College Football 26 Arrives: Let's Talk About It

It’s exciting seeing how the “best” sports game will come back to defend its crown. Whether you thought College Football 25 was the best sports game or not last year, it did end up in that slot for a majority of people in the OS orbit, and so I’m treating it as such.

I give you the means to hit me up with comments, thoughts, musings, or questions for all things related to this week’s newsletter or anything else. If you have some takes about College Football 26, hit me up as well, I might want to share some of them in the newsletter next week.

Here is the e-mail: [email protected] (and bonus points if you also include your city, name (or alias), and some sort of subject to go along with your thoughts.

And, yes, I have played a lot of College Football 26 this past week, but I’m not going to make too many sweeping judgments today because I’ve always been overly cautious in terms of giving out too much praise or scorn during launch week. That might seem odd for some to read because many people say sports games don’t change much year to year — and sometimes that is true — but it’s not the case here, and sports games have way more nuances than they’re credited with most of the time, and I think that’s even more true with football games.

On top of that, early patches happen, annoyances become more noticeable, and things you didn’t expect to care so much about continue to bring you back weeks later. In short, I’m going to be talking about CFB ‘26 a lot for the next month so there will be time for more matter of fact opinions down the road. For today’s newsletter, I’m going to mostly chat through gameplay, while sprinkling in a little dynasty mode talk and a couple “hey, heads up” things that you might care about.

You Can’t Say College Football 26 Feels The Same As ‘25

Being different by default should not get you bonus points even if it’s an admirable goal to have when it comes to a yearly sports game, but if you’re worried ‘26 would “feel” the same, I think that notion is pretty quickly washed away. I’m mostly going to showcase some plays from an Ohio State vs. Michigan game I played to explain some general positives and negatives I have so far, but a key point to relay to those on the fence is if you did not like the gameplay last year, you might like it this year.

Gameplay speed has 100 percent been toned down. It doesn’t mean it’s slow, and it doesn’t tread into the territory I criticized Madden for during this current generation of games of feeling sluggish for the sake of “realism” that still never really was shining through. What it means is your inputs are accepted, but most players just don’t cut as hard on a dime and there’s a little more planning that needs to go into your moves. I also think there’s a wider gap between the good and bad players from a ratings standpoint based on how bad a lot of the players feel in Ultimate Team at launch (mostly high 70s ratings right now). However, I’m not going to fully get on that train quite yet without some further testing.

One of the best ways for me to highlight the tweaked gameplay speed is through the positives and negatives of a run blocking play here in the Mich/OSU game because I think it encapsulates so much of the good/bad/legacy issues of this engine:

Now, I think there’s far more bad than good in this clip, but I lead with it because I do think it works for new and old fans alike. Falling over like I do here is a legacy issue most vets can recognize. Sometimes you get stuck on that lineman, or sometimes you just bounce off and go a weird direction, but never do you really just put your hand on that lineman’s butt and gracefully scoot around him. It would be great if you did and players had more general awareness of their surroundings, but that’s not this game.

Still, the clip also showcases that cutting and using your brain does matter more this year because game speed/bounciness of your players has been dialed down. There’s a very obvious cutback lane, and I just react late and burn myself on what should be an obvious positive play. I do like the outcome here, I just wish it didn’t look so bad getting to that end result.

I should also be clear and say I’m going to be focusing a lot on the running game with my quick videos because I think it’s the best way to showcase the positives and flaws of ‘26.

With that in mind, I jump now to a play I would basically never call last year, which is a Slash running play cutting back across the grain of the offensive line:

These sorts of misdirections or counters were losers last year to such a degree that I mostly took them out of my playbooks. Running to the weaker side of the formation in general just wasn’t viable most of the time. This is no longer the case. I’m sure certain runs will still be net-losers too often to be used a lot, but so far I’m not finding many run types that are never worth pulling out. This is a boon for those of us who pride ourselves on playcalling and setting up built-in counters that can play out over the course of a game against both AI or human opponents.

To be clear, you could run the hell out of the ball last year (and can again this year, more on that soon), but it was more with Stretch or Duo or Jet Sweeps/passes. It’s not that those plays aren’t still very good this year, but it doesn’t feel so cheesy to run those because it’s not your only option anymore.

And just to prove Stretch is still a winner, let’s show it in all its glory real quick:

No real commentary is necessary here beyond mentioning that showing a little patience paid off in big way on this one — and adding an extra auto-motioning blocker into a Stretch play is cruel.

In general, the play variety feels very liberating so far this season. Some balancing needs to happen in various areas, but I hope no matter what gets patched or tweaked that EA doesn’t lose sight of that positive. It’s seen all over the place in such a way where the whole playbook feels open in a way that it didn’t last year. For me, that’s one of the more exciting things I can write because there are a ton of plays and playbooks to utilize in a college football game, and this means the chances of getting bored of the game go down by quite a bit when you can always think about running a new sort of offense to fight off the monotony.

As another example, here’s an RPO play against man coverage. Running an RPO screen against bump-and-run man coverage was something you did last year if you wanted to have a bad day. Here is how it can work out this year:

There is no universe where I run this play last year if I’m looking at this defensive look pre-snap. And maybe it shouldn’t work so well here. Yes, it’s good blocking, but should the other defender have enough awareness to come off his mark and make a play? Maybe, but the point is more to say that I like that the outcome doesn’t feel so predetermined now for what will or won’t work in every situation.

The same goes for PA plays. Plenty of people swore off play-action passes last year, and it was because you would get sacked a lot. You still will get sacked a lot at times (more on that in a second), but you can absolutely setup PA plays to work very well:

I love these slow-developing plays with a TE bleeding across to the other side of the formation, but the reality is these were very risky last season. They’re a fun wrinkle to incorporate back into the fold with ‘26.

Here is another one, just for good measure:

Bootlegs and just using a mobile QB in this way feels so much more rewarding and dangerous now once you set it up with some good runs. Why this stuff works better now can be credited to a couple different areas, one of which is that EA did redo the blocking schemes on a lot of plays to build in actual unique blocking for the play you’ve called rather than just having a “stock” one-size-fits-all setup on most passing plays.

But the pass blocking is still being talked about a lot, and many people are frustrated by the number of sacks being given up by both the CPU and user teams. I would not dispute the claim that there are too many sacks — there are. That statement aside, I think content creator ZAN has a video everyone should watch because EA has done a putrid job explaining how pass blocking works even if the functionality of it has taken massive strides this year.

We’ve already had people thinking pass blocking is a major issue on OS, and I understand where that sentiment comes from, but I think minus some buggy plays or a slight tweak to the pass blocking (for both AI and humans), it’s actually in a much better spot than it was even a year ago. Overall, you’re just going to have to do what EA refuses to do and learn a bit about how blocking works, and take a little more time before the snap to adjust the line like a real QB has to (assuming the center isn’t doing it for him).

Speaking of both a legacy issue and one that is a contested issue depending on who you ask, pursuit angles are something that I am incredibly passionate about because I think they have been dreadful for so long in all EA football games. I did see a thread on Reddit praising EA’s work on pursuit angles, but this is one where I disagree with how much improvement has actually been made (even if the example showcased is perfectly solid).

Pursuit angles are something that impact competitive online games and dynasty-centric folks because EA is stuck between worlds and pleases no one with how things work. Much like EA never satisfies anyone with how they handle AI players defending in EA FC, the same keeps happening with pursuit angles in EA’s football games. My best guess is that EA doesn’t want AI defenders to be so dominant you never “click on” to tackle, but really all this does is create situations online where players “click on” to get a defender into position, and then “click off” so the defender can make the tackle because the AI is generally better at not getting juked/making the tackle than your average user.

So the balance is that EA makes the pursuit of the defenders iffy at best so you’re incentivized to click on and do it yourself. This should not be the way to balance offline vs. online play. If anything, they have it flipped the wrong direction. AI defenders should be good at pursuit angles and playing the right gaps, but you should get a “bonus” for clicking on and making the tackle yourself (which means fewer broken tackles or whatever other “buffs” you want to give to the user).

In addition, downfield blocking has been showcased a bunch of times in various forms, and I agree with people that it has improved more than I expected (because EA has promised it would improve many times before doing it again this year), but it’s not due to better downfield blocking why there are too many big plays right now.

To me, it still comes back to craptastic pursuit angles:

Both things can be true at once. The blockers show much better awareness down the field, and the play above shows highly rated Caleb Downs totally blowing it as he overpursues on an RPO Read play here and does nothing useful to slow a play down that ends up going for a TD. If this were a one-off, you could chalk it up to just being a bad play, but I assure you this is not a one-off.

(Since Chris Fowler is also on the call for this game, I do want to give some praise to the job both he and EA did to make him sound more natural this year. I expected improvement after talking about him being the weakest part of commentary last year, and we have gotten some. He’s still not totally natural, probably in part because you can’t just delete every bad line he recorded last year without hurting the overall product, but it’s better. It’s not great, and I still hate that EA doesn’t have a “flow” that talks more in-depth when you let these replays play out — instead you’re met with plenty of dead air — but I no longer dread when Fowler is on the call.)

There’s other reasons that big plays seem so pronounced in the run game this year, and one of them does go back to a classic tackling issue. I think ever since physics were introduced into Madden/NCAA Football there have been serious issues with gang tackling, but it’s still as big an issue as ever:

Guys, just use your arms and wrap him up! Maybe even do it together, teamwork makes the dream work! For whatever reason, certain animation chains just cause everyone to mash their faces into each other, and this is both an ugly looking outcome and a frustrating one from a gameplay standpoint.

Overall, as much as I love that more types of runs work now, the big plays are probably not a “quick fix” for this season. Between pursuit angles and gang tackling issues, I don’t know if either one is a simple thing that can just be patched. In a perfect world, the big plays wouldn’t even be reduced, they would just feel more earned. Instead, I feel like the big plays are almost predetermined.

Next time you play, think about how often you’re even touched on your 20-plus yard runs. The “holy grail” for running should be that you as the user make at least one good move (hopefully with the left stick!) or show incredible patience to create a big-play opportunity. Right now, it’s more that while you maybe did call the right play, you don’t need to be “elite” as a runner to do the rest to create that big play. As long as your running back has enough speed, that can be enough to create the big-play opening.

Regardless of the negative tone I might have there with some of the gameplay I’m bringing up, what’s good fun is getting dominated by elite players who should dominate you.

Jeremiah Smith getting defended one on one with no safety help is my bad, and I deserve this:

By and large, it’s even more fun getting son’d on deep passes as well. Getting beasted by big lads on deep plays feels balanced overall:

Before moving on to dynasty mode, I will end with one other long-standing topic that EA mentioned would be improved this year (once again), which is the robo QB. I won the game above on “stock” All-American, and here is how AI QB Sayin’s day ended up:

Yep, 18-19 passes completed and the only thing really slowing him down was the pass rush (and a so-so running game). I will say, much like with pass blocking, some of this comes down to the user. The game I was playing here was more to showcase things for this newsletter, so I wasn’t exactly “locked in” with my playcalling while recording, but there’s still not a wide gap between great and bad QBs, which is a shame because the ratings disparity is in a great spot at so many other positions.

You can absolutely force a QB into a miserable day by changing up coverages, disguising coverages, and moving your safety depth around along the way, but short of how elite vs. non-elite QBs react to throwing under pressure, most QBs are only stopped by consistent pressure in this game.

This is somewhat true for how it plays out in the NFL, but in college, that should not be the case. College passing offenses are setup in such a way to press far more easy buttons and have some gaudy completion percentages compared to the pros, but you should not be dealing with guys who have elite accuracy on every squad. There are not enough errant throws right now, so I’m hopeful that folks like Matt10, or Playmakers, or canes21 (my personal GOAT from last year) will find a nice balance as they work through their early slate of sliders — none of which I have tested personally so far.

Dynasty Mode Takes Mostly On Hold BUT…

Since many of you know how much I love recruiting, I do want to at least mention a couple things this week before letting you all go. First off, recruiting is harder and thank goodness. It’s not impossible or anything, it’s more that lower-tier programs feel more like lower-tier programs, and because of the transfer portal (and dynamic dealbreakers), you have more chances to lose your players now.

Being harder isn’t good all on its own, but I think what is working to its advantage is that the difficulty comes from the choices you now need to make. In the past, you could load up at every position and winning cured most of your problems. On top of that, the transfer portal didn’t have many great players in it after the first offseason. Both of these things are now false — though one comes with some caveats.

As a smaller/crappier school, now it’s harder to get 4-star and 5-star recruits, and it’s harder to hold on to them for multiple seasons even if you get them. I don’t love having to pad my stats at times or micro-manage how I’m playing certain guys to satiate some dealbreakers (I like this general suggestion for how some of the dealbreakers should work instead), but I’ll allow it if it means things are harder overall. I’m also hopeful there will be more 1-star and 2-star shockers so that you’re rewarded for digging deeper for sleepers that can make a mark at your school (before maybe still leaving because they outgrow your program). So far, I have had a little more success with these players, but I need to test further.

You will still see some situations where position stacking happens in the portal, it just won’t continue for years on end (those players will be unhappy once again and leave the following season). I believe this is due to a legacy bug that handles how players are leaving/graduating from your program, which has now been confirmed by the internet critters. One Reddit user accurately notes that the legacy bug I’m alluding to still exists, which means it might not get improved once again, but matters more now with how dynamic dealbreakers and everything work:

This is both why you lose out on certain players you probably shouldn’t, but also why I had a situation arise where Arizona State ends up with three QBs who are 90+ overall on their squad post-portal. Either because there is no chance for the game to update how your roster really looks now or because the players are not aware of how the roster will look after the portal, you get into these awkward situations where top-rated players hurt their own chances by needing to fight with other highly rated players on one team when 20 other teams would be dying to have either one of them start at their school.

Either way, there’s so many good quality-of-life updates that make recruiting even more of a blast this year that this single “major" issue won’t bother me too much at this point. The new archetypes alone are going to keep me busy for many weeks as I try to figure out which are good/bad/somewhere in between. I hope the game is more balanced this year so every archetype is viable, but I also like playing the game to try and figure that sort of stuff out.

Miscellaneous Goodies

Give the folks behind the music and all the band cover songs in the game all the flowers. One thing we all agreed with last year is the menu music in CFB 25 made us go “something something.”

The Bombs Over Baghdad cover is probably my favorite I’ve heard so far in ‘26, but the point is the covers and marching band rip. Yes, we could turn on Spotify or mute the menu music, but there’s something to be said for being able to let the in-game music play in the background as you deep dive your recruiting board. It absolutely adds to the experience, and I applaud EA for the job they have done here.

As another aside, Coach Mode fans should be stoked about the changes made to the game this year. It’s still not going to be perfect, but man, what an improvement over last year from my limited testing. QBs are now making more reads, doing RPOs, scrambles, and they even throw some screens. It’s not totally hands-off as you still have to function as a D-Line player (unless I’m missing something), but you can mostly automate yourself when you handle defense as well.

Formation subs do not play nice with custom playbooks, nor do the formations themselves organize correctly in the playbook. Coach suggestions are mostly a no-go as well. In other words, not much has changed here for the better, but the custom playbooks themselves are still a good time. Their lack of functionality sticks out a bit more now that we do have formation subs that are so in-depth in dynasty mode (plus things like gadget guys now).

Bottom Line

There’s a lot to like and plenty still to improve (for example, it stinks that there is a lack of penalties once again), and this is the life of sports games throughout history. What I will continue to say regardless of where you fall with your opinion is that it’s obvious the love for college football is there with these developers. I will never mistake their “errors” for a lack of passion. The game screams college football even if the presentation or gameplay or modes don’t always stick the landing. At the end of the day, it feels like a college football game, and that’s half the battle, and CFB 26 continues to succeed there.

I mean, come on, how can you not love that shit. If anything, we need even more crowds singing songs in our sports games because it simply rules.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase