Madden League Official Rules

Madden Unlimited Scheduling/Trades/Banter: Used for general chat, we would prefer it if scheduling and trade talks occurred in DMs, because we have a system in place to not clutter the general chat; but we understand that sometimes this can't happen!

M.U. ANNOUNCEMENT/Rule Discussion: This chat is strictly for posting game times, game start times, and requesting that your opponent be placed on autopilot. We also discuss rules in here, but this chat is not for general discussion, so that we can keep things organized.

Scheduling Procedure: 

- We advance every Monday (11 pm EST), Wednesday (11 pm EST) and Saturday (3 pm EST).

- You can DM your opponent to discuss your game time with your opponent. 

- All games must start before 10:30 PM EST on the night of the advance, and by 2:30 pm on Saturdays since that advance is at 3 pm.

- Once you both have agreed to a time, post the finalized game time in the ANNOUNCEMENT chat. Example: Jets/Patriots 9 pm EST 

- Once the game has started please also post that it has started in the ANNOUNCEMENT chat. (Jets/Patriots started) 

- YOU MUST HAVE YOUR GAMES SCHEDULED BY 9:30 PM EST. We don't care if you schedule the game for 10:30 PM, but it must be posted in the ANNOUNCEMENT chat by 9:30 PM, otherwise when 11 PM comes around, we won't wait for you. HOWEVER, if you post that it is scheduled for a time, and you must push it back, this is allowed because you did have it scheduled on time before.; But your game cannot start any later than 10:30 PM EST. 

- If you contact your opponent and you don't hear back for eight (8) hours, not including the hours of 2 AM-9 AM, then take a screenshot of the lack of reply from your opponent and post it in the ANNOUNCEMENT chat, along with a request that your opponent be placed on autopilot so you can play the CPU. You may also request a force-win. If you don't post it in here, we will sim it once we advance and there will be nothing that will be done about it. 

- If your opponent doesn't show up to your scheduled time, you will get the FW. If you play a non-user team, you must play the CPU.

- In response to how difficult the AI is on All-Madden, we are allowing users to decide if they want to play the auto-pilot user games and the CPU games. We have turned down the sliders significantly, but if you decide to play your game, we will not reset it if you lose.

- This process will allow the league to move along quickly.

- We have had a big issue with people restarting games against autopilot and cup teams. THE ONLY CIRCUMSTANCE WHERE THIS IS ALLOWED IS DUE TO LAG, OR A DISCONNECT FROM THE SERVERS. If you must restart, you need to capture evidence BEFORE you exit the game (video of lag, or picture of disconnect screen), and then post that in the announcement chat. If we see that you have restarted a game and you haven't posted evidence, you will be suspended one game for the first offense. Any following offenses will be equal to the amount of times you restarted the game (so if you restart the game three times, you will be suspended for three games).

1. Illegal Plays: Nano Blitzing, Motioning Outward* or Mid-Motion Behind the Offensive Line Hiking, "rocket catching" (not the animation catches)Zigzagging your S/LBs to wiggle through the line (That fucks with the AI and you dummies know that), Pulling guys off the line on punt returns.

*Motioning Outward: All motioning must be INWARD or Left to Right/Right to Left. NO Left side Left Motion or Right side Right Motion. (unless player comes to a complete stop for example: Motioning a left side TE to the left slot and he stops at the LOS.) All motioning OUT OF THE BACKFIELD must come to a complete stop BEFORE HIKING or it is illegal.

2. Illegal position changes:

WR can't move 

QB can't move 

HB can't move 

OL can only be moved to other OL positions 

FB can only be moved to TE 

DE can only be moved to any DE/DT/LB position 

LB can only be moved to any LB/DE position 

DT can only be moved to DE 

FS/SS/CB can't move to any LB positions

DBs can move to wherever you want to place them in the secondary.

3. No running your manually controlled defensive player around pre-snap to build up his acceleration.

- No running your player around solely to gather speed! Lateral movements and attempts to jump the snap are fine.

4. No manually pulling the d-line to run around into coverage (DE or DT or any LB @ DE or DE @ DT). Hot route hook zones and man coverage is okay if the AI is controller, but manually controlling a DE or DT to instantly drop into coverage is illegal.

5. HB/FB/TE BACKFIELD STREAKS: The HB/FB/TE (out of the backfield) Streak is banned. There is no play in the playbook that has the HB/FB/TE running a streak from the backfield, it is a hot route audible that you have to do yourself, so if you do it, the admins will fuck you up.

6. No Monster-Stack formation, or MTN HB Swing at all. It is cheap and nigh-unstoppable. We all hate cheese.

7. Be sure to mix up your play-calling. We are having everyone watch out for that, and if you are caught running the same offensive plays all game, or running only variations of one form of defense (only Cover 3s, or Cover 4s etc.), we are going to bust you for it. Starting out with you being suspended the following week. Subsequent violations will lead to more severe punishments.

8. You are allowed a MAXIMUM of two hot routes per play. Smart routes and line adjustments do not show up in the count. This rule applies to actual hot routes and max protection. If you catch your opponent hot routing more than twice, take a picture of the post-play screen, pause the game, and let them know about the rule. If they continue to break the rule, gather evidence, then alert an admin and send all evidence you have and they will then be punished.

1. Cutthroat: If an opponent disconnects and you are able to take a win at ANY time the game allows, you are free to do so.

2. Grieving: If an opponent disconnects for grieving then you must post in the ANNOUNCEMENT chat with proof for further action, you must have a screen shot showing the opponent was actually kicked for grieving before anything is done about it. Also at this time, please also present the situation of the game (Score, Quarter, Time Left, Down/Distance). This will be decided on a case by case basis.

3. Don't Be An Asshole: There is no reason to be running up the score on teams just because you can. You may play a game against an opponent significantly worse than you are so simply play the game with class. If it gets out of hand then simply drain the clock and get it over with. In addition, if you are up by 14+ points with 3 minutes left in the game, you need to run out the clock. At that point, you are not in danger of losing the game and it is easier on everyone if we avoid any garbage time passing touchdowns. On the flip side, if you are losing big and would like your opponent to not continuing playing normally and continue scoring, it is on you to run the ball more once the game is out of reach, and to not be passing (unless totally necessary), and to not call timeouts.

4. Show respect to your opponent. Racial/Sexist terms will be dealt with severely. Things are going to get heated at times but try to keep it mellow because if someone elects to report you, it could cost you and your team severely.

5. 4th Down Rule

1) You may go for it on 4th down at any point if it is 4th and 2 or less. However, if you go for it on anything longer than 4th and 2, you will be punished. 

2) If it is 4th and ANY DISTANCE longer than 2, you must punt/field goal or fake punt/field goal. 

3) If the game is tied, or you are losing at any point in the 4th quarter, you may go for it. If you break any of these rules, you will be suspended for at least one game.

6. Quitting Out

I repeat, DO NOT QUIT OUT. Madden has decided to change it so that if you quit out of a game, you're opponent will NOT get the win/xp etc. If you are getting stomped then just stick with it and take your loss. If you have ANY complaints after the game and wish to have them addressed then please do that after the game while bringing any proof to the table at that time and it will be dealt with.

Now if you QUIT out of a game and don't have some excellent excuse then you're opponent will get the CPU but your team will also be BOOTED for the week (not autopilot) so you will lose coaching XP. It's annoying to have people quit and force the other team to have to play all over again.

7. CPU Spamming rules: Applies only to User vs CPU games.

Can only restart vs a CPU due to a connection issue. If you need to restart, take a picture of the disconnect or a video of the lag as evidence so you don't get punished for breaking this rule.

Max points scored: 56 

Max 250 Receiving Yards for any Receiver 

Max 250 Rushing Yards for any Running Back 

Max 500 Passing Yards for any Quarterback 

Max 4 sacks for any one player 

10 receptions for any one player

Max 3 TDs for position players 

Max 5 TDs for Quarterbacks

Only exception being that it is a close game and you had to do what you had to in order to win. If it's debatable on whether it was a close game or not there will be no debate, you will be punished. This rule is in place to prevent people getting cheap touchdowns and yardage to boost stats so that their players win end of the year awards that come with huge XP boosts.

There is zero margin for error. If you rush for 351 yards your ass will be punished. If you break it by any margin you will be placed on auto-pilot for the amount of players that broke the rule that week. Example: You throw for 627 yards with your QB, and your WR scores 6 TDs. In this scenario you would be placed on auto-pilot for two weeks (not counting bye weeks). If only one player breaks the rule, you will only be placed on auto for one week.

8. Custom playbooks are allowed as long as they follow the play rules (no HB/FB/TE streaks out of the backfield, no motioning out on the same side of the field to break coverage). Custom audibles are allowed as well.

1. CPU to Human trades, or vice versa, are illegal. All trade talks should happen either in DMs on GroupMe, or in the "Madden Unlimited Scheduling/Trade/Banter" chat thread on GroupMe. Once the trade has been agreed to, post the agreed to terms in the "Madden Unlimited ANNOUNCEMENTS/Rule Discussion" chat on GroupMe.

2. There is NO limit on the number of trades you may complete per season. However, new members of the league can't trade 1st or 2nd round picks, or any players over 80 OVR. This way you don't trade away your good players and then bail, leaving the next owner with a shitty roster. The admins will inform you when you have made it through the test period and can begin exchanging higher value picks/players.

- Free Agency has three stages: 

Stage One: Preseason. In week one of the preseason, all teams are sorted lowest to highest based on team overall rating. We will split the league into 3 or 4 tiers based on number of members. Each of the following stages allows for one (1) pick per team, per round. Tier One will have three hours to pick/reserve their picks for the first round. Once they have all completed their picks, or the three hour limit expires, tier two will get their turn to make one pick/reserve their one pick...and so on and so forth. Following the first week of preseason, we will simulate to regular season week one.

Stage Two: Regular Season. In the first three weeks of the regular season, each team will get one pick per week. We do not separate into tiers for this. Once we hit the end of week 4, you can pick as many players as you want. You don't need permission to steal from another user's Practice Squad at any point in the regular season.

If you have more than six games simmed or a game in which your opponent played the CPU, you will be unable to draft the following year. You will still get draft picks but you cannot select them. It will be up to the Madden Gods.

Don't waste the league's time. If you don't intend to spend time in this league, this is not the league for you.

*Games simmed in the final two weeks because they are non-playoff related will not count towards this total.

Don't mess it up, plain and simple. Only hurts your own team, so this really should go without saying.

1. This is simple. Be mature about what you say and do. We are all grown up here, lets act like it.

1. If both users agree to broadcast their game, they may do so and post the link in the Scheduling/Trades/Banter chat.

Will be dealt with on a case by case basis as they arise.

Advancements are EVERY Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Monday and Wednesday are at 11 pm EST, Saturday is at 3 pm EST to allow people to watch some games over the weekend. However there are a few exceptions to this rule:.

- League will advance if all the user vs user games are completed before the scheduled advance time.