The biggest aspect that seems to be missing from Madden that was one of the most enjoyable aspects in NCAA Football for years is a coaching carousel. Throughout the year without fail all sorts of coaches meet their doom. Whether it is on Black Monday after the final week of the regular season, or just after the halfway point of the season as we saw with Hue Jackson this week (THANK YOU, FOOTBALL GOD!).
Madden NFL needs to add two aspects to their Franchise Mode if they hope to continue building it up. They need to bring in offensive and defensive coordinators as well as position coaches (some of these can even be fictionalized). Once you bring this aspect into the game it can more easily flow into opening up a coaching carousel like that in the NCAA Football games of yore.
Imagine opening your career as an offensive or defensive coordinator and building your resume after a year or two. Maybe you can take the Bills or 49ers defense from the depths of terribad and build them into a beast with your amazing skills. The unfortunate aspect is that your team is doing poorly and the head coach gets fired in week 12. Suddenly, the ownership wants to bring you up a notch to coach the team and make the big decision on both sides of the ball and determine the depth chart in full. As you make a splash to finish the season with a few wins you might not want to stick with the team you’ve been struggling with. The end of the season comes and the Jaguars have finished a lackluster campaign and you are now their number one target. What do they have to offer you outside of a great defense and some weapons on offense (that aren’t named Bortles… *shudders*). That would be pretty awesome. What would make it better?
I think the next step in making it an experience to build multiple seasons and truly view it as a career mode would be making the role of General Manager something you have to earn. Instead of being the owner, GM, and coach from the get-go, you should be given different offers from different teams as you play through your career. One of those options should be GM/Coach offers (much like what Belichick does and some other coaches have done in some cases). You would pay so much more attention to the draft if you weren’t put in charge of the scouting as just a head coach that had to take the players you got… or deal with players being traded.
Until that day comes, we will have to continue to create and maintain house rules to make our career mode more interesting.
Do you have other ideas for franchise mode? Hit up the comment button to share!
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