A simulated season of Madden NFL 19 created some interesting takeaways.
Madden is a staple in football. Perhaps there isn’t another sports game in the modern era of gaming that has captivated both gaming enthusiasts and sports fans alike. There is something surreal yet familiar about holding your given system’s controller in your hands and moving your fingers and thumbs across buttons and control pads to feverishly will your favorite superstars and role-players to carry out the plays that you’ve called. It’s the thrill of playing football — it’s the outdoor two-hand touch that blossomed into tackle and became streetball, the recreational and intramural flag football leagues that, after ten gruesome in-house games, yielded a champion that solely held bragging rights until the next season — it is all of this, all on a disk or downloaded to your preferred console, at your fingertips.
Simply, Madden has the ability to literally make the untouchable touchable by bringing you into the game, immersing you into what it is to be a player, coach, and fan all in one.
And with that in mind, and the 2018 NFL season steadily creeping up on us, the brass of who is who and what is what when it comes to professional football nomenclature is completely and holistically captured within the simulated counterparts of the real-life players and the Any Given Sunday festivity that is football. What happens in Madden, or should we say, could happen in Madden, is and can be viewed as what could happen in real life (remember the so-called Madden Curse?). Well, just for fun — or maybe not — a simulated 2018 Madden season ran and some interesting plot points occurred, noteworthy mentions to say the least, according to Yahoo Sports.
Some of the gems from this simulated season include The Cleveland Browns making the playoffs, the Jacksonville Jaguars winning the Super Bowl, and Tom Brady retiring at the end of the season with everyone finally breathing a huge sigh of relief.
While those were strange, there were some more fun results. Rob Gronkowski led the league with 106 receptions, while the Detroit Lions completely owned the NFC North with a 9-5-2 record (no other team there managed to hit a winning record), and the San Francisco 49ers made the playoffs!
However, again, this is only Madden and while life can be stranger than fiction there is no guarantee that the two will intersect, or that life will imitate “art.” What the Madden 19 simulation does do for us sports fanatics and NFL diehards in conjunction to everyday gamers, or just Madden-gamers, is remind us that there’s nothing quite like football, and there’s only one NFL. Whether virtual or real, we have to get ready for some football!