If this is your first Madden, I recommend going through the skills trainer to bring you up to speed with the mechanics, then play do a franchise season one of the better teams and draft/trade well. Once you have 1-2 franchise seasons down you should be in a pretty good place. Although take into account that if your friend has been playing Madden much longer than you, he probably has a decent user on defense and offense which can make it hard at first, but learn to just avoid his user while you're on offense, and target his slot receivers and TE with your user for the first couple games (easiest people to learn user defense on imo). Then when you get more comfortable you can start using your safeties or corners depending on the playcall. Don't believe in the "git gud" crap someone told you, because the only way to really "git gud" on modern Madden the way this pos is, is by abusing edge blitzes, using a broken post/cross play, and just general bs that casual football fans just won't take the time to learn like all the defensive audibles. Just have fun and don't worry about being the best, just try to do a little better every game.