How many games will the Chicago Bears win this season? It’s a simple question, one that management asks you in every preseason of Franchise Mode. Promise the Super Bowl, and you’ll be showered with XP if you actually deliver it – or take control of the Detroit Lions in a flash if you don’t. But this time there’s an added complication: I’ve decided to play 16 games without throwing a single pass. So, with that significant and completely self-imposed restriction on my playbook, how many games are my Bears going to win?
If you’re playing Madden 23 on PC this year, you’ve probably noticed that it leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a $60 roster update without any of the next-gen features present on the PS5 or Xbox Series X versions. So if I wanted to have a good time with it, I had to bring the innovations myself.
While the league is still heavily focused on passing yards, there is a growing trend to run quarterbacks. And a handful of teams, bound by their QB’s limited throwing arm or wayward coaching, let the ball run more. Of course, I felt it was my solemn duty to take this idea to its limits: a season of National Football League games in which not a single passing yard is recorded.
At least not a single forward pass. Technically, I’ll have to hand the ball over to the Halfbacks and Running Backs, and these alone will be our offense. No bullet passes, Hail Marys or hot routes. Just two or three beleaguered men, running the ball over and over against brick walls of padded muscle, until either a) they can’t handle anymore and I really get out of position with an injury, b) I get fired by team management for a such blatant display of incompetence; or c) the end of the regular season.
I make my decision: we are going to win four games.
Norwegian for wear
With that, we’re off to our first game, away to the Minnesota Vikings. We put together a decent set of possessions in the first few minutes, but we regularly use three downs to grab a new one. And by the time we even get vaguely close to the end zone, the defense seems to have our number and build a wall. We can’t make it through, so get the special teams in fourth place and kick a field goal. Our first points of the season.
The Vikings score two touchdowns in a row. By the fourth quarter, we don’t have enough time to enter it twice, and the only way to stop the clock is to go timeouts or out of bounds. It is not enough. In our first game, my brave bears take an L.
It’s the same story in game two against the Packers. Their defense always seems to reach my HB just as he queues on his route and builds up speed. Meanwhile, they score TDs on almost every possession. I’m starting to wonder if four wins might not have been a bit optimistic.
This is, I’m sure, a good trade. Not in real life of course. But within the confines of this ridiculous season, I compose
Then comes the revelation: I’ve got pretty – not great, but decent – Wide Receiver talent on the list that I’m really not going to use. Not once. Darnell Mooney and Byron Pringle aren’t the most sought after WRs in the league, but they do have some trade value.
Conversely, David Montgomery and Khalil Herbert aren’t great Running Backs either. And I ask them to capture the best running track and TD season ever in NFL history. I see an opportunity for a little trading activity.
Out go Mooney and Pringle, both plus a first round pick in the next draft, to the Colts. The other way, and please give him a big hand ladies and gentlemen, is elite HB Jonathan Taylor. One of the best in the league. He’s got Superstar X Factor skills and all. This is, I’m sure, a good trade.
Not in real life of course. But within the confines of this ridiculous season I’m putting together, it makes perfect sense. My offense is literally one man. Two at most, if I get Justin Fields to run a little bit. Trading my redundant WRs for arguably the best HB in the league is the smart move. It’s Mooney Ball.
Apples for pears
Not to brag, but the fruits of this unorthodox trade deal are immediately apparent in game three, against the visiting Patriots, where we score our first W of the season. Taylor is an absolute monster, shrugs and puts in those extra yards Montgomery wasn’t capable of. We are still taking an absurd amount of playing time to get across the field, the clock is ticking all the time, but our progress is very hard to stop.
Now, however, the defense problems are clearer. The Patriots take a fraction of the time to record touchdowns in response to ours. It’s 14-14 in the fourth and through sheer, ugly, tenacious runs we get within the opponent’s 40 and score a winning field goal.
Our next win comes just a week later. We are on track.
This is where Madden’s defensive AI shows itself as silly robot thinking in one sense, and also demonstrates impressive realism in another sense.
This is not an aesthetic football brand. Each property, we claw about four to six feet of soil. The most flamboyant thing we get is playing an options game and getting 12 yards with Justin Fields against a stunned defense of the opposing zone. It really should be so easy to defend against us. Obviously, we’re going to hand the ball to Jonathan Taylor, and he’s going to run with it in one of a very limited number of routes. Or Fields holds it and executes it.
And this is where Madden’s defensive AI shows itself as silly robotic thinking in one respect, and also demonstrates impressive realism in another. It’s incredibly silly because it doesn’t adapt to this one-dimensional offense, and still covers our WRs in case we throw a pass this time, for the first time in five games.
But when you play this way, you also notice the unique quirks in the opponents’ playbooks, and the differences between standard and superstar linebackers. Normal Madden doesn’t show you these subtleties because you mix it up so much offensively. But if you play the same two or three plays over and over, you get to know defensive formations and linebacker behavior routines very well.
Fields ahead
Let’s flash ahead. Closer to the season, Jonathan Taylor is of course leading the league in running yards and Justin Fields tops the QB stats for running yards. We are somehow with seven wins and eight losses over the season. I did a few more stubborn trades – lost some depth at HB by putting Montgomery on the trading bloc, with a few draft pick sweeteners, to bolster our defenses. In, De’Vondre Campbell of the Packers joins the middle linebacker. It is a team designed to last one season and play only six or seven games. It would ruin any franchise in real life.
In this virtual football ecosystem I am very proud of these bizarre bears
But in this virtual soccer ecosystem, I’m very proud of these bizarre bears. They were far from the best team going into the season, but together we found a way. That way has entailed many, many field goals, because it’s basically impossible to commit four-minute and two-minute fouls without passing. But thanks to our impenetrable defense, those field goals and the sometimes hard-fought TD have kept us competitive.
Not much is at stake in this final game against the Vikings. But it would be nice if this experiment didn’t go down in the books as a losing season. We’re not going to make it to the playoffs 8-8, but it could put Coach Phil Iwaniuk on the lips of NFL fans for decades. The crafty misfit who broke football. The running man.
Anyway, we’re losing it, so let’s move on.
Is there anything practical to do here? Well, exclusively choosing running games is chewing some serious clock time. And as Coach Kilmer says in Varsity Blues, if you control the clock, you control the game.
And look, the man’s injury protocols were a little old-fashioned, sure, but he was a legend in that bizarre Texan town where no one noticed that James Van der Beek in high school was a) 45 years old and b) spoke like a prospector. from the 19th century. So perhaps we should heed his wisdom.
If you’re up against a team whose offense isn’t done much on the first and second downs, running fast is one way to choke them. To minimize their time with the ball.
Run pass options games, when you use them once in the five or six downs reveal themselves as quite VP against the AI. Always use them is my advice. And interestingly, Fields wasn’t injured all season, although I soon stopped pressing slide to end the game for contact and just let him do the trick.
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