Every year, football fans and gamers join together to play the latest EA Sports ‘Madden’ game.
One of the best parts about the game is seeing former college stars make their first appearances in the games. While the rankings are usually the most controversial aspect, there are sometimes debates over if the player in the video game looks any thing like the real player.
It’s basically unanimously agreed upon that Jones’ video game character looks absolutely nothing like him.
Jones has short blonde-is hair and no beard.
The Madden 22 version of Jones looks a bit more like Mose Schrute, Dwight Schrute’s cousin from ‘The Office.’
It’s a running joke in the gaming community that developers of the Madden video game franchise aren’t the best when designing the appearances of rookies. So, no one is usually surprised when they see the draft picks in the game for the first time.
However, pictures of Patriots’ first-round pick Mac Jones from this year’s version of the game seem to show a middle-aged man rather than a 22-year-old.
Instead of his blonde hair and clean-shaven face, Madden 22’s Jones has dark brown hair and just one of the worst neckbeards you will ever see. This is without mentioning the atrocious hairline they gave him.
Just look at this picture shared by 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Toucher and Rich show on Twitter:
It would be completely reasonable for Jones to march down to EA Sports headquarters and demand an apology. Although, I guess it’s better than the time they made Christian McCaffrey the wrong race.
Hopefully, Mac Jones wasn’t looking forward to seeing himself in Madden for the first time.
We’re still over a month away from the release of Madden 22, but some lucky gamers have been able to play the beta version of the game and screenshots are starting to leak out on the internet.
One of those screenshots featured a look at Patriots first-round pick Mac Jones, who will be making his first appearance in the video game series. Well, I’m not even sure this counts. The “Mac Jones” who appears in Madden 22 doesn’t look anything like the actual Mac Jones. Instead, this virtual Jones looks more like the guy who played Marv in the Home Alone movies.
This is what the real Mac Jones looks like, by the way…
Paul Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports
I’m assuming that photo was taken shortly after Mac saw what he looked like in the new Madden. I’d be furious too.
The release date is still over a month away and this could very well be a placeholder used until EA is able to get a proper face scan of Jones, so maybe we should cut them some slack. But how do you not have a better “generic white guy” option to choose? Jones is THE generic white guy!
Anyway, fans in Boston might get a kick out of playing with a quarterback who looks just like them, so maybe this was a genius marketing strategy by the Madden team.
Madden 22 drops on August 20. Will EA do Mac Jones justice by then? The world waits with bated breath.
The Madden team has revealed the new upgrades to franchise mode. It’s a good start but we have some suggestions to make it even better.
Information on Madden 22 continues to roll out. A week after the cover reveal and the first trailer for the game, the folks at EA dropped an in-depth video on the upgrades made to the game’s franchise mode, which has largely been neglected over the past few years much to the dismay of customers.
To the credit of the game’s developers, after fans complained about the franchise mode being ignored in last year’s game, the Madden team promised upgrades for this year’s version of the game. Based on the five-minute video EA dropped on Tuesday, that promise has been fulfilled, with the mode getting a complete overhaul…
Deep Dive into Franchise Improvements coming to #Madden22:
☑️ Franchise Staff ☑️ Talent Trees ☑️ Weekly Strategy ☑️ Season Engine & More! pic.twitter.com/DSfRoEgwvI
This is certainly a good start; but, hopefully, that is all it is and the mode continues to receive this type of attention in the years to come. I’ve come up with some ways the Madden team could build upon this foundation to give gamers a more realistic franchise experience.
Player ratings will begin being released starting July 29, so here are my top five rated players for the Falcons ahead of the Madden 22 release.
Fans around the league have caught their first glimpse of the upcoming Madden NFL video game from Electronic Arts. Putting your feelings for the game aside, more often than not, it’s the player ratings that stir the biggest debates among fans. For nearly a decade, wide receiver Julio Jones has been the Falcons’ highest-rated player. Now that Jones is gone, it opens the door for the next generation of Atlanta players to get their due.
Player ratings won’t be released until July 29, so here are the five Falcons I believe will have the highest ratings in this year’s game.
There’s a screenshot of an early peek at what former Ohio State and current Chicago Bears QB Justin Fields looks like in Madden ’22. Look.
Former Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields is hoping he’ll take the NFL by storm this fall and winter, and so are many Chicago Bears fans. Heck, there are quite a few Buckeye fans that are also pulling for the former Heisman finalist to light up opponents that come to the Windy City when he gets his chance under center.
We’ll have to wait to see when that happens, but soon, you can at least use him to sling passes all over opposing defenses in Madden 22. The wildly popular NFL franchise video game by EA Sports is set to release on August 20, but before that, they are providing us with some teasers and trailers to get things going to a boil.
In fact, there’s already a teaser screenshot of Justin Fields in his Chicago Bears uniform as he looks in Madden 22. If you haven’t seen it yet, we’ve got it for you below thanks to the Twitter account of B/R Gridiron.
I have to say, the creative folks and programmers at EA Sports generally do a pretty good job, and this representation of Fields is pretty spot on. If you are like me, you are already planning a way to dominate the rest of the virtual football universe with Fields at the helm.
Peter Schrager’s bid for Dolphins ‘Madden 22’ cover falls short
The latest cover athletes for EA Sports’ Madden 22 are a pair of familiar faces for any football fan. Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes will grace the cover of this year’s game — two “GOATs” (greatest of all-time) at the quarterback position. But before this week’s reveal of Brady and Mahomes, the gaming company teased the cover with an image of two literal goats, kicking off plenty of speculation as to who would actually be gracing the cover. And while Brady and Mahomes are a fine choice, we personally would have loved to see Peter Schrager’s suggestion come to be reality instead.
This, of course, is a continuation of the romance between NFL Network’s ‘Good Morning Football’ and Van Ginkel going back to this past season. After Van Ginkel’s bright flashes of play midway through the season, he was declared the show’s “MVP, hero and Good Morning Football legend.”
We talk about the @MiamiDolphins heading to the playoffs, their Week 17 matchup against the Bills, the relationship between Fitzpatrick & Tua, his NFL headshot & more! pic.twitter.com/OqVvLqFbE7
As fun as it would actually be for Van Ginkel, of all members of the Dolphins, to actually grace the cover of Madden, that suggestion would be the greatest upset of all-time. There has not been a single Dolphins player to be featured on the cover of the game, which first debuted in 1988. The best chance Miami would have had along the way? Dan Marino, of course. But his career ran parallel to when Madden himself was featured on the cover. 2001 was the first year that the former coach was not on the cover himself and that honor went to Titans running back Eddie George.
Perhaps Dolphins running back Ricky Williams would have been a good choice in the mid-2000s, but Williams retired in the middle of his physical prime before making a comeback and other league stars were chosen over him during his first two years with Miami.
Van Ginkel on the cover? That’d be cool. But at this point we’d simply settle for a Dolphin. Any Dolphin.
Peter Schrager’s bid for Dolphins ‘Madden 22’ cover falls short
The latest cover athletes for EA Sports’ Madden 22 are a pair of familiar faces for any football fan. Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes will grace the cover of this year’s game — two “GOATs” (greatest of all-time) at the quarterback position. But before this week’s reveal of Brady and Mahomes, the gaming company teased the cover with an image of two literal goats, kicking off plenty of speculation as to who would actually be gracing the cover. And while Brady and Mahomes are a fine choice, we personally would have loved to see Peter Schrager’s suggestion come to be reality instead.
This, of course, is a continuation of the romance between NFL Network’s ‘Good Morning Football’ and Van Ginkel going back to this past season. After Van Ginkel’s bright flashes of play midway through the season, he was declared the show’s “MVP, hero and Good Morning Football legend.”
We talk about the @MiamiDolphins heading to the playoffs, their Week 17 matchup against the Bills, the relationship between Fitzpatrick & Tua, his NFL headshot & more! pic.twitter.com/OqVvLqFbE7
As fun as it would actually be for Van Ginkel, of all members of the Dolphins, to actually grace the cover of Madden, that suggestion would be the greatest upset of all-time. There has not been a single Dolphins player to be featured on the cover of the game, which first debuted in 1988. The best chance Miami would have had along the way? Dan Marino, of course. But his career ran parallel to when Madden himself was featured on the cover. 2001 was the first year that the former coach was not on the cover himself and that honor went to Titans running back Eddie George.
Perhaps Dolphins running back Ricky Williams would have been a good choice in the mid-2000s, but Williams retired in the middle of his physical prime before making a comeback and other league stars were chosen over him during his first two years with Miami.
Van Ginkel on the cover? That’d be cool. But at this point we’d simply settle for a Dolphin. Any Dolphin.
On Thursday morning, football fans everywhere got their first look at EA Sports’ Madden 22 video game.
On Thursday morning, football fans everywhere got their first look at EA Sports’ Madden 22 video game. The preview of this year’s edition also gave Falcons fans a virtual glimpse of the team’s first-round pick, Kyle Pitts, making his debut at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Madden 22 has an expected release date of August 17, which is just two months away. Given the game’s history, we can expect the release of the top rookie ratings to come in early July. Pitts is a lock to be among the highest-rated players from this year’s draft.
Last year, Madden’s top rookie tight end was Cole Kmet, who was given an initial rating of 70 overall. Screenrant projects the Pitts will have an 81 overall rating.
Madden 22 sounds like it will be a lot like past versions of the game with a few cosmetic upgrades.
The new Madden cover dropped today and it will be Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes gracing it this year. That comes as a shock to absolutely no one after EA teased the reveal with a photo of two goats. Also not a shock: The underwhelming new features that were revealed along with the cover on Thursday.
Now, it is early in the process and maybe EA has more in store for customers, but it sounds like Madden 22 will be a lot like past versions of the game save for some cosmetic upgrades that have been recycled from the last truly great football video game the company produced, NCAA Football 14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htZxwfGARGk
The big back-of-the-box feature coming to the game this year is an enhanced gameday experience meant to create a real home-field advantage in the game. Game Informer has more details on what to expect:
“Crowd noise can make it tough for opposing quarterbacks to hear the playcall, and new characteristics for each stadium grant special bonuses to the home team and apply various gameplay modifiers based on the location. For example, in the thin air of Denver, throws and kicks will fly further for both teams, while the visiting team will struggle to catch their breath, taking a hit to short-term stamina. Other examples include the Windy City of Chicago making it tougher for kicks to fly straight, Vikings players getting a red zone boost as the “Skol” chant rings through the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. And the notorious 12th Man of Seattle rattles visiting players, making it so their pre-snap play art is squiggly.”
These new gameplay modifiers — they got wind y’all! — aren’t really all that new and some of the ones that are new to the Madden series, like Seattle’s crowd making pre-snap art “squiggly” is a thing we got in college football games three generations ago.
Game Informer’s Brian Shea brought that up to Madden produce Clint Oldenburg and he didn’t really push back against the notion that EA is recycling old features…
“Gameday Momentum, it really has its origins in what we had in NCAA for sure, but it’s modernized and one of the key pieces of feedback we got way back when we made an NCAA game was it was a little too ambiguous and there wasn’t a lot of different objectives to know when you unlocked certain things … So that’s what we really attacked with Gameday Momentum, is giving you the proper feedback to know exactly what you need to do and what you’re going to unlock and when you’re going to unlock it. It’s a modernized version of that blast from the past, if I may put it that way.”
I’m not saying these features aren’t a good addition to the game. But the fact that they are headlining the big announcement is more than concerning for those of us who just want to play an accurate simulation of professional football.
One thing that will excite those of us looking for a more true-to-life experience is the announcement of an upgraded franchise mode. But the details that we got Thursday sound like more rehashed ideas that won’t actually improve the experience. For instance, EA finally put assistant coaches back in the game.
“The new Franchise Staff feature lets you build, grow, and customize four coaching staff positions using RPG-style skill trees. Using experience earned through play, you can develop your head coach, player personnel, offensive coordinator, and defensive coordinator with more than 60 different talents.”
If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably played NCAA 14, which had the same feature nearly a decade ago…
A screenshot from NCAA Football 14
EA says that teams’ strategies will mimic what we see in real life but it wasn’t made clear if assistant coaches will have any effect on that. Apparently, if you play against the Ravens, you’ll see a heavy dosage of run plays but it’s not clear if Greg Roman being replaced by a more pass-heavy offensive coordinator will change how Baltimore plays. Or if a change in the personnel department will affect how teams manage their rosters. Will trading with the Raiders feel similar to trading with the Patriots or will there be a stark difference?
I’m just going to assume staff changes won’t have much of an effect on those things because that would be a pretty cool feature worth advertising and we heard nothing about it.
There wasn’t really a whole lot revealed about any gameplay improvements, which is another red flag. The novelty of these more cosmetic features will wear off after a couple of games and won’t be able to mask a poor on-field product.
Admittedly, I’ve been pretty harsh in this blog but I will say that I had a lot of fun with the PS5 version of Madden 21. In terms of gameplay experience, it was the best version of the game I’ve ever played — even if wasn’t a massive leap forward. I was hoping it was a jumping-off point and another year of development on the next-gen consoles would only improve the gameplay — especially the more strategic aspects of it — but the lack of info on that front erased most of my optimism.
It is very possible that I’m being a reactionary idiot and there will be significant gameplay and franchise mode updates that will be revealed later in the promotional cycle. In fact, I would be ecstatic if that were the case and I typed up all this up for no good reason. I just want a good football game, man.
