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Dermontti Dawson makes Madden All-25 team

Hall of Fame center Dermontti Dawson was announced as the starting center of the all-time Madden team that will be usable in the upcoming edition of the football video game series, Madden 25.

By Christopher Carter
Charles LeClaire-US PRESSWIRE

Although the new rosters for the upcoming Madden game, Madden 25 (named for the game's 25th anniversary), are not yet available, EA Sports is announcing its all-time anniversary team: the Madden All-25 team.

The team is chosen based off of EA Sports picks of the best players that have ever been available in any of the Madden games. Each day a new player is added to the link provided above, and the fans awaiting the new rosters can see how that player will be portrayed in the game. For the more contemporary players that were elite NFL players in the 2000's the ratings of those players are pretty much what they were when they were featured on the game in their prime.

For example, Eagles quarterback Michael Vick used to be the most electrifying player in Madden when he was featured on the cover in 2004. Then, Vick still played for the Atlanta Falcons and was used by almost every person who played the Madden franchise (I can proudly say that I never sold out to use Vick and kept using my Steelers, even if it meant dragging Tommy Maddox to victory with me).

The list of players is not simply who has been the NFL players since the Madden franchise has been releasing games, but instead which players were the most dynamic in one specific edition of the game.

The only Steeler to make the list so far, is hall of fame center and successor to Mike Webster, Dermontti Dawson. Dawson's overall rating is at a 97, featured from the Madden 96 edition of the game. Madden designers reasoned for Dawson's placement on the team because they believe he may be the smartest lineman to ever play the game.  Check their highlight film of Dawson in Madden to see how they evaluate the center.

Although the demo is already out for Madden 25, I don't plan to give a full review of the game until the Steelers' roster is available for review. The demo allows for users to play in either a rematch of the Super Bowl with the choice of picking the San Francisco 49ers or the Baltimore Ravens, or random match-up between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers.

The demo itself is still a little glitchy. At the end of a quarter, certain players appear invisible on the screen until a change of possession occurs. It's annoying, but EA Sports usually puts in a rough prototype for a demo to make you want to actually buy the game more when it comes out. Individual movement of players feels smoother and there are some interesting additional features such as their new version of the read-option, which actually make defending offenses not as difficult as it has been since Madden 2011 beefed up the advantages of offenses in the game.

Hopefully we'll start to see more Steelers emerge on the All-25 list. It would seem reasonable to include Troy Polamalu, Rod Woodson, Alan Faneca, Jerome Bettis and even Hines Ward for their reliability in the game. Polamalu especially can take over games even in the most recent editions of the franchise. In the near future you'll be seeing more posts from me as new features involving the Steelers are released for Madden 25.

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