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America’s least favorite team can be your bellweather
EA College Football 25 comes out this week, and for those desperate enough to find a ray of joy in this offseason cloud of garbage, they pay 30 extra bucks to play the game three days early. It was me. I did that. now, because of my sacrifice, I will enshrine you with the secrets of the Colorado Buffaloes before most of the world plays the game! Pretty cool thing I did, huh?
First of all, some ground rules. Online competitive play (Road to the CFP is what it’s called in game) consists of three minute quarters and teams are divided up into tiers. Colorado is a Tier 2 team, meaning you don’t lose many “CFP points” against Tier 1 teams like Georgia but you do have the chance to jump up a lot if you beat them. At 87 overall, CU is a solid team in this game, with an explosive offense. Those are always the fun ones to play as anyways. In this game, YOU CANNOT SWAP PLAYBOOKS. This sucks, but adds realism. So the Buffs are running a mostly spread offense and a 4-3/nickel defense. Those are your options as far as playcalling goes. Ok, some enumerated tips:
Sanders is the best quarterback in the game, which isn’t that far from the truth in real life. He has amazing awareness, pretty good athleticism and lots of touch on deep balls. USE THAT! I personally like to go with the shotgun spread playbook and hit some nice intermediate routes on the sidelines. Those are hard for non-Shedeur QBs in EA CFB 25, so if you have him, take advantage of that.
Travis Hunter can lock people up in man coverage in this game, but the secondary for the Buffs has some uneven player ratings, which in my experience, just kills man coverage schemes. Much like in real life, a good tight end crossing route is all it takes for this defense to fall apart. Much of my time playing this game has been spent in a Tampa 2 formation out of your classic 4-3 or Dime packages. This prevents the effectiveness of some of those crossing routes, and Hunter’s game sense is so high in this game that he’ll jump one or two for free no matter what. Highly recommend zone coverage as the Buffs, especially those schemes that take away the underneath stuff.
It’s crazy how much this game imitates the 2023 season for the Buffs. It may be tempting to throw with Sanders every play, but the AI in EA CFB 25 is smart enough that if you do that, the safeties and linebackers start creeping back and spreading out, and suddenly your throwing windows get small. Dallan Hayden is a great back in this game. I prefer to go no-huddle once I get my personnel grouping (Pistol Spread is a fave of mine) and run some nice inside zone every once in a while. Hayden will pick you up 5 or 6 yards on those plays and keep the defensive AI honest on those PA deep bombs. Also, there’s a fantastic PA Boot play out of that formation that just FEELS right after a run like that. A no-huddle run game does wonders for the whole offense.
These are the ramblings of a semi-retired sports gamer who was looking for anything other than baseball to look at. I have an ok record as Colorado (6-6 right now), but if you keep in mind that every other team I encountered was Alabama or Ohio State (shout out to the one random Kansas team, that was fun), that record ain’t bad! This game is fantastic and shortens the wait for the season even more. Please let me know if you match against me online by starting every game against CU with “Jack? From Ralphie Report?”. I’m sure I’m the only one repping the Buffs these days.
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