Continuing on in our series of the best archetypes to upgrade in Madden’s franchise mode, today we are covering tight ends.
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.
Tight End Archetypes
There are 3 archetypes you can use your skill points on to upgrade tight ends in Madden.
- Vertical Threat
- Possession
- Blocking
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:
Vertical Threat
Madden Claims: DRR, MRR, RLS
Reality: MRR, CIT, DRR
Possession
Madden Claims: CIT, SRR, RLS
Reality: SRR, CIT, MRR
Blocking
Madden Claims: RBK, IBK, LBK
Reality: RBK, RBP, LBK
Our Recommendation For Upgrading Tight Ends
Tight end is one of the clearest cut positions for which archetype to upgrade.
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.
Our recommendation for the best TE archetype is is Vertical Threat.
Why Vertical Threat Is The Best Archetype For TEs
After running our experiment on tight ends, it became pretty clear that the Vertical Threat archetype focuses mostly on attributes contributing to more of a receiving tight end and the Blocking archetype focuses mostly on attributes related to blocking tight ends.
The Possession archetype is really just a middle ground between the Vertical Threat and Blocking.
Vertical Threat stands out as the best archetype tight ends because of a few reasons.
- The highest expected value for individual attribute increases
- The highest chance to get a speed increase
- By far the most receiving related upgrades of any of the archetypes.
Highest Expected Value For Total Attribute Increases
We did 50 tests for each TE 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 Vertical Threat was higher than any of the other archetypes.
- Vertical Threat: 432 rating increases on 50 attempts. Expected Value = 8.64
- Possession: 398 rating increases on 50 attempts. Expected Value = 7.96
- Blocking: 273 rating increases on 50 attempts. Expected Value = 5.46
One thing that stands out is that tight end increases provide a ton of individual rating increases in order to move up +1 overall.
Highest Expected Value For Important Attribute Increases
If someone asked you to make a list of the most important attributes for tight ends in Madden, it might look something like this:
- Speed
- Acceleration
- Catch
- Catch In Traffic
- Spectacular Catch
- Medium Route Running
- Deep Route Running
- Awareness
- Jumping
In all of those individual ratings, the Vertical Threat Archetype has the highest expected value. This makes it an absolute no brainer.
Final Rankings, Raw Data, And Conclusion
Tight end is one of the most straightforward archetype upgrades in the game. You should be upgrading Vertical Threat.
Here are final rankings based on how good each upgrade is:
- Vertical Threat
- Possession
- Blocking
That being said, there are exceedingly few situations where it would make sense to ever upgrade the Possession archetype when you could just instead upgrade the Vertical Threat archetype.
The one situation where it might make sense is if you had a tight end who had ratings like 99 Vertical Threat, 96 Possession, 90 Blocking. In that case, if you are still just trying to get the best bang for your buck it would make sense to upgrade Possession instead of Blocking.
In terms of practical rankings, our final rankings are:
- Vertical Threat
- Blocking
- Possession
This takes into account the fact that there are situations where you may want to develop a blocking tight end instead of a receiving tight end. Even though you won’t get the best return on your skill points, it can then make sense to move the Blocking archetype up 1 spot.
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.