Offensive line disintegrating

[Kriegsmarine]

For the past few games in my Patriots franchise, my offensive line has been next to nonexistent. I regularly watch the replays only to find players not even trying to block the rushers or blocking the wrong player, leading to massive holes opening up. The result of this is as expected - I have absolutely no opportunity to either pass or rush. By the time my QB has handed the ball off to the back, there's already two or three rushers to take him down. What can I do other than fiddling with sliding the protection and using my TEs and backs as blockers, because that obviously doesn't work?

[RevanFan]

Mess with the sliders. Get better players. Change the difficulty level.

[Danchat]

Getting the O-line to play well is really difficult and even though I've been playing Madden 08 for a long time, I barely have anything figured out. Other than what Revan suggested, make sure you stop calling all plays that are an auto-fail for your linemen. This includes most rollout passing plays, having linemen roll out during a running play, or having all of your linemen blocking in a diagonal direction (instead of most running plays where they are told to block forward). Toss plays will usually fail if you're using Coach mode too.

Trey31 suggested in his research that the only stats that affect offensive linemen are SPD and ACC, so you could try subscribing to that theory and use only fast O-linemen.

[RevanFan]

I actually can get rollout passes to work often. Pulling guard runs are a crapshoot, though, and no draws ever work, as the line starts as if they're pass blocking, which doesn't really work on runs.

[BUS36]

you need to make sure that both the Human AI for run blocking and pass blocking are about the same. when you have a guard pulling check to see if his pull is to the outside or thru the guard tackle hole ( misdirection plays). Also if you allow the back to setup the block, don't hit the speed button right off the snap. wait till the hole opens and the blocker is engaging the defender. then hit the speed button to blast thru the hole or bounce it to the outside.

[AaronS]

I actually can get rollout passes to work often. Pulling guard runs are a crapshoot, though, and no draws ever work, as the line starts as if they're pass blocking, which doesn't really work on runs.

Probably cheese.. but I've got draws to work if I pull a G into the hole ahead of the back, or if you set the interior to run block, letting the ends crash down.

.. don't use it often, beacuse it feels like cheese, but I probably run once/game.