Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston learned Thursday night which jerseys they'll be wearing when the 2015 NFL pre-season kicks off this summer, but their virtual selves were already suited up and prepped to take the field.
Just hours after the NFL draft, Mariota and Winston became playable characters in last year's Madden NFL 15.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers snatched up Winston, a Florida State Seminoles quarterback and 2013 Heisman Trophy winner. The Tennessee Titans followed, snagging Mariota, another much-touted signal-caller who won the Heisman a year after Winston.
The two players paid a visit to EA's Madden development HQ in the weeks leading up to the draft, to spend some time in front of the team's motion-scanning cameras, meaning they can be activated as soon as their draft's were announced. The rest of the newly drafted rookies are in the game as well. Winston, Mariota and all the rest are now part of Madden's Ultimate Team mode.
Madden Ultimate Team, or MUT, mixes the thrill of tearing open collectible card packs with strategic team-building and constructed on-the-field challenges. You create a team consisting of players obtained from virtual card packs and then use other cards to boost their stats, extend their contracts and more.
With the arrival of the 2015 NFL Draft, a whole, new set of collectibles have been added to MUT card packs, each relating to individual players in the latest rookie class. Completing a set of these collectibles for a single player unlocks the Elite version of that card, which is what you need to get that rookie as a player for your Ultimate Team.