Hey Madden Nation, my name is Larry Richart, and I am one of the designers on the gameplay team working on Madden NFL 10 this year. Just to give you a little background on me, I have been at Tiburon for around 9 years, and this will be my 6th year working on gameplay and the Madden playbooks. Before joining the EA Sports team, I attended the University of Florida and played quarterback for the Gators. In fact, many of the QB animations you have seen in the game over the years from handoffs to passes have been from me getting in the motion capture suit up at our Vancouver studio.
Here’s a good photo of me running for my life against Citadel in 1998.
We had one overarching goal to reach when it came to playbooks this year: “our teams MUST play like their real life counterparts do on Sundays”. With that in mind, we have focused on creating several unique formations and plays that are team and playbook specific. Anthony White (another designer / playbook guru) and I have spent countless hours watching game film on every team in the NFL to try and find some of these unique plays and formations. But we also knew that it wasn’t enough to just add some correct plays and formations into the playbooks, we also really had to change up the way the teams called these plays as well. In future blogs, we’re going to touch on the technology we built and tuning we did to hit that goal, as well as more detail on the formations and plays we have added to make the most authentic version of Madden NFL in history.
But before we go too deep on what we’ve added so far, we felt that we needed to go ahead and let everyone get a sneak peek at the formation that everyone has been asking about. The Wildcat! Yes, folks, the Wildcat will be in Madden NFL 10 in full force, including many new animations that were specifically motion captured to support it. Today we will show the Wildcat in action, specifically the Jet Sweep, Power, and Counter plays.
Throughout the season we have witnessed many different teams use variations of the Wildcat, but no one used it more effectively and extensively as the Miami Dolphins. In the Dolphins version of this offense, they placed running back Ronnie Brown at the “Quarterback” position. They then lined up running back Ricky Williams at slot receiver, and often times brought him in motion to either receive or fake a handoff from Brown. The Dolphins also use an unbalanced line by moving the left tackle over to the right side of the formation and lining him up next to the right tackle. The Tight End moves down to replace the left tackle and is still an eligible receiver because he is on the end of the line and uncovered (You’ll see a good video example of this below) by another receiver.
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The Wildcat had its coming out party in a week 3 matchup between the Dolphins and the New England Patriots with Ronnie Brown putting up a remarkable five touchdowns. What was even more remarkable was that four of those touchdowns came out of the Wildcat formation. The first play we are going to breakdown is the “Power” play. On this play, the slot receiver will come in motion from the left and fake the Jet Sweep, and Brown will follow his pulling guard through a hole on the right. Here is a video from the Dolphins-Patriots game:
We actually could have just added this formation and play to the game in our play designer tool using old/existing handoff animations and movements. But this year we really wanted to go the extra mile and make sure that the Wildcat looked totally perfect and authentic, so we knew we had to motion capture specific animations. When capturing these animations, they took a surprising amount of takes to get correct (6!). It can be quite difficult to get the timing down, mainly because it’s not like these motion capture actors have “practiced” this play together or anything. It’s kind of an interesting dynamic because we basically have to create a little mini football practice session for these guys – we break down the film, go over the basics, and then let them try it a few times to get it right. Even though these guys are in an elaborate studio with millions of dollars of equipment around them, wearing state of the art suits with sensors all over their bodies, often times it’s just like they’re back in practice and we’re the coaching staff. So here it is:
Now check out a video of this same play in action in Madden NFL 10:
The next play is the Wildcat “Jet Sweep”. To the defense before the snap, everything looks the same as the Power play. However, Brown will give the ball to Ricky Williams as the FB will lead him around the corner. Here is the Jet Sweep from the Week 3 game:
Now check out a video of this same play in action in Madden NFL 10:
There is another wrinkle to the Wildcat that we have added to the Dolphins playbook - the “Counter” play. Just like the other two plays everything looks the same to the defense before the snap. When the play starts, Brown will fake the handoff to Williams on the Jet Sweep and instead of following the strength of his line to the right, he will cut back left behind a pulling guard. Here is this play in action the Week 12 matchup between the Pats and Dolphins:
Again, here is the motion capture of the new animation that was required for us to accurately portray the “Counter” play (where the QB runs to the left after the fake). This one took a few less takes than the first once they got the concept down.
Now check out a video of this same play in action in Madden NFL 10:
The final play that we are going to talk about is the “PA Jet Sweep”. As you might guess, this play looks just like all the others do before the snap. As the play starts, Brown will fake to Williams on the Jet Sweep and then roll out to the left. As he does this, the Tight End (Anthony Fasano) will release on a corner route where Brown hits him for the easy score. Here is the PA Jet Sweep in action:
Using ANT (our in-house animation tool) we were able to string together the animations captured above to create this play without the need of custom motion capture. Seeing that the Dolphins also just drafted Pat White to seemingly use in this style offense, we figured we'd give you a first look at Pat on the Dolphins running this very deadly play against the Jets. Check out Pat White's first career touchdown pass in Madden NFL 10 out of the Wildcat:
To those that may be wondering, the Wildcat will not be exclusive to the Dolphins playbook. As I mentioned earlier, several other teams have used a version of this new trend. We won’t talk about which other teams will have it just yet, but as we move forward closer to launch and keep talking about how we’ve made each team’s playbooks more authentic than ever we’ll find out at that time.
Well, that’s it for the Wildcat. I hope this was informative and gets you a little bit stoked about using the Wildcat in Madden NFL 10! We are looking forward to your feedback on what other teams could and should potentially have a “Wildcat” type formation in their playbook, so feel free to post away in the comments section or in the EA Sports forums. Until next time…
- Larry Richart
Designer, Madden NFL 10