Pats Sail has been a staple of the Patriots offensive playbook for quite some time now; but with Madden ’20, the play was basically destroyed and became unusable for the most part. Well, the deep Post part of the play anyway. In previous Madden’s, the deep Post would clear most all coverages, and the only way you could stop the deep Post was to use-r defend the route. In Madden ’20 they extended the Post route and made it more vertical and stretched it so that it extended into the area of the deep blue zones; where a Safety or Cornerback might be playing.
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| Madden 20 - Pats Sail Stock Play |
As a solution to the is problem, I have found that having a QB with Hot Route Master allows you to put that deep Post WR on a Cross route. You can also do this if have the WR Apprentice ability on your WR, that allows you to have 4 additional Hot Routes.
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| Madden '19 - Pats Sail |
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| Madden '20 - With Cross route (look at distance compared to '19) |
The setup for this is simple: motion your outside single-side WR in; put him on a Cross route, then motion him back to his original position on the field. Now you can put the Bunch side WR on a drag or slant, and max protect if you like – this gives you a similar setup to the Gun Bunch of old. It isn’t quite the same, the WR goes about 2-yards deeper and cuts more across the field than the Post route, but it is close enough to make it a much better play than the default Pats Sail in Madden ’20.
Anyway, take this play to practice mode, and get a feel for it. Then take it to a head-to-head game and run it against a real opponent and start dominating them with Pats Sail again.
