New Orleans Saints long snapper Zach Wood was having a fine day until he saw that the player ratings for EA Sports’ “Madden NFL 20” had been made official, and that he had the bad luck of carrying the worst rating in the game. Wood was rated at 36 overall, with an awareness grade of just 53. Poor form for anyone, but especially a long snapper whose only real responsibility is to know where the ball is and where it’s going. So he was a bit perturbed by the slight and had been fuming in silence ever since he learned about it.
Luckily for him, the Saints gave Wood an opportunity to get some payback. The game developers sent physical copies to the Saints and other NFL teams as promotional materials, and Wood had the bright idea to show them just how good he actually is at his job — by using one of the games as target practice.
Inspired by Wood’s thinking, the Saints quarterbacks ended up incorporating the game into their daily skills challenge. Drew Brees, Teddy Bridgewater and Taysom Hill wrapped up a tough week of training camp practice by going skeet shooting, with copies of the most anticipated sports game of the year as their targets. See it for yourself:
That’s certainly one use for a video game. The players certainly seemed to enjoy it.
