2006-2032: Madden 19 Sim Stats vs. Real NFL Data

[DeuceDouglas]

This was something I did for Madden 17 and then followed up and did for Madden 18 and have now done for Madden 19 as well. I used the same process that I used last year which was going into CFM, simming 15 seasons while tracking data each season in the form of the top ten statistical leaders in major categories as well as the complete league totals to compare with the actual NFL data from the last several years ****** back to 2006. This is likely going to be lengthy so if you want a TL;DR, there will be one at the bottom. I'll start with the League Stats:



So there's definitely some issues here which I'll get to but Madden 19's numbers are a HUGE improvement over Madden 18. Madden 18 (and Madden 17) had significant issues in a bunch of areas and almost all of it has been fixed and looks significantly better. For example, last year over the course of simming, sacks were down in the 500's and nearly cut in half from where they should be. Also by the end of the sim, virtually every league passing record was being broken every year by a pretty significant margin. And then probably the biggest issues which are connected, rushing touchdowns being almost double the all-time NFL high and total scoring being higher than it's ever been in NFL history by a huge margin as well have both been significantly improved. Just in the last season of my Madden 18 CFM, the league record for most points scored in a week was broken 6 or 7 times in ONE season. And all of those things weren't even close to being an issue at any point over the 15 seasons I simmed. So while I'm going to do a significant amount of talking about the issues, it can't be undersold how many improvements were made across the board in this area. But to the issues:

Passing Touchdowns

So I just mentioned that rushing touchdowns were fixed but unfortunately the same issue that was present in M17 & M18 seems to still be present with Madden 18 and the issue is that there's just too many touchdown passes league wide. Looking at the chart above you'll see the yellow box in the NFL stats in 2015 and that signifies that it's the NFL record and as you can see, every single year of the sim broke that record and often by a very wide margin. You won't see anything crazy in the league leaders and the issue still seems to be that there's just an overabundance of QB's in the higher range of touchdowns and near that 30 touchdown range and you'll hardly see a scenario like with Marcus Mariota last year where a guy will only have 13 touchdowns.

Interceptions

So this is an interesting one. This wasn't a problem in Madden 17 or 18 and always fell in line with the real NFL numbers but with Madden 19, you can see that the amount of interceptions thrown drops off after the first season pretty quickly and stays consistently low throughout the simulation. Just to put those numbers in perspective, excluding the 1982 strike-shortened season, the last time the NFL was under 400 interceptions league wide was 1969, which was pre-AFL-NFL merger and when there was only 16 NFL teams. Again, if you look at the interception leaders down below, you won't notice anything too crazy or that seems out of the ordinary but I think the problem mainly lies on the low end. I saw a lot of years where guys were throwing 30 or 40 TD's to five or less picks. Wentz had a 41-3 year and 30+ and 6 or less was a common occurrence.

With the way the numbers were fine in Year 1 but then dropped off and stayed consistent in the subsequent seasons, it made me think it has something to do with the incoming rookies being different than the stock rosters so I looked into a couple things and found a couple oddities. Like Madden 18, every single starting QB at the end of the sim had Ideal for Sense Pressure but I figured that would likely affect sacks more. So then I also looked at the Force Throws trait which I felt might affect interceptions and every QB with the exception of one had either Ideal or Conservative for that with that exception being Deshaun Watson, who had balanced and is obviously a real player. So I went through and changed a bunch of the other QB's from either conservative or ideal to balanced to see if that would significantly change things and it did bump the picks up a little bit but only to 328 which is still far too low.

So then I took a look inside a few draft classes and noticed that every corner in the classes I looked at had either conservative or balanced for the Plays Ball in the Air trait. I'm not saying that nobody had it but if they did, it was extremely rare. I didn't test that theory out however so it's hard to say if that is the cause but I think it could definitely be a factor.

Rushing Numbers

So this is by far the biggest issue out of everything and that's the rushing numbers. As you can see, looking at the carries the amount per game is significantly lower than the real NFL numbers by about three per game which coincidentally is the same amount that overall plays are low and it might not seem like much but that's 3 per game over 512 games so that's over 1500 carries less than a normal NFL season which is a lot. And then you get to the overall rushing yards which again is extremely, extremely low. The lowest rushing total in NFL history was 104.3 in 1994 and each season was about 20 yards per game below that and by the end of the sim, 30 yards below that. And then what goes hand-in-hand with that is the Yards Per Carry which is routinely in that 4.0-4.3 range and has been for years in the NFL but in the sims it peaked at 3.6 and got to as low as 4.1 YPC so there's big issues there.

There's a few things to mention here though, one being that it seems like the issue lies more with middling backs than the stars. For instance, take a look at Ezekiel Elliot's numbers:



He ended the sim with over 20,000 yards rushing, Saquon Barkley ended with over 15,000 and the higher end backs usually were completely fine but a lot of the middle of the road (i.e. >90 or 85) would end up having a good chunk of carries but average low 3's or even mid-2's for YPC and that was far more common than the good seasons which would drastically drop the numbers down. Then there's another big issue that plays into this:

Quarterback's Don't Run

This was painfully obvious going through team totals each year and is likely a big part of why the numbers are so low. I don't think it's the sole problem because even if you add in QB carries, the YPC and YPG numbers would still be low but it's a definite part of the problem. A couple examples here from my sim using Lamar Jackson who was a starter for every season except his rookie year:



And then Russell Wilson who ended up on the Vikings but you can see the stark contrast where his real-life numbers end and his Madden numbers begin:



So there's that and then one last thing is that I noticed at the end of my sim that the OL's across the league were really weak. There was only one 90+ lineman in the entire league and only 43 80+ lineman and many teams had guys in the 60's starting for them and most team's had 3-4 spots filled with guys in the 70's so that could be something also playing a role.

Field Goals

So this is the last big issue with the sim numbers and it's that the amount of field goals kicked is really, really low. As I was simming I was trying to figure out how the Passing TD's were higher than the NFL numbers while the Rushing TD's were right in line but the scoring was consistently lower. So as you can see above, I didn't start tracking this until season five but the numbers when compared to the real NFL are nearly cut in half and then the overall field goal percentage is lower than it should be as well. Out of the 11 seasons I tracked a kicker only made 30 FG's one time and just to put that into perspective there was 13 teams just last year who made 30 FG's. But what would happen is that the majority of guys would be in the teens and then you'd also have a few that would finish the entire year 7 of 12 or 8 of 11 and things like that.

Random Thoughts

Quarterbacks don't ever seem to get injured in the sims and this could definitely be because in part of them not running. But one of the annoying things about tracking data before was getting to teams that had three or four different QB's with significant numbers and having to add those rather than just having one big number but there was hardly ever any occurrences of that with Madden 19.

Sack leaders are incorrect below because it is the most common of all stat categories for players to be in the top-10 but not meet the downs played requirement for them to be included in the NFL leaders when looking at stats. Same thing happens with interceptions but like I said it's more common with sacks.

In the sim, the Falcons made it to the Super Bowl four consecutive times winning three of the four. The Jaguars also made the Super Bowl in five of the first 8 seasons. A lot of teams ended up going to back-to-back Super Bowls.

Individual Leaders

Completions

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Attempts

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Pass Yards

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Pass Touchdowns

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Interceptions Thrown

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Times Sacked

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Carries

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Rush Yards

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Rushing Touchdowns

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Receptions

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Receiving Yards

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Receiving Touchdowns

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Sacks

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Interceptions

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Team Records (Gold=SB winner, Silver= SB loser)

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TL;DR

• Overall a HUGE improvement over the numbers from Madden 17 and Madden 18. A ton of sore areas not only improved but right in line with where you want them to be.
• Passing touchdowns are still too high; each year the league total breaks the real-life NFL record.
• Interceptions are far too low and look more like real NFL numbers from the 1960's. The significant drop off after Season 1 make me think it has something to do with incoming rookies.
• Carries, Rushing Yards and YPC are all extremely low and drastically lower than numbers ever seen in the NFL before. Quarterbacks don't run virtually at all in sims and OL progression in the future is something to look at.
• Field goals aren't kicked at a realistic rate or accuracy in simulations. Real life NFL totals are nearly double on the rate and percentages are higher on FG's as well.

[goillini03]

Great stuff!

[Therebelyell626]

Terrific research man. Very nicely done

[Gosens6]

Awesome job on this! Just solidified my decision to not buy.

If they can fix sim stats and the running game overall, I might make the jump. Great work here


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[jyod21]

Wow. Great work.

[BleedGreen710]

wow great work as always Deuce. I was scared to read this thread cause I was just beginning to enjoy my franchise and didn't want it to be ruined but fortunately most of the stuff shown I was already aware of. I agree this is MUCH improved from past years. but some issues such as the QB rushing stats has got to be addressed.

[NickCav21]

Awesome work man, do you think the rushing stats could be fixed in a similar way that league wide interceptions were raised by adjusting traits?

[haloofduty]

I hope this doesnt get buried. This is great work. Hopefully the developers take a look at it. Have you ever noticed the majority of Wr2 average yards per reception is low? Been that way the last 3 years.