In a largely overlooked but very important change to Madden 20, your opponent’s exact offensive formation is listed in the pre-play defensive play call screen.
In previous Madden games, you would be confronted with a generic personnel grouping like 3 WR 1 TE 1 RB after your opponent selected his offensive play. That information indicated that your opponent was in a formation that had 3 wide receivers, 1 tight end, and 1 running back on the field but that is all you had to work with.
That information will still be available to you, but you will also get the exact formation your opponent is coming out in. For example: 3 WR 1 TE 1 RB, Gun Trips TE.
From a theoretical standpoint, simulation style football purists may not be thrilled with the change. After all, defensive substitutions are usually made after you see the personnel grouping the offense is in but well before you know the exact formation the offense is planning on lining up in.
Realistically though, the vast majority of Madden players will either be a fan of this new change or not notice it at all.
Offenses have always had all kinds of advantages in football video games. In Madden 20, they will have even more with the new Superstar X-Factor abilities for quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers.
This small change will definitely give a little more power to defenses. After all, many top Madden pros have a very different defense for a formation like Gun Trips TE than they do for Singleback Tight Slots. Now they will be able to implement those defenses more effectively.
Knowing this information before you ever call your defensive play is a big step forward in the right direction for gameplay balance.
Do you like this new change or would you rather they have kept it the same? Let us know in the comments.
I love defense and have been playing madden for over twenty years. Once upon a time I played real football. This adds to the realism.
Silly change. The fact that you know the formation does help defending. If you know they are in a shotgun you have less time to get after the qb and there are far less run plays to go with and if you know they are under center you know the qb will need more time to throw and there are a lot more effective run options from under center which will inevitable affect the defense calling blitzes and having more or less dbs on the field do defend WR. More time it takes to pass the easier it will be for a linebacker to cover a WR. If you want to help the defense simply eliminate the silly new clock runoff when running hurry up. All the advantage goes to offense with defense having literally 0 time to react and audible. The 2 worst features added this year. Clock runoff in hurry up should be eliminated completely. The animation takes 6 seconds and Madden feels the need to rob those seconds which are in real life time to adjust and prepare for the next play.
This is so unrealistic and actually didn’t stop anyone from running the same play over and over again in madden 20 like the comments suggested it would. You shouldn’t know I’m in wildcat before I break the huddle doesn’t make sense. And teams run the same play over and over in real life the real problem is madden not giving us the tools to fix plays this is a band aid attempted fix that didn’t even work. So change it back in future games it adds competition to competitive players you have to understand situational football. Making it easier doesn’t balance the game, fixing the cheats the game has balances the game.