My Saga with those Slippery Running Backs
Alright, let me tell you about my recent obsession. I’ve been dedicating, let’s say, a significant amount of time to this football game on my console. You know the type. And the biggest headache, the absolute thorn in my side, has been these elusive running backs. Trying to get a solid tackle on these guys? It’s like trying to grab a fistful of water. Seriously frustrating.
I pretty much blew an entire Saturday trying to crack this. My defense, which I thought was decent, was getting sliced and diced. I’d call a play, get my linebacker perfectly positioned – or so I thought – and then zip, the running back would pull off some ridiculous juke or spin move. My defender? Left tackling thin air. It drove me nuts. I must have replayed similar scenarios countless times. I fiddled with defensive formations, changed up player assignments, the whole shebang. For a long while, nothing seemed to make a dent.
- My first bright idea was to just send the house, blitz everyone. That was a disaster. Left gaping holes bigger than my driveway.
- So, I swung the other way. Super conservative, contain defense. The running back would just patiently dance around until a lane magically appeared.
- I even tried manually controlling different players on defense – the big guys on the line, the linebackers, even the safeties way back. My skills with the controller, or maybe the lack of them, were embarrassingly clear.
This whole thing, this intense focus on trying to stop these digital athletes, really got going because I was cooped up at home for a solid week last month. Caught a nasty bug, nothing too serious, but enough to keep me away from work and pretty much confined to my living room. So, what’s a guy to do? Fire up the game, of course. And that’s when these elusive running backs transformed from a minor annoyance into my personal Everest. It wasn’t just about winning a match anymore; it was about solving this one, specific, maddening puzzle. My wife would walk by, see me muttering at the TV, and just shake her head with a smile. “Still wrestling with those little computer men?” she’d ask. Yep. Still wrestling. It became this weird point of personal pride, you know? I couldn’t just let a bunch of programmed code outsmart me. Or so I told myself.
I even, reluctantly, browsed some of those online tutorial videos. You see these folks claiming they have “unstoppable” defensive setups. I tried to mimic what they were doing. Half the time, the button sequences they suggested felt like I needed an extra hand just to attempt them. And their “surefire” strategies? Well, the AI running back in my game clearly hadn’t subscribed to their channel, because he just kept on slipping and sliding away, completely unfazed.
So, what’s the verdict after all that effort? Am I a master defensive coordinator now? Absolutely not. Far from it. But, I did stumble upon something. Sometimes, just sometimes, if I switch to my safety really late in the play, and try to anticipate where the running back is going to cut, instead of just charging in like a madman, I seem to have a slightly better shot. It’s more about being patient and less about raw aggression, which feels weird for making a tackle, right? Honestly, it’s still a bit of a lottery. Those elusive running backs are still a massive pain. But now, every so often, I actually get to see one of them eat dirt. And that, my friends, is a small victory worth savoring. Still a long road ahead, though. Maybe I’ll finally crack it next weekend. Or the weekend after that. It’s what keeps me coming back for more punishment, I guess.
