Madden Nfl

Madden is an annual series, and our coverage of it spans two of its years. Five of the seven guides here were written for Madden NFL 22 and two for Madden NFL 23, so this hub is a Madden hub rather than a hub for one release, and every guide is labelled with the year it describes. Rather than list them by year, the sections below follow the order a Franchise Mode season puts its questions to you: which team to take, which playbook to run, who to draft, what your roster's stars can actually do, and how to keep the other side out of the end zone.

Picking The Team

Two of our Madden 22 pages rate teams, and they rate them for different jobs. The rebuild teams guide is for Franchise Mode, where the question is what a roster could become, and it puts forward the Panthers, Ravens, Bears, Browns and Cowboys. The spread is wide: the Panthers carry a 73 overall but a 97-rated Christian McCaffrey, and the page says the quarterback is the position you fix first if you take them. The Ravens are the highest-rated of the five at 88 overall, with Lamar Jackson at 91. The Browns and Cowboys are the two offensive rosters at 89 and 88 on that side of the ball, while the Bears are the defensive one at 87.

The playbooks guide closes with a different list, the three best teams as they stand rather than as projects: the Bills at 87 overall, the Ravens again at 88, and the Buccaneers at 92. Where the two pages name the same team they agree on the number, and the Bears' 87 on defense matches the figure the Madden 22 defense page gives when it ranks defensive teams, which is a small sign the ratings were taken from the same roster.

Picking The Playbook

The playbooks guide splits defense along the 3-4 and 4-3 line. Four good linebackers make a 3-4, and the page's pick for it is the Buccaneers' book; two tackles and two ends make a 4-3, where it prefers the Vikings; and the Patriots' book is offered as the one that mixes both with Nickel and Dime looks. On offense it names the Chiefs for long-developing passes, the Ravens for a mobile quarterback out of Pistol and Shotgun sets, and the Raiders for having a formation for almost everything. The Madden 22 defense guide adds its own three defensive books with the formations it found most useful, including the Steelers and a Multiple D book, and gives the Patriots book a second recommendation for covering the most field.

For Madden 23 our defense guide makes the playbook its first of nine steps and notes that the books were updated for that release, which is the one place our pages record a change between the two years. It does not name a book, so the 22 recommendations are the only specific ones we have.

The Draft

Our two drafting pages are a year apart and approach the same event from opposite ends. The Madden 22 drafting guide is about judgement: favour younger players with higher development traits, do not pay a star quarterback's salary when a cheap one can be surrounded with talent, build the defense first because a team that concedes nothing cannot lose, and grab a fast cornerback late for the dime package. It also describes a trade trick in which a player is edited to punter to lower his value before the deal and edited back afterwards. Its shopping list runs to ten positions, from Justin Fields at quarterback to Anthony Harris at free safety, with Marlon Humphrey's 92 overall the highest rating it quotes.

The Madden 23 Fantasy Draft guide is about procedure. It walks through creating a league from the Franchise menu, using the active roster, choosing Fantasy Draft as the starting point and switching off pre-existing injuries before the draft begins. Then it gives a round plan: elite players in rounds one and two, gaps and value in three to five, depth and sleepers in six to ten, with the reminder that picks snake, so the last pick of one round becomes the first of the next. Its position list is nine deep and quotes ratings throughout, from Patrick Mahomes at 95, whom it prefers to higher-rated veterans for his age, up to Davante Adams, Aaron Donald and Trent Williams at 99. The page says four players in that game are rated 99 and names those three.

Knowing What The Roster Can Do

The Superstar abilities guide for Madden 22 is the largest page in the set: ten tables and 140 ability rows, each with its effect and the players who carry it. Twenty-five of the rows are X-Factor abilities and 115 are Superstar abilities, and the split by position group is below. Reading across the tables, more than 130 different players appear, and the two names that turn up most often are Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson with six abilities each, followed by Tom Brady, Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey, Michael Thomas, Aaron Donald and Stephon Gilmore on five. That is worth knowing at the draft stage, since the Madden 22 drafting guide's trade trick is pitched as the way to collect the top-rated X-Factor players.

Game Day: Defense In Both Years

Both defense guides begin with the playbook and then diverge. The Madden 22 page is about coverage: it explains the hard flat, soft squat and cloud flat zones and when each is worth calling, how to shade coverage with the right stick after opening the adjustments with Y or Triangle, and how to assign man-to-man matchups defender by defender. It recommends the contain, triggered with two presses of RB or R1, as the reliable answer to a scrambling quarterback, suggests the defensive camera perspective, and ranks the five best defensive teams from the Buccaneers at 90 down to the Patriots and Broncos at 86. Its closing tips are for both CPU and online play: match coverage against rollouts, settle for forcing field goals, and accept that some yards will be given up.

The Madden 23 page is about inputs and formation. It gives the interception button on each platform, describes 3-4 and defensive back formations by what they stop, and lists four tackle types with their controls, though it prints the same stick input for the hit stick and the cut stick, which an editor should check. It then covers blitzing from inside and outside a contain, setting the defensive line against the offense's strong side, double-tap adjustments for the secondary and linebackers, and finally reading coverage, which it treats as the skill that makes the rest matter.

Questions Our Pages Answer

Which Madden year does each guide cover?

Madden 22: playbooks, rebuild teams, drafting, Superstar abilities and defense. Madden 23: drafting and defense. Nothing here covers Madden 24 or later.

How do you start a Fantasy Draft in Madden 23?

Create a new league from the Franchise menu, choose the active roster (update rosters from the main menu first if yours is old), pick your team, set the starting point to Fantasy Draft, and turn off pre-existing injuries in the league settings before you begin.

Who are the 99-rated players in Madden 23?

Our Fantasy Draft guide names three: Davante Adams, Aaron Donald and Trent Williams. It says there are four in the game but does not name the fourth.

What is the best defensive team?

For Madden 22, the defense guide ranks the Buccaneers first at 90, then the Steelers at 88, the Bears at 87, and the Patriots and Broncos at 86. Our Madden 23 pages do not rank teams.