For years there have been rumblings that offensive line ratings don’t matter all that much in Madden. Most of the time, it was just frustrated Madden gamers venting that they are getting sacked too fast.
In Madden 20, however, there is some truth to it and we can prove it.
This all started based on a lot of community feedback mostly anecdotally that no matter how good their offensive lines are, they don’t seem to get any extra time to throw the ball.
That made a lot of sense to us just based on our own experiences with blocking in Madden 20 so we decided to put it to the test.
Here’s what we did.
We choose a team who had a decent offensive line and also had a 90+ overall X-Factor pass rusher. We settled on the Denver Broncos because they had Von Miller.
Note: We wanted to make sure we used a team with an elite pass rusher because at this point in the season, whether you are playing franchise mode, MUT, superstar KO, or another game mode, you are very likely to have a 90+ overall superstar pass rusher.
We took all the Broncos’ backup quarterbacks and switched them to various positions on the offensive line. We also went out and signed some free agent quarterbacks like Matt Cassell and Mark Sanchez and moved them to offensive line.
In the end, we had a full offensive line made up of all backup quarterbacks. We subbed them in and ran a bunch of tests.
The basic idea of it is to compare the times from when the ball is snapped between the real starting offensive line and our terrible 12 overall (only because they can’t be rated lower than a 12) backup quarterback only offensive line.
We kept everything consistent between formations, play calls, and user input. We would snap the ball and then not touch anything and just time how long from the first frame of the snap until our QB is first touched on the sack.
We did this from a bunch of different formations and plays but running through all of them in a video would be incredibly boring to watch. So we condensed it into a 3 minute video showing 5 snaps each (3 with no X Factor ability and 2 with it activated).
The first set of 5 snaps shows the all backup quarterback offensive line and the second set of 5 snaps shows the real starting offensive line.
Note, this was filmed on All-Madden difficulty using the competitive game mode setting. Results may differ using different settings.
Check out the results below.
To put it midly, the results surprised us.
Time until sack with all backup QBs blocking
- 2.682
- 2.163
- 2.769
- 2.207
- 2.380
Average Time Until Sack: 12.201/5 = 2.4402
Time until sack with starting OL blocking
- 2.076
- 2.682
- 2.076
- 3.116
- 2.076
Average Time Until Sack: 12.026/5 = 2.4052
The all backup quarterback offensive line blocked just as well as the regular starters. In the tests filmed for the video, they actually blocked slightly better! To be fair, that was likely due to human error or small sample size since in the non-filmed tests, it averaged out to just about the exact same times.
We didn’t test anything with superstar abilities on offensive linemen. That might be for a later date and very likely would effect the results.
In franchise mode though, superstar offensive lineman are incredbly rare. In MUT, most people don’t use 1 of their 3 superstar slots on offensive line, and in H2H it is rare to have many good pass blocking superstar offensive linemen.
So the actionable advice here is simple, there is absolutely no need to pay up for good offensive lineman in your franchise mode or in Ultimate team unless they have a good superstar pass blocking ability.
In our brief tests for the running game, offensive lineman ratings seem to actually matter but by no means did we run a comprehensive test on it.
This is something we definitely want to see fixed heading into Madden 21.
You need a larger sample size to definitely say that. With this group of data, it fails the small sample t-test. If you actually want to “Prove It” then I would suggest a larger sample size (30+ for each data group)
Thanks for the comment Mark!
We did have a larger sample size but we decided against making a video of us snapping the ball 100 times and taking sacks. The thinking being that would be incredibly boring to watch. Nor were we going to dump 100 lines of data into an article. We did allude to our tests with larger sample sizes in the article and how it yielded basically the same results, but we definitely could have highlighted it more to avoid confusion.
I would like to see VA all 99 OL
Can you test User vs User to see if that matters at all?
This is not even close to being proof enough to come out and say offensive line ratings do not matter at all. You would need to make some major adjustments here if you want to come out and say all that because all this shows is that a 77 gold does just as poor as a job as a 12 overall while attempting to block one of the best pass rushers and most importantly of all being the fact that he has abilities active.
So based on this video at best you can say that there is no difference between any player which is rated 77 or lower when it comes to being able to block an ability active Von Miller.
Now if you want to “prove it” when it comes to offensive line ratings not mattering at all you can start by replacing that 77 with a 99 or the best possible right tackle and see if you get the same results. If you do indeed get those same results even that still would only go as far as proving that ratings do not matter when facing an edge pass rusher with abilities.
In order to FULLY PROVE that offensive line ratings do not matter you would then need to do the exact same thing one more time except of course this time having no active abilities.
I myself obviously have not tried it but I would be absolutely shocked if that outcome would end out having the same results yet if they do then THAT would be what would FULLY PROVE this theory.
100% right man. I totally agree
This literally proves nothing.. First of all if you’re just going to just stand there of course you’re going to get the same results. You just dropped back you never stepped up into the pocket.. When you run your blocks set up based on the play design and the players movement. If you don’t move NOBODY WILL BLOCK!! if you don’t step up into the pocket NOBODY WILL BLOCK!!! once again this proves nothing..
How would you set up an experiment to test something like this? Obviously nothing will be perfect but this is about the best we got.
If you are going to come out and say “offensive line ratings DON’T MATTER AT ALL” then clearly much different than this as this does not come close to proving this statement. I of course however have already spent more than enough time answering exactly that yesterday just up above.
take an offensive line group (10 of them), make all of them 6’5″ 300lbs. Make 5 of them have 99 PBK 99 PB footwork 99 PB str 99 str. have the other 5 with 75 PBK 75 pb footwork, 75 pass block str, and 75 str, since that is roughly the range of offensive linemen ratings that most people would ever play at OLine. You could do them at 12 across if you want more drastic results… but no one is going to ever play a 12 ovr lineman.
Load the Run and Shoot Playbook and select Gun – Empty (its 5 wide), 4 verticals. Use just that play for the test because it is a long pass play and there is absolutely no one on the field who can help or effect anything. That one play is your control. Run the play 50 times and time it with group A the 99s. Take the times and add them up and divide that by 50 to get the average time. Do it again with group B the 75s. Add them up. Divide it by 50. That would give you a clearer answer, where player size, strength, and pass blocking ratings are all the important factors. You could go back and see if STR matters or Stamina even, that would be another interesting test, how much does having low stamina effect pass blocking. But to test that you probably would have to go into a play now game mode and no huddle a few times then run the test, which is a long process.
You definitely need to use a pass rusher without abilities. Von miller has edge threat which gives him auto wins against anybody. You need to do a test that is looking at players without abilities. This is a very misleading test.
Wait so you are cool that Von Miller can’t ever be stopped even by a 99OVR player in everything cause he has a power up? Lol this aint supposed to be Mario Brothers.
I don’t know how reading any of this would give you the impression that he would be cool with any of that. Given the title of the actual post I would imagine his post is in complete reference to offensive line ratings not matter at all.
proves enough to me only thing id like to see if this on all madden sim mode and if it holds true im about to make some trades in the off season
Playing online H2H the Bears can’t get near the QB rushing 4 or 5 . The edge rusher will literally be engaged with a O-linemen back turned bumping into the QB while he completes a Deep pass to Tyrek Hill for a TD. I know the bears suck but at least honor the higher skill players on the team. Another thing is that the LB are to fast on 3-4 odd . And the zero man defenders are telepathic…. That’s the nano blitz the breaking the A.I.
Only in Madden would they not allow a one armed player to switch positions in the name of realism, but you can move your punter to right tackle and not miss a beat.