How to Play Defense in Madden 08 - Learn about man to man coverage in madden 08

Hey this is Phil Coonrod on behalf of Expert Village, today we're going to talk about Madden 08. Okay up next we're going to talk about man coverage, and to best illustrate this I'm going to go to my dollar formation. That's a really, really blitz heavy formation. And, a lot of your blitz plays are going to be man coverage. What man coverage means is, a defensive player has, is going to be guarding only a certain wide receiver, or certain running back; he has a one-man responsibility on the field. So, let's take a look at a play here. This is two-man under. What the two-man means, what the two means, is cover two. You'll see clearly that your safeties have deep half responsibilities. Then these X's in the Madden game, the X's that don't have a line coming from them, or a bubble coming from them, that means they have man coverage. So in this particular play we have two guys on both of the sides, both of the outsides, with man coverage. Your far X on the right will have man coverage on the number one receiver to the outside. The next X in will have man coverage on the number two receiver on the inside; might be a slot receiver, might be a tight end, and it might be a running back depending on what formation they come out in. Same thing on the left side, the outside X has man on the outside receiver, your inside X has man on if it's a slot, or a tight end, or a running back. That's basically what man means in this game. I'll look for another play to maybe illustrate man. Here's another blitz play. You'll notice that you have a couple line backers blitzing, and you have just the one safety. What that one deep means, is that you just have one safety back on coverage, so your other safety that has an X just by itself without a line or a bubble, he also has man coverage, and by the looks of it he's going to have the third receiver to the right; which is probably more often than not going to be a running back or a tight end. Maybe they have a trips formation out to the right, he would guy the inside guy on the trips formation. So, man coverage basically means they have one man responsibility; they follow him where ever they go, they press him, try to knock them off their routes, but they have that one man responsibility. So that's man coverage.