MOF DEFENSIVE USER RANKINGS

What's up everyone! Thanks for checking out my article on the Top Defensive users in the MOF! First and foremost, these rankings are totally subjective based on my own experience in the MOF from both playing and watching Owners.

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by Enzo
January 16, 2021

The intent is certainly not to offend anyone, but to spark conversation and opinions around the league. Who knows, maybe this will ignite some fires to get on the list! Secondly, when playing and watching games, I notice a lot of Owners tend to switch who they user on defense depending on the situation or maybe the offense they're playing. Therefore, for the sake of the article, I've listed the position the Owner appears to use most frequently. Thirdly, for simplicity, I've narrowed the positions down to DL, LB, or Safety. So regardless if you play DE or DT, I've considered you a DL (so on and so forth). Luckily, no one really plays cornerback, so that eliminated that position.

Now it would be near impossible to rank every Owner according to their position, so for the sake of time (and my sanity), I'm going to rank the top 5 users in each position, then rank the top 5 users overall. Hope you guys enjoy!

We have 32 Owners in this league. Here is how the user positions broke down:

Defensive Lineman

Ranking the top 5 Defensive Lineman first. Defensive line is somewhat difficult to rank because the position is generally a "quiet" position. There's pressure, tackles for loss, run stopping, and now in this edition of Madden, with the throw-out-of-sack feature, what could have been sacks are no longer. I had to choose something, so the method I chose to use to help my rankings is simply looking at the team sack leaders at this moment in time. Interestingly enough, I think the rankings look about right.



My take: Before ranking these, I automatically thought of Krayzie as the top DL. Just from pure memory of playing against him and consistently sticking to DL, I think the stats proved me right. The #2 and #3 coaches are relatively new to the league, so I don't have much history with them, but seems like they'res doing something right. Bengalsonly at #4 looks like he made the top sacks list from his LB sacks, but nonetheless, pressure is pressure. Coach Q rounds out the list in the fifth spot, who I believe has recently made the switch, so maybe we see Q sneak up the list in the future?

Linebackers

The next position we'll look at is the most popular position in the MOF, the LB's. Since this position is the most prominent, it makes it a little harder to list because some really good Owners were left off the list. However, I don't think the top five Owners on this list will surprise anyone. Different from the DL list, this list is merely based on experience playing and seeing these coaches do their thing.



My take: This is a fun one to get a conversation going! I know what everyone might be thinking. "How is the champ not number one?" Well, from my experience, the Commish takes the top spot as he is one of the more balanced users at the position playing both rush defense and pass defense well. KnightNoles takes the #2 spot but not very far behind. Newcomer SonGoku has shown his skills at the LB position as he's basically a guaranteed hit stick and plays the pass very well. He could arguably be #1. Betts comes in at #4 as one of the more consistent user LB's to play in my experience, also one of the better hit stickers in the MOF. Estrada ends the list at #5 as one of the more difficult Owners to play in this game as he appears to be everywhere. Again, this was a hard list to narrow down, but I'm open for suggestions!

Safety

This list was a little easier to narrow down since there are only five Owners who consistently use a safety on defense. Like the LB rankings, this is based on experience playing and seeing these coaches.



My take: Now hear me out (haha)! Between these five Owners, Enzo (myself) and Jfon have been the longest tenured safety users in the MOF. Companied with the fact that Enzo has more interceptions at his position in the last two seasons puts him in the #1 spot. Jfon is a a solid safety user and plays the position as good as anyone. The next three coaches could really have gone either way, especially since it seems they recently switched to using the safeties. Based on past team success though, Pettigrew gets the #3 spot, Gouch #4, and RobPowers #5.

Overall

It was pretty difficult to rank every position, but it's even harder to narrow those down to five! To keep it short and sweet, here’s the top five defensive users in the MOF.



My take: The top three defensive users come from the LB list. The LB position is arguably the hardest position to play because you have to be able to get through the line or get to the edges on runs as well as play pass defense, and do both well or else the middle of the field is wide open. Enzo takes the #4 spot with consistency at the safety position and also his ability to help against the run. Krayzie takes #5 because without pressure, the LB and Safety positions are nothing! Imagine these users all playing on the defensive side of the ball at the same time! Yikes!

That's it boys! I really hope you enjoyed the article and I hope this sparks some conversations and friendly arguments! We have a ton of talented Owners in the MOF and as the saying of "there's no 'easy' weeks" is extremely true these days. To the Owner's that made the rankings, well done. To those who missed the list, keep at it and maybe you'll make the next list?!