Detroit Lions Madden 17 Player Ratings Released
Special Teams
Okay, soapbox time.
The game is called “football.” Despite that, Madden decided that this year the people who actually do the thing that involves kicking the oblong spheroid thing the game is played with should be given universally low overall ratings.
The highest rated kickers and punters in this year’s edition of Madden only earned overall grades of 86 or 85, in large part because their awareness ratings matter a great deal towards their overall rating and most of those hover around 70 for some reason.
Granted, this does not affect their actual efficiency because the awareness rating for kickers factors little into the game itself, but it makes their overall ratings look very low compared to their teammates. It’s almost purely aesthetic, but it still doesn’t make sense because all it does is make kickers look bad. And this league. already. hates. kickers.
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Matt Prater‘s 81 rating is tied for ninth in the game, he has an outstanding kick power rating of 96 and a respectable 88 kick accuracy rating, all of which sounds about right for Prater. He should be an excellent Madden kicker.
The highest rated punter in the entire game only earned an 86 (Pat McAfee), so Sam Martin‘s grade of 80 (after being a 91 last season) makes a little bit more sense in that context, but not much. He is still only the 16th-ranked punter in the game despite a kick power rating of 96 and a kick accuracy rating of 88.
He will be fine in the game, but his ranking should be higher than this. He is one of the best punters in the game today and should be given an extension soon by the Lions. Surely this slight will incur Martin’s wrath, which will bring about such great punting this season that the Madden rating committee will have no choice but to increase all of his stats.
He is the punt god. Fear him.
Because Madden for some reason has never incorporated a snapping skill for centers and long snappers, long snapping the ball in Madden has always been a ubiquitous thing that anyone you put at the position can handle. Thus, long snappers in Madden do not matter one bit, which is both a shame and a travesty.
Because of all of this, long snappers Don Muhlbach and Jimmy Landes are awkwardly labeled as tight ends for some reason with overall ratings of 50 and 46, respectively and possess no real skills that can help you in the game, despite the fact that they have a very specific and difficult job that must be done perfectly every single time so the punt god can rule from his throne fifteen yards behind the line of scrimmage.
*sigh*
Okay, descending from the soapbox now.
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