It’s the fourth quarter, a comeback trail is on, an animated Tampa Bay Buccaneers offence stands at the thirty-five-yard line on the Kansas City Chiefs half of the field. The Bucs require a touchdown to collect a victory; the clock ticks down with a mere twenty seconds. Can Tom Brady and his team face adversity after reaching second and twenty? The next move made is of the utmost importance. Bright lights, screaming fans and my cousin Clyde was staring me dead in the eye, chanting, “you suck, you suck”. I have no idea what play to make, I am no professional football coach, but luckily for me, I can ask Madden.
A perfect example of what occurs when a Madden contest becomes too close to reality, but also laughable to Madden experts and Football masterminds alike – simply put, asking Madden is for amateurs. But this does trigger the thought of Madden gaming and how its assistance can genuinely elevate the tactical mind of your average Football fan.
Since its first arrival to our television sets in the late eighties/early nineties, Madden NFL has come a long way. Graphics are near life-like, and concepts have been altered to an intense level. So much so that fans are beginning to understand what is happening on the actual field.
The overbearing nature of Football tactics can often scare the life out of your average fan. Still, with more than thirty years in the gaming market, Madden has become the essential game and distant relative of the real-life sport, with uncle Fantasy Football looming in the background. The short Football season is never enough, leaving us craving for more. Still, since 1988 Madden has supplied the ability to run hundreds of games, dare I say thousands in the off-season; it has become a staple amongst NFL households alongside the addictive nature of Fantasy Football.
Assisting your Fantasy Football with Madden NFL
Well, simply put, since Madden introduced its Draft Champions and Fantasy Football modes, gamers have been given the ability to mock-up a roster that can be used for their Fantasy teams outside of Madden NFL.
Sure, with many prognosticators, there’s enormous room for improvement, but, at the same time, you could undoubtedly achieve worse – such as attempting to follow trends in online betting; it is never a wise idea to imitate the masses; why? Because the masses are more often wrong than they are right.
The simulation feature will never be an accurate indicator of what is to come, and it can be entirely off the mark. Still, each year as a new Madden NFL game is released, the technology is starting to surpass the average mind and knowledge of a regular Football fan.
A Harvard student study once gave some interesting insights into how precise Madden was (bear in mind this experiment took place five years ago). The student was able to certify the relationship between Madden player ratings and fantasy football success. He calculated correlation coefficients between Madden’s positional rankings and the ESPN standard scoring positional rankings at season’s end overall and for each particular position. He then repeated this method with ESPN’s preseason positional rankings and the end of season positional rankings to establish a control group.
The correlation coefficient with ESPN’s preseason rankings and the season’s final rankings ended up being higher in every category than what Madden’s ranking and season-end rankings had provided. In layman’s terms, ESPN rankings were more accurate and favourable predicting outcomes for fantasy football success than Madden’s NFL rankings had provided; they proved a more robust linear relationship with fantasy football positions rankings. However, Madden ratings gave an accurate reading towards the quarterback position giving the game a stronger correlation than ESPN. But ESPN displayed the most potent connections from three out of five categories and was the winning method overall. Still, Madden was not a failure, and I can only presume if this experiment were tried and tested in 2021, it would provide more than a moderate correlation for each position group than it did in 2016.