People enjoy playing Madden NFL 17 for different reasons.
Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin, given his team's 36-20 playoff loss to the Falcons this weekend, enjoys the video game because it's all in his hands.
"I was up at 3:30 this morning playing Madden," Baldwin said Sunday, via The Seattle Times. "The reason why I play Madden is because in Madden I can control everything and in the game of life and the game of football you can't. It's kind of like an outlet. When I was sitting there visualizing about all that we've been through, it is hard.
"I don't want to take away from anything anybody else does in this world or in this life, but to get to where we got to this year, it was difficult. It was extremely hard. It was exhausting, and then to now know everything ended so abruptly, now we have to start all over again. There's some happiness in that because there were a lot of things we couldn't fix during the course of the season that we can now work on because it's the offseason. But it's hard and it takes a toll on you, mentally and physically."
Even for a team that has all of their core players under contract for next season, the Seattle Seahawks are taking the loss especially hard. The realization that reaching the mountaintop gets harder every year is significant; especially for a team as collectively passionate as the Seahawks. We often talk about modern-day dynasties and, while no team in this era will be able to accomplish what the New England Patriots did, Seattle has the players in place to make a run at second place.
Seattle has made the playoffs in six of the last seven years, making it to at least the divisional round every time and reaching the Super Bowl twice, losing one on the last play of the game. Their six best players (Baldwin, Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas) are all under 30 and, despite a heavy trickle of talented executives and coaches flowing out of their building to take bigger roles elsewhere, they show no signs of slowing down.
As difficult as that is for Baldwin to consider now, it will come back to him quickly once a very dangerous team reports to offseason workouts this spring.
