“Madden 20” unveiled complete player ratings earlier this week, and perhaps nothing was more surprising than the stunningly low marks Aaron Rodgers received. It appears, though, that there was some method behind the madness.
Long heralded as one of the elite quarterbacks in the league, Rodgers plummeted to the sixth-ranked signal-caller in “Madden 20” with a 90 overall rating.
It was a precipitous drop for the Green Bay Packers quarterback after coming in with a 98 overall rating in “Madden 19.” Granted, Rodgers did not enjoy the best of seasons in 2018, but the case can be made the superstar signal-caller deserved better when it came to his placement in the virtual quarterback hierarchy.
Andre Weingarten, associate franchise and gameplay designer for “Madden 20,” attempted to explain Rodgers’ low rating in the game, and the case can be made the perceived slight was at least partly justifiable.
“Rodgers has been kind of taking a bit of a downhill slope the past three years,” Weingarten said, via Complex. “His accuracy has gotten progressively worse over the past two years and while he might’ve been playing hurt, we can’t really project how much that impacted him because we don’t know everyone who was hurt and how much it impacted them on a week to week basis. So we can only base it off of the film we’re seeing, and we saw a different Aaron Rodgers the past two years than we had seen in years past.”
There is no shortage of controversy when player ratings for “Madden” are released, Every edition elicits arguably overwrought reactions, with some outbursts coming from the players themselves. If the ratings on their own don’t generate enough attention, “Madden” is known to troll players with clever digs as well.
All that said, at least Rodgers can take some solace in the fact that at least he has eyes in the upcoming edition of the video game, unlike the nightmare fuel that occurred in “Madden 16.”
It’s in the game, indeed.
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