Combining Plays From Different Formations

Imagine you begain your custom formation, basing it off of "Singleback-Normal". But you also want to add a play from the "I Form-Normal" formation to the same formation in your custom playbook. All you have to do is create the desired formation and rename it.

Example:

• Out of the singleback formation you already have several plays.
• Go into the formation editor and rename the singleback formation to "I Form-Normal".
• Move the slot WR into a position directly in front of the HB, and change him to FB1, creating an I formation.
• Move the left WR (WR2) up one square, up on the line of scrimmage.
• Now go back to the "add play" screen, and add the desired I Form-Normal play. It should be put into the formation with all the singleback plays.
• You can create your custom formation from here, change it back to a singleback formation, leave it as it is, or change it to another formation (like Singleback-Big, Weak I-Normal, etc).

• Some formations have names too long to rename. You cannot type Singleback-Normal, Singleback-Trips Bunch, Full House-Normal, and Singleback-Slot Strong, among others, into the formation editor. Because of this, you must add plays from these formations first, and then add plays from other formations by the method explained above.
• Madden is a bit picky about its formations - they have to be exact. Sometimes you may need to switch guys around to get it to work. For example, if you move the right WR (WR1) to the left, and change him to WR2, while moving the left WR (WR2) to the right and change him to WR1, it will not work. When adding I Form plays to a singleback, try different players at the FB spot to see which one works.

• Make sure the numbers match

  If all else fails, go to the "Preview Playbook" area in the play editor, and match up the uniform numbers. This comes in very handy on the defensive side of the ball.

With this trick, your options are much bigger. You can begin with the "Fake Dive Pitch" play from "Full House-Normal" (one of my favorites), and change the formation to an I Form-Normal, and add plenty of other plays. You are not only limited to the Full House plays.

The Colts playbook uses different names for several Singleback formations - Singleback-Dice=Singleback-Normal, and Singleback-Deuce=Singleback-Big.

Duplicating stock plays:

Say you are working with the "Full House-Weak" formation in the Atlanta playbook. There are only 9 plays out of that formation available, and only one playaction pass. But if you are creating a Full House playbook, which is run-oriented, you'd probably want more than one playaction pass. So how do you create another, if you've already added one?

Simply add the playaction pass, go into the play editor and rename the play to something else, and go back to the "add play" screen. Add it again, and you're set. This way, you can create as many copies of a unique play as you want, and change the receiver routes/blocking to make them all different.

This is useful for creating many playaction passes, pass plays with "blue" routes (the player stays in for a second before releasing on a route), or run plays with special blocking assignments.