EA Sports has released the trailer for Madden 17 and the Denver Broncos, not surprisingly, are featured prominently. The Broncos and Panthers kick off the real season on Sept. 8 and kick off the trailer, which has some good news in it for Broncos fans (and something that doesn’t quite add up).
The trailer opens with dramatic and wildly lifelike pans of Von Miller, his Broncos teammates and the Carolina Panthers.
“Welcome to Denver, I’m Brandon Gaudin alongside Charles Davis,” Gaudin crows before Brandon McManus kicks off and the music kicks into high gear, “as the 2016 NFL season is underway.”
Highlights from the game and the upcoming season roll and there are plenty of Miller included. But the reigning Super Bowl MVP isn’t the hero of the trailer – or of the upcoming season, if EA Sports is predicting things.
“Here we go…” Gaudin says as the trailer nears its climactic end. The Broncos defensive line crouches at the line of scrimmage. “Just three seconds left. The Broncos fighting for their playoff lives…”
An isolation shot shows T.J. Ward calling out the play ahead of the snap. Kansas City is in field goal formation.
“The snap… Hold…” Gaudin shouts as Ward comes flying around the left edge.
“It’s blocked! T.J. Ward blocked it! And in the most improbable of ways, Denver is going to the playoffs!”
Improbable indeed. And not because of a T.J. Ward blocked kick.
The virtual highlight occurs at Mile High Stadium, which is where the Broncos will play Kansas City in Week 12 – Sunday, Nov. 27, Thanksgiving weekend.
Four teams have clinched a playoff spot by Week 11, so it’s not impossible, but it is certainly improbable as Gaudin suggests.
Considering that the Super Bowl champs needed until Dec. 29 to clinch a playoff spot in 2015 (and they’ve got major questions at quarterback and with their Super Bowl MVP) it seems unlikely that they’d be clinching a full month earlier in the season. And it’s hard to envision any scenario in which the Broncos would be “fighting for their playoff lives” at that point. A Week 12 clinching scenario would mean the rest of the division would have to be playing incredibly poorly, especially considering Denver will still have matchups with Kansas City and Oakland (Weeks 16 & 17) still on the schedule.
In what is expected to be another competitive year in the AFC West, the more realistic (yet still improbable) scenario would be Ward blocking a kick at Arrowhead on Christmas Night to clinch a playoff berth. But the highlight is clearly at Mile High, in the middle of clear Denver day.
It’s great that EA Sports has so much confidence in the Denver defense (there is no indication in the trailer as to who will be the Broncos quarterback) getting the Broncos back to the playoffs, but how they get there is just a little off.
