Codes
Mike wasn’t tanking
Reality or Overreaction: Reality
Mike was accused of tanking all of last season
which he denied. He came out firing this season starting 2-0, but now he sits
at 2-2 with a back to back loss vs the Chiefs and Colts. If we dive deeper into
his wins… it was close going into the 4th vs the Dolphins and he ran away with
it at the end. Then vs the Chargers, Herbert had the worst game of his career
(I also had the flu) and it was still close until the end. Mike could easily be
1-3 if it wasn’t for some 4th quarter crumbles. He is also having the worst
passing season I have ever seen from him, Jayden Daniels has 5 TDs and 10 INTs.
I think with all these things combined Mike will have a similar season to last
and will beat the tank allegations.
DK is going to miss the playoff again
Reality or Overreaction: Overreaction
DK had back to back heartbreaking losses to
the Jags CPU and to the Chargers, then followed it up with a blow out loss to
KFMO. Now he is sitting at the bottom of the AFC West at 1-3 with tons of
injuries. I don’t think this is the end though, DK still plays JT, Arod,
Kingmike 2x, Curt, Goose, Cammy… those are 7 games he is favored in then he
also plays the Chargers one more time who he swept last season. So that’s 7-8
games he could easily win… he just has to start winning now.
—
Hypemike
The Eagles will win the NFC East.
Reality or Overreaction: Reality
The NFC East believe it or not is a two man
race right now between the Commanders and the Eagles. Given the roster
differences and user differences, I would say this race is in favor of the
Eagles. We do not know much about the new hire coach for Washington. On the
other hand, the Eagles coach is DANGEROUS when he is locked in. If he locked in
for this whole season I feel like he could win the division. The Cowboys are in
a hole right now and the Giants are still rebuilding thanks to that terrible
Daniel Jones contract they have to deal with.
Trouble in San Francisco.
Reality or Overreaction: Overreaction
Right now the 49ers aren’t starting off too
hot after making the playoffs last cycle. They made it to the divisional round
then took a loss to the Rams I believe. We must realize the 49ers are in one of
the toughest divisions in PML, but their coach is known for always finding a
way to crank out 9 or more Ws when they are locked in. They once again have a
good defense and a superstar RB that fits his playing style. I see them
bouncing back and getting over .500 soon.
—
Arod
At least 2 quarterbacks will lose their
devs this off-season
Reality or Overreaction: Reality
So here is the quartermark check-in on the
interception threshold watch. As of today, entering week 5, there are 5
quarterbacks (Burrow 10, Maye 10, Allen 9, Lawrence 7, & Herbert 7) on pace
for 30 interceptions or more. I will also note, Prescott and Goff are in
dangerous territory as well entering the 5th week of the season. Typically,
users begin to slow things down once they sense danger towards their quarterbacks
dev. However, the top 2 or 3 guys are on pace for 42 interceptions or more,
which is an alarming stat with 13 games left to play. We’ve seen Herbert deal
with injuries, so if he were to go down by some freak chance, his dev is in
serious danger. There are a lot of variables in all this, so anything could
happen. My guess is we have at least 2 casualties to the amended rule this
season.
Zach Wilson will be a superstar quarterback
by end of the season
Reality or Overreaction: Overreaction
As a Jets fan, and Zach Wilson
in-real-life-supporter, I would love to see it. He has all the fixings to be a
solid Madden quarterback between his throw power, accuracies, and his 83 speed
still allows the defense to respect option plays. Hes at an 80 overall as of
today, +11 from the start of the cycle. Hes dethroned Kenny Pickett who
actually gained superstar abilities this off-season. So the Steelers are all
in on Wilson, and play their best football with him under center. Sitting at
normal dev, you have to think the star dev game will come after his next big
game, but will he ever reach superstardom? My answer is no, and only because
the requirements to reach it are sometimes a bit difficult to reach when you do
get the dev game. At age 26, his window is closing and realistically Curt may
get one chance at it, if that. Could he possibly get it in the off-season
randomly like Pickett got it? Sure, but I wouldn’t count on that. As much as
I’d like to see it happen, I think the road to achieve it will be difficult
leaving Curt to rely on his attributes and throw style for the rest of the
cycle.
—
DK
Hypemike has competition in the NFC North
Reality or Overreaction: Reality
Fallen has jumped out to a 4-0 start this year
with his Detroit Lions, and you can really start to see the roster and all of
the pieces coming together. I think the biggest piece of his offense is Jahmyr
Gibbs, and reasonably so as a 22-year-old superstar RB in the league. Although
Wimmy is off to a 1-2 start at the time of this writing, we always know that he
can get back into the mix after a couple of games. However, the Brazil Bears
seem to be struggling with connectivity issues, so we’ll see how that ends up.
Nonetheless, these divisional matchups will be fun to watch, as Fallen has shot
out like a rocket this season with his young crew that is only becoming better
and better.
—
Drama Can Still Win the Division After an
0-4 Start
Reality or overreaction: Reality
I know I touched on this last week, but this
still remains true. He was 0-3 last week, and even after suffering another
defeat to Hypemike’s Green Bay Packers, I still think that there is an avenue
that Drama can explore to win the division. You have HD’s Philadelphia Eagles
and Miles’ Washington Commanders sitting at the top at 2-2. We saw the numbers
Drama was able to put up here against those Packers, so it is not far fetched
to say that he can put a couple games together and take the division. He has
the roster and the division to be able to do it in, it is just a matter of will
he. Only time will tell.
Matigy
Lions are for real
Reality or Overreaction: Reality
Starting off 4-0 is no small feat, since 1990
83.7% of teams who started 4-0 have found themselves in the playoffs. The team
has just been playing well as a whole. Gibbs is carrying a huge workload but
the passing game has been pretty effective with Goff completing almost 75% of
his passes. And so far jamo has not played a game. I think there’s good reason
to think this offense gets even better when their WR1 comes back this next
game. But the main reason this team is 4-0 is because of the defense, ranked bottom
4 last season. They are now a top 7 defense with the addition of Chris jones.
Week 5 they will have the colts and we could see them heading into their week 6
packers game 5-0 and looking to take control of the division.
__
Bengals will figure it out
Reality or overreaction: Overreaction
After a horrible 5-12 season the bengals were
looking to bounce back, keeping burrows dev was huge for new beginnings, but so
far they are 0-4 and have gotten smacked 4 times with the latest coming vs
miles. The offense was able to score 26ppg last szn which isn’t awful but so
far this szn, they are dropping 14 PPG and are the 2nd worst offense in PML.
Which is truly shocking to say for a team that has one of the best QB WR Duos
in the entire league. Burrow has 5 TDs and 10 INTs thru 4 games. The gameplay
is extremely conservative and overall look like they have zero confidence in
dropping back and making the right read. Maybe goose needs to hit up cammy for
some tips..
__
KMFO
It’s all about speed!
Reality or Overreaction: Overreaction
Every offseason we see the same things happen
year after year. In free agency, everyone is competing super high bids to snag
that one really fast LB or fast WR/RB that finds their way into the open
market. Then come draft time, it never fails that multiple guys reach for a
projected late round or undrafted player in the first 2 rounds because they ran
a blazing fast 40. The idea that “you can’t coach speed” and in PML terms, you
can attribute request everything to improve other than the physical attributes,
causes bad football players with great speed to be taken way earlier than they
should every draft. This strategy does pay off once in a while, and in past
Madden cycles it has brought us randomly great players by season 3 or 4. However,
Madden 24 is proving to be a bit different. Not to say speed isn’t important
still, but it’s definitely less important than it ever has been before in
recent Madden games. We are seeing the high rated-low speed players that used
to never produce become much more effective and heavily utilized in this cycle.
LBs can go sideline to sideline without needing 90+ speed. 88spd WRs are
getting open and creating separation. 79spd TEs are making plays (we see you
Tyler Higbee). Speed is no longer the king it once was, and maybe we’ll see a
shift next offseason when people begin to learn that in this madden, the other
ratings mean something, too.
Injuries are a curse this cycle
Reality or overreaction: Overreaction
In a lot of ways, injuries can suck. Losing your
top playmakers as you go into the playoffs can certainly sink a team’s season.
However, these early season injuries can come with their own blessings. Look at
Nef for example. Losing Bijan, and half of his other key players, might be the
best thing for him down the last stretch of the season this year when his team
is healthy. Losing so many important pieces has forced him to do different
things on offense and really develop his passing game since he can’t rely on
juke-box Bijan Robinson and ball control offense to keep games close anymore.
Now all of a sudden, the weapons Nef has in his passing game are showing out
and he is scoring more than he ever has before. This is just one example, but
injuries to key players can really start to open up the offensive and defensive
attacks for players that look for new ways to be successful once their players
they heavily rely upon are no longer on the field.
