Football coaches, especially college coaches and high school coaches, have made comments regarding how Madden has changed the game in some ways, but it's mainly

Football coaches, especially college coaches and high school coaches, have made comments regarding how Madden has changed the game in some ways, but it's mainly due to increasing the baseline knowledge of the game. Your typical new player might have watched some football games, and most of their coaching would involve a position coach teaching the specific position. There aren't that many coaching hours that aren't dedicated to the physical part of the sport, so it wasn't uncommon to find players with the right physiques for a position, and decent knowledge of how they had to play, but short in general "Football IQ". As the games have become closer to a simulation, kids that are football fans get a lot free time where they control both the offense and the defense. They get to make calls, and see how every player in the team should move, and how it makes a difference. It in no way replaces actual football practice, but it boosts a lot of what you can ask a middling high school team to do. Even in the pros, you'll hear people talk about how so-and-so is "like another coach, but on the field", because knowledge of the game overall, and the system they play in, matters. Years of videogame football, instead of having to learn even the very basics from scratch, makes things easier.