Cardinals Vs. Cowboys: The Game Played As A Madden Simulation

Time for another Madden Sim, this week playing out the week twelve matchup between the Cardinals and Cowboys.

Again, I am using 15 minute quarters, the rosters are the most recent ones, and the game is played through the Super Sim mode.

From everything we are hearing, Kolb will be good to go this weekend, so he will start. Some minor depth chart changes were also done such as replacing Andre Roberts with Patrick Peterson as the Punt Returner because for some reason EA hasn't changed that yet. They fixed the Porter/Acho thing after taking five weeks to do it though....

Game Summary:

When the Cowboys come to Univeristy of Phoenix Stadium, crazy things seem to happen. Will anything crazy that you just can't explain happen here?

The Cards got on the board first with an early drive that wound up stalling in the redzone and the Cards had to kick a field goal and Feely made it from 29 yards out. Then Dallas responded a 22 yard pass to Laurent Robinson by Romo to end the first quarter and quickly followed up with a one yard plunge by DeMarco Murray for a score to start off the second one.

Later on in the second quarter, after a Cowboys drive stalled they kicked to Patrick Peterson, and he made them pay by returning it 74 yards for a score. Bet they will stop kicking it to him now. Feely did miss the extra point though, bad Feely.

They responded to that with another drive that stalled early and they had to punt again. So now they are going to kick it out of bounds every time.... wait.... Peterson caught it, and there he goes again.... 78 yards for a score. Has anyone ever scored on consecutive punt returns because PP21 just did that.

Moving on, the Cardinals were able to keep the momentum on their side after Mat McBriar for some reason forgot that you don't kick to Peterson, and they ended the half with a 31 yard scoring pass from Kolb to Roberts to end the first half. They were up 23-14, but if not for Peterson they would have been down 14-10. Then in the third quarter things slowed down with only two scores, the first being a six yard pass from Kolb to Doucet, and the second being a 15 yarder from Romo to Bryant.

So now we enter the fourth quarter, and Dallas is punting again, this time they won't dare to do it again right? Nope, it is going straight down the middle, and there goes Peterson again.... This time he went 84 yards, and now Jerry Jones is going to have McBriar shot and fed to his pet hyenas. The Cowboys were able to respond with a 17 yard touchdown from Romo to Robinson, which led the Cardinals to chew up some clock and score on a two yard plunge from Beanie to put the game out of reach. The Cowboys were able to score again with a 19 yarder from Romo to Bryant, and then the Cards were just able to kneel down and run out the clock.

In these closing reflections, lets just focus on the main thing here. Patrick Peterson scored three touchdowns on Punt Returns. I don't know how that happened, I have had him as the returner for the entire season and I think he only scored once this entire year, then he goes off and does it three times in the kind of game you would only see with the high school varsity team's best returner going against the freshmen team or if you are just screwing around with Devin Hester in rookie mode with Madden. I don't know how this happened, I have no control of the results, I just let the game play itself out and write down the results. And the results wound up being Peterson scoring 21 of the Cardinals 45 points. Amazing....

So, in the end, the Madden Cardinals get the 45-35 win over Dallas (although 21 of those points came off of Patrick Peterson returning Punts, something I never though I would see on here). Their record also jumps up to 5-7.

Box Score:

Teams	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	OT	Final
Cardinals	3	20	8	14	0	45
Cowboys	7	7	7	14	0	35

Notable Stats:

Passing:

Kevin Kolb - 16 of 29 for 209, 2 TD, Int

Tony Romo - 17 of 32 for 322, 4 TD, 2 Int

Rushing:

Beanie Wells - 18 for 76, TD

DeMarco Murray - 19 for 51, TD

Fumbles - DeMarco Murray

Receiving:

Larry Fitzgerald - 2 for 18

Andre Roberts - 5 for 114, TD (I have no idea why he went off and Fitz didn't)

Early Doucet - 3 for 23, TD

Dez Bryant - 3 for 58, 2 TDs

Laurent Robinson - 7 for 136, 2 TDs

Dropped Passes - Laurent Robinson

Seriously, why did you kick it to him?

Patrick Peterson - 6 returns, 262 yards, 3 TDs

Defense:

Sacks - Daryl Washington, Darnell Dockett, Nick Eason, Sam Acho (I don't know why nobody for the Cowboys got a sack)

Int - Daryl Washington, A.J. Jefferson, Gerald Sensabaugh, Abram Elam (One of the Dallas picks was on a 4th down play where Zastudil threw a pass)

Kicking:

Jay Feely - 1 of 1

Dan Bailey - 0 of 0

Total Offense:

Cards -305

Cowboys -397

3rd/4th Down:

Cards - 4 of 10, 0 of 1

Cowboys - 6 of 14, 0 of 0