Madden NFL 08: Fantasy Draft Part 1

In continuation of my journal entries on Madden NFL 08 I will now venture into the Game Mode known as Franchise Mode. This mode allows the player to control an entire team, such as signing new players, firing coaches and managing prices of tickets. But before we go deeper into this Mode we will be looking at a different aspect of the Franchise Mode – The Fantasy Draft.

In order to understand the Fantasy Draft you need to know what a draft is. In the actual National Football League there is a draft each spring where college players can declare themselves ready to participate and play in the NFL. Based on their overall wins and loses the previous season each team gets to select a player whom they want on their team. The team with the worst record gets the first pick and the last pick in the first round is the Super Bowl winners. However in the Fantasy Draft instead of picking college players you get to choose from all the players in the entire NFL, essentially reshaping every team.

There are several reasons for why the Fantasy Draft was implemented. First off Fantasy Football is a huge deal in the U.S so it would make sense to use this aspect in a football video game. Second, the Fantasy Draft allows the player to almost pick their very own team and they can mold their team in whatever fashion they want – maybe you want a hard-nosed defense so you pick a lot of defensive playmakers in the first few rounds, or maybe you want a Franchise quarterback and build your team around him. Last but not least the Fantasy Draft evens out all the teams. In the actual NFL there are 5 or 10 top teams that almost always win and then a bunch of semi-bad teams that rarely compete for the Superbowl. This is unfortunately a trend that continues in regular Franchise Mode where a few teams will continually dominate the league. With the Fantasy Draft good players are divided among all 32 teams and spread out rather than being stacked in a few teams.

For my Franchise I decided to pick the San Diego Chargers as they’re my favorite team. I got the 32^nd pick in the first round which meant I got the 1^st pick in every second round. I rarely have an overall plan for how my draft will go down and which players I should look for. Normally I base it of what players are available and then determine what direction I want to take my team. Having played the game for several years I know quite a few things about what I like to see in my team as well as knowing which young players become stars later on. I have several key fundamentals that I nearly always follow for my drafts.

-       Building a strong core.

By this I mean that I like to pick a star/playmaker at each level of position. So this means usually a quarterback, runningback, wide receiver, tackle, defensive lineman, linebacker and a cornerback/safety. My belief is that they by having a really strong player at each of these positions will cover for the lacks of my remaining players.  

-       Age and speed.

One of the most common complaints about Madden 08 is the attribute speed and how easy it is to exploit. Basically if you have a very fast receiver it doesn’t really matter how well they can jump or catch as long as he can get enough room to run away from his defender. Likewise if you have a stud linebacker that runs as fast as your grandmother it doesn’t matter whether they have a 99 overall tackling rating. If you are fast you can make up for any other insufficient attributes. So as any other good manager I try to capitalize on this by having very fast players on every position, especially pass rushers, cornerbacks, and receivers.

Although older players usually have a higher overall than their rookie counterparts, veterans have a tendency to get injured or retire within a few years. When I draft I like to make sure that my team will be a top contender each year and not just win the Superbowl once. Therefore I draft young, cheap players with decent attributes that will hopefully evolve into superstars. Often players with low overall ratings are just players that have a low awareness rating and are otherwise perfectly capable of playing good football.