When training camp first began, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin told reporters that he might have to take a look at the soon-to-be-released Madden NFL 25, with the goal of getting a better grasp on how the new kickoff rules will look.
But as it turns out, he's done a lot more than that. According to Nick Shook of NFL.com, the Steelers head coach actually worked with the developers of the game before its release in what was a symbiotic relationship.
When Tomlin was getting his face scanned for the upcoming video game, he asked an EA Sports employee about the company's approach to handling the kickoff changes in the latest installment of the wildly popular video game franchise.
From there, Tomlin took part in Zoom calls in which he watched the development team play games to get a look at the kickoffs. During the calls, the Steelers coach asked for different variables to be thrown in by those playing, which helped him and the development team get a better grasp on kickoffs.
"We're going into uncharted territory with this kickoff concept," Tomlin said. "There's actually no real visuals of the concept. My sons play all the EA Sports games. I have a lot of respect for the realism of their product. We reached out to those guys and wanted to just kind of get a visual, maybe, of some of the schematics -- how the alignment might affect the timing of blocks and so forth.
"That game is more than entertainment from my perspective -- it is a real simulator. As we all move into uncharted territory in terms of not knowing what these concepts look like, I viewed it as a potential tool to aid us in teaching and gaining some understanding and experience where there is none, while at the same time maybe helping them do what it is that they needed to do, because really they had the same issues that we did."
EA Sports' Clint Oldenburg revealed that Tomlin was a huge help in developing how the game would simulate kickoffs, with Oldenburg adding that Tomlin's level of thinking in terms of the different possibilities and strategy "blew our minds."
"When we first started talking to Coach Tomlin, it was about rules application and just making sure the basic black-and-white application was correct," Oldenburg said. "But what he started talking about kind of blew our minds about that level of strategy. He said, 'Initially, you're gonna see small people against small people, and you're gonna get a lot of big returns. And then the kicking team is gonna put big people out there, and the return team is going to have to start countering that with their own big people, and then it's going to turn into an offensive play, and it's going to do this and that.'
"The foresight that he was having as an NFL head coach was amazing to witness in real time as he was talking through what was going to happen, and how he was going to navigate these new rules. We started to play off of that. What can we do? What can we lead with that people have never seen before with these kickoff rules? They may think we're crazy when they first see it come out, but then they'll see it two or three months later in the NFL."
Oldenburg also revealed that the relationship between the game's developers and football coaches has "been growing for a long time," so Tomlin getting involved isn't necessarily something new.
He did say, however, that no coach has helped the developers quite like Tomlin did. Now, they have a better understanding of all the possibilities the new kickoff rules bring, and Tomlin has a better idea of what's coming in 2024.
