The Best Middle Linebacker Archetypes To Increase In Madden 24 Franchise

Continuing on in our series of the best archetypes to upgrade in Madden’s franchise mode, today we are covering middle linebacker.

We spent thousands of skill points on all of the different archetypes for each position and documented the results of our experiment. This effort took weeks of data collection and man hours and we hope that you find the actionable takeaways from it.

Middle Linebacker Archetypes

There are 3 archetypes you can use your skill points on to upgrade middle linebackers in Madden.

• Field General
• Run Stopper
• Pass Coverage

We spent 50 skill points on each of these archetypes and we’ll go through what we found in much more detail a little later on in the article. First, let’s start with what Madden claims each archetype’s top skill increases are:

Field General

Madden Claims: PRC, PUR, TAK

Reality: ZCV, AWR, TAK

Run Stopper

Madden Claims: POW, PUR, TAK

Reality: TAK, BSH, PRC

Pass Coverage

Madden Claims: ZCV, MCV, TAK

Reality: ZCV, MCV, AWR

Our Recommendation For Upgrading Middle Linebackers

Understanding how middle linebacker progression works is pretty straightforward. If you want to develop your MLB to stop the run, choose Run Stopper. If you want to develop your MLB to stop the pass choose Pass Coverage. If you want a bit of both, choose Field General.

Note: Our recommendations do not take into account superstar abilities that unlock at specific overall ratings. We are only looking at which upgrades produce the best individual attribute increases.

If there is a specific superstar ability you are working towards getting, it can make sense to upgrade that archetype even though the individual attribute increases might be low.

If you are just looking to develop the best overall MLB the fastest, our recommendation is to upgrade the Field General archetype at MLB.

Highest Expected Value For Total Attribute Increases

We did 50 tests for each MLB archetype and marked down every individual rating increase they got then added all of it together for the total number of individual ratings increases.

What we found for these 50 tests is that the expected value of ratings increases for Field General was higher than any of the other archetypes.

1. Field General: 272 rating increases on 50 attempts. Expected Value = 5.44
2. Run Stopper: 262 rating increases on 50 attempts. Expected Value = 5.24
3. Pass Coverage: 208 rating increases on 50 attempts. Expected Value = 4.16

Expected Values For Important Ratings Like BSH, AWR, TAK, ZCV, MCV

Middle linebackers don’t have too many truly important attributes that they need to be elite. All 3 archetypes had similar speed upgrades so we turned to other important attributes like block shed, awareness, tackle, zone coverage, and man coverage.

• Field General: 32 BSH, 53 AWR, 31 TAK, 57 ZCV, 36 MCV
• Run Stopper: 62 BSH, 27 AWR, 56 TAK, 35 ZCV, 20 MCV
• Pass Coverage: 0 BSH, 34 AWR, 16 TAK, 71 ZCV, 51 MCV

The numbers pretty clearly show that with Run Stopper you will get the most Block Shed and Tackle but the least zone and man coverage. With Pass Coverage you will get the least Block Shed and Tackle but the most zone and man coverage. And with Field General a decent middle ground between the other 2 archetypes.

Final Ratings, Raw Data, And Conclusion

You could make a case based on your player development strategy or your personal situation for any of these archetypes to be the one you choose.

That being said, these are our rankings for MLB archetypes.

1. Field General
2. Pass Coverage
3. Run Stopper

Madden School Unlimited members have full access to all of the raw data that went into this experiment so you can dig into the details further.

Return to our Madden 24 franchise mode skill points/archetype overview.