Madden 13 Info

The one year the Rams had a good screen game in 06 SJ caught 90 balls for 800 yards, he also ran for 1500 to go with it.
I'm not sure whether it was last year or the one before (cos all the losing blurs together) but SJ had a broken finger on his primary hand and he played through it with it heavily wrapped and carrying the ball on his unfavoured side and at one point he caught a one handed grab with his free hand, it was so sick. All the McCoy/Forte being great receiving backs is just media talk, they are just the media darlings cos they are good players on popular teams. I'm not saying they aren't good cos obviously they are very good but Jackson does everything they do it's just the Rams aren't sexy so he gets swept under the rug.

I agree AP is great and I think MJD carries the jags like SJ does the Rams, everybody else is a tier below IMO. If you let me choose any back in the league though I take #39 100 times out of 100. It's all opinion though and everyones is different.

my mate supports rams, and he's always going on too me about how good he is.. and i have tbh i didn't know anything about him until he showed me vids on him... imo he's def one of the best in the league and hes ALWAYS playing hurt... if rams were good i think people would be saying hes one of the best ever, but suppose when u play on a bad team u never get the credit u deserve... i think its alot like steve smith for panthers...

lol true about media darlings.. cowboys and eagles players r ridiculous when it comes to media..

everyone is entitled to their own opinion.. i will take AP 100 times out of 100... but thats just me... not bashing anyone's views or opinions, its just i love AP think hes unreal..
lads if u have a bit of free time watch this vid on AP very very good..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0C87tJgmg&list=FLxLvDNAKXHsqGlxiGoiG94g&index=1&feature=plpp_video

http://www.operationsports.com/news/566832/madden-nfl-13-demo-arrives-august-14th-details-included/

madden demo out august 14th... 5 mint quarters...
can use giants v 9ers or seahawks v redskins

Agree with the Smith comparison, unfortunately it's just part of the game.

AP is a beast but SJ is THE beast

Man I can't wait for the season, you know you're hooked when you get excited about the pre season!

yea steve smith is so good on such a bad team until last year, and they get beason back this year..

haha yea SJ is a fucking animal... what weight is he?? hes alot bigger than AP..

yea man I'm dying for new season... and we're completely useless lol

soxy wrote:i disagree jensua... i think AP is hands down the best hb in the league... and he gets more 8-9 players in the box than any player in the league, but players like forte, cj, mccoy are all round better cus they can catch the ball and are better blockers.....

but yea players like sj39 always get royally screwed cus they play for bad teams like the rams..

sj is an absolute beast and def deserves better than that shit..

Yeah AP might be up there as well but he is gone after blowing out his knees. To be a top back in the league you need consequtive 1000+ yards seasons. SJ has that for the worst team in football over the last 5 seasons.
I think other teams respects the viking passing game more than the rams. Further, if you really look into the strengths of SJ. He is really a top pass blocker and he catches the football as good as anybody out there. Btw he averages allmost twice the number of catches as AP. The knock on him is that he will never break the 70-80 yarders that ap, cj, mccoy does. But look at his stats in the 3rd/4th quarter. I would bet you that he awerages close to 5 yards a pop. He wears a defense down.
I have some man love for him but I would like too see the guys you mention put up the same numbers sj has in 7 years. Then we can talk. Dude, SJ can reach 10.000 yards if he rushes for 900 yards this season. That is hall of fame numbers right there. Personally I think that cj is gone same with forte. McCoy will live off a very good eagles teams wirh lots of other weapons. In my book he is average and you can find a guy like him in every draft... there is said it....

wanna start off by saying yes i rate SJ really really high and think hes underrated...

but as a pure "runner" i think hands down AP is the best in the league..

jackson and the other backs are better at catching the ball and far better at blocking, AP is very average at these..

SJ does get alot of 8 men in the box, as does AP.. apart from the 2 years he had bret favre, when else has he had a decent qb for them to respect the pass and not stack the box?? tavaris jackson lol

the other backs i was talking about, im not necessarily saying their as good as AP or SJ, im saying they are all round better than AP cus they r so good in pass game and can pass block alot better.. i think outside AP and SJ forte and foster r very very good, but not as good as a pure runner.. i think mccoy is overrated as he has the opposing defense worrying about vick scrambling and need 2 deep safeties to stop jacskon on streaks, so hes obviously gonna get loads of yards on the ground... if AP or SJ had that in their team, imagine how good they would be..

this isn't really relevant, but in terms of fantasy football AP is always a top 3 back without a good qb, catches very few balls, and rarely plays 3rd downs, name me anyone else that can do that???

oh and i liked your bit about the 4th quarter, yea SJ has players hanging off him in the 4th, hes so big an hard to bring down... i think hes prob the best in the league in this stat aswell..

i like AP better and u like SJ better... its a good argument and i think alot more people wud be saying how good SJ is if he had a good team whatsoever...

i agree with all of the above.

But please look at the rams quarterbacks that sj have played with.... beat up bulger(i like old bulger), chris f´ing chandler?!?!... i mean travarris jackson is all world compared to the rams quaterbacks

Big problem with sj is that he does not score that many touchdowns.

yea bradford is good and i think will be class, but the o-line is soooooo fucking bad he doesn't have time to throw or make proper reads...

yea don't quote me on this because im not sure if its still stands as addai got injured last year and didn't really play... but addai at one stage had more rush td's than steven jackson.. i mean thats unbelievable manning never runs the ball lol... its just when u get to the redzone the other teams know your gonna run the ball.. and he always get stuffed...

i genuinely like SJ and would like him to have a better team to really show how good he is, but the rams are rebuilding so think hes gonna end his career with an average enough team..

there are some morons that would say demarco murray who had one good year is better then AP or SJ cus they play for media darling teams lol..

good to have a proper discussion with good fans..

I was enjoying reading both of your posts but you had to go and mention Chris Chandler jens! Jesus those were dark days! I'll give you a few more. Jamie Martin, Scott Covington, Kyle Boller, Brock Berlin, Keith Null, Gus Frerotte (old and terrible Frerotte that is).
The one decent backup we drafted Linehan went and traded (for practically nothing) and he now starts for the Bills, Ryan Fitzpatrick. I guarantee outside of Rams fans most have never even heard of most of those. You still think Tavaris sucks after that motley crew Soxy?

And I'm with you Jens, I was also a fan of Bulger before the Rams O-line got him killed and he contracted David Carr syndrome. This is my biggest fear with Bradford too, at times last year you could see the early signs of it with his happy feet, staring down receivers and never stepping into his throws. I sure hope they can protect him better this year but the signs aren't promising. I still can't wait to watch the pre season opener though, 45 mins to kick off!

lol well maybe tavaris jackson isnt that bad lmao.... yea yous have had some stinkers...

andrew luck td baby lol

Lol, good job its pre season cos so far we flat out stink.

Kyle Boller threw 3 ints in for the Raiders last year when Campbell went off injured. I believe he signed for the Chargers for this season but chose to retire instead (at 31).

wow thank god it is only preseason... notorious you and should go out for a beer

Cant believe we won by such a high margin, but i'll take that win after that depression last year... cant wait to see luck play in the regular season.. he looked absolutely amazing today.. letting go off manning was definitely the right choice..

lol notorious and jensua, good thing for yous it is the pre season lol..

yeah he looked solid but beyond that 1st play td it was against the 2nd stringers. And the rams second stringers are practice squad players on all other nfl teams. but that was a pretty good start of lucks nfl carreer. thought the d colt d looked stout after sj left (did you see the drop in production after his exist ;-)) I did not expect that the colts d would be that stout even if the competition is somewhat weak

AfroDizzyMac wrote:Kyle Boller threw 3 ints in for the Raiders last year when Campbell went off injured. I believe he signed for the Chargers for this season but chose to retire instead (at 31).

he has an extremely hot girlfriend so i would not bad mouth boller. Think she was miss california or something

Notorious_MH wrote:I was enjoying reading both of your posts but you had to go and mention Chris Chandler jens! Jesus those were dark days! I'll give you a few more. Jamie Martin, Scott Covington, Kyle Boller, Brock Berlin, Keith Null, Gus Frerotte (old and terrible Frerotte that is).
The one decent backup we drafted Linehan went and traded (for practically nothing) and he now starts for the Bills, Ryan Fitzpatrick. I guarantee outside of Rams fans most have never even heard of most of those. You still think Tavaris sucks after that motley crew Soxy?

And I'm with you Jens, I was also a fan of Bulger before the Rams O-line got him killed and he contracted David Carr syndrome. This is my biggest fear with Bradford too, at times last year you could see the early signs of it with his happy feet, staring down receivers and never stepping into his throws. I sure hope they can protect him better this year but the signs aren't promising. I still can't wait to watch the pre season opener though, 45 mins to kick off!

haha I just threw up in my mouth reading those names

lol true enough towards the his last few plays the standard wasn't great, but his arm looked fantastic... cant wait fr regular season now.. yea our D looked good... rams surely wont be that bad when your starters are playing...

jensua wrote:wow thank god it is only preseason... notorious you and should go out for a beer

If the season is anything like this game then I'm gonna need more than one

soxy wrote:Cant believe we won by such a high margin, but i'll take that win after that depression last year...

Ha, you call that depression? Try going 15-65 the last 5 years!

jensua wrote:
he has an extremely hot girlfriend so i would not bad mouth boller. Think she was miss california or something

Good job he's better at pulling than playing QB then I guess

jensua wrote:

Notorious_MH wrote:I was enjoying reading both of your posts but you had to go and mention Chris Chandler jens! Jesus those were dark days! I'll give you a few more. Jamie Martin, Scott Covington, Kyle Boller, Brock Berlin, Keith Null, Gus Frerotte (old and terrible Frerotte that is).
The one decent backup we drafted Linehan went and traded (for practically nothing) and he now starts for the Bills, Ryan Fitzpatrick. I guarantee outside of Rams fans most have never even heard of most of those. You still think Tavaris sucks after that motley crew Soxy?

And I'm with you Jens, I was also a fan of Bulger before the Rams O-line got him killed and he contracted David Carr syndrome. This is my biggest fear with Bradford too, at times last year you could see the early signs of it with his happy feet, staring down receivers and never stepping into his throws. I sure hope they can protect him better this year but the signs aren't promising. I still can't wait to watch the pre season opener though, 45 mins to kick off!

haha I just threw up in my mouth reading those names

It's called Ramming in your mouth, every seat in the Edward Jones dome comes with complimentary barf bags.

A sense of humour is a must being a Ram fan

All jokes aside though we looked pretty good last pre season and we all know how that turned out. Fingers crossed we stink it up until week one then put on a masterclass. I can dream can't I?

Guys, c'mon, the only reason Jacko has been any good is because he wears Eric Disckersons' old x-ray ski glasses ...........................

did you see his tribute to dickerson? Man SJAX rocked those glasses.

He called dickerson up prior to wearing them and asked him if it was ok. SJAX is such a class act compared to some of the other rb´s out there which is also a big reason why i like him.

Ok, so it seems its been determined that SJax is the greatest ever to hold a football. And if he actually had other NFL caliber players on his team instead of 10 braindead, one-legged chumps from under the bridge then he would probably have 8 rings and every offensive record an RB can hold by now. I fully agree.

All joking aside I do think Jackson is underrated and should be regarded as one of the top backs currently in the league but I'd like to point to some statistics before he gets crowned GOAT over here.

Rush Yards per Season and Career Yards per Carry


Receiving Yards per Season and Avg. for Career


Team Pass Ranking and Avg. for Career


Now just looking at the numbers, the first player appears to have had the most success rushing over his career. He has also had a pretty bad supporting passing game at just 21.8 average rank during his career.

Over the past 3 years the last player looks to have clearly outperformed the others. And he has had the worst passing game of all (average rank 22.33) despite having the most receiving yards.

The best individual season was probably had by back number 2 with 2300 combined yards but he also had the best passing attack that year to support him of any player on the list. He also did his fair share of receiving that year but that appears to be an outlier as he hasn't topped 390 yards receiving since.

Honestly, according to the stats none of these guys are the dual-threat backs that Faulk or Tomlinson were but that is very elite company.

And finally back number 3 has a very similar career arc to back 2 although he is young and still has much to prove. He has had the best supporting cast on average but his supporting cast over 3 years so far are not close to the supporting cast back 2 had over his first 3 years. He is also tied with back 1 though for highest career ypc.

Based on the numbers alone I'd have to say #1 is the best RB over his career (bad supporting cast and consistently best production). #4 is the best right now (Clearly best performance over the past 3 years and worst supporting cast). #2 has had a great career and hasn't showed significant signs of slowing down (Consistently good numbers and best individual year.) #3 has shown signs of ability and based on last year has to be considered one of the top guys. Also has to prove it over the long run though and maybe without such a great supporting passing attack.

So, if you haven't guessed who the 4 backs are yet here they are.
1) Adrian Peterson
2) Steven Jackson
3) Lesean McCoy
4) Maurice Jones-Drew

Before I prepare to get bombarded with hatemail from Rams fans, I just want to say this about McCoy. I think he's been a bit underrated in this thread and not just because I'm an Eagles fan. I love watching great RBs. I used to stay up late as hell to watch Faulk play at San Diego State and LT at TCU. I used to watch Barry Sanders everytime I got a chance. Old clips of Jim Brown, Bo Jackson and Earl Campbell are also always fun to watch. Now that I've got gamepass I watch the top backs whenever the Eagles aren't playing. I don't consider myself an expert by any means but I think if you don't see that McCoy is a special player when he's got the ball in his hands you just haven't watched him much. I haven't seen anyone that elusive in a long time. So-called experts have compared him to Sanders. I would say he's got a different type of running style and elusivity though, something more like Sayers. I'm not saying he's anywhere close to those guys yet or ever will be but the way he escapes tackles and turns nothing into something is definitely a pretty unique skill that you just don't see very often.

And back to the original topic, the ratings. I think if you take a look at the top rushers from last season (with the exception of AP and Charles) then its pretty obvious how EA determined the ratings. There's more to a complete RB than rushing yard totals but thats typical EA:
Rushing Yds
1. Maurice Jones-Drew*+ · JAX 1606
2. Ray Rice* · BAL 1364
3. Michael Turner · ATL 1340
4. LeSean McCoy*+ · PHI 1309
5. Arian Foster* · HOU 1224
6. Frank Gore* · SFO 1211
7. Marshawn Lynch · SEA 1204
8. Willis McGahee · DEN 1199
9. Steven Jackson · STL 1145
10. Ryan Mathews · SDG 1091

In the end though, I hope the physics engine will finally make powerful backs like Jackson and Lynch more realistic and attractive to play with and that the top rushers won't just be limited to guys with 96+ speed.

I just want to add one thing. SJAX is not the best back ever but what in my book consitutes as an elite back is the ability to be consistent in the nfl. Look there will always be guys that shines in a season or two. Look at the Steve Slatons and the likes out there. My point is that you need to put up solid numbers for many years to be an elite back.

Regarding McCoy he could en up being way better than SJAX but he needs to prove his health and ability for 5 more years (and beyond). If he is still an elite back in 5 years he will have the same numbers SJAX are approaching and I will give him his credit. To me alot of backs have the talent to put up spectacular numbers in one season but only the really elite backs do it consistantly. Look at the curtis martins and the likes (the name of the guy from the bengals and later patriots elludes me right now).

The above is offcourse difficult to model in madden but I believe that the rating guy at EA approaches the stats very shortsighted.

Nice article Brza!

I gotta be honest about the RB's, and much as i love Matt Forte i think Shady McCoy is the most electrifying back in the NFL right now. Since the Bears played the Birds a couple of seasons ago i always watch McCoys highlights - the man is a ghost! Forte will make most first tacklers miss but thats down to his patience and vision - McCoy makes them miss through reaction and natural ability.

I'm a bit older than most guys and am used to watching Payton, Dickerson and the guys from 25 years ago as well as AP, MJD etc from the current bunch and i think McCoy is right up there for elusivity coupled with speed. If he can stay healthy he could become a legend.