Playbook Tips - Madden NFL 20 Guide - IGN (2024)

This page presents some tips for finding the right playbooks for your playstyle in Madden NFL 20.

There is no “best playbook” or “best defense,” but finding exactly what works for you, why it works, and how it works in the game engine can lead to consistent wins and easier experiences.

Listed below are several Playbook Tips and Tricks that will help you to succeed in Madden 20.

Franchise or MUT?

The main two modes of Madden NFL 20 are Franchise Mode and Madden Ultimate Team. Although your personal playstyle should always be the main aspect to consider when choosing your playbooks, there are enough differences in the two modes that it may change your approach.

You can view the pages on Franchise Mode and Madden Ultimate Team for more details, but in short, your team and its composition changes much more quickly in MUT. In Franchise, every team's default playbook is based around the real-life philosophies and player ratings of that team. With MUT, it will default to your chosen favorite team, and that may or may not gel with the team you've drawn from cards. Note that in MUT, you can easily buy new Playbook Cards if you need to make a change.

Simply put: it's much easier to change the players around in MUT because you can acquire new cards through the Auction House or Trading Block. In a realistic Franchise Mode, it's more difficult to acquire many new players at once because of the salary cap and roster limit.

Therefore, you can more easily quickly build a MUT team around your personal playstyle than you can in Franchise. In Franchise, you have to adjust to the playbook; in MUT, your playbook and team adjust to you.

Franchise Playbook Descriptions

Even if you have no interest in playing Franchise Mode, you may want to enter a file anyway and go to the Schemes screen. To find it, navigate to Team, then My Coach, then the Schemes tile.

On this screen, you can adjust your Franchise team's playbook. The important feature here though is that the game will give you a short description of the playbook and its overall philosophy. In the screenshot below, we see this Steelers team is running the “PIT M Tomlin” playbook its general description is at the top-right, stating that it uses “a base 3-4 scheme that focuses on generating pressure from multiple directions.” This means the playbook is built around different blitzes and a variety of different, flexible defensive plays.

In Franchise Mode, you can change your playbook from this screen at any time. If you're just looking to learn what each playbook does, you can cycle through the entire list and read the descriptions there.

Note that you only have access to the 32 team playbooks on both offense and defense in Franchise Mode. In Madden Ultimate Team, there are playbooks not attached to teams. You can view these in the Auction House by looking up Playbook Cards and selecting “No Team” for the Team option.

The overall philosophy of a generic playbook will be seen at the bottom of the card. The highlighted card in the screenshot is a Cover 2 defense, which may or may not work with the rest of your team.

Playbook Concepts

Rather than focus on a specific playbook, the Playbook Concepts are the driving force of what plays are available. For players new to Madden NFL or just football in general, concepts may seem a little daunting at first. However, they are simply names to general philosophies on how a given play will be done.

The absolute best place to learn what the concepts mean is to go into Skills Trainer. To find it, head to Exhibition Mode on the main menu, then select the Skills Trainer tile. You'll need to select both an offense and a defense team, and it can be the same team.

Once you're in the menu, the tiles can take you to various aspects of football strategy. There are entire categories for Pass Concepts (in short, medium, and long range), Run Defense Concepts, and Pass Defense Concepts. The tutorials will walk you through both learning the terminology and practicing the plays in a full-speed situation.

It's highly advised to take advantage of the Skills Trainer to brush up on your knowledge or skills if you're planning on playing competitively. If you play Madden Ultimate Team, you'll get some mid-tier cards for getting at least a bronze on the various drills in Skills Trainer, so you may even want to check it out if you're a Madden veteran.

“Best” Playbook

Although there is no “best playbook” or “best defense,” some concepts are universal in Madden. For example, due to both the real-life NFL and the Madden game engine being focused on passing, the playbooks that are focused primarily for it tend to have more options and consistent success.

Further, the distance of the passing philosophy greatly matters. If you have a quarterback who is terrible at throwing deep passes, then playbooks centered around deep passes won't help you very much. Every playbook has some options for all situations, but a playbook specifically designed for what you like will have more options to work with.

Playbooks with “West Coast offense” in them tend to be for frequent runs, short and medium passes, and play action. This includes the playbooks for the San Francisco 49s, Atlanta Falcons, and Tennessee Titans. For deeper passes, look for “Vertical” or “Spread” offenses such as the playbooks for the Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Chargers, or Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Defense is tougher to play but generally comes down to how straightforward it is. Playbooks focused on 3-4 formations are less predictable but require better players to pull off consistently. Teams with the 3-4 formation playbooks include the Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos, and New England Patriots. Conversely, playbooks focused on 4-3 formations are more predictable, more “classic,” and put a bit more consistent pressure on the quarterback. Teams with 4-3 formation playbooks include the Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts, and New York Jets.