Zone drops are the best feature EA has added to Madden 23 in a very long time. If you are confused about how to use them, it will cause you a lot of unnecessary frustration on defense.
Many struggle to defend only 1 or 2 plays due to not being aware of how to use zone drops. Zone drops allow you to defend almost any route in the game.
Madden 23 Defense Tips: So how do zone drops work?
Let’s say your opponent is at midfield. If you set your flat zones to “25” your flat zones will drop back to the 25-yard line.
For the most important zone drop, flat zones, I usually start a game with them on “30” because the last thing you want to do on defense is give up big chunk plays on the first drive. Having your flat zones be “30” will bring death to the ever-so-popular crosser routes. Remember it is important to adjust the flat zones throughout the game based on the primary routes your opponent uses.
It would not make sense to keep your flats on “30” if your opponent never throws deep crossers or corners.
The key to zone drops is on any route over 5 yards, put your zone drops “5” yards above the primary route you want to stop.
So if your opponent is spamming a 10 yard corner route to the sidelines that is killing you, set your zone drops to “15” and make sure to have an outside cornerback in a flat zone. If you put the zone drops at the same depth of the route, with a pass lead up the route will get over the zone sometimes.
Your Urgent Next Step
A concept pros like to do is “stacking zones.” Meaning having two defenders dedicated towards the sideline at different depths. This allows for the defense to guard a crossing route with flat zones on 30 while not giving up a huge gain underneath.
Stacking zones is 1 of the 12 fundamental tips at TheMaddenAcademy that I teach for free. It takes only 5 minutes to prevent those crossing route spammers from haunting you.
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