Madden 13 Predicts A Seattle Seahawks Playoff Victory
By Keith Myers
As the playoff matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins approaches, I decided it was time to dust off my copy of Madden 13 and have a little fun seeing which team that piece of software thinks is going to win this game.
Clearly there are better tools to predict the outcome of a game, but this one is available and well known. Lets all try and remember that this has nothing to do with reality, and not overreact. It’s just for fun.
First, lets set the stage a little bit. The Seahawks have an 87 overall rating, and the Redskins have an 82 rating, so the Seahawks are the favorite in this game even though they are playing on the road.
The game profiled below was watched on “spectator mode.” That way, it’s just like the simed games, and my skills (or lack there of) wont effect the results. The goal was to simulate the game and see how the software thought the game would unfold, not to play game. I’ll save that for another day.
Seahawks lost the toss. Redskins deferred to 2nd half, so the Seahawks got the ball first. Leon Washington runs it out from 6 yards deep and gets stopped at the 18. I feel like I’ve seen this before.
1st play, Russell Wilson scrambles for a 8 yard gain. Probably going a theme. Seahawks have a tough time getting Lynch going after that and the drive stalls.
Pete Carroll’s digital version looks like 80 years old, and like he’s recently has a stroke. The guys at EA must hate him.
RG3’s first play is also a scramble, for 2 yards. 2nd play is a pick by Marcus Trufant. Seattle’s defense getting it done early.
After 2 Seahawks drives, Wilson is 4 for 4, but only have 16 yards. 2 passes completed each to Robinson and Lynch. only 1 first down so far, but they get a FG after the pick
3-0 Seahawks.
2nd Redskins drive, more RG3 running the ball. 12 yards up the middle on the first play. 5 more on the 2nd play. They’ve run 4 plays, 3 RG3 runs and a pick. Then he finally completes a pass. Seahawks playing zone. Next play is another pick. This one by Jeremy Lane.
Seahawks 3rd drive Begins with a Lynch 3 yard carry. He’s now 5 carries for 3 yards. Clearly the other 4 carries weren’t worth mentioning. Seahawks have to punt 2 plays later. That ended the 1st Quarter.
I don’t think the Seahawk’s playbook in this game has the read-option. Washington’s playbook does though. They ran it twice in the 1st quarter for 1 yard. The Reskins subbed out Morris for Royster at RB at this point and his speed is helping them move the ball a little better. They still had to punt, but they got a couple first downs this time.
After that the teams trade punts for a while. I got bored and started writing the introduction to this article and stopped paying attention and waited for something interesting to happen. That finally happened when the Seahawks took over with 3:33 left in the 1st half. The Seahawks stopped trying to run the ball (which clearly wasn’t working) and let Wilson pass on every play. The result was an 80 yard drive in 1:50 and a 26 yard TD to Doug Baldwin.
Washington responded with a quick FG drive before the half. Making it 10-3 Seattle at halftime.
A quick 3 and out (3 incompletions by Griffin) gave Seattle great field position for what would be a disastrous drive, at least on the injury front. Russell Okung injured his ankle on the first play and had to leave. Russell Wilson was injured 2 plays later. It was a minor lower back injury, but Pete Carroll apparently decided he hold him out for next week.
Matt Flynn came in and 2 plays later the Seahawks were in for another TD. 31 yard run from Lynch set up a 17 yard TD pass to Miller. 17-3 Seahawks.
Another DC punt, followed by another Matt Flynn TD pass. This time it was to Rice for 8 yards, capping off a 82 yard drive. 24-3 Seahawks with the third quarter almost over.
At this point the Redskins finally woke up. A long drive with no running plays results in FG and Seattle lead is cut to 24-6. This is followed by a Matt Flynn interception and another DC field goal, making it 24-9 Seattle.
At this point, I think Matt Flynn decided he didn’t want his interception to be what people remembered about his performance, and connected on a 56 yard TD pass up the seem to Zach Miller. That made it 31-9 and essentially iced the game for the Seahawks.
Bruce Irvin sacked Griffin on 4th and 1 on the next drive which gave Seattle another FG with 1 minute left.
The final score was Seattle 34 – Washington 9.
Lynch ended the game with 77 yards on 22 carries. Yards up the middle were tough to come by. The Washington running attack was led by Royster’s 22 yard. Morris as 21 yards on 12 carries.
Griffin had 51 pass attempts and 259 yards, but completed only 56% and had the 2 picks. Wilson was 12 of 15 and a TD before his injury. Flynn was 18 of 25 and 3 TDs.
After that game, I switched to using “supersim” and simulated 19 more games so that I’d have 20 total. Here are all of the scores:
Winner |
Score
Winner
Score
Seattle
34-9
Seattle
31-26
Seattle
47-38
Seattle
35-17
Seattle
49-33
Seattle
52-21
Seattle
36-27
Seattle
59-39
Washington
38-34
Seattle
30-27
Seattle
28-20
Washington
44-36
Seattle
33-26
Seattle
46-22
Washington
48-44
Washington
42-33
Seattle*
33-27
Seattle
42-22
Washington
37-31
Seattle
38-37
* Game ended in overtime.
I would have liked to do this 50 or 100 times or more for the sake of having a larger sample size, but 20 was all I could handle for my sanity.
The Seahawks won 15 out of 20 games (75%). Few of the games were close. All but 2 were decided by more than a FG, though another game did go into overtime.
If there’s a common thread in all of these games, it’s that the Seahawks were able to put up a lot of points. In only 1 out of 20 games (5%) were the Seahawks held under 30 points. Conversely, they broke 50 twice (10%) and were close 3 other times.
It didn’t seem to if the Seahawks jumped out to an early lead and ran the ball a lot, or fell behind early and had to throw it to get back into the game. The one common denominator here is that a lot of Seattle possessions ended in touchdowns.