Perfecting and Defending the Face Catch in Madden 15

On Mar 20, 2015 10:27 pm, by J Gleez

The face catch is basically a user catch in Madden 15. To execute the face catch, you must bullet pass the ball to a wide receiver who is running a vertical, or go pattern. When throwing the ball, be sure to pass lead the ball up. Doing this will throw the ball deeper down field and make the trajectory of the ball a bit higher.

This type of pass lead will force the defensive back to run to where the ball is going to land. This allows a good user to click on and under cut the ball. Once the receiver is in range to catch the ball, the player hits and holds the catch button (Y on Xbox One, Triangle on PS4).

This type of catch takes a little bit or practice, but compared to user catches in past Madden games, this catch is ridiculously simple to pull off. Below is a video showing how to execute this face catch animation in Madden 15.

Defending the face catch is a lot trickier than actually performing it. Many people are at a loss when it comes to defending the face catch, but they don’t have to be. It is much easier than you may think.

A great play to use when defending the face catch is cover 4. Once we break the huddle we will find the big, tall wide out and man our safety on that side to the wide receiver.

Cover 4 is a perfect play call because the corners are playing deep quarters. This is essential when defending the fact catch. Thirds (cover 3) get sucked inside when the outside WR is manned up. This poses a ton of other issues that we just don’t want to deal with.

If you are ever stuck in cover 3 and your opponent is running a no huddle offense, simply hot route the corner who is defending the face catching wide receiver to a deep quarter. To do this highlight that corner, click the A button and hit “Up” on the d pad.

The video below illustrated how to defend the face catch and goes over the necessary defensive adjustments. Be sure to watch until the end of the video, as it also gives tips for defending face throws from the slot receivers.