Madden NFL 26 Goes 'Contract Year' on Us With Initial Showcase

I’m not sure I fully believe the headline I slapped on this week’s newsletter, but I do think it’s a good way to shape a discussion around how big a year it is for the Madden series. “Contract years” in real sports are a fun topic because they can impact a player’s performance right before entering free agency. This makes sense because that athlete has something on the line — a tangible goal, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It absolutely tracks that plenty of athletes have their best seasons right before getting fat and happy on a new deal.

Are you buying the hype for Madden this year so far or are you still more in wait and see on Madden since you’re all-in on College Football? I give you the means to hit me up with comments, thoughts, musings, or questions for all things related to this week’s Madden reveals or anything else. You’re free to explain why no one can ever top Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl, or talk about why Tin Cup is underrated as a sports movie — any and all are welcome. If I get enough responses, I’d love to feature them in future newsletters or in “mailbags” of our own.

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.

This is relevant to Madden because the NFL has not extended its exclusive NFL licensing contract with EA as of yet, and that is slightly odd because neither side tends to let it get this far down the road before renewing. Last time the contract was renewed was in 2020, and that was two years before the contract was set to run out in 2022. This version of the contract is set to expire after the 2025-26 season, which means this could theoretically be the “last” version of Madden.

Now, to be clear, I don’t see any world where the NFL and EA don’t stay in a relationship, and my assumption is exclusivity remains part of whatever deal they make, but in recent years the NFL has clearly moved in a new direction where they’re comfortable with more partners for media rights deals as long as they get more money in the end. This is how we end up with NFL games on everything from CBS to Netflix, and YouTube TV now has NFL Sunday Ticket.

Ultimately, video games could remain like Sunday Ticket where the NFL considers its video game rights worth restricting to just one partner — and in that case, I don’t think it’s a situation where the NFL leaves EA for 2K like the NFL left DirecTV for YouTube (after all, AT&T/DirecTV were at least partly the reason the NFL left by questioning the worth of Sunday Ticket in the first place). The other guess is maybe EA is trying to make sure exclusivity remains part of the deal while the NFL is somewhat resistant to that idea. I’m positive EA/NFL have a good relationship, but both sides are still going to haggle over the money and details.

Whatever the case may be, after reading the initial Gridiron Notes and watching the reveal trailer below, it’s fair to say most of OS is excited about what’s being shown so far in the “contract year” Madden 26.

And, yes, you could chalk it up as the beginning of the annual cycle of hype, but I don’t think it is that because Madden doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. More OSers than not put that game in the “prove it” camp now, and it’s understandable when you look at the track record.

I’m also not quick to say this is EA emptying the tank right before a contract expires. Video game development is not a straight line. I can tell you a lot of times games look like absolute slop right up until the last couple months before they’re shipped. With sports games, these “three-year” plans you sometimes hear about are not just spin. You do have to build the framework that no one really cares about before it finally becomes a pretty house. It doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed success at the end of those three years either, but if your plan actually comes together, it’s how sports games sometimes take these crazy leaps out of nowhere.

As a reminder, ‘26 will mark the three-year checkup since Madden 23 franchise mode was actually broken. EA had to have a “come to Jesus” moment and apologize and vow to do better after that mess. If we’re to believe the Madden team did learn and follow through on promising to do better, this is year three of that promise and so this could also be why a lot of us franchise/offline guys are doing the full Citizen Kane right now while reading the Gridiron Notes.

The last reason Madden 26 might be “getting its act together” is because we do have College Football back in the mix. People on the Madden team have always said they only compete with themselves, or when NCAA Football was around they would compete against their own internal game. Now, yes, obviously some of that is spin (they obviously were competing with NFL 2K), but I don’t think it’s entirely untrue either. No one is trying to make bad games — regardless of whether there is competition or not — but I think what competition does for video games has nothing to do with pressure and everything to do with perspective. You’re going to get more ideas from games playing in the same sandbox as you, and thus you’re going to have more things to use as inspiration (or even just steal) for your own game.

We’ll get into it below, but it’s clear Madden and College Football are both sharing and stealing from each other. This is an EA tradition anyway (don’t forget the Frostbite engine went from Battlefield to pretty much every sports game in EA’s portfolio), so it’s not all that surprising to see the football games doing this — even if how they’re doing it is perhaps telling.

You put all these possible scenarios together, and this week’s news about Madden 26 feels far less shocking but no less satisfying.

Madden 26 Marketing Is Aimed Directly At Franchise Mode Fans

If EA is just telling us what we want to hear right now, well, that will be proven out with the final product, but it’s very clear EA is staring right at simulation-focused football fans who care about franchise mode with the things they’re talking about so far.

The Madden trailer lead with presentation, franchise mode, weather, and signature style for coaches and players. Almost none of this stuff really matters to MUT, “comp” or online-focused players (most of those people wouldn’t even want weather on for online games, and they sure as shit don’t want to slip on cuts).

Instead, the trailer screamed College Football with the way it lead with vibes and traditions, and this is the part I do think is telling about that relationship between the two games. College Football 25 succeeded on the back of its dynasty mode, its care for traditions, and a healthy dose of nostalgia after a 10+ year layoff. It reviewed better than any Madden game has in many years.

Madden’s Current-Gen Malaise

As a reminder, since Madden 21 the series has reviewed extremely poorly. The transition to current-gen consoles was not kind to them, and you can chalk that up to a variety of factors, but the point is even if some on OS have been liking the game much more the last couple years, there is a lack of positive buzz for this series overall.

I can point to any number of gameplay, presentation, or modes reasons for those reactions, but I do think it comes back to a lack of perceived “love” for the NFL itself with the way EA showcases and ships the product. Part of what made College Football 25 feel so fresh was not just that it was returning from its hiatus, it’s that clearly the people working on the game loved college football.

It would be easy to be cynical about a lot of what was showcased in the trailer and even the Gridiron Notes. Hell, this thread on Reddit is totally fair in terms of pointing out mascots/cheerleaders have been in Madden and out of the game multiple times. EA does these presentational touches, and then at some point they either decide it’s not worth updating the assets or think people are “clicking through the presentation because it’s boring and old” and we end up rinsing and repeating after EA removes this stuff all over again.

How Serious Should We Take Player/Coach DNA?

This could be the start of another one of those cycles, and hearing about “QB throwing motions” or “physics-based interactions” don’t assuage those fears if you want to believe they’re just running back the “hits” in terms of marketing.

I’ve got one foot in the camps of pessimistic and optimistic, and while I want to give full-throated praise in later sections, I do want to dig into the “QB DNA” and “Coach DNA” stuff first as that’s where I have my foot planted more firmly in the pessimistic camp.

I’m always happy to get signature animations, but EA either gets cold feet or doesn’t really know how to showcase this stuff in ways that come through much of the time. We had the Mahomes diving throw as a full-on bullet point for marketing one year, and people got so concerned it would be OP (it probably was to be fair) it basically never happened in the game. Now, "QB DNA” isn’t just animations, but the point is EA does not have a great track record getting players to truly play like their real counterparts,

With that in mind, let’s now get to the Coach DNA stuff:

Again, this sounds great. I do find it hilarious they say “machine learning” since it’s a somewhat popular buzzword now, but really it would have been enough to say “we finally decided to update Ask Madden and make it useful for the first time in an eternity.” I am pretty confident whatever “machine learning” they’re doing isn’t some new fancy thing compared to the past, it’s more likely they finally decided CPU playcalling was worth being a priority during the development cycle — and they probably found a better system that allows them to more easily make adjustments to the AI playcalling.

“AI” and “machine learning” are obviously things we’ve had in these games forever, but now you can fool some people into believing they’re magic beans that will fix everything in a video game. Instead, the same is likely true about that stuff today as it was years back in terms of how effective they can be for games, and that comes down to whether or not developers actually want to put in the time to work on making those tools better. And I say that because none of this stuff is going to matter if AI teams are still never running the ball.

I’ve been a game developer, and though I’ll never claim to be some expert, I do think sports video games are about “priority” much of the time. It’s not that a lot of cool stuff hasn’t been in Madden before, the issue has been getting things to “trigger” in the right priority sequence. I can promise you that even with a crappy Ask Madden feature and whatever else working against AI teams in past games, not every team is supposed to run Four Verts on third and long all the time or only run the ball four times.

In short, none of this stuff is going to matter unless we consistently see it, and the bad stuff doesn’t overwhelm the positives. Joe Burrow throwing more often to one side of the field or constantly setting his feet might not be very noticeable to everyone, but that sort of nuance will absolutely go unnoticed if every QB still throws most every pass on target and pressures are the only thing that drive INTs. Dan Campbell going on fourth down is great, but it’s not going to matter to many if every team is still running the ball six times and throwing it 45 times.

(As an aside, I didn’t see any mention of the “tush push” either, which feels like an odd thing to omit when you’re pushing the idea of Coach DNA.)

In either case, the Madden team is preaching “fundamentals” and that’s what the challenge is going to be with DNA features. If the core tenets of your AI playcalling and decision making aren’t solid and varied, none of the signature one-off stuff will matter.

With that in mind, I do hope we hear more about guys like Kyler Murray not throwing over the middle much (because he’s short) or certain QBs being “honorable” and throwing seam balls into traffic more often while other QBs are prone to checking down a lot because that stuff is very visible and tangible every game. Those are the sorts of “fundamentals” we need within stuff like QB DNA in order to make arm slots and all the other sweeteners pop.

Coach DNA will pop for me if they simply double down on the playbooks like they seem to be doing, and they get the adaptive in-game schemes somewhat right. Yes, you shouldn’t be able to run the same couple plays and succeed, but I don’t think any game is ever going to get this totally right. There will always be ways to exploit the AI, so my hope is they at least try to give you more varied defensive looks, don’t just run Four Verts or give-up screens on third and long, and they use all the tools you have at your disposal — College Football did a solid job in this department last year (AI using hot routes, bluff coverages, and so on).

Graphics Aren’t Just Player Models

I’ve talked before about how we’ve hit this world of diminishing returns with graphics in video games, and sports games have especially felt this because sports games for decades helped sell consoles by making those graphical leaps with each new generation. But I think during the last couple generations some developers got too obsessed with trying to find these small gains with the players themselves, when really the gains to be found were lighting, arenas, crowds, weather, equipment, and almost everything else that was not the player models.

(I feel inclined to remind EA they’re making a football game. Yes, you should spend time on scanning player faces, but these guys have helmets on all the time, and you really don’t do that much presentational stuff where you show them on the sidelines with their helmets off anyway. The gains were always going to be somewhat minimal here by default, and were only even more minuscule due to presentation priorities.)

This is all a lead in for me to say the Madden 26 weather looks sick. It’s a little baffling to me that Madden didn’t double down on this stuff sooner because rain and snow make the games look so much more epic. Yes, blizzard games in real life are a lot of bad football at times, but damn do they look cool on TV. It’s bonus points that they seem to be leaning into making the gameplay sloppier during these extreme weather games, and that they’re even going as far as putting “fog” in the game is awesome.

I will also make my yearly pitch to EA and tell them to give us a better broadcast camera(s) for this game. EA doesn’t do itself any favors by not at least attempting to try some broadcast cameras that are a little easier to play from because the game never looks better than when you’re in those. Not too many people would play from them, but they’re worth the videos and screenshots people would post while playing from those custom broadcast cameras.

Beyond the weather, EA also clearly heard us when it comes to coach apparel — we’ll see about player equipment. Both CFB and Madden were extremely easy to make fun of for the lack of coaching apparel options, and so the fact that they’re finally adding more to that department is long overdue but still important.

Player equipment is this weirder one because it’s partly about playing nice with the NFL. As much as people want to give EA zero benefit of the doubt, I don’t think they want to have Mahomes in their trailer having his knees exposed in the real clip and then not exposed in the game. The NFL is archaic about some of this stuff, and it’s nothing new when it comes to the pants-above-knees issue.

What’s less forgiving is still having facemasks that do seem wrong, or your cover athlete’s logo not being quite right. Yes, other things should be higher priority, but this is also what seems to be more “right” in the college game a lot of the time.

What’s also been bad in both games to some extent is new players (whether that’s recruits or draft classes) lacking flavor. OS user Heisman said it best in one thread:

This is the sort of stuff we can’t have happen in franchise mode, especially if we’re being denied the “import draft class” feature once again.

Franchise Mode Goodies

Everything from Player DNA to weather is already somewhat aimed at franchise mode, but it’s good to see them going into stuff like warm-weather players playing worse in the cold and vice versa. How real that even is almost isn’t relevant to me because I’m just a believer in trying every which way to make franchise mode games feel unique week to week. A player on the Dolphins maybe went to Michigan, so I doubt he forgot how to play in the cold, but the point is to make the Dolphins need homefield in the playoffs to avoid this potential issue.

Wear and tear being in the game is great, but OS user The Gamer said it best for me that I want the system to not just impact my team, but also the feel of the league:

This would be genuinely cool and would add so much to the feeling like you’re competing with other teams. Of course, I also hope there’s more to come on deeper contract and salary cap management as well because it feels so outdated to not have at least some ways to structure deals or move money around — we have fewer ways to structure deals today than we did years ago in franchise mode.

Lastly, this idea of “coach abilities” is there to give off some of that RPG flavor:

I’m always less excited by this stuff because it’s nearly impossible to know how much it’s helping or hurting you. Am I even going to notice if my tackles are doing better against power moves? I hope it inspires me to care more about the week-to-week gameplanning, but I don’t ever like the in-game scenarios/goals that are stuff like “get a TD on this drive” or “get 30 yards passing on this drive” because they’re so arbitrary and meaningless in terms of what any of it means for the football game itself.

Something I am excited about are the weekly recaps and halftime show being back. It’s always fun for me to be able to mention stuff I worked on when I was on the Madden team, and I was right in the middle of the design of the last attempt of a halftime show. I was only there for Year 1 so I can only talk about its initial implementation, but the main issues I felt we ran into related to configuring how to actually pull the most impactful plays or drive “stories” that helped frame the half, show those plays from good camera angles, and what to do during a really boring first half or first half where you play on three-minute quarters where not a ton of plays are even called. The actual writing and stitching together of the various phrases to snag all the potential storylines was the much easier part to tune and tweak.

(One thing that was never an issue was Larry Ridley. He was fantastic, had a great voice, and understood exactly how to get things right in the booth so they translated the right way to the game.)

But the bigger point here is that EA has taken shots at both a weekly recap and halftime show before, so now we get to see them take another shot at both in the same game. Even if it’s not many of the same people anymore on the development team, you would hope whoever is there has learned from the past successes and failures and can dial in something that could add so much to a franchise mode. Rich Eisen for the halftime show and Scott Hanson for the weekly recap show are obviously popular guys in the industry already, so that can’t hurt either as long as EA secured enough time with the both of them. Oh, and I’m sure it’s wrong of me to hope for this, but what if we get plays from around the league in either the weekly recap show or halftime show? I don’t dare dream that big.

Beyond the presentational touches, the one thing I am a little unclear on right now is the “play sheets” idea:

To be clear, I’m all for a limited playbook and all that because that’s true to real life, but I’m not sure how this will function if you use a custom playbook. I think what it’s saying is your playbook — whatever it is — is baked into your team so I don’t think you’d even pick a playbook before a game. Instead, you’re picking a playbook for the season or at least before the start of the week. For this to work, I imagine you’d need to pick a set number of plays from your playbook, and you then get more plays depending on your coach rather than picking more plays from various other playbooks or something like that. Point being, I want to know more about this aspect, but I am intrigued.

Sharing Is Caring

I do want to say it’s good to see both football games sharing some good stuff. Wear and tear and dynamic subs will make it to Madden 26. We’re also getting DL stunts/twists, and position updates so EDGE and nose tackle are now a thing. The long snapper position stands out to me the most because I don’t see any reason to mention that unless bad snaps/snapping ratings will matter, which has been another one of those long-debated things in terms of whether “bad snaps” should be a thing or not in the game (again, online “comp” guys would hate this, we sim guys would like it).

We’re also getting custom defensive zones in both games, but I want to echo again the imbalance that will still exist between offense and defense, especially in H2H games. It’s not enough to believe a corner route is coming and wanting to stop it, you still need to sometimes make tons of pre-snap adjustments on defense to get there. A QB needs to make 1-2 adjustments to bend the defense to his will, a defense in Madden needs to make 5+ adjustments at times to counter them. Even the most smart and hardcore users (with dexterous fingers) have trouble making those adjustments in time, and that menu math will only be amplified now that we can make specific zone adjustments at the LOS.

I’m not sure I have an “elegant” solution to this problem beyond allowing defenses to build in their custom adjustments in the playcall screen (we already can set zone depths on a universal level there). Even that’s maybe not enough time because you have to pick a play after seeing what set/formation/personnel grouping the offense selects before even attempting any tweaks. Perhaps some sort of audible-like system where you build your defensive adjustments into a play once and then save them could work as well, but that might be a bit of a mess to implement (especially online where it matters the most).

Madden Lost A Battle To Hopefully Win A War

I think a philosophical decision is being made this year with both football games, but it’s most relevant to Madden because I think they lost the “war” and are changing things up. For me, this rings most true with this point about gameplay:

I said it in last week’s newsletter, but I’ll say again I know some people like Madden’s slower gameplay style where every step feels a little more planted than in College Football, but I think you folks are in the minority. Fast gameplay is better than slow gameplay in most people’s minds. It doesn’t mean your taste is bad if you like the more methodical gameplay speed, but that “sluggish” feeling people could sometimes feel in Madden isn’t what the majority want even if it’s more realistic. This doesn’t mean giving up on foot planting or physics, but it means reactive inputs, speed, and finesse take priority.

I think it’s easy to forget how the locomotion and that feeling of the left stick changed with this transition to current-gen consoles. I don’t think it was ever explicitly mentioned as a goal, but we really did lose most of the ways to make players miss with smart and decisive manual moves on the left stick.

EA seems to be going one step further than just giving us “quick twitch” left stick movements back by also trying to say small movements between the tackles will matter as much as being able to go 0-100 on the left stick with the Tyreek Hills of the world. All this sounds great, but it also shows not leaning into the left stick was always a mistake.

I think “jukes” and all that won out for a bit because they look great at times and can give some real players signature style, but ultimately they’re usually canned animations where EA makes a defender intentionally fall over if you time certain jukes/spins right. As a user, that’s not going to feel as satisfying as doing a move all your own on the left stick to make a defender miss.

This type of gameplay choice along with the decision to lean into presentation and franchise mode shows that College Football is leading the charge for now. The fact that dynasty mode was far and away the most popular CFB mode, and the series got so much positive press for unique team intros and faster more responsive gameplay perhaps gave EA Tiburon enough self-awareness and confidence to turn back the clock and go back to what made these football games so popular in the first place throughout the late-90s to mid-2000s.

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

-Chase