Madden NFL 17 News Post

Madden NFL 17: Understanding the New Zone Coverages

06:45 PM - August 31, 2016 by RaychelSnr

Madden NFL 17 includes some huge changes to how zone defenses work, and much of it has been for the better.

No matter if you are a defender or trying to attack zones, knowing how the game now handles zone coverage is to your benefit. Last year, Madden would stick zone defenders into their zones without any awareness of the other players on the field.

This year that script is completely flipped, with defenders now playing receivers within their zones and also playing new assignments within zones which allows for more realistic and dynamic handling of varying offensive attacks.

What new zone coverages are you finding to be the most lethal? Let us know how you are doing on defense!

Video: Gmiasworld on YouTube

Game: Madden NFL 17Reader Score: 8/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / PS4 / Xbox 360 / Xbox OneVotes for game: 17 - View All

Member Comments

# 1 GR5Noles @ 08/31/16 09:39 PM

Cover 3 Mable is life.

# 2 SolidSquid @ 08/31/16 10:16 PM

I usually user a lb in a hook curl zone, does anyone have any tips? Should i look to take away inside or outside routes first? How deep do i drop?

# 3 Agent89 @ 08/31/16 10:32 PM

Cover 2 Buster is good to man up on the lesser opposing receivers while zoning up and spotlighting the best receiver on the other side. All of them have their uses though. O Sally go hard flat against trips.

# 4 WilesThing @ 09/01/16 01:48 AM

There's 6 new kinds of blue and purple zones, and they all have different shades of color to distinguish them. A rough hand way to tell what they do is how dull or deep the color is. The duller the color, the nearer the zone plays to the line of scrimmage. The deeper the color, the deeper the zone drops.

The zones are much more dynamic than just how deep they play though, with certain zones dropping to take away seam routes or actually switching to man coverage based on the routes. But EA smartly gave them different shades as a shortcut for what they do. Oddly, they didn't do that with the 4 new yellow zones though. They're all just one shade of yellow.