The Bears have been on a roll in the offseason for the past few years. First, was pulling off the blockbuster trade in 2023 to get D.J. Moore from the Panthers, and their 2024 1st round draft pick. That 2024 pick turned into the #1 overall pick in 2024, which the Bears used to draft Caleb Williams (along with their own 9th overall pick, in which they drafted Rome Odunze). Now, in 2025, they managed to sign Ben Johnson (perhaps the most sought-after head coaching prospect in 2025). They also walked away from the free agency signing period with a revamped offensive line that should give Caleb Williams much better interior protection in 2025.

The Ben Johnson hire, by itself, was enough for many people to crown the Bears "offseason champs" for the third year running. But I was a bit hesitant. I was hoping that they would get the trifecta of also having an exceptional draft. And my definition of "exceptional draft" was to somehow manage to select Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty. Jeanty was a controversial topic among Bears fans. Conventional wisdom says that drafting a running back early in the first round is a waste of draft capital. But I think this is wrong for 3 reasons.

Photo credit: Boise State Football.

I was 1 thousand percent on the Ashton Jeanty bandwagon.

The case for drafting a running back (named Ashton Jeanty)

The first is that the NFL is changing. It isn't the "passing league" that it was for most of the 2000's and 2010's. Passing production has tapered off for the past few years, and even elite quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Matt Stafford are struggling to put up 300 yards and more than 1 or 2 TDs on a week-to-week basis. In fact, in 2024, not a single QB reached the 5,000 yard mark (Joe Burrow was the top passer, with 4,918 yards). And that is despite the fact that there's a whole extra, 17th game on the schedules now! The reason for this is that defensive coordinators are getting sick of getting torched for 4 or 500 yards and 4 TDs every game. They're building defensive rosters specifically to stop the pass, and are moving away from run-stuffing Cover 3 and Cover 1 schemes in favor of calling a lot of Cover 4 and Cover 2 in order to limit offenses' ability to throw down the field. This has opened up space underneath and lead to a resurgence of elite running backs, with Saquan Barkley having one of the best years of any running back ever, breaking the single-season rushing record (including playoffs) on route to leading the Eagles to a Super Bowl victory.

The second reason is that I firmly believe that teams should prioritize drafting for need, unless there are simply no good options at those needed positions, when your pick comes around. Running back was one of the Bears' top needs this season. Only offensive tackle was arguably a more important need.

Photo credit: AP Photo / David Longstreath.

Jeanty's 2024 season was 2nd only to Barry Sanders.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is that Jeanty was an elite prospect -- possibly a generational one. His 2024 season is 2nd only to Barry Sanders in terms of rushing yards, and he's tied for 7th overall for TDs. The only reason that Ashton Jeanty did not win the Heisman is that Travis Hunter was an ultra-rare 2-way player, who excelled at both offense and defense. I totally understand selecting Hunter for the Heisman, even though my vote would have been for Jeanty. Honestly, I think the committee should have award co-Heisman trophies to both Hunter and Jeanty, due to the unique circumstances surrounding this year's award (having a 2-way player, and a record-book bell-cow running back).

A few months ago, I wrote a blog piece about suggestions to expand Madden 16's feature set to make the game a deeper, more realistic depiction of the management of an NFL team. This year's Madden game has proven to be a much better game than the previous few years, and I actually have found myself playing it well into the new year. As such, I've also been coming across new, nagging annoyances, and new ideas for features and enhancements. Most notably, I finally got to play through a complete off-season, and I have several ideas for how offseason can be improved in future years of Madden.

So I've decided to write a follow-up piece with more suggestions for future games. This article will focus on off-season activities. In order to keep things clean and concise, I've also made a few changes to the original post as well. I wanted to keep specific topics grouped together. There's also less to talk about in this new post, so I've moved the "Little Things" section from the original post into this article in order to shorten the original post and pad this one out to about the same length. I've also made some small revisions and clarifications in the original post, so I highly recommend re-visiting that post to see the changes.

Table of Contents

• A player's experience within a given scheme
  • Mentorship and "coachability"
• More and better off-season team management and progression
  • Phase I-II: Contract negotiations
  • Phase III: A mock draft and interface enhancements
  • Phase IV: Off-season shake-ups summary
  • Phase V: Training Camp
• Making a commitment to scouting
  • Importing a draft class from obsoleted NCAA Football 14
• ADDED: JUNE 5, 2016: Think you could've drafted better?
• The little things
  • Play-calling screen suggestions
  • Defensive matchups
  • Defensive "give up" slide
  • Better sack avoidance from lower-tier QBs
  • Allow Franchise user simulate CPU injuries
  • Nagging injuries
  • Add officials to the physics engine
  • Change the coach cam controls
  • More time to read the defense
  • Allow Franchise players to change CPU team uniforms