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[ I Am Bengal – Hear Me Roar (Page 1) ] Apologies in advance for the long-windedness of all this, but please allow me to present, for the delight and edification of several readers, the story of my current Madden 2003 franchise game: Not meaning to sound big-headed, but I consider myself a little bit handy at the single-player Madden experience. In 2002 I took my expansion franchise team, the Night City Rangers, to the Superbowl in their second year before going unbeaten for three straight seasons. Admittedly in Night City I had the help of The Greatest Show On Turf II ("This Time It's Personal"), with QB Cornell "Flawless" Kato (TPW 96, THA 98) launching bombs in the direction of wideouts Trent "Super-Trent" Ford (CTH 99), Brad "Big-Play" Ballman (SPD 99), Norm "No-Nickname" Sawyer (SPD 91, AGL 93, CTH 90) and, erm, Brandon "Hey, He Was Cheap" Stokeley, while Deuce McAllister forced teams to respect the run, averaging well over five yards a carry over two seasons. In Kato's third year, Rangers set NFL all-time single-season marks for completions, pass yardage, TD passes and QB rating (Kato), TD catches (Ford), receiving yards (Ballman), and rushing yardage (McAllister). Not so much Fun And Gun as Orgasm And Gun, really. I mention this only because I've now had to delete my Madden 2002 save to fit 2003 onto my memory card, and so these players' achievements have now passed into the realm of the electronic afterlife. But there's a part of me that will ever see Brad Ballman slanting hard across the field from the slot, leaving some beleaguered linebacker or nickelback floundering in his wake as a ball drops perfectly into his stride, allowing him to blast untouched across the face of the safety before kicking in the warp engines and vanishing downfield in a blur. A thing of beauty in an all-too-imperfect world. Or perhaps I just really, really need to get out more. Anyway. There was a point I was trying to make, and I think it was this - once you've turned an expansion team into world-beaters, there remains only one greater challenge to take on, one higher peak left to climb, one even more impossible mission to undertake. Trying to coach the Cincinnati Bengals to a winning record. For those vaguely interested, I play on All-Pro (I find the "Defensive-tackles-running-down-wide-receivers-from-behind" effect just too pronounced to stand on All-Madden) with slightly fiddled sliders (Interceptions way up, pass-blocking way down for both sides, CPU kicking game toned down a bit) and six-minute quarters. Well, first things first. I came into Cincinnati with no preconceptions and, indeed, no real idea of what they were like as a team (beyond "bad"). Over here in Britain we get a couple of NFL games a week, with no choice as to what matches we see, and for some reason over these last few years the Bengals don't seem to have figured much in the schedulers' plans. So the first thing to do was have a detailed study of the roster, identify their strengths and weaknesses as a team and come up with a strategy that would hopefully net us more games than we lost. My musings came out like this: Strengths: GOOD HANDS - The Bengals' receivers run pretty deep - all the first four wideouts and both tight-ends can be relied upon to catch most balls that get to them. RIGHT SIDE OF THE FRONT 7 - Spikes, Simmons and Smith, all players out of the top drawer. UM... ER... NO, THAT'S IT. Weaknesses: NO DEEP THREAT - Corey Dillon aside, not one Bengal has the pace to stretch the field. If teams work this out, we're likely to be facing eight men close to the line to nullify our running game and take away the short pass. Hmmm. O-LINE - My tackles are okay, my left guard is adequate, my centre and right guard are laughable. Plus, both tight ends are much better pass-catchers than they are blockers. So Dillon's likely to be running uphill pretty much every game, and my bad quarterbacks are going to be forced to make hurried throws. Fantastic. This just gets better and better. THE OTHER EIGHT DEFENSIVE STARTERS - Here was me thinking that this was the year Cincinnati's defence was meant to turn the corner. Not according to Madden, obviously. The secondary, in particular, is terrible. But so long as teams don't run at our right side, it's hard to see us stopping anything. Christ. SPECIAL TEAMS - Surely that's not a kicker with OVR 34? I -must- be reading that wrong... it's got to be an 8, 84, yeah, that's it... oh, wait, no. No, Neil Rackers really does have a 34 overall rating. Oh. My. God. Oh, and the punter's nothing special, which is a problem because I anticipate doing an awful lot of punting this year, and my return specialists aren't up to much, either. So, other than no defence, no special teams, and a more or less completely one-dimensional offence, there's no problem, then? To coin a phrase - yikes. So what’s the plan, Dan? Well… The Strategy
(Offence): Can you say "run first"? Sure. I knew you could... Well... they put this create-a-playbook thingy in, it'd be a shame not to use it, eh? The plan has to be to get the ball into the hands of my best players. With that in mind, I cobbled together a set of plays revolving around huge doses of the run and plenty of short passing. We won't go deep often because of our lack of a) speed at receiver b) blocking on the line and c) talent at quarterback, but there are a couple of long passes in the mix just in an attempt to make the defence stay honest. I expect to throw flares and screens to my running backs with monotonous regularity, and I included a ton of play-action passes. We are by no means an explosive offence, but hopefully we'll be able to grind out drives inch by tedious inch, until the defence is exhausted and Lorenzo Neal flops over the goal-line from one foot out. It's this dream I have. The Strategy
(Defence): Oh, yes. Between my nothing-but-runs-and-dump-offs offence and my nothing-but-runs-and-dump-offs defence, there's going to be some pretty damned scintillating football played in Bengal-land this season, you know it. The Strategy
(Personnel): CENTRE/RIGHT GUARD (top priority, no question. We need far better blocking up front if we're going to have any success running this season) DEFENSIVE TACKLES (two run-stoppers for preference, big fat-boys who'll keep blockers off my MLB and let the guy scavenge and fly to the ball) SECONDARY (every position other than free safety. Right now this unit is scary for all the wrong reasons) BLOCKING TIGHT END (preferably one who can catch a few balls, too, to stop defences keying entirely on Corey Dillon up the middle. Plus, a nice big target nice and close to the line will help out a poor QB) KICKER (we've not the most potent offence in the world, so kicker will be an important position for us and Rackers, frankly, sucks) SPEED RECEIVER (as mentioned before, I can see the short zones getting pretty crowded otherwise) PUNTER (a primo punter would be nice, but there are way more pressing needs at the moment) Aaaand... that's it. Next, if you can stand the excitement, I'll get into the practical stuff - exactly who got hired and fired, and whether the grand scheme survived contact with the pre-season. You can just taste the tension, can't you? So... shopping. We didn't have much in the way of disposable talent that had a lot of trade value, but I felt if nothing else we could probably get something for Darnay Scott (WR, OVR 75) who was costing us a bit more than his age and skills should warrant but who'd make someone else a lovely 2nd or 3rd wideout. On top of that, 4 half-decent running backs was probably one more than we needed, making one of them trade bait. I decided Gus Frerotte (QB, OVR 69) was surplus to requirements, which was a pity because in my 2002 expansion franchise he'd done a decent job babysitting my incredibly young receiver corps, but there's no room for sentimentality in this game, oh no. Well, if the deed was going to be done, it was better done quickly. A quick 'phone call and a chat with that bloke with the scary 'tache who coaches Tennessee, and Frerotte was heading South, with young HB Curtis Keaton (OVR 61) to keep him company. Coming back the other way were CB Andre Dyson (OVR 73) and a banker for the future, SS Aric Morris (OVR 66) - I'd had to throw in a 2nd round pick for the Titan's 4th rounder, but hell, draft picks aren't going to be that valuable to me after I've won the Superbowl, are they? Feeling better already, I took a little dip in the free-agent pool. With all the problems this team has, at least cap space isn't one of them. Yet. Ahahahahaaaa. My three most troublesome positions I had already identified as right guard, centre and defensive tackle. Guards proved a bit thin on the ground, at least for what I was willing to shell out for one, but I did manage to shore up the heart of both lines with the additions of Roman Fortin (C, OVR 76) and archetypal fat-boy-up-the-middle Sam Adams (DT, OVR 81). Feeling a bit light-headed from all the power, I went on a bit of a spree, grabbing a couple more starters in the shape of CB Donovan Greer (OVR 70 - and yes, OVR 70 is more than enough to get you a starting spot in my secondary. Did I mention that our defence sucks? Oh, I did, fair enough then...) and blocking TE Terry Hardy (OVR 66 - and yes, OVR 66 is... oh, you've heard this one before, sorry...) ... I'm not going to linger too much over the pre-season games, so suffice to say that in game 1, at Buffalo, our offence had a remarkably good game, with Akili Smith looking composed in the pocket and dangerous outside it. Unfortunately, we were up against Drew Bledsoe, Eric Moulds and Peerless Price, who laugh in the faces of secondaries in which OVR 70 corners get starting spots. Bottom line, we had no answers on the ground and no answer against the pass. Final score - a garbage-time touchdown made it a very flattering CIN 28-35 BUF. Still work to be done, then. The first chalk in the win column came the following week with our visit to Indianapolis. The plan was simple - double-team Marvin Harrison all game, stop Edgerrin James by any means necessary up to and including safeties armed with machine-guns, try to get pressure on Manning, cross fingers and hope for the best. The Colts leaped out to a 14-3 lead by half-time, at which point the second part of the plan - wait for their second-string to trot on and put the hurt on them - came into effect. CIN 24-21 IND final score, then, with Akili Smith, left in all game in the theory that he's the only one of my QBs who's going to benefit from more reps (and that he's the one who needs the benefit most...), scrambling into the endzone for the winning TD with thirty ticks left. Huzzah. We're off and running! My quest for a second DT continued fruitlessly, although I did pick up ex-Saints wide receiver Willie Jackson (OVR 77) for about a million less a year than I was paying Darnay Scott. With both players very similar in age, ability and style of play, this move put Scott very much in the file marked "Disposable". In the plus column, however, I managed to identify a player who'd magic away my woes at right guard - the Patriots backup RG, Joe Andruzzi (OVR 76). Skipping through the rest of the Patriots' roster in an attempt to find other players to chuck into the deal, I fell in love. It was mad, it was irrational, it was totally against the plan that I'd carefully set out, but a part of me knew, KNEW, that I needed the Pats' rookie TE, Daniel Graham, in my life. Yes, I knew that the last thing I needed was another young recieving tight-end (OVR 73, SPD 70, CTH 75, RBK/PBK 56), yes, I knew that the blocking TE position I'd filled with the decent and cheap Terry Hardy, but... but... well, all that went out the window. Hell, love isn't a rational thing, it's seeing someone for the first time and just connecting, on some deep and real level. Besides, I'd thrown far more to my tight ends over the first couple of pre-season games than was usual for me, and I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that it was going to be an important position for us this year. The only problem (well, only other problem) was that Andruzzi had picked up a bit of a knock, meaning that I couldn't make the trade until after he'd recovered, meaning that I wouldn't get to see either him or Graham get a run-out in pre-season. Not that that mattered, since my judgement was obviously flawless. Obviously... ... Then the Saints came marching into Cincinatti, with Aaron Brooks, who does that same pass if it's on/run if it's not thing as Akili Smith does, and does it a million times better. Oh, and they brought Deuce McAllister, that old stalwart of my 2002 game, who ran through us, around us, over us, back up the field to us again once we've picked ourselves up to give us another try, only to give us an apologetic little smile as we miss our tackles once more before he finally goes over for the score. Traitor. Oh, and to add injury to insult, my "play-Smith-24-7" plan backfired as he picked up a spot of turf toe (Turf toe? On grass?) that would keep him out of our last pre-season game and probably the opening regular season match as well. Great. Final score - God knows. We got beat. Really beat. Finally, in come the Falcons, and give us a damned good pummelling to end our pre-season with a 1-3 record. The most pleasing aspect of the games is some nice progression made by a number of our young players, particularly Akili Smith, who despite his injury picks up a massive 8 OVR points to go up to a non-massive 68 OVR. Still, it's a start. It's a time for hard choices and panicked buying, and I do both. There are still no decent defensive tackles to be had, but ex-Green Bay (I think...) MLB Bernardo Harris (OVR 78) is still in the free-agent pool. So. In he comes, and it seems we'll be playing a 3-4 defence this season, a scheme I don't much care for but will probably suit my personnel. I'm very tempted to grab Victor Green to play SS (OVR 83) since he's always been outstanding for my Jets both in Madden and real-life, but in the end a calmer head prevails and I pick up the younger, cheaper, Chad Cota (OVR 74) to fill the position instead. Joe Andruzzi finally gets over his injury, and is signed along with dream tight-end Daniel Graham from the Pats, with surplus-to-requirements wideout Darnay Scott and Terry Hardy going the other way. I justify the cheese of trading a free-agent I signed only three weeks ago with the knowledge that I honestly intended Hardy to start for us this season and he was never meant as trade-bait (because when you're looking for players to sign to trade later, the first choice would be an OVR 66 blocking tight end, wouldn't it?) "It just didn't work out with Terry the way either of us wanted it to..." I tell the press with a bland smile. "We both thought it'd be good for him and for us that he make this move. Terry's still a terrific player, and I wish him all the best, but Daniel will offer us different things from the tight-end position than Terry has. Like talent. Oh, I'm sorry, am I thinking aloud?" "No, there's no truth in the stories that I've had any sort of personal issues with Terry or with Darnay Scott. This trade has been made purely for on-the-field reasons. And because Darnay is a whinging cry-baby who's about one-third as talented as he seems to think he is. Whoops, doing it again..." Okay... next time - the opening of the season. And maybe a list of the starters, depending on how I'm feeling. Edge-of-your seat stuff, this, isn't it? ... For the stat fetishists among you - the starting roster of the 2002 Cincinnati Bengals. Offence Defence Special Teams Looks pretty solid to me. So long as the opposition don't try running at the left side of our defence. Or passing. And so long as we don't have to punt, or return any kicks or punts. Or pass. Kicker's still a problem, too, but the only decent kicker on the market is in his forties (Gary Anderson), so I think the only plan is to grit our teeth, put up with Rackers for the last season on his contract and go placekicker fishing next draft day... it's not like my field-goal kicker's going to be that important in the grand scheme of things, is it? Or is it? OR IS IT? [
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