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Perfect Madden 16 Ultimate Team Roster

Madden 16 Ultimate Team: Building The Perfect Roster

Everyone knows that a big part of Ultimate Team is about how good your roster is.  If you are stuck with 70 overall players, you can’t beat that team you see with 90+ players across the board.

Unfortunately, there isn’t too much you can do about that outside of playing a lot of games, doing solo challenges, opening packs, and hitting up the auction house.  However, when you get to a certain point in the Madden season, a lot of people will have good teams.  A little tweak to your roster here and there can make a big difference.

We are going to assume that you aren’t struggling to get coins and you have a pretty good understanding of Madden Ultimate Team.  The goal of this post is to hopefully help you take your team from good to great in Madden 15 and in the upcoming Madden 16 game.

Disclaimer: Reasonable minds can disagree as to what are the ideal ratings for each position.  This is just what has been proven to work for elite gamers.  You might be plenty successful with your own style.

We will need to keep a few basic ideas in mind as we go through and build our perfectly optimized Madden 16 roster.

The Basics Of Building Your MUT 16 Roster

  • Don’t always play the highest overall rated player at each position on your team.
  • Don’t always play the guys whose name you immediately recognize.
  • Find a play style and scheme that works for you and constantly add players that fit within what you are trying to do.

Building Each Position In Madden 16 Ultimate Team

Quarterback:

You’ll always want to have a fast and accurate quarterback with a big arm.  If you have to sacrifice either speed, throw power or throw accuracy, always sacrifice accuracy.  Of course I am assuming here that you are going to have an 85+ overall quarterback.

The reasoning behind why we sacrifice accuracy instead of speed and arm strength is really quite simple.  A 10 point difference in Throw accuracy (lets say from 95 to 85) really isn’t all that noticeable.  You are still going to complete just about every pass you would have completed otherwise.  However, if you take a 10 point hit on throw power, you have now limited your offense significantly.  The same thing goes for Speed.  You can do a lot more with a quarterback who has 10 points more speed (lets say 92 speed instead of 82).

Most people are typically pretty good at this especially at the QB position but it is worth mentioning anyway.  If you have a 92 overall player like Cam Newton and a 96 player overall like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, you’ll want to use the lower rated Cam Newton in most situations.

Running Back:

Ideally you are going to want the whole package at running back.  Speed, Strength, Trucking, Agility, BCV, etc.  If you can’t get an elite running back who is the total package, you will want to share the running duties between 2 or 3 guys.

Regular online Head-to-Head ranked matches have ingrained us to be so dependent on our 1st string running back because that guy is usually 10-20 points higher overall than his backup.  That isn’t the case in MUT though.

You can get a Jamaal Charles type for your tosses and counters and use a Marshawn Lynch type for your power runs.  The worst thing you can do is to get a guy who isn’t particularly speedy or strong and have him try to perform both roles.

Wide Receivers and Tight Ends:

To use NFL players as prototypes, you will want 1 of each type:

  • Randy Moss – Tall, fast, deep threat every play
  • Calvin Johnson – Tall, fast, strong, catches everything
  • Wes Welker – Perfect slot receiver.  Route running, catch in traffic, awareness
  • Rob Gronkowski – Matchup nightmare

Please keep in mind the basics we referenced earlier.  The players we are talking about here are referencing the real life NFL players not any specific card or player in Ultimate Team.  You don’t necessarily want these exact players just players who have similar characteristics.

Offensive Line:

Just find guys who have high run blocking, pass blocking and strength ratings that fit within your play style and scheme.

If you have high ratings in those individual characteristics, you will be pretty highly rated overall.  Don’t over think your offensive line too much.

Defensive Line:

Defensive Tackles should always have high block shed, strength, and power move ratings.  Awareness is a plus but all the awareness in the world won’t do anything if you can’t hold up against the best offensive lineman in Ultimate Team.

Defensive Ends should ideally have high block shed as well as either high power move ratings or high finesse move ratings.  Don’t go for a defensive end who is just average at both though.  Given the choice always go with someone who is really good at one of the moves.

A defensive end who has 85 finesse moves and 85 power moves is going to be useless against a 92 overall offensive tackle.  A different player who has 95 finesse moves and 70 power moves will be much more effective.

Linebackers:

You’ll want to find someone who is similar to Patrick Willis or Luke Kuechly.  You’ll want speed, strength, coverage ability, hit power.  Awareness and play recognition are good too but those attributes rarely force turnovers in Madden.

Stopping what would have been a 3 yard run for -1 yards is great but it doesn’t do much for you in Madden.  You need the guys who are going to get sacks, fumbles, and interceptions.  It only makes sense to go after guys with individual ratings that enable that.

Cornerbacks:

You need speed at corner.  It is as simple as that.  I don’t care if you got a guy with 96 man coverage and 99 awareness out there.  If he is going against an elite Calvin Johnson, he is going to get burned deep.  Everyone in Madden 16 Ultimate team will have those burners at wide receiver.  You need cornerbacks that can keep up.

Much like we’ve discussed earlier, you don’t want a cornerback that is above average at both man and zone coverage.  Assuming every cornerback you play as top end speed, here is the order you will want to play cornerbacks in:

  1. Elite ZCV and MCV
  2. Elite MCV but average ZCV
  3. Elite ZCV but average MCV
  4. Above average ZCV and MCV

Height is also something you’d like in an ideal cornerback.

Safeties:

Speed and hit power are what we are looking for here.  Most good safeties will also have decent catch ratings and that comes in handy as well.  We really want to at least force 1 fumble a game because that is sometimes all it takes to win in a high level competitive MUT game.

Safeties usually have the best chance to line up a hit stick against a running back coming through the hole or a wide receiver over the middle.

What qualities do you look for in each position? Leave a comment to let us know your thoughts.

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Chris
Chris
8 years ago

What dose the cornerback
1.elite ZCV and MCV
2.elite MCV but average ZCV
3.elite ZCV but average MCV
4.above average ZCV and MCV
don’t understand what it means

Gabe
Gabe
8 years ago
Reply to  Chris

he’s saying that’s your priority list. If you could chose any CB than your first option would be the guy with great speed and great MCV and ZCV. Then if there are none of those go for the guys with great MCV and decent ZCV.

gage
gage
8 years ago

The jump ball skills and speed rule for receivers and secondary

Gabe
Gabe
8 years ago

for cornerbacks should I try to get all three of them the same type of coverage? Like 3 guys with great MCV. Or should I mix it up with like 1 guy with great ZCV?
And also say I use 3 guys with great MCV and decent ZCV. Should I call heavy on plays like cover 2s and cover 1s and try to lay of the zone plays? And vise versa if I have 3 CBs with great ZCV and decent MCV… Thanks!

TySON
TySON
7 years ago
Reply to  Gabe

Try and get corners that git your syle man or zone . make sure they are 6foot or taller and have a speed of 92 or better with a catching of 70 or better .

Shawn
Shawn
7 years ago

Can’t get team over 94%