Hints & Tips

Perfect team
In season mode, go to rosters, select "Edit Player". Select any player (created or a real) and go to "Attributes" Move everything to 99 for all players.

Thanksgiving commentary
Set the system date to the third Thursday in November.

Created player announced
Give a created player a pro's last name to hear his name announced.

Winning the coin toss
Continually press L1 + R1 + Start prior to the coin toss screen appearing.

To win the coin toss, remember what you or the CPU choose before 95% of the time the result is the opposite of the previous coin toss. For example, if the CPU picks heads the last time and won, next time choose tails.

Kiss a cheerleader
After your first five seasons in franchise mode, at the end of the SuperBowl there will be a cheerleader waiting for you. You have to be a running back, corner back, wide receiver or a linebacker for this trick to work.

Houston Texans
After the first season in franchise mode, do the expansion draft for the Houston Texans.

Christmas commentary
Set the system date to December 25 to hear Pat Summerall will say ''Season's Greetings''.

New Year's commentary
Set the system date to January 1 to hear James Brown (JB) say "Happy New Year".

Avoid tackles
Stop running for a moment. You can sometimes easily avoid being tackled. Sometimes you will need to juke, spin, or stiff arm to get past defenders.

More broken tackles
When you run the ball to the outside, hold Stiff-Arm (L2 on right side, R2 on the left side). In time the person with the ball will drop his arm or use it to stiff arm a player. Then while continuing to hold Stiff-Arm you will start to ram into tacklers and break them.

Easy touchdowns in Two Minute Drill
For Two Minute Drill, select the Admirals Defense and play as the 2000 All-Madden Team. Use the HB Counter play and you can usually run all the way for a touchdown on your first try.

Change player appearance
Under the options screen select "Rosters", go to "Edit Player", and finally go to "Player Appearance". You can make anyone in the NFL look different than they really do.

Good protection
To get good protection on kick returns, choose "Onside Kick" as your play. When you run back the ball, you will normally get past the 20.

Real draft
This trick requires NCAA Football 2002. Simulate a season in NCAA Football 2002. When the game tells you who is going to the draft, save that draft class. After that, simulate a season in Madden 2002. At the end of the season, after the Pro Bowl, the game will ask "Advance to off season?". Select the "Import A Draft Class" option and the real people will be in the draft. You can do this as many times as you like.

Ultimate draft
Use this trick to draft all first round draft picks up to the league maximum per draft. Start the season in franchise mode, then go to the rosters screen. Purchase all free agents that your team can afford, with stats 63 or above, preferably SS, FS, OLB, MLB, LOB, CB, or DE as they have a higher trade value. Go to "Trades" and trade any three of your same defensive players to any team willing to give a draft pick at least fourth round or lower. Next, trade one bad player along with all fifth and sixth round picks for a fourth pick. You may end up with second to fourth rounders. Next, trade only picks for lower picks. For example, three fourth round picks equals one third round pick; three third round picks equals one second round pick; three second round pick equals one first round pick. This takes awhile but you can create a super team all from draft picks with a team average of 99.

Easy passes
When you are the QB, you can throw the ball two different ways: straight (hold the button of the receiver you want to receive it) and up high (press and release the button for that receiver). When you throw it up high, the QB will throw the ball over the safety to your receiver. He will catch the ball usually. Throwing it straight is the most common way. He just throws it to the receiver and it will not go over the safety. It is best to use the straight pass if the WR is open.

Realistic franchise mode
Use this trick to affect the ratings/attributes/salaries of players that will carry over into franchise mode. On the main menu, select "Options", then "Rosters". You can do a lot of things here to make the players/ratings/attributes/salaries more precise. The game was rushed out to market after the draft, and there are a lot of inaccuracies on which players are on which teams, the ratings/attributes of players (especially rookies), and player salaries. In the Rosters screen, you can sign, cut and/or trade players to any team you desire. This will allow you to account for the roster changes made after the game was created. Also, you can create players to account for any rookies or players not in the system, though in doing so they will automatically be salaried at what the game thinks is fair market value. For example, the Packers roster does not have David Martin (TE) or Gbaja-Biamila. Note that by simply selecting a player to modify, you can change appearance, name, attributes, etc. You can make players better or worse to make their attributes more accurate. Even better, as soon as you select "attributes" to edit, the players salary changes to what the game thinks is fair market value. This works against you when editing rookies and young players, who typically have low salaries. But fair market value is never too outrageous and it is more fun to use players who you really see on the field and that have exact ratings. For those overpaid players in the game, by simply hitting edit attributes you will knock their salaries down to fair market value. For example, the Packers' Santana Dotson, Levens, Reynolds all have extremely inaccurate salaries in the game, and this fixes them. It leaves the contract lengths the same, it only modifies the dollar value. After making all the desired changes, save the Roster to a memory card. Then begin a new franchise mode and all the roster changes you made will be reflected in the rosters. Of course, the roster changes are in every playing mode as well. Most franchising involves trading overpaid players and signing free agents who do not really play for your team, or cutting players and suffering the cap penalty. This will also allow you to have signed free agents you wanted for your team to sign but did not (i.e. Charlie Garner, Simeon Rice), or to adjust who your team drafted this past spring.

For easy sacks or tackles for a loss, do this: Select a Man To Man coverage play. Man Lock, on 4-3 defense works best. This is the play where the ROLB is blitzing. Do not move your defensive end. Move your ROLB over to the right (your left on the screen) outside of the right tackle. With offsides off just keep running at the QB. The QB will either scramble forward and be hit by one of your defensive line fronts or he will scramble into you. He will do this every time. If the other team moves a tight end over to block you, just move slightly to the outside of him and it will still work. This will work every time with any team and can be used to get more then twenty sacks per game.

For the best defense, create a team. Go to the Create A Playbook section. Make a defensive play from the 4-3 formation. Have your cornerbacks lock inside front, the safeties do not matter, but make sure that there are six men that are covering a man. Have the defensive end on your left blitz left, and vice versa. Have the DLs stunt towards the middle, and the middle LB blitz middle. Save it to a memory card.

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     X          X  x  X  X  X  x    X       X

Find Corner Threat under Shotgun Normal. Pass it to the "Square" player, and if you get your timing correct you will always gain at least 10 yards.

Easy Madden points
Choose your favorite and least favorite teams. Enter the rosters screen and select the "Edit Player" option. Make everyone on your favorite team a perfect 99 points for all attributes, then go to you least favorite team's roster and make everyone on their team the minimum 15 for everything. Save your roster changes. Continually play in exhibition mode and do your best run kickoffs and punts for touchdowns, let yourself get tackled, and run for 96 yards for a touchdown, etc. This can result in over 1000 points for a game.

Easy tokens
For easy tokens, go to the two minute drill screen. Choose two to four accounts, and the Admirals for defense. Choose your team and make sure you choose a profile to save to, then begin to play. Keep throwing to WR2 and you should get a lot of touchdowns. It is possible to get a score over 33,000 with this trick.

Have the Dragons on defense and the Titans as offense. You can score well above 55,000 points by selecting HB Off Tackle as a play. It takes roughly eleven seconds to run and you obtain 5,150 points per touchdown and 375 points for running the same play as a two point conversion. If you can score 11 touchdowns, you will have a score over 55000.

Modify the speed of every player on the Raven's defense to 15. Modify all of the halfbacks', fullbacks', tight ends', and wide receivers' ratings to 0. Modify you offensive lineman's pass block rating to 99. Modify your quarterback in this manner: 0 Passing Power, Accuracy; 99 Speed, Accel, Carrying, Awareness, Stamina, and Agility. Save your roster as "Cheat", load it before doing this trick. Begin a Two Minute Drill. Choose All-Madden, and then the Ravens' defense. Choose whatever team you modified offensively, and make them your offense. Next, you will need a passing play. Choose Single Back Formation, and then Hot Route your second wide receiver, looking left to right. Also Hot Route your tight end. For the Hot Routes, make them do a buttonhook (Left on the D-pad). Now instead of passing the ball, run a "Quarterback Sweep" by sending the quarterback to the right side of the field. Run towards the endzone, using speed bursts as required. Make sure you get to the endzone. If you do not, call timeout if the clock keeps ticking. If a penalty is called, do not waste the time running down the field. Just go out of bounds, and do it over. You should be able to score roughly ten touchdowns. Your score will be very odd, and you will obtain millions of tokens. Go the Madden Cards menu to see your tokens they may not appear on the Two Minute Drill menu.

Create a profile with M. Martz's playbook. Run the two-minute drill under rookie with Galaxy as the defense. Use the Rams. Run single back 5 wide, Hail Mary. Faulk or Hakim will be open every time. You can score 100 points and get roughly 220 tokens. It takes nine seconds to score.

Dance going into the endzone
Press L1, L2, R1, or R2 while running into the endzone and your player may do a dance.

Getting good players
In franchise mode, create a new coach and assign him to one of the teams that are available, but not your own. The game only lets you choose from the worst teams. Then go to "Roster", then "Trade". You can now trade away the better players on that team to your team without having to send a ridiculous amount of good players for just one (even bad teams have some good players). Also, because the teams you can choose are the worst teams, they have the best draft picks. This will allow you to trade away the draft picks. In other words, if you do this with several of the bad teams, you can actually end up with, for example, four first round draft picks. Its a good way to keep your team on top, and not have to suffer because your team wins so much.

Use this trick to get a lot of first round draft picks within the first year of your franchise. Keep signing the free agents that are good (77 and above) and trade them away prior to week 6 to the worst teams, standings wise to that point. You will get their draft picks for like three players in the mid-to-high 70s. They can all be people off of the free agents list.

To get a very good running back, draft or trade for Ladainian Tomlinson from the Chargers. At the end of year 3 in franchise mode, his rating will go from 83 to 100.