How to Slow Down Madden 26 Offenses Like Vic Fangio (and Mike Macdonald)

One of the reasons I started this newsletter was to have it be an outlet for very deep strategy discussion that blends the real world with the video game world.

One of the core tenets for OS in my book has always been that while we want to get better at our games and have fun with them, we want to do it the “right way” in our minds. This means relying less on “cheese” and “money plays” and more on understanding the real sport to accomplish those goals in our video games.

We now have an official OS Account that you all can sign-up for right now. I implore all of you, whether you want to subscribe to a paid tier or not, to go that site and sign-up. Go there, click the “Sign In” button and then use either Discord or your OS name to log-in and connect everything together.

It will make your life easier on the forums and Discord even if you’re just going with the Rookie/free tier. If you somehow have no account on OS or Discord, you can make a totally fresh account at that link as well. You can subscribe to the premium newsletter through your OS account as well if you don’t want to do it here.

And speaking of which, please join the OS Discord.

We may still end up finding “cheese” that works a lot of the time, but if we find that cheese, at least we found it by exposing breakdowns in coverages rather than by simply “rocket catching” our way to wins.

This is why I was stoked when CM Hooe reached out and said he wanted to do some writing for OS. His first newsletter piece was about the Zoom camera, but this week’s newsletter is more in line with what you should probably expect from him moving forward: in-depth breakdowns of real football concepts and how to translate them to your video game football.

Because two-deep safeties are all the rage right now coming off the Seahawks (and Mike Macdonald) using two-deep safety Nickel looks most of the time to dominate offenses and win the Super Bowl — just a year after the Eagles used a similar blueprint — CM Hooe felt it was a good time to explain the philosophies behind this defense and how you can run it right now in this year’s games.

This means he will be explaining the core tenets of the defense to you to start things off (so you can learn real football as well) before getting into the video game examples.

He also points out where real football and the video game football don’t quite align — or at least why it’s more challenging pulling off certain looks — so you can understand what you’re seeing on the real and virtual gridiron.

With that said, I hand it off to him…

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