I swear bro if you made a field general I’m either sorry for you, or your God’s strongest soldier. I feel like if you don’t make anything other than a Lamar Jackson archetype, then this mode is unplayable bro… no matter if you set blocking assignments PA passes equal immediate sacks for defense, HB screen passes are always tackles for loss, if you run anything other than mesh, you have 0.5 seconds to throw the ball before you’re hit, WR’s are butterfingers for days, Madden will flash a button indicating an open receiver and they’ll either drop the ball or get intercepted, your entire o line apparently has “smarter ai” but they freely let anyone in the pocket, and they all get hurt game 1 of the season, and all defenses play like Aaron fuckin Donald. Not to mention how buggy this game is, and it seems like whenever you’re doing good the game will freeze with the crowd screaming in the back and you have to quit and start over. I was up 21-0 against the Carolina Panthers with 150 passing yards in the 1st quarter and it did that. Then I replayed the game, now all of a sudden they were CRACKED. It’s like the game isn’t designed for you to win at all bro… I don’t expect anything to be easy but DAMN ts not fun and EA needs to fix their game

I've spent a lot of time testing the franchise coaching abilities, specifically the scouting ones: Eagle Eye, Talent Evaluator, and Fit Finder.

Quick note up front: the positional abilities seem to work as described. Stack a couple and you'll see a real difference in what gets unlocked for that position. This post is about the scouting abilities, which fail in ways I can't explain.

Problem 1: They don't expire. They reset.
Every scouting ability is listed as lasting 5 weeks. Say you're out of the playoff race and equip one in week 15. You have 4 games left, so you'd expect 4 weeks of the ability, then either 1 week carrying into next season (worst case) or it burning off during the playoffs and offseason, since those count as weeks too (best case).

Neither happens. If the season ends with time left on the ability, it fully resets and locks in at preseason week 1 the following year. You have no choice. You're stuck with the same scouting ability for a full 5 weeks of the next season.

Problem 2: The abilities that should be the most powerful either do nothing or do the opposite.

Talent Evaluator. Supposed to give a 10% reduction on talent range unlock per ability, so 30% stacked across HC, OC, and DC. In theory that drops the threshold for seeing a prospect's round from 95% to 85% with one, or 65% with three.
It doesn't lower the threshold at all. With one or three equipped, you still need 95% to see a prospect's round.
Stacking more than one actively breaks it. I tested a prospect at 100% unlocked: with two equipped, the round disappears entirely. With one or zero, it shows fine.
This one is already well documented as not working, and I can confirm it.

Eagle Eye. Supposed to give a 10% reduction on two-letter range unlock. Normally you need 70% to get every grade down to two letters (A to B instead of A to C). This should lower that to 60%.
It does nothing. With it off, 70% players show two letters and 60 to 65% players show three. With it on, no change at 60 or 65.
Stack three and it gets worse: players at 70% now show three letters instead of two.

Fit Finder. Supposed to be a 20% reduction on archetype unlock. This is filler. Even in the best-case use (equip it the week prospects are revealed), you learn everyone's archetype by about week 3 anyway. So you spend 5 weeks of a slot for roughly 2 weeks of a head start on archetypes, with no info on abilities and nothing you can act on. Truly useless ability.

The bigger picture
Positional abilities work, but they cost 6 weeks, don't reveal much on their own, only really deliver if you stack them, and they carry over too.

From what I understand, these have been broken for several years. It's a shame, because the idea is good. It just never got finished.

How do you pass? No matter what I do they are covered. I can rush 150 yards try PA and I get sacked instantly. My players can be 8 yards open but the second the defender touches them the ball falls out of their hands. THESE ARE NFL PLAYERS THEY CAN HOLD ON TO THE BALL. I feel like I’m going crazy.

So I loaded up a game of H2H and several players including my WR Rome Odunze and my DB Tyrique Stevenson had an interesting glitched large object attached to their helmet 😳
This has happened a couple of times since owning the game from pre-order launch date.

Has anybody else run into this ? 🫩😡

It doesn’t really do anything except create an eye sore and make it hard to cover reads but lets just not fix our games I guess EA 🤦🏼‍♂️😭

What's your "How are they here?" Moment when looking at a team interested in your services?

Just wondering how many people are playing previous years versions of Madden regularly? For example, I’m playing both Madden 26 and CFB 26. I typically buy both after the Super Bowl when EA usually sells them for about $13 each. I don’t see the need to buy the current years game anymore as the gameplay is relatively the same and there is still online support for older versions for several years after release. Personally I think Madden should just be a subscription type game with annual roster updates, but until then staying 1-2 years behind I don’t feel I’m missing anything. The only possible drawback is Madden rosters change but if one plays MUT that does not matter as much. In franchise mode players can be traded or created if needed. In CFB, it’s more about the school than the players . Just wondering if anyone feels the same or if buying new versions annually is still a thing

I am old school enough to remember when Madden used to have NFL classic teams available. I believe they abandoned it as to not have to pay individual retired players outside of owning the NFL rights and access to all current players. I’d love to see classic teams back in a similar manner that NBA 2K does with classic NBA teams. Does anyone agree this would be a nice feature to renew ?

I am currently doing a Falcons franchise and after the first week, Jessie Bates III and Ryan Neuzil have reached out for a contract extension. I would love to extend them both as I have a good amount of cap space but is it wise? Free Safety Jessie Bates III is 29 years old X Factor development with a rating of 94. Center Ryan Neuzil is 29 years old Star development with a rating of 85. Is it better to let them walk or trade them? Sign them for a few more years? I worry about them regressing in the next year or two if I do extend them.

Texans vs 49ers
#Madden 27
#OnlineH2H
#PS5

Okay, this may sound totally unbelievable but i promise you i know what i saw. It was not something i thought i saw or made up it literally popped up on the screen and maybe it was just an added joke in the game if it ever got to that point which i assume i did get to that point in the game but surely i can’t be the only one who’s ever done this.

Madden 09 and it has always stuck with me. So when Madden 09 came out my dad surprised me with it after i got home from school. I loved that game and played it in my room for hours and hours on my little box like TV where you would plug in the red/yellow/white cable to the back of the TV.

Anyways, i was 12 years old so i didn’t set a high difficulty it was rookie if i can remember correctly.

During one of the games i scored like 100 something points lol. Come on, who hasn’t tried and done that before on the easiest difficulty 🤣

I vividly remember when i had 95 points the next touchdown came in plus the extra point and it showed 102 - 0
Then a message pops up on the screen in the game and pauses the game for like 10 seconds while displaying this :

“ PLEASE STOP SCORING YOU ARE GOING TO BREAK THE DISC “

Guys, i swear i saw it. I vividly remember seeing that. Obviously the disc never broke, i mean there’s no way it would by running up the score.

My only thoughts on that is either a glitch/bug or something developers added randomly just to make a joke and tease about it if anyone ever scored that many points because it’s totally unrealistic and could be an Easter egg?

Thoughts? Has it ever happened to you? I was too young and didn’t try to do it again to see if it would display the message again, I should have and totally would do it now if I could again but I will probably never play it again because it was 17 years ago on Xbox and I don’t game much anymore.

If anyone on here has a collection of the games & the older Xbox 360 maybe you could try and see if it would happen to you as well on Madden 09.

Kind of crazy but not really

I’ve been playing for 3 weeks now and online head to head is so awful. Had a dude chew clock for 2 straight quarters out of halftime, I didn’t get the ball once and wins by kicking a field goal. This has happened like every one in 3/4 games I play… how is that even fun? Most of these guys only run the same formation of cheese plays.

I’ve always been the guy that thought MUT was the best mode/part of madden. I spent money, grinded, sweated, and had fun. However, lately I just lost the spark for mut. I’ve become really busy with school, work, life, etc. I used to be able to play each weekly release, 1-2 hours a day, grind and sweat. Now I’m lucky if I can play 1 game a day. I just couldn’t keep up with the green of EA and the fast rate cards get outdated. It exhausted me and lowkey I just gave up and stopped playing MUT. I was wondering what I wanted to even do on madden. I just decided late at night I’ll start a dolphins rebuild offline franchise. Lo and behold it’s been the most fun I’ve had on madden. It’s like the best aspects of MUT, without the sweats, EA greed, having to worry about not being able to play on a constant basis. I slept on franchise for the longest time before I realized how good it actually is. I was so invested in free agency I almost lost track of time. Franchise just showed me how flawed mut is, sure I can’t have the best players in every spot, but I never even had that in MUT. It’s just so much more fun. It’s motivating me to lead every nfl team to a Super Bowl at least once.

Was this used every yr or does it change each year?

This is nebulous, but as someone who played the game religiously from Madden 08 to about Madden 13 - the current day version gameplay feels so uncanny and simply not as fun.

It's hard to put a finger on but an example to illustrate my point- hit stick feels underwhelming on defence. To me, this is the one fun thing about D, trying to kill the opposing QB/runners lol. I'm not asking to bring back the helment-popping-off feature, but it used to feel way way better to successfully hit stick.

This could be a mixture of sound in game too, but I liked the way the OL/DL would kinda just smash into each out in the old 08-ish era games.

Some positives, spin moves/jukes as a ball carrier are great. I also love that they have the real players from the game on the sideline (finally), it was cool seeing Cooper DeJean signal a first down for my Eagles offence.

Anyone else feel this way? I think in the pursuit of lifelike game play, there is a risk it becomes a bit too realistic and therefore tedious.

I am definitely washed at the gameplay, just to get ahead of anyone else rightly pointing this out lol.

My left tackle completely just didn't block his man and it resulted in me getting sacked. I could've passed it to Pitts for a 1st down. Instead I get sacked and I'm forced to punt.

What have they done to my boy aj

​

Hello,

I'm French and I only know about 5% of what American football is. I tried Madden 26 to see if it was fun, but I feel like 90% of the game is loading screens and the AI playing for us. Am I right, or is this just due to my inexperience with this sport?

On '27 I am so uniquely terrible at it. I put in my backup QB who has greater strength than my starter. And my o line strength is somewhere in the 80s generally.

That said usually my QB just immediately dives at the Line of Scrimmage for no gain. Ive resorted to running the wildcat for direct RB hand offs or any QB run that doesn't start the horizontal bar just give myself a chance.

That said id be open to anyone's tips. I play offline Franchise mostly.