The Running Game

With the addition of the Truck Stick along with improved blocking by the offensive lineman the running game has taken a huge leap this year. Put it this way… I ran sweeps and some of them actually worked! I ran plays with the Tackle or Tight End pulling and they worked! It was great. The Truck Stick which is similar to the hit stick just used on offense this time can be a force to be reckon with especially with a power running back in the backfield. Time will tell if it’s to effective or not. You have to hit it pretty early so sometimes there isn’t enough time to get it to work. Some of the guys were doing well with a power running game and didn’t seem to have to pass very much. Hopefully the new stamina system will balance things with a strong running back. If the stamina works right he will be tired if he has 25 or 30 carries by the 4th quarter. The improvement of the offensive line blocking will be noticeable the first time you run the ball. The lineman turn there backs away from the hole to create a seal and it helps with inside runs greatly. All in all I have to admit I didn’t run much as I was worried about getting the vision and precision passing down. I did however run enough to know that it’s improved greatly. I was also hoping to see a huge improvement to the play action plays. What I found was that it’s not an automatic sack and I got them to work a lot out of a single back formation but I would still like to see the running backs block better after the fake and pick up LB’s quicker.

Online

Nathan got a PS2 online for us to go through the menus to look at things. I thank him for doing that as he had to jump through many hoops to do so. If you have seen NCAA 06 online then you already know the look and feel. It looked about the same to me. They do have the EA locker which has 8MB of space and allows you to upload about any type of game save. There is also an option “Spawn Game” which refers to the way they have enabled people to play an online franchise. It’s not a true online Franchise but it’s a way for people to do one until something better is available. Hopefully in the Next Gen games an online Franchise will be available. For now it looks like what will happen is you hit Spawn Game and it opens a window for you to point to the Franchise file. I assume then it will launch that Franchise and when you are done it saves it back to your online locker. What I do wonder is how a draft is going to work. It would take a lot of time to go through a draft with multiple people saving and then waiting for their next pick. Hopefully the hardcore franchise guys will test this out when the game hits the shelves and give everybody directions on the best way to do this.

Slide Protection – Pass Blocking

With the new vision and precision this option is a must have. Learn how to use it early and often and lower your QB’s sack total. I started using this option a lot on Thursday while playing VG Cobra. He was overloading one side of the field to bring the heat. When I would use the slide protection and choose that side of the field it was an amazing difference. If I used slide protection to the left and rolled out slightly to the right I seemed to have all the time in the world. I had no real rhythm with the passing yet so I wasn’t able to capitalize big on all the time I had. Even without using the slide protection the easy quick pressure problem of last year has been rectified. I am referring to the defensive audible of spreading your defensive line and then making an adjustment to also make them crash wide (triangle and up on the right stick). The offensive lineman pick up on this quickly and make a quick step to the outside to cut the D-lineman off. If you see your opponent spread the line you should still use the slide protection outside which is up on the D-pad. Overall I thought the pass protection was very much improved from last year which is great because I think we are going to need that little bit of extra time to adjust to the vision and precision passing. One thing that still needs some work is the AI blocking of the Running Backs. They need to be better at picking up blitzing Linebackers especially on play action plays.