Madden NFL 24 is at its best when you’ve embraced the way of being the worst

They’re reviewing it.

The ball looked to have been fumbled right on the goal line. The Raiders looked to have sprinted away with it, denying us what could be our best chance of scoring a touchdown this season. Now, it looks as though the call might be overturned.

It is.

Play resumes with the ball in the hands of Daniel Jones, quarterback of the 0-8 New York Giants, who currently sit bottom of the NFL standings.

3rd and goal. Last chance.

He’s going to run for the endzone again, hoping this time that the ball will come all the way with him. There’s the snap. Here he comes, gently crab-walking towards the writhing mass of roaring, colliding bodies. Some of those in black jerseys reach him and begin to wrestle him down.

They’re too late. He’s in for six.

A squad in the midst of one of the most brutally terrible seasons in the history of the NFL, of organised sport in general, rush towards Jones, celebrating the fact that – for what seems like the first time in forever – they’ve actually taken the lead in a game. In the cruel and unknowable future, the very next possession is already seeing the Raiders, who’ll go on to win the game by a score of 24-7, draw back level.

But it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter to the doomed Giants, and by extension the man controlling them, because, since this simulation of the 2023 season in Madden NFL 24 began, we’ve been using the ancient Chinese wisdom of Taoism to form a mindset immune to the depressing realities of being a bad sports team.

“The submissive and weak will overcome the hard and strong,” reads one passage of my English translation of the Tao Te Ching, Taoism’s foundational text. In this particular Madden save, at least from a practical perspective, you could argue this hasn’t proven true. Having taken control of the Giants quarterback and attempted to play in a manner that mirrors the relaxed, naturally harmonious way of life described in the book, wins were not forthcoming. By the time we reached our third game of the year, we’d already come the closest we would to notching a victory, having fallen by a score of eight to six against the Arizona Cardinals in week 2.

Our strategy, which decreed that every offensive play could only ever see Jones scramble, and by that I mean go for a leisurely stroll in the general direction of the endzone, didn’t exactly lend itself to scoring lots of points. However, the Tao told us to “blunt the sharpness, untangle the knots, soften the glare, let your wheels move only along old ruts,” so that’s what we did. Jones, taking on the role of the sage, aimed in governing his teammates on the offense to “(empty) their minds, but (fill) their bellies, (weaken) their wills, but (strengthen) their bones.”

That meant that no plays of either the running or passing variety were to be called, with the quarterback instead seeking to allow his receivers and running backs to earn their money without substantially risking their health by getting hit. Instead, the team’s highest earner took all of the punishment on their behalf, knowing that his largely guaranteed contract could offer him a safety blanket that (while not 100% stable) is still much more so than those of his peers.

From the 42-0 loss to the Dallas Cowboys that kicked off the season, through thorough pummelings by everyone from the 49ers to the Patriots and even some games that were a little bit closer – such as a surprising 16 to six encounter with the high-flying Eagles – Jones has been Atlas, stoically bearing the weight of his team and their fans on his shoulders. Amid the eerie silence that’s regularly gripped the cavernous MetLife Stadium as the Giants’ home faithful have repeatedly watched opposing squads unleash brutal beatings on their team and run up the score, he’s stood unflinching. During away games played on foreign soil, with opposing fans cheering and jeering raucously as they witness their team put on its most dominant performance of the season, he’s remained unfazed.

“Hence the superior must have the inferior as root,” the Tao Te Ching says, “the high must have the low as base.” This year, the Giants have been the NFL’s base. While teams like the Bills and Cowboys racked up scores of wins, augmenting their totals with drubbings of lowly teams, the Giants and their struggling ilk amassed their own loss-heavy records. Through the first 10 weeks of the season, the G-men shared the fate of being winless with the Chicago Bears. We weren’t by ourselves. Then, the Bears beat the Lions.

“I alone am muddled, calm like the sea; like a high wind that never ceases,” says the Tao Te Ching, “the multitude all have a purpose. I alone am foolish and uncouth.” The purpose of NFL teams is to try and make the playoffs, something all three teams that played the Giants more than once during this season managed to accomplish. The Buffalo Bills, who beat the Giants 28-3 in week six, go on to win the superbowl over a San Francisco team that did something similar.

The purpose of a defensive pass rusher is to sack the quarterback, knocking him to the ground before he can make a play. All of the players who end the season in the top 12 in terms of recording the most sacks during this season have their numbers inflated by performances against the Giants. Each week, four players receive awards from the league for their outstanding numerical performances in their game. Following 15 out of the 17 games the Giants play, one of their opponents receives one of these accolades.

The Giants aren’t purposely losing games in order to score a high draft pick, a practice unique to American sports known as tanking. The save file they’re in is doomed to end after a single season, before any draft can take place. The proverbial saviour who’d make all of the suffering worth it, at least in theory, isn’t coming. So, all the Giant players can do, much like their brethren on any sports team potentially constructed to bottom out by its management, is play for their own pride. They can take solace in having been the necessary footnote in the successes laid out above.

Without their participation, none of it, and none of the good for those involved that has or could come to pass because of it, would have been possible. As the Tao Te Ching says of the ideal ruler: “when his work is accomplished and his work done, the people will say ‘it happened to us naturally’.”

That said, while the Giants have been forming the foundation of others’ achievements, they’ve also been busy building something beautiful for themselves. Even though he hasn’t been able to score many points, running on every play has led Jones to rack up plenty of yards, with his teammates helping to insulate his strolls from the opposition for just long enough to make incremental, metronomic gains.

By the time the season is over, the Giants QB has not only managed to lead the league in terms of cumulative rushing yard totals for the 2023 season, but has supplanted Eric Dickerson’s 1984 total of 2,105 yards to notch the highest rushing mark ever achieved by an NFL player in a single a season. Dickerson amassed his total in 16 games compared to Jones’ 17, but his Rams team were also able to pass the ball.

The Giants’ opponents came to know exactly what was coming on every offensive possession. They still couldn’t stop Jones and his team from writing their names into the history books.

Two thousand one hundred and fifty yards. Daniel Jones. 2023 New York Giants.

Immortality.

The Giants play out the final snap of their season, one which ends with Jones being the victim of the final sack ever recorded by soon-to-retire Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham. I find myself thinking about two passages from the Tao Te Ching. One reads: “The whole world recognises the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly, the whole world recognises the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.”

The other says: “Know contentment, and you will suffer no disgrace; know when to stop, and you will meet with no danger, you can then endure.” Taken together they sum up the season this Madden experiment conjured up.

The Giants were often ugly, they were often bad, they battled disgrace and danger at every turn. But, in their own way, they managed to be beautiful and to be good. Most importantly, they did what we all have to do in a world that often feels cruel and hopeless.

They endured.