Rookie defense questions

Hey everyone,

I just got my hands on madden 2010 and it's an awesome game. Haven't played a madden game seriously since madden 04 so I'm still learning all the new additions to the game like the truck stick which is very cool.

One thing that i never took the time to learn was how to read the defensive plays from the playbook when you're up on D. I especially have trouble understanding what all the different colored bubbles mean? So like if you call a cover 2 play I'm pretty sure those blue blobs mean that whichever guy has that zone, he will drop back and guard anyone that shows up in the area. Am I right?

But then you have some plays that have purple blobs and yellow blobs? What do those mean?

Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance.

Ya, you got the right idea and I could give you all the names for the zones, but it might not help youi much. So try this.

Get two controllers, so you have time to play around with defense setups before the ball is snapped.

Go to practice mode

Choose any offense play

Then choose a play like 3-4 defense, cover 2

Now go to pg 3 and 4 of the manual and start setting up different zones and QB spies, etc...

Then when you got a good idea of what's going on, read some of the sticky defensive tips just above these posts.

Don't worry if you don't have a manual, just play around with the defensive setups.