New to madden, need help!

Hi I am new to madden and I have been having difficulty winning my games. I didn't really have an issue winning games at first, but when I started matching up against better players, the skill difference was clear.  After getting cooked left and right I tried to learn off youtube and e-books but no success. I don't have a clear understanding on how to properly run offense and defense which is why I am looking for easy to learn schematics with simple user adjustments that will help me be win more games. Thanks!

Pick a formation. Gun tight bunch is pretty strong. Pick like 5 passing plays that you like out of it. You wanna make sure it has a good inside zone run as well. Run your 5 plays nonstop and practice them against cover 1  man, cover 2 man, cover 3, and cover 4 zones. Remember it's better to have 5 plays mastered so you can make better reads, than running 25 plays half-assed. You will eventually (if you pay attention pre-play) learn to recognize the coverages and the soft spots to attack in each of them. You can use practice mode to do this (helpful since you can tell the defense what play or formation to run) but solo battles and challenges can be efficient modes to practice in since you'll earn other bonuses along the way.

Defense: Idk what type of resources you have in your lineup but upgrade your Eric Berry captain and put him at sublb 1 under specialists. You want to be playing as Eric pretty much every play. Practice running cover 3 sky, cover 4 quarters, cover 1 robber, and cover 2 man out of your Nickel set. At first sometimes you'll take yourself out of the play but it's a learning curve and will help you in the long run. At first just try and take away one route from each one of their passing plays (you'll be surprised at how many picks this can generate especially when the person planned on throwing to the person you decided to cover, either you pick off that route or they may panic and throw it into coverage elsewhere on the field.) With run plays there will usually be a couple gaps in the O-line the opposing rb will want to run through, and being able to shoot those gaps with your user will really help your defense. It's really awesome when they lose confidence in their run game and you can just sit back and try and make picks. When you get good at recognizing weaknesses in certain offensive formations you will learn when to throw in a man blitz. (For instance if I see someone come out with an empty backfield and I can afford to take a small risk I'll run a mid blitz out of Nickel double mug. Base align and press my DBs, pinch my D-line, and a lot of times I can run free on their QB with my user.)

If I could go back in the past, that's what I would tell myself when I first started taking madden a little bit more seriously.

LeftHandUp said:

Pick a formation. Gun tight bunch is pretty strong. Pick like 5 passing plays that you like out of it. You wanna make sure it has a good inside zone run as well. Run your 5 plays nonstop and practice them against cover 1  man, cover 2 man, cover 3, and cover 4 zones. Remember it's better to have 5 plays mastered so you can make better reads, than running 25 plays half-assed. You will eventually (if you pay attention pre-play) learn to recognize the coverages and the soft spots to attack in each of them. You can use practice mode to do this (helpful since you can tell the defense what play or formation to run) but solo battles and challenges can be efficient modes to practice in since you'll earn other bonuses along the way.

Defense: Idk what type of resources you have in your lineup but upgrade your Eric Berry captain and put him at sublb 1 under specialists. You want to be playing as Eric pretty much every play. Practice running cover 3 sky, cover 4 quarters, cover 1 robber, and cover 2 man out of your Nickel set. At first sometimes you'll take yourself out of the play but it's a learning curve and will help you in the long run. At first just try and take away one route from each one of their passing plays (you'll be surprised at how many picks this can generate especially when the person planned on throwing to the person you decided to cover, either you pick off that route or they may panic and throw it into coverage elsewhere on the field.) With run plays there will usually be a couple gaps in the O-line the opposing rb will want to run through, and being able to shoot those gaps with your user will really help your defense. It's really awesome when they lose confidence in their run game and you can just sit back and try and make picks. When you get good at recognizing weaknesses in certain offensive formations you will learn when to throw in a man blitz. (For instance if I see someone come out with an empty backfield and I can afford to take a small risk I'll run a mid blitz out of Nickel double mug. Base align and press my DBs, pinch my D-line, and a lot of times I can run free on their QB with my user.)

If I could go back in the past, that's what I would tell myself when I first started taking madden a little bit more seriously.

Pretty much this. Something worth learning is certain weaknesses and what works against different coverages. This helps immensely on both sides of the ball. Here are the most important/basic ones:

Man coverage gets cooked by crossing routes. Man blitzes are another story, but mainly most of the time at least 1 route will get pretty open if the rush doesn’t get there fast. 

Cover 2 is weak to deep middle routes that split the safety’s, watch out for post and double move routes 

Cover 3 leaves seams and corner routes open 

Cover 4 is naturally weak to short routes like drags and outs, also watch out for wheel routes 

And unless you have a specific setup for it, it usually isn’t worth running a defense that isn’t one of these(excluding zone blitzes).

Another thing to keep in mind is that defense is just pretty bad this year, and most games between players of equal skill are shootouts. Unless you user them, corner routes will pretty much always get somewhat open. Same with late crossing routes.

Thanks for the feedback! I applied what you guys told me and I started to play better on h2h. Thanks again!

bigislandd said:

Thanks for the feedback! I applied what you guys told me and I started to play better on h2h. Thanks again!

You're welcome. If you have any specific questions you can DM me on here. If you're on Xbox my tag is Graymercy.