently installed FOF & TCY games....(I have had that happen already a bunch of times when installing other dl games which used Elicence).

I haven't seen that info anywhere. However, given the F-up that delayed the release, I'm willing to bet money that it is Digital River.

Any progress on the interception front?

Cwilloughby posted early this morning that he should have a program done by tonight that will allow you to modify quarter length, accelerated clock, and the interception slider for both CPU and Human.

cwilloughby is graciously writing a utility that will unlock the human & CPU interception sliders (as well as quarter length).

He said it should be realized in the not-distant future.

Wow, just got home from vacation and this is GREAT news. If the onfield stuff can be fixed, I just might see what this game is about. Good luck Cwilloughby!

Yep. There will still be some flaws with this game even after Cwilloughby fixes these issues, but I think for me this will be a fun game that will be worth the purchase price if the interceptions and quarter length are fixed.

Yeah, at least a break from the text sims I've been playing a ton of lately. :)

How is this possible? Is all the MAdden stuff really right in there, just not accessible for us? What the heck is wrong with EA?

Yes, from what he said it's just a matter of unlocking sliders in some fashion.

My only guess as to why EA released it this way is that EA will say since you're the head coach, you should have less control over the game settings compared to Madden where it's designed for you to play however you want to.

I'm not saying it's smart or that I agree with it but it's the only thing that I think they could be thinking.

Ugh, after the preseason is over I have three practices for the Thursday Night game.

Sheiza, what am I supposed to do?

That's the fun part. It's not so fun that Leinart heaved 7 INTs last game. We'd have won if he had kept that down to a barely reasonable FOUR.

One thing I noticed though, and others should verify -- at least three of those INTs came from a tip into the hands of a guy who, IRL, would't have been able to pull that off most of the time. Are an inordinate amount of tipped balls being caught by the defenders?

The ball does bounce around a lot -- it might not be something that you can fix with a simple tweak, or DBs will never interecept. It should have been coded somehow that tipped balls are harder to catch. They really are harder to catch.

Yeah, all of the Madden stuff is in there. I was reading on another board (OS) that some guy has even found some code from superstar mode and owner mode in some data base such as setting the price of hotdogs. Of course, that makes you think they used most of Madden's code as a base despite saying this was 75% new coding. However, I'm just glad the sliders are still in and hopefully will cut down on the terrible interception rate that I'm seeing in my career.

So, basically what you're saying here is that you will learn from the mistakes, and learn how to program 3D and create us a solid 3d NBA GM game in about 3 years
:)

Pretty please?

Please stop causing problems.

Please stop causing problems.

I'm pretty sure the download is for North American customers only.

I'm into the 4th week of regular season, and have had no tipped ball picks.

I'm also lucky in the respect that so far, the most amount of INT's I've seen in a game is four (last week when my team barely edged Carolina)....and that was just one occurrance.

Just my personal experience...not saying that it isn't a problem.

Cheers!

Maybe it's a problem that will only affect rookies and bad QBs. That wouldn't be so bad.

Come to think of it, we only picked off Manning once.

Yep, US only. Good marketing, uh? ;)

Sigh, i got a 15 dollar EA coupon code, but I can't use it on this game cause of the free shipping code :(.

https://account.ea.com/commerce/prod...en_GB&curr=GBP

England

https://account.ea.com/commerce/prod...le=de&curr=EUR

germany

I've been picked off 3 times in a game with McNabb. I know that you can knock McNabb, but there are plenty of people who report that going against Brady or Peyton Manning or even using them, they are frequently seeing Brady and Manning with 3 or more picks a game.

I'm hopeful that things like this are just caused by user failure(going to the well once too often), but it's really hard to say. If Manning was repeatedly told to throw downfield on every play, I bet he would easily have 3 picks a game, especially if he was trying to force the ball into a zone.

Yeah, I noticed, but didn't even tried. Instead, I actually tried right now and it looks like we can buy whichever version we want, even the US one. I'm not 100% sure though, because I only logged in with my EA account and I didn't buy anything, but when I get to choose my country Italy was in the list, so I guess it's no problem. :cool:

Anyway, I'm still holding off to buy this game. First, I have no money to spend at the moment, and second, I wanna see if something can be really done to fix this game. Also, NCAA 07 is available on pre-order at my favourite on-line store, so...

another question

is it possible to make the game windowed like the demo? Tried all of the video settings(very tedious) and couldnt find it.

Another thought on the interceptions. After my last game of 6 ints with 4 going for 6 the other way, I decided to really work on my running game this week before the game.

As you could imagine this helped tremendously for my passing game, not leaning on it. However I did also try to take my time at the line, instead of quickly snapping each time. Seems the QB was much more accurate in his throws and finished with 291 yards, 4 TDs, and 0 INTS. Not sure if this really made a difference, but I did notice if you wait, you can pick up blitzes better. Not sure if the game is that smart or not, but worth a shot.

The other side of the coin is I could have been playing a really bad D also.

To tired to try another game tonight with this but thought I would post to see if anybody else has the same success.

Found a bug -- I set my QB to "pump fake" in practice, set for "all game". When the game came, I couldn't turn pump fake off. I had set it that way only because I wanted to see how pump fake worked in practice, didn't realize I was making a commitment. Got sacked about a half dozen times.. Nothing I did would get the QB to come off the pump fake.

2 Things...

Is there a patch out? I heard of one but nothing from EA?

Also, does anyone have any issues with crashing? While I am in a game, it crashed both times to the desktop?

There is a patch on EA's servers, but all it fixes is a MP incompatibility between the download version of the game and the boxed set.

I've never had any crashes in 12 plus hours of playing.

If this was a port from Madden and all of this stuff is simply turned off, and that even if it is listed (Superstar Mode for example) it is still not usable, what makes us think that the sliders will actually change when we change the setting?

Is anyone else thinking that these sliders may not have any bearing at all on the gameplay? We may be able to adjust them but they may just be phantom settings and actually do nothing at all.

Eaglesfan27


When you get a chance, can you post the sim stats for a season.

Are they realistic?

thanks

Well, from the screenshot, it clearly shows the time clock at 9 mins.

yeah, but someone posted one right after that showing it as 8, and explained that he just photoshopped it.. looked the same.

I'm hoping but I'm not ready to believe just yet

Aw...crap. Don't tell me that!

I'm not simming ahead at this time. However, someone on another board posted some simmed stats and they looked fairly good, although receptions were a bit low.

I see no reason for Cwilloughby to do that.

No. See post above. I believe Cwilloughby that he has already changed the quarter length. If that works, I think the other sliders will work. There is a big difference between having some vestigial Superstar code in the game and a complete slider set.

Ok.. just to show..

(this is Cwilloughby's screen



here's Skyboxer's..fake

Again, not insinuating, just saying let's not get our hopes up until we have it in our hands :)

yeah but what would the incentive for faking it be?

I can understand Skyboxer's skepticism (sp?) since he isn't a regular at any of the boards where Cwill is at, but Cwilloughby has been here for a few years and has never stirred up any shit that I can remember. There is just no reason to doubt him, in my mind.

Ok Brett Favre just heaved 7 interceptions. It's strange that number keeps coming up. Must have the INTs toned down or the gameday part isn't any fun. I don't want to win 59 - 10 with three INTs returned for TDs ever again.

It's too easy for the DBs to score the TDs. Jumping an out is one thing, but I had guys dodging and weaving through traffic on their way.. I even had a MLB almost score on one of them.

Yeah, that is a problem. I've had about half of the interceptions our DB's made go all the way back for a TD including one in which Dawkins dodged 4 or 5 tacklers.

Did you see him play last year? Sounds realistic to me.:D

Allright...

Enough with the fake rumors :P.

Here is the first version of the setting application. Unzip the file and run the executable. Click Load and find your career file. Then edit to your delight. When done click Save. The program automatically creates a backup of the original when you save, it can be found as Career[#].bak in the appropriate career folder. As this is a 3rd party program that modifies your career files, use it at your own risk. While it is still in its infancy, I recomend keeping your own backups of everything before you let this little guy have his way with it.

At this point, you can set the quarter length, and sliders which affect the exhibition and career games for the career you edit. I didn't get a chance to test the sliders enough to know if there is a difference or not. If these sliders don't seem to work, there is at least one more set that I can try within the data file (go EA storing multiple copies of the same data in the save file).

Along the same lines, I couldn't get accelerated clock to work yet. It seems that either: A) EA has hardcoded this as disabled, which would make sense with all of the coach in between play crap, or B) I'm changing it in the wrong place (same possibility as the sliders above).

It would be nice if a few of you could test different slider settings to see if you notice a difference. Some of you have played the game far more than me, and would probably notice a difference. In the mean time, I'll continue testing and trying to track down the true location of the sliders (if currently wrong), and the possibility of making the accelerated clock work.

Enjoy!
Chris W.

yaya for cwill :)

Thanks a lot cwill. If this tool really works i'll buy the game, waiting for the ones that have it to confirm it.

cwill:

"This application has failed to start because MFC71.DLL was not found. Re-installing may fix the problem"

Any help?

Never mind. Found it on-line.

For the record, the minute adjustment works. I don't know about the sliders yet, but at least that part can be adjusted with Cwill's work. Thanks man. You are a hero.

As a side note, I turned auto-save off and simmed ahead (I was at the begining of training camp) to see if the minute change works. Goodness the injuries! I had about 8 starters out for significant time by the time it got to the first pre-season game. What sucked was that I couldn't change my depth chart except for two players pre-game! Once in the game, I had to make all of my adjustments as the game was playing behind me. That's just stupid. They really did make some stupid design desicion in this game.

BTW, I had no idea how long anyone predicted to be injured since the sim info flew by, and I can't find anywhere that tells you that information. There is so much that is missing or hard to get to in this game. I like the ideas behind much of it, but so much of it is not executed very well (and the fact that it is really a console port is mostly to blame).

The minutes work great. I had decent stats for 8 minute quarters. I turned down the interceptions, but I think it was inconclusive since I was playing Vince Young against the Ravens in week 2. He had two interceptions with the second in the third quarter. He got injured on the second interception when he tried to make the tackle. Andrew Walter came in and on his first pass threw an interception. That's probably pretty realistic, but I'm not sure if the slider worked. :)

On a side note, I really like the fact that if my QB can't practice during the week it makes a huge difference. I also like the fact that I have to determine how much the 2nd string practices and how that affects their improvement/decline.

During practices, I've found that some will give you a 6-7% boost on the play (mostly just the pass skeleton and running contact practices) and the full offense/defense contact practices give you a 20% boost. I've been trying to get my plays to a 20%, 40%, 60%, or 80% level before the full offense/defense contact practices to maximize my money plays.

You can find out how long they'll be out in the injury report. It's by their name when you pull them up. I have Vince Young pinched nerve-1 week

Excellent! I just bought the game!!

I don't have the game, but thanks for doing this cwill. Awesome job. Now I'm tempted again...

Excellent! Thanks for your work on this. I'm trying it now. :)

Off to play my first game now. I'm going with 9 minute quarters and I turned interceptions for both sides all the way down. I also bumped QB accuracy and WR catching a bit. I'll let you know if it seems to have made a change in the stats in a bit. :)

Thanks for the update as I am curious of the results. Also, how long does it take to play a game? Either with 5 minute quarters or the 9 minute quarters?

Getting the same message...the .dll error message.

I found the file online, but am unsure where to put it. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

Press [ from the playcalling screen to see a replay, challenge a play, or call a timeout.

Someone asked this a bit ago.

Let us know how the new settings work EF!

Nevermind...answered my own question.

Cheers!

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Unfortunately, as I suspected it looks like the set of sliders that I am modifying within the career are the wrong ones. I'll look into it a little more tonight, and hopefully I can map it up to the right set.

I'll keep you posted.
Chris W.

Awesome man. Regardless of the sliders, just modifying the quarters is a giant leap towards accurate stats.

I'm still seeing a few interceptions in practice after bumping the sliders down 30 notches on each side. I see that CWil didn't think these were the right sliders. I can't say that the INTs were excessive though, they looked legit. But I had never noticed the INT problem in practice anyway. Haven't been able to play long enough to get to the next game.

I wonder if 8 minutes is too long, conisdering that 5 minutes very nearly gets you to NFL average. It looks about 10% off at 5 minutes. Maybe 6 minutes is enough. I'm trying 7 minute quarters, but don't think I can get back to this game today. Lots of things to do.

That awesome news.

How is the sim stats looking? Pretty realistic?

8 minutes appeared to be too long. I only played one game and there were about 200 yds passing and 140 yds rushing for both the Raiders and Ravens. I'll see what happens in week four with 7 minute quarters.

I can't even get the game to install, shit. Works fine when I try on my kids pc. The splash screen comes up, then I click install.. cd spins up and nothing after that. Weird.

Gremlins.

I had that problem too, and it turned out to be related to my CD/DVD drive drivers. See if you've got the latest drivers instaled.

If I got it working on this Dell laptop, which gawd only knows what is wrong with it but everything that can go wrong does.. then most people can probably get it running.

Ok, I just finished my first game. I think it took about an hour and 20 minutes to play with 9 minute quarters. I had to do a few practices before I started the game.

First the good:

- I loved how the Ravens worked the run and the play action.

- I told McNabb to not force it in, and to scramble if he didn't see anyone open after 3 progressions, he did that well.

- Jamal Lewis was a beast to stop. If I didn't have at least 2 men around him, I was likely screwed.

- The CPU will sub guys in if the starter is dead tired without you doing it. Westbrook was subbed out and Addai in during the 1st half for me without me doing it.


- I loved the flow of the game. Despite unrealistic pancakes, the O-Line D-Line interaction felt good.

- Both Carter and Detmer looked very bad on some deep throws where they underthrew the guy, overthrew the guy, or just threw it way wide.

- Based upon the stats, Carter only threw 2 interceptions all game, and McNabb and Detmer each only threw one in a half, I think the sliders ARE the right sliders. However, I'll play another game (or 5 ;)) over the next few hours and will post further stats to see if it is really working.


The bad: Lito Sheppard muffed 2 punts. Hopefully, it was just an aberation. Both were he just dropped it before even being hit.

McNabb threw it into his O-lineman's back on one play.

My receivers dropped a lot of balls, but we did have a bad week of practice according to my receivers coach, so this could actually be a good thing. I just hope if I get a very good possession receiver, he isn't dropping this many balls.


Onto the stats:

135 total plays from scrimmage with 9 minute quarters. This is despite the Ravens having a 10 point lead and working the clock down to 3 seconds left with 4 minutes left in the 4th quarter. By the way, I'd hate to see the CPU do this with 5 minute quarters!

Ravens beat us 27-17.


Eagles Stats:

In a half, McNabb 9 of 22 for 100 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT. I counted 6 dropped balls, including 3 by Peerless Price (why did I sign him to a relatively big deal? :(). McNabb was sacked twice as well.

Koy Detmer 5 of 15 for 69 yards, 0 TD, INT, 2 sacks. (I counted 3 dropped balls.)


Westbrook: 10 carries for 38 yards, long of 9. In a half.

Addai: 10 carries for 53 yards, long of 32, 1 TD. Oh yeah, the CPU does sub guys in if the starter is tired. Addai got the 32 yard TD in the 1st half when he was subbed in for Westbrook for a play or two.

McNabb 7 carries for 52 yards (I told him not to force it in and to scramble if he got through his 3rd read without seeing anyone open.) Long of 18.


L.J. Smith led the team with 4 catches for 42 yards, 1 drop.

R. Brown had 3 catches for 34 yards with 1 drop.

C. Jackson, the rookie, had 1 catch for 24 yards. 2 drops.

Westbrook 1 catch for 23 yards, 0 drops.

Peerless Price, 2 catches for 22 yards, 3 drops.

Ritchie, 2 catches for 20 yards, 0 drops.

Addai 1 catch for 4 yards, 0 drops.


Dawkins led the team with 11 tackles. Trotter had 10 tackles.

Kearse had 3 sacks. Walker had 1 sack.

Dawkins and Sheppard each had 1 interception.


Akers made 1 of 2 FG (made 27, missed 55)

R. Plackeimer, my rookie punter, had 7 punts for 36.1 avg with a shank of 19 on one play.

L. Sheppard had 5 KR for 90 yards, long of 28.

He had 1 PR for a return of 11 yards.



Ravens Stats:

Quincy Carter: 15 of 30 for 213 yards with 2 TD 2 INT, 4 sacks. Long of 54.

Jamal Lewis had 24 carries for 126 yards, 1 TD, long of 57.

Chester Taylor 13 carries for 28 yards.

Quincy Carter 4 carries for 12 yards.


D. Mason had 5 catches for 82 yards, 1 TD, 0 Drops, long of 54.

C. Moore had 2 catches for 44 yards, 1 TD, 2 drops.

T. Heap had 3 catches for 37 yards, 1 drop.

Clayton had 2 catches for 27 yards. 1 drop. He burnt me on one play and was wide open deep, but Quincy overthrew him on that play.

Ray Lewis led the team with 12 tackles. E. Reed had 10 tackles.

A. Weaver lead the team with 3 sacks.

C. Mcalister and E. Reed each had a pick.

S. Rolle led the team with 2 passes defended.

D. Zastuvil had 6 punts for 34.3 avg.

D. Mason had 1 KR for 14 yards.



I'm debating on dropping down to 8 minute quarters as the play total is a bit high. However, I'm MUCH happier with these stats post sliders.

If it isn't the right slider sets, I'm amazed that I didn't have more interceptions against Carter in a long game.

Sorry to hear that you and others are having problems. It installed on both my main computer and my laptop with no issues.

More details.

Interface is terrible.

The fact that you can only do two depth chart movements per coach time is terrible.

The slowness between phases is terrible.

Hiring coaches is terrible, the interview is garbage.

For daily Practice, the fact I have to run each play is terrible.

I don't even really like the gameplay mode. Playcalling is terrible.

Good concept, terrible implementation. I wasted my money.

Alright, played my first preseaon game with 8 minute quarters. CW is right that the sliders are not working. After turning interceptons all the way down, and bumping accuracy up, Tom Brady threw 4 intereceptions and Vick threw 3. I won 41-16, and with the Pats only TD coming from an interception. Vick went 11-24, and Brady went 23-46. Completetions were way too low, and open field tackling horrible. Of course, both of those things might be flukes considering it was one game. The interceptions are a flaw that is carried over from Madden coach-mode.

There were some positives. Punt returners didn't fumble every third punt like in Maddem coch-mode, and they will call for a fair catch. There was also regular subbing for fatigue. I wish the whole team subbed out in the Pre-season like in Madden (btw, if you change the roster in game does it stay that way once it is over?).

There were no injuries, so that is a concern. There probably were too many plays as well. What is the average plays-per-game?

Ok, I guess my game with Quincy Carter was an aberation if Brady threw 4 picks. If you make depth chart changes in game, they don't carry over after the game.

Dola -

I believe average plays per game is about 120. Despite that bad game you had with picks, I'm going to go ahead and play another pre-season game, this time with 8 minute quarters. I don't care too much if I end up with a high number of picks in pre-season. I'll post results after the game again.

NFL averages about 120-125 plays per game. Probably 6 or 7 mins quaters, non accerlation will get close to that.

Also read to lower interceptions is to talk to the QB and Practice some plays with your QB. I don't know if that will help.

Encouraging, thanks!

But how does that help cut down on opponents int's? That's the problem. Vick throwing three (especially this game's Vick) is no biggy. But Brady throwing 4 with a 50% completion rate? Definite problem.

So give it to a poor college student (me) and you'll have the sound mind of knowing your money was put to good use


:):D

Good point.

I hope the sliders when fix will help with that.

Does that 120-125 include xp and kick-offs?

About to start my 8 minute quarter against the Steelers now. After a rough start to the week, I have McNabb looking good in practice, while my scouts think Big Ben looks relatively bad at the moment. I'll post stats after the game.

In 2005 the NFL average 125 plays per game total between both teams.

It includes runs, passing,fg attempts, punts and kickoffs.

http://www.nfl.com/stats/teamsort/NF...r?sort_col_1=4

There was 32,021 total plays between the 32 teams in the NFL in 2005

32,021/32 teams=1000.66

1000.66/16 games=62.54

62.54 x 2 teams=125 total plays per game

Quick question on talking to your players. When you choose strategy instead of motivation, how do you finalize it? I pick all of the options, but I'm unable to continue. The only thing I see is to cancel out.

I read this at operation Sports forum


Is this true for those who have the game?

From Tom Brady's real-life game log:

Date

Opp

Cmp

Att

Pct

Yds

Yds/Att

TD

Int

1st

Sck

Rtg

Nov. 27

KC

22

40

55.0

248

6.2

1

4

14

3

42.5

It's a problem if it happens 5 times out of 16 -- it's not if it happens 1 out of 16 times.

I have the Xbox version.

The only time I have seen injuries is when you do sim through your practice time or games. I have not seen a player go down with an injury in practice or during a game at all.

I have also read that the game engine is from Madden 2006. In my experiments in the past using Madden 2006 in coach mode, it was difficult to decrease the amount of interceptions even with the adjusted sliders. (increasing QB awareness and WR catch)

The only real bug/glitch that I have seen during a game (besides the Madden come back code) is when your QB play actions with a RB, turns around and throws it in thte wrong direction for a fumble that the defense always returns for a TD. I have seen this happen twice now.

I enjoy the game very much. I think it is a step in the right direction for EA.

Not true. I had Vince Young get injured in my last game.

I've been running Vince Young 30+ times a game and he hasn't been hurt so far.

I haven't seen any injuries during practice or games yet. Maybe that can be changed via sliders at some point, since RA has had it happen at least once.

I think these sliders might be the real sliders. I maxed out WR catching this game, and each WR corp only had 1 dropped ball. Big Ben did throw 3 picks, but two of them were late in the game when he was forcing it in since his side was down.

Overall, another very fun game.

We beat the Steelers 28-14. We ran 66 plays. They ran 44. However, I strategized much more in this game and therefore ate more clock. Also, I ran the ball over 40 times counting McNabb's scrambles. That eats clock and leads to less plays. Therefore, I think 8 minutes is going to be the sweet spot for me. It took me an hour and 20 minutes to play 8 minute quarters.

Stats:

McNabb 16 of 24 for 197 yards with 3 TD's 1 INT and 2 sacks.

Addai 18 carries for 76 yards with a long of 12.

Westbrook 18 carries for 42 yards with 1 TD. Long of 7.

McNabb 5 carries for 51 yards long of 22.

Ritchie 1 carry for 4 yards.

Price 4 catches for 70 yards. He had my only drop.

L.J. Smith 5 catches for 53 yards, 3 TD's. McNabb was looking for him everytime we entered the red zone.

C. Jackson 3 catches for 42 yards.

Westbrook 1 catch for 20 yards.

Ritchie 3 catches for 12 yards.


Sheppard led the team with 6 tackles. Dawkins and Trotter each had 5 more.

Kearse led the team with 2 sacks. 4 other guys had 1.

S. Brown led the team with 2 INT's. Dawkins had 1 too.


R. Plackmeier had 5 punts with an average of 36.1

Sheppard had 2 KR with a 14.0 avg.

Sheppard had 3 PR with a 9.0 avg. Long of 12.


Big Ben was 9 of 16 for 86 yards, 1 TD, 3 INT. It was raining. I'm not sure if that mattered. He was also sacked 6 times, and we got constant pressure on him.

Bettis (he didn't retire after the SB in this game) had 18 carries for 56 yards. Willie Parker was out injured.

Staley had 3 carries for 8 yards.

Krieder had 1 carry for 4 yards.


Hines Ward had 4 catches for 50 yards and a TD. They had 5 other receivers with 1 catch. Only 1 drop among them.

T. Polamalu led the team with 12 tackles. J. Farrior had 9 tackles.

Farrior lead the team with 2 sacks.

D. Townsend had their only pick which he returned 71 yards for a TD (it was a pass into the flat that he jumped.)

C. Gardocki had 7 punts for a 36.5 avg.

A. Randel-El had 4 KR avg of 21.0.

Dola -

Oh yeah. As if there was any doubt that this was based on Madden, Pittsburgh had a chance to stop us on 3rd and 1 with about 4 minutes to go in a pivotal play. The camera switched from my pressbox to the dramatic camera that first started appearing in either Madden 05 or 06 and the heartbeat sound could be heard.

Going to pick this game up today at Best Buy for 29.99.

Seems like you guys are having fun with it.

How the end of game decisions by the AI teams? Is the AI being smart when they have a lead and when they are behind at end of games?

Great job by CWill with the utility but how pathetic is it that people like CWill have to create such a utility at all? The great EA can't even produce a realistic game without the help of one of their customers. And ONE person is reporting ONE in-game injury? That is a total joke.

Anyone have a Liteon cd rom or dvd player? Both my dvd and cd rom are Liteon players and I still can't get this friggin game to install.

Shit!