It's almost that time of the year again, where football fans fire up their Xbox 360s, Playstation 3s and Nintendo Wiis, and take the day off of work to play as their favorite football stars in the latest version of the Madden football video game franchise. With the game being released in a little over a month, and using rosters that are already a few weeks outdated (but will be updated around the 8/10/10 release date, I'm sure), the ratings of each team and player have been leaked out to the public for consumption.
Click here to dig through each ranking of each Chargers player on the Madden roster, I'm just going to touch on a couple of key points.
- This year there is a new attribute rating called "Swagger", which is sponsored by Old Spice. I'm more than okay with this. I always thought there needed to be a way to separate guys like LaDainian Tomlinson (who doesn't typically celebrate on the field) from guys like Terrell Owens (no explanation necessary). My problem is that I don't think whoever was in charge of giving players their swagger ratings did a very good job. Mike Tolbert, king of the stanky leg, gets rated with a 65. That's one of the lowest on the team. Tyronne Green is the only one with a swagger rating lower than 48, and his is 20! He must just be crying and apologizing all the time.
- I have no idea why they continue to put Corey Clark on the roster. I'm not even sure if he's ever actually made the roster. With that being said, I agree with all of the O-line ratings.
- Not a big fan of the LB rankings. Larry English and Kevin Burnett better than Brandon Siler? English and Siler more likely to get injured than Burnett? Shawne Merriman is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (higher jump rating than every WR not named Vincent Jackson or Malcom Floyd)?
- The Chargers defensive line looks awful. I wish they would give better rating to Alfonso Boone and Cam Thomas, but they're not going to change them because Boone was a FA in the middle of 2009 and Thomas was a low draft pick. Earn it, fellas.
- Holy crap that's a lot of guys in the secondary! 6 CBs and 5 Safeties. Well, Kevin Ellison is gone now. Dante Hughes isn't going to make the team, I don't think. That's two open spots. If McNeill and Jackson hold out, there will be two more. So who gets added? Ernest Smith? Randy McMichael needs to be added. Sure, just for the hell of it, stick David Binn in there somewhere. Don't want those snaps getting messed up.