Before each regular season Cowboys game, we're simulating the game with Madden NFL 12 to get an outlook on what we might see on Sunday. Read more on the method behind our Madden-ness here.
Our Madden Crystal Ball now has a nice 2-1 record picking the winners through simulations, so we fired off a new sim for Detroit's visit to Dallas this weekend and were kinda confused by the data.
In our simulated game, the Cowboys took down Detroit in a vicious 43 to 17 final. We expect that to be too high of score for Sunday's real-life contest -- especially because our simulated Cowboys grabbed seven turnovers from the Lions in the sim.
The star of the virtual show was Felix Jones, who ran in two touchdowns and even caught one in the end zone, in a total of 169 yards. Receiving duties were shared between Jones, Bryant, and Ogletree -- but nothing for Witten. That's pretty weird.
This sim really emphasized a Cowboys running game, which we really haven't seen much of in reality, with 213 rushing yards and only 120 yards passing. That's pretty opposite of our previous sims, which flipped those numbers to rely on receiving.
Compared to the oddly ineffective simulated Lions, the digital Dallas team looked like a well-oiled machine. No fumbles, no interceptions, and none of the confusion on the offensive line like we've seen in recent games. It's hard for a computer to simulate "human" mistakes, but it serves to emphasis what potential the team has...if it's working right.
We'll have to see how the real life versions stack up against the simulations this Sunday in Arlington.
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