UWDP Roundtable: Favorite Video Game Huskies

EA announced on 2/2/21 that it would be producing a new college football video game in the future. The most recent addition was NCAA Football 14 before it became legally dubious to include replicas of real life people, pretend they were someone totally different, and then share none of the proceeds with those players. With name, image, and likeness rules set to change in the near future it has re-opened the door for us getting a new college football video game. Unfortunately we were all deprived of a game during the Chris Petersen era. So that begs the question, which Husky player since 2014 are you most excited about potentially being able to go back and play as in a historical game mode?

Max- I will be honest that I didn’t play a lot of football video games. I never transitioned over to Madden. My football game of choice was ESPN NFL 2K5. And I had one rule in that game. Speed kills. My favorite thing to do was re-draft the teams and emphasize taking the faster players in the league as possible at every position. Almost every team I had included Andre Johnson at WR and Warrick Dunn at RB who had the best speed rating in the game. Is it any surprise then that I’m going with John Ross? Finding a play that would get Ross in isolation on the outside without safety help and then just chucking up a deep ball to him on every snap would certainly have ben my go-to in every game against the computer.

Honorable mention to Salvon Ahmed as sometimes a wide receiver is going to be well covered. Having someone nearly as speedy at running back means I can just run an outside sweep or toss play for Ahmed all the time and there’s not much that most computer defenses can do about it.

Andrew- I’m not a big gamer with one exception- the EA NCAA series. I owned every edition of the game and played them to death. Online dynasties, simulated dynasties, everything. The way to answer this question has a lot to do with how you play the game. A lot of people love the scrambling QBs. That hasn’t been a UW specialty over the last half-decade. The deep pass is another great weapon, so Ross is a great option. He’s the first guy I thought of, too. RB speed is a great video game attribute because you can get to the edge, which makes Ahmed probably the best RB option. If they gave Myles Gaskin a killer spin or juke move to make up for the fact that you can’t really program patience or vision into a video game, he might get the advantage. Just to be different, I’m going to say Dante Pettis. His shiftiness would make him great running after the catch, and he would be an asset in the return game.

The defense is a little harder to pick because I know a lot of people choose to control different positions at the snap. I was largely a DE controller because a good speed/finesse rush could be really disruptive. At that spot, I’ll go with Hau’oli Kikaha, but Joe Mathis, Joe Tryon, or even ZTF would be good choices.

Playing against friends online, rushing off the edge made it too easy for them to exploit if you lost contain, so I would often control an ILB. Either Ben Burr-Kirven or Azeem Victor would be lethal with the combination of closing speed and tackling ability. I had some friends who liked to freelance as a safety, and Shaq Thompson or Budda Baker would be the best option there.

So that was just a list of great Huskies of the ‘10s. To narrow it down, I’ll say Pettis on offense, Kikaha on defense against the CPU, and BBK on defense against a human opponent.

Kirk- A lot will depend on how the controls feel and what the gameplay is like. I’ve gravitated more and more towards playing Dynasty Mode and simming games in that series, although I did enjoy the “Road To Glory” feature and building up a created player and playing just as them rather than trying to control the whole team. If I were just playing as a particular player John Ross would be an obvious choice given his speed. In NCAA 14 you could have a ton of success as a WR that freelances to get open, and with his speed he’d be lethal. I also have gotten to where I feel reasonably comfortable playing QB and reading defenses, so I think the arm ratings for a guy like Jacob Eason would make him pretty fun to control, and I’d like to think I’d handle the pass rush better than he did. I’m terrible on defense so to minimize the damage I do to myself on that side I think I’d pick Vita Vea - there’s only so much I can mess up playing as an interior DL, and he should do a pretty good job of clogging the middle and getting pressure up the gut.

Andrew- Eason would be interesting. He’d probably be like a 65/98 accuracy/power guy if we are accurately rating his arm.

Kirk- I was thinking more like “awareness” would be his Achilles heel in his ratings. Accuracy is pretty good, but decision-making wasn’t always on-point.

Andrew- I’m trying to find historical player ratings online to see how they broke down Locker’s power/accuracy, but no luck so far.

Apparently when Locker was a rookie on Madden, there was a rating for sensing pressure of “oblivious.”

Coach B- Dynasty mode in NCAA 14 was one my favorite video game binges back in the day. I always ended up running a dual threat QB in a spread option offense, so I’m going to go with a bit of a curve ball and say a Colson Yankoff. He didn’t really end up doing a whole bunch while he was on our team, but I could see him being a lot of fun to play as in an option-based scheme just off his athleticism.

On defense I used to freelance with an LB or safety, so Budda Baker or Taylor Rapp would be awesome guys to play as. They were so athletic and versatile that it makes me think that they could be one-man game wreckers in a new NCAA video game.