Best Quarter Length for Realistic Stats in Madden 24 Franchise Mode?

When it comes to quarter lengths in Madden 24, a lot of different factors go into things that are beyond your control. So when you’re chasing realistic stats in franchise mode, there’s actually more to consider than you would think.

There’s a fresh group of people playing Madden 24 now that it’s “free” on EA Play, and so the topic of quarter length came back up on the forums in the last couple weeks. As always, the “right” answer is just play the length that you enjoy the most and don’t worry about too much else. But, this is OS, and a lot of people do worry about the little things. In this case, trying to get realistic stats is not a small thing because a lot of us are trying to generally the mimic the NFL game in our video game.

Best Quarter Length For Realistic Stats In Madden 24

With that in mind, there’s two routes to go here on the whole, and they each have their own valid argument. The first is what quarter length do you play on if you want a realistic number of plays based on the real NFL. During this past season, you had teams range between 58 to about 70 offensive plays. How that translates to the field depends on if you want to use clock runoff or not. Some people want more time at the line and they don’t use the runoff, and then others use the runoff because they want to get as close as possible to 15-minute quarters.

The other caveat here though is Madden itself. If you’re playing franchise mode, then it’s likely you’re simulating every game that is not your own. In Madden 24, the simulated stats showcase teams getting closer to 50-60 plays rather than the 60-70 plays in the real NFL. In other words, if you pursue the real NFL stats, then you’re likely to be at an advantage for seasonal awards and such by default because you’re getting on average 10 more plays per game than everyone else.

Therefore, most people have settled in to pursuing stats that line up with ones you get in the game and chase that 50-60 offensive plays rather than approaching the 70-play mark. So if you like playing as close as possible to 15-minute quarters, then it’s best to go with something like 15-minute quarters and a 13-second accelerated play clock/runoff. If you want more time at the line of scrimmage, then the better bet is to go with 9-minute quarters in most cases to approach the general averages.

You can get even more caught up in this because the CPU passes far too much on average in the games you play this year, but that’s a topic for another day. This was more a reminder that while pursuing real NFL averages is straight forward enough, you still have to consider the game in the “realism” thought process if you want to create a franchise mode experience that is balanced on the whole.