Madden NFL 12 Walkthrough Primer

Shutdown a Receiver with the Spotlight

The idea behind spotlighting a player is to make sure that the receiver essentially has two defenders on him at all time. The way that spotlighting works is any defender who is playing a zone will help out on the spotlighted player when he enters their area on the field. Spotlighting a player in Madden 12 definitely works and should be used quite a bit against some of the upper echelon receivers in the league. Check out the examples below to see first hand how spotlighting a receiver can improve your defense this year!

In our example, the New England Patriots have come out of the huddle with a goal of hitting wide receiver Randy Moss deep downfield. The defense that we've come out in with the New York Jets has basic man-to-man coverage with two deep Safeties playing over the top. We're going to run through this play the first time without using the spotlighting feature to allow you to see how the Safeties react.

As soon as quarterback Tom Brady receives the snap the strong safety on the right side of the field makes an initial break toward Moss. Unfortunately, it's the strong safety's second move on the field that makes us wish we had used the spotlighting feature. You'll see the strong safety has now squared up on the quarterback and is in no position to try to turn and run with a speedster like Randy Moss. The strong safety now finally turns and begins to try to run with Moss.

The bad news is he doesn't have the speed or the angle to prevent Moss from getting behind him at this point in the play. Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady sets his feet and prepares to make the deep throw across the field to Moss. Meanwhile, the safety remains slightly ahead of Moss at this point, but slightly ahead won't be enough to stop the pass once the ball is in the air. Brady fires the pass as Moss is already almost dead even with the strong safety. As the ball approaches Moss begins to widen the gap between himself and these two members of the Jets' secondary. The deep pass from Brady is completed to Moss; he's able to get behind the entire New York defense with ease.

Now let's take a look at the exact same play, only this time we'll be using the spotlight receiver feature to focus the Jets' defense on the electrifying Randy Moss.

We make the quick call to spotlight Moss by pressing right trigger + receiver icon on the 360 or "R2" + receiver icon on the PS3 before the snap. You can only spotlight one receiver per play, so don't waste your time trying to spotlight every receiver on the field. In our example now, our deep safety makes an initial break towards Moss as soon as Brady takes the snap. The difference in the play this time is our strong safety continues running toward Moss instead of standing flat-footed closer towards the middle of the field-spotlight!

At this point in the play our strong safety is moving deeper down the field as he lines up directly in front of Moss. Our defender is in a much better position to try to stop the deep ball now because he realized his biggest responsibility much quicker than he did before without the spotlight receiver feature being used.

When Brady rolls out of the pocket once again and attempts to throw deep to Moss. Our safety is running at full speed and still remains a couple yards in front of Moss. As the ball closes in our safety continues to run at full speed and has great inside position on Moss. Even against the speed of Randy Moss our much slower strong safety is now in position to make a play. Our safety uses his great inside position to leap into the air in an attempt to make a play on the ball at its highest point. Moss is behind the defense now, but that's only because our strong safety broke off his coverage to try to make the interception.

One way to counter opponents that like to abuse the spotlight receiver feature is to use your main threat as a decoy. In our next example, we've hot routed Moss to perform a curl route instead of going deep because we suspect that our opponent will be spotlighting him once again. Our goal on this play is to get the strong safety to commit to Moss early, allowing our tight end to get open over the middle against one-on-one coverage.

As soon as Brady takes the snap the strong safety runs over to help on Moss once again. Our tight end has a little extra room over the middle of the field to operate with one of the Safeties out of the picture now. Try this out and you can see the strong safety totally committed to Moss on the right side of the field as our tight end prepares to make his break over the middle. New England tight end Ben Watson cuts to the inside and we make a high pass with quarterback Tom Brady.

Spotlighting a receiver is a great way to try to take out your opponent's best threat on the field. Many people have had trouble stopping players like Randy Moss and Plaxico Burress for years, but now this feature should likely force opponent's to have to look to throw somewhere else on the field more often. However, like everything, it can be countered with some savvy offensive play in Madden 12.