Football coaching’s ‘Madden’ generation

He kept the title belt ready and the console juiced for whenever his little brother came home.

“Coach Rowe” might fling his whiteboard, scream into his microphone to chew out his assistants, stomp away into the locker room . James would hoist the WWE belt they’d bought specifically for these showdowns, parading around the house with it as the brothers talked trash.with the pair almost coming to blows, and invariably their parents would step in and remind them that, for goodness sake, it’s just a dumb video game.

So when the defensive back asked what a “hash dropper” does, James didn’t explain it in football termsthat the defender steps forward after the snap, guarding a zone in the underneath center of the field, traditionally a linebacker’s assignment. He just said the player’s responsibility was a “yellow” zone on Madden.When Ryan McNamara was a business administration student at Florida, he took a summer job at EA Sports in Orlando. His almost too-good-to-be-true title: video game tester.

When he arrived, the other coaches were … skeptical. He’s 5-foot-6 and bespectacled, a look typical on the Valdosta town council but not on the Blazers’ sidelines. McNamara wasn’t a coach, exactly, as his responsibilities included Burger King runs, running errands for superiors and driving to other campuses to swap DVDs of Valdosta State’s game film with that of opponents.

“It’s all old-school-vs.-new-school thinking, and they had to come up with a fake word to basically accept the way Madden players play,” says A.J. Smith, a 34-year-old former college coach who’s now offensive coordinator of the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks. “On fourth-and-short, you go for it, and the glitch play is the quarterback sneak. Now that’s analytics. AnalyticsStill, these changes don’t always sit well in football culture, it being sports’ most insular and secretive sport.

The program’s 37-year-old general manager, Ryan Dorchester, approached Holgorsen, the coach, with an idea for some unusual homework to assign players during the break: Let them play Madden. Holgorsen, 52, knew nothing about gaming, but he appreciated the creativity and the idea of additional “mental reps.”“A video game,” Holgorsen says now, “as a teaching tool.”

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