Seattle Seahawks Preview: Madden 13 Simulation Results

The NFL season is upon us! Over the next couple days, my fellow writers and I here at 12th Man Rising will be previewing the Seahawks team and season to help everyone get ready for football games that actually count. I thought I’d start us off with something completely trivial, but ultimately pretty fun.

I simulated the 2012 season 20 times using EA’s Madden 13 in order to get an idea for how that game things this season is going to turn out. Normally I would simulate the entire season at least 100 times for this, but the new version of Madden only allows simulating one week at a time, so I had to stop at 20 seasons purely for my own sanity’s sake. Anyways, here’s how things worked out in the NFC West:

Rams: 3.8 wins

Cardinals: 4.3 wins

49ers: 8.9 wins

Seahawks: 9.4 wins

Obviously, things didn’t look good for the Rams or Cardinals. Neither team made the playoffs even once out of the 20 times I simmed the season. The Rams ended up with the #1 overall pick 4 times, and the Cardinal once. The two teams were in the top 5 of the draft a combined 16 times. Clearly, Madden doesn’t think either team is any good.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Seahawks and 49ers. Both teams averaged more wins than losses. While the Seahawks were more consistently good, the 49ers had the best single season. Then again, they also has more loosing seasons, for whatever that’s worth.

The 49ers won the division 8 times, and also claimed 5 wild card spots. Of the 7 times that they didn’t make the playoffs, they averaged just 6.1 wins, with a low of 5 wins. Their best season was one in which they won 13 games, and then lost in the superbowl to the Patriots.

The Seahawks won the division 12 times, and claimed a wild card spot and additional 5 times. So that’s 17 of 20 seasons in which the Seahawks made the playoffs. Their worst season was one in which they won just 6 games, but that was the only season in which they were below .500. In their best season, the Seahawks won 12 games, and lost in the NFC Championship game to the Lions.

Now, if you’d played this year’s version of Madden, you know that the Seahawks were given no love by the people who rate the players skill levels. In the game, the Seahawks are a bit below average when it comes to talent, so the fact that the Seahawks were consistently good when simulating seasons came as a bit of a surprise.

Now, I want to make sure that everyone realizes that results above are completely meaningless. The Madden franchise, while fun, has never been very accurate about predicting anything.