| | Offensive Street
NFL Street takes some of the best professional football players alive and lets you take them out on the field. Only, in this case, the field is a beach … or a city square … or the top of a mountain! But, every good coach will tell you that you can’t win if you can’t score, no matter where you play. Take a minute to master these offensive techniques before you hit the gridiron because, no matter where the game takes place, it’s still NFL football.
Pitching heat.
Inside the Helmet
Avoid becoming predictable. Use a combination of rush and pass plays, with the occasional trick thrown in to keep the defense on its toes. Keep your opponent guessing by continuing to highlight other plays after you’ve chosen the one you really want. You can also throw off the defense by switching the left/right orientation of a play or by using pump fakes and fake pitches. If you can make the defense guess wrong, you’ve got an opportunity to exploit.
Right in the Numbers
Your passing game is the quickest way to march downfield, but it’s risky. A quick defender or a careless receiver can turn a long gain into an incomplete pass, a turnover, or worse. Spend some time learning (and building) your receivers’ speed and patterns, so that you can hit them in the numbers as soon as they become open. Remember: Tapping the pass button will throw a regular pass, and holding it will throw a bullet. If coverage is good, you’ll need the extra speed and your best aim. If you need to throw past the defender, loft it up and over to give your receiver time to open up a lead. 
Grinding out yards.
Run for It
Your offensive ground attack is the down-and-dirty art of forcing your opponent’s line back a few yards on every play. (Or, if your blockers are on, you can create a hole for big gains). Pile-ups at the line of scrimmage are common, with 300-pound titans trying to shove each other aside, so the ball carrier needs a little extra juice to make yardage. You can use brute strength and try to blast your way through using shoulder-charges and stiff-arms (when someone has already committed to tackling you), or you can try to slip through by using jukes to fake your opponent out (or simply hurdle right over them). If you’re close enough to the goal line, you can dive headlong for the end zone, covering that last few yards in a single bound.
Remember that rushing plays are the best way to use your Gamebreakers because they make your runners faster and harder to stop. 
One for the Highlight Reel.
Stylin’ and Profilin’
Don’t worry about Stylin’ until you have a lead or the play is already going your way. The easiest way to cough up the ball is to be showing off when you get hit. The various degrees of Style Runs all rack up style points, but they also slow you down and make you vulnerable. Only go for the Signature Style moves when you’ve got no one between you and the end zone. When passing, put all of your style into the pass itself and not into the receiver before, during, or after the catch. This will create the best chance of completing the pass and scoring your style points.
NFL Street may not be the most realistic football title for the Xbox, but it’s one of the most intuitive … and the most fun! By concentrating on action and attitude, EA SPORTS BIG delivers another gridiron winner. By Mickah Wallace |
