Ender has been playing a lot of Maddens and started thinking he was pretty good. And, to be fair, he is getting pretty good; at one point in the second quarter I was down by 10 and he had the ball on my four-yard line. But a very timely interception in the end zone followed by a quick 95-yard touchdown pass got me back in the game and I had a one point lead at halftime.
As in real football, the key to success in two-player Maddens is making adjustments. Ender had been chewing up my defense with deep passes to the right side of the field and my front four wasn’t getting any pressure on him, so I switched to a dime formation and began blitzing from the left. On offense, began calling more audibles to take advantage of his tendency to cheat the free safety. That rapidly changed the game, to such an extent that he began muttering about how I could possibly know when he was going to try to stop the run versus the pass.
The final score was 56-40. We both threw for over 400 yards; the difference was that I had another 200 on the ground. He put up a much better fight than the previous New School challengers I’ve beaten down over the years, but I don’t like my chances once he figures out how to better mix up his playcalling. As I explained to him afterwards, he already knows how to think about his actions, so now he has to take the next step and begin to anticipate his opponent’s actions.