Shaun King calls out his Madden 2004 rating on Twitter
By Josh Hill
As we all wait for NFL training camps to open next week, the fine folks over at EA are using the brief lull in action to announce the annual ratings reveal for the upcoming edition of Madden.
Madden 24 ratings are all over the place, as each day a few new position groups are dropped to reveal who received what rating in the latest update of the game. We started with safety and will end with quarterbacks before the game is eventually released on August 15th.
There's an actual element of interest in the Madden ratings, as a certain pride is felt for those who join the coveted Madden 99 club. These are players who are given the highest possible rating -- a 99 overall -- and while it's not exactly a bust in Canton it's a honor of sorts that a player was at one point in their career among the best and most popular.
The flip side of that is players complaining about their Madden rating.
Some folks are having some fun with the outrage over an arbitrary rating in a game that is nothing more than virtual reality.
Shaun King calls out his Madden 2004 rating on Twitter
Trevon Diggs is among the current NFL players who are taking exception to their Madden 24 rating. Cornerback ratings were revealed on Thursday and Diggs was listed as the 12th-best cornerback in the league with a rating of 87 overall.
Needless to say, he wasn't too pleased about it. That's where, of all people, former Buccaneers quarterback Shaun King enters the narrative.
Talk about a plot twist.
It's hard to tell whether this is a dig -- no pun intended -- at players complaining about their rating or not, but King posted his Madden 2004 rating with similar sentiment.
To be fair, this was at the tail end of King's relevancy with the Buccaneers. His best year was when he replaced Trent Dilfer in 1999, which culminated in his role in the disastrous NFC Championship Game against the Rams.
At this point in his career, King being a 67 overall rating is generous, but it's also still a rather respectable one for a player in his tier.
There's obviously a tongue-in-cheek element to this, but it also highlights a long history of players not agreeing with a Madden rating that's anything less than what they expect -- which in most cases is the top rating.
Diggs is one of the best cornerbacks in the league, and there's a serious argument that he's a Top 5 guy. That's the charm of these ratings, though, as they're entirely subjective and will never be universally agreed upon.
Not even ones that are almost two decades old.