“Now they’re just running up the score”: Pats fans’ checklist for Madden 09

By Os Davis  |   Monday, June 23, 2008  |  Comments( 4 )

New England Patriots
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Surely more than a few in New England Patriots Land are feeling the itch in their trigger fingers in anticipation of the Aug. 12 release date of EA Sports’ Madden 09. Dreams of a team full of Tecmo Bo Jackson-level players are causing mouths to water all over the six-state area (not to mention among thousands of online players who will swallow their Belichick-hating pride to play as the Patriots) with 55 days to go.

In the meantime, RealFootball365.com offers this handy checklist of must-does for any proper Patriots backer seeking some measure of revenge for the worst 150 seconds of Boston sports this decade. Print it, clip it, affix it to your refrigerator and starting counting the minutes until you can wreak video havoc.

• Run up the score like only EA Sports lets you – you know, with the last-second field goal while up 51-7. This player can’t wait to hear the sound bite they cook up for Chris Collinsworth to spout on the issue, though Al Michaels’ grousing mutter “now they’re just running up the score” will be missed.

• Let Tom Brady (overall rating 99) toss TD after TD in the first half whenever possible. Then throw in San Diego State boy Kevin O’Connell (overall rating 73) and let him hurl a few. Hey, who's gonna stop him?

• Three words for your very first run with the new game: 1972 Miami Dolphins.

• See if the Madden 09 Patriots can become the first ever to overcome the Bill Simmons No-Effing-Way Game Principle. (Someday in the late 21st century when actual androids and/or robots are playing out sims, the Simmons Principle will come second in programming importance only to Isaac Asimov’s First Rule of Robotics, i.e. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”)

• The Patriots’ team rating for the game is a mere 97. The good news is that you can improve on this insultingly low mark, thanks to the illogical inclusion of the 2008 draft picks for the 2007 season. Pump up that rating in three easy steps:

1. In the spirit of the real-life Randy Moss trade, totally rip some AI Davis-led team off by trading Tedy Bruschi (overall rating 86 and presumably based on the pre-extension Bruschi with just one year remaining on his contract) and your choice of scrub (maybe Matt Cassel) for a fullback, say, Jerome Felton or Lorenzo Neal. (Sure, this move won’t sit well with hardcore Patriot loyalists, but business is business. And Madden is Madden.)

2. Slot the new fullback atop Heath Evans (overall rating 84) on the depth chart.

3. Work Jerod Mayo like a dog in preseason drills. All he needs is five points to top Bruschi, and bingo! You’ve got a top-notch MLB for the next 10 years of franchise mode and sentimentalists can just pick up Tedy for a song off the next season’s free agent market.

Alternatively, you could just recreate Larry Centers.

• Pummel Bruschi and his new team.

• Rewrite the record book against the Dolphins (team rating 67) in Week 7. Marks to look for include the 64-point margin of victory notched by the Philadelphia Eagles over football's Cincinnati Reds in 1934; the 72 points scored by Washington against the New York Giants in a regular-season game in 1966; and of course, the 73 mark registered by the Chicago Bears in the infamous 1937 championship game.

• Then rewrite your own records when the virtual Dolphins come to town in Week 16. Think Georgia Tech’s 222-0 victory over Cumberland College in 1916.

• Spot the Baltimore Ravens a 21-point lead in Week 13 and then see how the game accurately reproduces the Dirty Birds’ egregious choke job from 2007. The stock footage of the head coach walking off the field sadly shaking his head will be plenty accurate for Brian Billick (who has since been replaced by John Harbaugh).

• Obliterate David Tyree and exterminate Eli Manning in Week 17. EA Sports promises improved gang tackling in the game; any reputable player should have the subtleties of this sorted by the end of the first fictional season, so use it to good (read: “bad”) effect here. Of course, you didn’t need me to tell you that...

• Give the virtual Green Bay Packers (team ranking 91, but certainly one of the NFC's favorite) something to cry about in simulated Super Bowl XLII. Or maybe you can spank T.O. and his Cowboys (team rating of 96) instead.

• Start preparing your hyperboles and trash-talking acumen for online play. Include the phrase “greatest videogame team of all time,” or "GVTAT" in Internet vernacular, as often as possible.

• Finally, simply employ any means necessary – and y’all know what I’m talking about here – in the quest to go 19-0.

Hitting that RESET button throughout the year at RealFootball365.com
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's ...
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