Madden 26: Should You Buy or Pass?

If you know me, you know I don’t write traditional “reviews” and that means I don’t really like giving purchasing decisions to people (so the title is a little bit clickbait-y, sorry). We all have different tastes, money situations, and everything else that makes it hard for me to tell someone with 100 percent certainty whether they’ll like something enough to purchase it. That said, I think Madden 26 at launch has very obvious strengths and weaknesses, and so if you know what sort of sports games you tend to like, Madden 26 will probably fall into one bucket or the other for you.

I wrote a ton about franchise mode in Wednesday’s newsletter, and that’s the best place to go (subscription required) if you want to read roughly 8,000+ words on the highs and lows of that mode at launch. And I mention that piece because I think franchise mode is the main character in Madden’s story this year because there is a lot of fun to be had in it — but you need to be a specific sort of fan to enjoy it.

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To keep it simple, if you like playing lots of Madden games, I believe there is a good chance you’ll enjoy ‘26. If you’re someone who more just wants to simulate a lot, maybe do some coach mode, and get 5,10, 15+ years into a franchise in relatively short order, I have little faith you’ll love ‘26.

This game remains nothing like a “true” sim in any way comparable to an OOTP, Football Manager, or even old NFL Head Coach games. I don’t think it’s because EA is against the stuff in those games, but Madden is not a game (in part because it’s built for controller) that is equipped in most ways to scratch that “management” itch. This is even more true this year because even the guts of an owner mode have officially been removed.

To be clear, I am someone who plays Madden to get the on-field experience. I am a huge salary cap junkie and would love if Madden did more in the GM space, but at the same time, if I had to pick one or the other, I would want the gameplay to be the thing people love the most rather than franchise mode. It obviously shouldn’t be a one-or-the-other choice, and I don’t think EA is actively choosing one over the other, but the point is I am enjoying franchise mode — but only because I’m treating it a certain way.

A Tale Of Two Madden Experiences

There’s playing Madden and then there’s simulating Madden. One experience is in shambles (simulating) and the other is showing a lot of good signs, especially if you can dial in a couple areas via sliders. If you tested out the gameplay via the EA Play trial and didn’t like it very much, then obviously don’t get the game. That said, I might really like the gameplay this year — or at least the overall direction. I’m going to point out some negatives to be sure in this newsletter, but gameplay is not my hang-up overall.

Last year, between the game speed feeling muddy and the BoomTech interactions being really jarring and poor, the base layer of ‘25 was not for me. I know some of you liked that slower speed (similar to how it had been the entire current generation so far), but it didn’t work for me. And if I climbed beyond the game speed and physics, there was still a lack of good pass-run ratios for CPU teams, and I thought game to game Madden 25 was weak overall.

Madden 26 isn’t super speedy or comparable to the old PS2 era in terms of how fast players or move or cut, but it feels closer to CFB and that’s a good thing to me. I also don’t think BoomTech is perfect in year two (still way too many big hit animations and not enough appreciation for height/weight in them), but running between the tackles feels so much better and there’s not as much animation ugliness. On top of that, the pass-run ratios are actually in a great spot in played games, especially in franchise mode when you play longer quarters — I do 12-min quarters with 20-sec runoff (I also put CPU run blocking to 100 in the sliders).

The two-minute drill and late-game management by the AI is absolutely dreadful and does require a patch, but I can’t really pick at too much other stuff the AI does from a “decision making” standpoint the other 56 minutes of the game. Well, I should rephrase and say I don’t think there’s anything else the AI does that I can’t correct for on my end in some fashion. I think some people will be frustrated by how often CPU QBs take off to run on pass plays, and I think like last year it’s still too easy to User Lurk as the MLB and bait INTs, but either via some basic House Rules or simply focusing more pressure up the middle, you can get around those other two potential hang-ups here during launch week (or at least I have).

On the whole, the AI is probably not aggressive enough on 4th down either, but I haven’t had major issues with “robo” QB, and AI teams have been able to both run and pass on me. TFLs are probably going to be a problem no matter what (sort of like in CFB) because it’s a lot of 7+ yard gains or negative 1-2 yard runs — and I think that goes for both CPU and human teams (and I also think lowering human run blocking will be the play, much like it is in CFB).

Elsewhere, the new player traits system is doing a lot of heavy lifting to finally get more players acting like their real-life counterparts. In addition, the new coach schemes (along with the best playbooks of all-time) give more teams a unique feel when you battle it out against them.

But when it comes to discussing gameplay, it’s probably better to show not tell, so let’s get to some clips. Perhaps my favorite drive by the AI in the last 500 Madden games I’ve played was this Ravens drive where Derrick Henry just put the team on his back, which is not something we got to say about most any RB in last year’s game:

Between the true-to-life upright running style, the broken tackles, and my poor user Cut Stick as I tried to go low on him, it’s all really great stuff. If you want to nitpick, maybe Henry should just go down on that second-and-short play, but I thought it was pretty cool the way he broke tackles and tried to find another way forward before losing the yardage.

Animations get a hard time in Madden, and rightfully so, but it is a lot of those animations — and the subtle ones at that — which I’m really appreciating early on this year. They won’t look like much on video, but between the visuals and the way they “feel” on the sticks, it’s making running the ball very enjoyable for me:

-The first clip is just to show how my RB doesn’t get “sticky” here. He interacts and smoothly slides off the lineman and continues for a big gain. Pursuit angles by AI defenders are terrible as usual, including on this play, but the running itself felt nice.

-The second clip isn’t even a new animation, but the way my RB throws his arm up as he saddles to the left for the short gain felt so nice (and looked so nice to me) that I went and replayed it multiple times, which is not something I tend to do in Madden, that’s usually reserved more for a game like NBA 2K.

The simplest way for me to put it is I think Madden finally understands the assignment. If you’re going to be animation-driven and all that, make the animations look good, which includes the small/subtle ones. 2K gets in trouble for over-animating at this point, but why they got so much love for so long was because their animations looked good even if they didn’t always feel good. You want both, but I would say for too long Madden had neither.

On top of that, I’ll mention traits in more depth in a second, but the uniqueness of game-to-game outcomes is also being propped up now by stuff like weather. Rain and snow games are nothing like games in domes, and you get a lot of wacky stuff that goes down in them:

• The first clip is more to show AI Jordan Love making a poor throw, which I don’t think has anything to do with the weather, but I feel like it’s news anytime there are throws that are not 100 percent on target in EA football games due to all the claims of robo QB (which are generally fair and valid).

• The second clip is Jacobs slipping a bit on a cut before recovering during a nice run.

• The third clip is Love slipping and sliding in the pocket before throwing the ball away.

• And then the fourth clip is my favorite as Love tries to slide up in the pocket but slips and then goes into a throwing animation that leads to a terrible INT because his arm hits his own lineman on the play.

You get to see stuff in these snow/rain games you would never see any other time, and that is really cool because we need as many ways as possible to keep gameplay fresh over a full season.

Something else playing into this freshness are the traits. I talked a lot about traits in Wednesday’s newsletter, so I don’t want to repeat too much about them for those who already read all that, but the point is they do clearly work. They’re not on enough players in franchise mode, and I don’t think there are enough traits to make every position feel unique right now even if all the players were tagged with them, but why a lot of stuff in this year’s game gets me excited is because as a former game developer, a lot of the new features look scalable. I see relatively obvious ways you could add more depth to them because at their core they seem to be solid ideas that are working as intended (beyond the bugs).

This scalability seems true for player traits, and I believe it could be true for stuff like the new Weekly Recap in franchise mode as well. And I think the Weekly Recap is a good encapsulation of why I think a certain type of player will like this game way more than another type of player.

In a prior newsletter, I had mentioned a Steelers highlight as the most buggy version of the Weekly Recap I had seen so far, but I didn’t showcase it because I thought I didn’t save the footage. But no, turns out I did have it. Both Steelers players are tagged incorrectly by EA’s pre-generated footage system, but I misremembered part of the footage because when I saw a left-handed QB I thought it must not be Rodgers. I was wrong because it is Rodgers throwing to a large fat man who should not be making a spectacular catch — the clip just made Rodgers left handed for some reason (video game development is weird).

But even with this comical multi-error bug, the Weekly Recap still has me stoked overall for a couple reasons. For example, now that we know EA can pre-generate this footage, what’s to stop them from putting college draft prospects in its own little show? You have all the college teams, and even if you legally can’t use the “real” college players in Madden, we could still have the fake prospects in clips because you have to load all the players into your franchise at the start of the season to start the scouting process anyway. Think about how much it would add to see these prospects in college uniforms making plays before you get to draft day — and how much more you might want certain prospects because of it.

…And also think about how much cooler it would be if some prospects didn’t look like 30-year-old binge-drinking motorcycle enthusiasts:

Ain’t no way you got track speed buddy.

The Weekly Recap does chug and take a little time to load so it could be a data issue for how much can really be showcased at once, but why couldn’t we have a Weekly Recap that’s closer to two minutes long with more highlights/news next year?

I mentioned the Weekly Recap as a good dividing line because I think how cool the Weekly Recap is to you is entirely dependent on how many games you play. If you’re not aware, the Weekly Recap (and even the Halftime Report I would bet) changes based on the games that have been played. So if you do 32-team control and play a lot of games every week, or you play in an online franchise with a bunch of friends, that Weekly Recap could play out multiple different ways in terms of the three clips that get shown during the same week. So if I look at the Weekly Recap after just playing my Steelers/Raiders game, then it will look one way. However, if I then play a couple other games from that same week and re-watch the show, it will most likely be different.

To put it another way, the Weekly Recap is way cooler (and less broken) the more user-controlled teams are involved. And, just to be clear, the Weekly Recap is pretty broken in some instances. Since it’s pre-generating the highlights when there are no user games (so, for example, when you’re on a bye week), the Weekly Recap will spoil everything for you before it happens in those weeks. So if you’re not playing in the Super Bowl but watch the Weekly Recap before you simulate the Super Bowl, that Weekly Recap is going to show you highlights from the Super Bowl game and who won.

This is one of many reasons I don’t think this year’s game is built for those who want to spend lots of time in menus. Except for the banger soundtrack, the less time I spend in the the franchise menus the better. I don’t need to belabor how miserable it is going through menus in this game either because I feel like everyone is already aware. Opening up player cards takes roughly five seconds to load the card, and even if that gets patched, I’ll still say the management and simulation side of this game is woefully under-represented.

Everything from salary cap management to the way salary cap totals are shown on players are the things I would improve first in this mode because many of the best GMs get there by understanding how to play salary cap games — plus tinkering/roster building is what many of us play franchise mode to do anyway.

That said, I’ll highlight stats in a couple ways as the reason certain franchise mode enthusiasts might want to stay away. Let’s start with one that’s more annoying than anything and that’s one of your standard player storyline conversations. Here’s Courtland Sutton walking into my office Week 8:

Oh, you only want to eclipse 1,800 receiving yards? Yeah, no big deal even though Ja’Marr Chase was the only receiver to surpass 1,700 yards receiving last year, my team has barely 1,800 passing yards in total so far, and Mr. Sutton has 550 yards receiving in total here in Week 9. But if other things were better that sort of stuff wouldn’t bother me because I think these stat storylines are dumb anyway, and I mostly ignore them because they’re boring busywork.

The issue is that simulated stats are at the core of most of these issues, and they remain in a terrible spot this year. The pass-run ratios are out of whack, there are essentially no special teams touchdowns, not enough running backs get touches, sacks are inflated due to the inflated pass attempts, and playbooks are still clearly driving simulated stat outcomes, which means certain teams will always have players with crazy stats even if those players are not very good, which is generally easiest to see with wild slot receiver totals. On top of that, essentially the same players always win the yearly awards in year one, and the same retirements tend to occur no matter what in year one. I also think SuperSim is a little busted right now overall as players end up in weird positions at times, and the game doesn’t seem to entirely understand when you’re playing on longer minute totals, which means stats come in lower than you would think in those situations.

Here is just a sprinkling of the sim stats issues if you want to see for yourself:

The sim engine has been bad and it remains bad. Things like the Draft, retirements, news stories, and all that other stuff also remain well below average, and so beyond playing the games (and now showing them in Weekly Recaps), the presentation and management side of things is poor. The head coach loadouts, abilities, playsheets, and all that — which only really impact played games — are other standout things that make playing games fun (but man do we need an option so the loadouts don’t get reset week to week). In short, only stuff that directly or indirectly plays into your week-to-week Sunday experience on the field has been improved in a major way.

Bottom Line

You better like playing the games because almost all the good stuff is on the field not off of it. If you want a game driven by a franchise mode built to last many years where you play a minimal number of games and spend more of your time building squads, don’t get your hopes up for this game (or go get College Football while it’s on sale right now). If you do want to invest yourself in that type of experience in Madden, your best bet would be to wait for the franchise mod tools to get updated on PC and try to find an experience you can enjoy there.

That said, on the field, a lot of this game is playing a pretty good tune for me. From graphics to presentation to animations to gameplay variety, I’m genuinely having an awesome time (most of the time). If a couple things like the two-minute drills got cleaned up in a patch, I could definitely see myself doing 32-team control in franchise mode and slowly playing through a couple seasons over a couple months and having a blast. Of course, there’s more than just a franchise mode gameplay experience for some of you to consider, and I have some concerns about “comp” play right now due to stuff like 50/50 balls favoring receivers too much in those environments, but I really think what sort of “franchise mode player” you are is the true dividing line that will define whether someone likes Madden 26 or not.

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

-Chase