While most Madden games played in your living room or basement are all about passing the football and making enormous plays to rack up the score on your friends, the current Madden NFL 20 champion was able to take the title without even throwing a single pass. In fact, the newly-crowned champion, Raidel “Joke” Brito, won this weekend’s annual Madden Bowl without a quarterback on his roster. Joke upended the Madden formula with an innovative run-first strategy, riding his unique roster all the way to a shutout victory in the championship.
In these competitive tournaments, Madden players are given a salary cap to build their rosters using both current and former NFL players. Just like in real football, quarterbacks are the most expensive assets in the game, and top-tier passers like Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Aaron Rodgers come at quite the cap hit. Joke decided he didn’t need to spend that money and rolled out punter Tress Way as his quarterback.
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This strategy allowed Joke to spend that leftover quarterback money on a dominant running game, as well as elite defenders at several key positions. It sounds risky, but it paid dividends for the 26-year-old, as he steam-rolled his way through the entire tournament.
Here is the moment @Jokeeee_ officially became a @EAMaddenNFL #MaddenBowl 🏆 pic.twitter.com/iCf7x2oyhu
— Madden Championship Series (@MaddenLeagueOps) May 17, 2020
The exclusive run-first offense and incredibly stingy defense allowed Joke to control the clock throughout the tournament, keeping things moving at his pace while his opponents had to try and stop him to get a chance. He eventually beat Daniel “Dcroft” Mycroft 17-0 in the finals on Saturday night, winning the coveted Madden belt. You can watch a video of the moment Joke won the championship in the tweet above.
Joke has long been a figure in competitive Madden, but had yet to breakthrough and win a title until Saturday night. Since the tournament had to be conducted online, and Joke wasn’t able to hoist his belt over his head in front of a crowd, Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James hopped on to the broadcast to show off the belt, saying that he would be mailing it to Joke in the days to come.
