Another day, another fanbase complaining on Twitter about their team’s Madden rating. It’s certainly that time of year.
This is peak offseason nonsense and I’m 100% here for it.
Last week, I wrote about how Madden finally got it right with Justin Jefferson. He’s the best receiver in football, an absolute game-breaking superstar, and is finally in the 99 club where he belongs.
The team at EA has since dropped the rest of their ratings, giving us the full picture as to what the Madden Ratings Team thinks of the Vikings and their makeup in 2023. Last week I began with the question, what can we learn from Madden’s numerical grades? Is it a perfect formula for simulating how many games we’ll win this season? Absolutely not.
But that said, it may not be useless. Madden stands as an imperfect representation of how the football media hive-mind perceives different teams and players. Therefore, it could provide an interesting barometer for how we should set our expectations as the Vikings begin training camp. Minnesota is a tough team to pin down going into Kevin O’Connell’s second season, and it’s worth taking a look at how EA chose to solve this conundrum.
Madden paints a bleak picture for the Vikings defense
I’ve been saying all offseason that Brian Flores has his work cut out for him, and Madden agrees.
There are only three defensive players rated higher than 80 Overall: Harrison Smith (90), Danielle Hunter (87) and Byron Murphy (82). That’s… not great.
I love Harry the Hitman but, frankly, I’d consider his 90 ranking to be a bit of a legacy bump. It’s not egregious, but I don’t think we saw the elite play we’ve been accustomed to with Smith last season. However, if you told me they swapped Harrison’s 90 and Hunter’s 87, I’d have no problem with it.
And Murphy was a desperately needed offseason addition at cornerback, which can hopefully replace and elevate the production lost from veteran Patrick Peterson. He’s a young, talented, and ascending player with some steps to take before he reaches elite company. Therefore, an 82 Overall feels perfectly justified.
The real issue is the precipitous drop-off from there. Almost half of the Vikings’ projected defensive starters are rated at 75 or lower, some of whom are being counted on as major contributors. Particularly in the secondary, it’s pretty desolate outside of Murphy and Smith. Madden players who like throwing the ball around the lot are going to LOVE playing against Minnesota’s defense.
Lewis Cine (75), Camryn Bynum (74), Andrew Booth (72), and Akayleb Evans (68) all figure to be frequent contributors in the defensive backfield. In the eyes of Madden‘s evaluators, they range from inconsistent project to legitimate liability. There’s a chance that players like Cine and Booth could prove evaluators wrong by season’s end. They were highly touted out of college but have been derailed early by injury. However, they’ll have work to do to prove it.
There’s also the issue at off-ball linebacker. Led by Jordan Hicks (77) and Brian Asamoah (71), this is another clear weakness on Minnesota’s defense. And that’s with a rather generous rating on Hicks, who should probably be several points lower. And while the Vikings are clearly invested in giving Asamoah a chance to seize the job and develop this season, we also need to see far more consistency.
The Vikings’ defense isn’t without any pieces for Brian Flores to work with, but he’s clearly going to need to get creative with its pressure packages to make life easier for a secondary that may struggle in 2023.
This offense is ready for a shootout
On the flipside, this offense is ready to cook in Madden ‘24.
Minnesota comes in with the sixth-best offense in football. Madden always over-inflates the Dallas Cowboys every year, so that means the Vikings are right on the fringe of being a top-five offense in the NFL. They likely would be if EA wasn’t juicing things to make fans of “America’s Team” buy their game. All joking aside, that seems right on the money to me.
The Vikings tout the best receiver in the game, not to mention an elite tight end in T.J. Hockenson (90 Overall). Christian Darrisaw (85) and Brian O’Neill (86) are one of the best tackle tandems in the game. And Madden rates Kirk Cousins as a perfectly fair 84 Overall and ninth-best in the league.
This offense is all about dominating with Justin Jefferson, though. Minnesota must use the complementary pieces to make opposing players pay for overcompensating to stop the game’s best receiver. It’ll be so much fun to see the constant montage of circus catches and insane plays Vikings fans pull off with JJ and Co. when the game launches this August.
The Vikings offense can be elite. But if this team is gonna be good, the defense needs to be average.
EA Sports sees the Vikings the way most of our fanbase does. They’re a fun, uneven roster with a couple stars and plenty of warts. But if this coaching staff can develop this roster and raise the talent floor, then they could once again be a tough out in 2023.
There’s a lot of pressure on new defensive coordinator Flores to make an impact in Year 1 with a raw, inexperienced defense. But there’s just as much pressure on O’Connell to overcompensate for the defense’s struggles with elite production on his side of the ball. However, with Flores’ pedigree and O’Connell’s success in Year 1, there’s a lot to be optimistic about.
It’ll be a challenge, but that’s what makes it fun anyways. Go ahead and pick up the controller as the Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles if you wanna play on easy mode this season; I’ll be booting up my Vikings, flawed as they are. Game on.
