The Three Biggest Disappointments With Madden 26 Gameplay

We’ll know who’s going to the Super Bowl after this weekend, and so I’m enlisting the help of long-time OS writer Kevin Scott this week to take us through a chat about Madden 26.

Back in August I created the hit game show, Truth or LIES (come on, we’ve all heard of it, stop kidding around), and that’s a bit of what Kevin is going to do here today — except it’s all going to be LIES that were told to us by EA about Madden 26.

So without further delay, I’m going to hand it off to Kevin:

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Ahead of the release of Madden 26, EA released a lengthy Gameplay Deep Dive that understandably got many in the Madden community excited. For starters, the sheer breadth of the blog post made it apparent that this year's game would evidently include more improvements from the previous game than we had seen in recent years or perhaps ever from one year to the next.

It was also promising that so many of the items mentioned in the blog were those that the community had been clamoring to see for quite some time. From the way that players moved to how the AI behaved throughout the course of a game, there was plenty of room for optimism that the game was finally heading in the right direction by overhauling a lot of the shortcomings that were holding it back form being a realistic representation of the football that you love to see on Sundays…and Thursdays, Mondays, a few Saturdays, and select holidays.

As is often the case though, much of the optimism dissipated when the game was released, and it became clear that EA had sold us a bill of goods that didn't quite live up to close scrutiny.

It was undeniably disappointing to discover that many of the items that they discussed in detail in that epic Gameplay Deep Dive blog post turned out to either be not quite as consequential as expected or entirely different than what they had hyped. This left many with the all-too-familiar feeling that the game hadn't been improved all that much from last year's entry and instead showed something more like the incremental progress we've become accustomed to seeing from one year to the next.

So what areas of Madden 26 gameplay have been most disheartening based on what we expected after reading the marketing materials? Let's go over a handful of aspects that have shown the biggest disconnect between what we had been expecting based on what was promised and what ended up being the underwhelming reality.

AI Instincts

What EA Said: "Decision-making for when to scramble has been improved by adding new logic that takes the game situation into account (down, distance, score, clock). We’ve also added prediction logic so the QB has an idea of how many yards he can gain before contact. This will make QBs more aware of the first down line so they are better at deciding when is the right time to take off and run."

If you're someone who prefers to play versus the CPU in Madden 26, you'll be dismayed to learn that the series continues to struggle with presenting an opponent that's suitably challenging.

On offense, it's far too rare to encounter a CPU-controlled team that excels in the ground game. That's not to say that you won't see more effective scrambles from QBs this year when the pocket breaks down and they're forced to improvise. It's instead the running backs that consistently fail to produce yardage at a realistic clip.

This is primarily due to a lack of vision that's readily apparent in the way they fail to hit open holes and leave big gains on the table. Rather than seek valuable daylight, backs will too often run into their blockers, bounce around needlessly behind the line of scrimmage, and ultimately get stopped in their own tracks.

What EA Said: "There are very few core gameplay features our community cares about more than pass coverage. Coming off of the considerable amount of conversation about zones in Madden NFL 25, the team has made coverage more realistic to what we see in the NFL for Madden NFL 26. These efforts included hiring a Super Bowl-winning former NFL defensive backs coach to our design team."

On the other side of the ball, a CPU defense has its own set of issues holding it back and these aren't exactly new to the series either. As per usual, zone coverages always have at least one concept that doesn't quite work as intended (for instance, Cover 3 match schemes were easily exploited for long stretches this season).

That leaves the CPU (and to a lesser extent yourself, if you choose to use the broken plays) vulnerable to attacks that expose the inherent vulnerabilities that come with AI defenders possessing faulty wiring.

CPU defenders also have a disconcerting amount of variance when it comes to ball skills. One player might fail to react to a ball sailing right over his head that he could easily swat down or pick. However, others will possess the same psychic abilities that have plagued All-Madden difficulty in the past, in which they can somehow anticipate the ball coming their way before it's even been released from your QB's hand.

Blocking

What EA Said: "The only people who care more about pass protection than a Quarterback are Madden players, and for that reason, we have a litany of improvements coming to increase the authenticity and control of protecting the QB."

It should hardly come as a surprise to those who have seen its shortcomings in past Madden games, but blocking still leaves a lot to be desired in Madden 26. Any hope that may have emerged from the fact that improved line play was highlighted in the Gameplay Deep Dive quickly dissipated after witnessing some of the awful play from your supposed protectors on offense.

The most glaring flaw continues to be linemen in pass protection absolutely whiffing when trying to prevent pass rushers from getting to the QB. It's perhaps even too generous to call these "whiffs" when that at least implies a level of effort that is absent from linemen on some plays.

Instead, they don't even attempt to contact their assigned defender, and more or less escort them to your backfield for a quick pressure and potential sack. It's understandable for lapses to happen when you fail to slide your pass protection to account for heavy blitz coming from one side, but it remains a unique frustration to watch in helpless agony as your guard or tackle don't even so much as engage with a defender hellbent on blowing up your play.

It's not just in the pass game though where your blockers can prove to be ineffectual. You'll also still see linemen or tight ends make some baffling decisions about the best way to open up holes for your running back to break big plays. They will too often pass up a chance to get a lick on a defender who is clearly an imminent threat to your back in favor of attacking a defender further up the field that will never factor into the play solely because of their misplaced priorities.

There's something that remains fundamentally missing from the core programming of the blocking AI that prevents basic logic from being applied as a running play unfolds.

Coaching

What EA Said: "This new playcall model will make Coach Suggestions and AI playcalling more dynamic and true to each real-life team by finding the play the head coach (or his staff) would call given the game situation. Things like down, distance, score, clock time, timeouts, personnel, field position, and even the weather conditions are used as filters to sort through all the available plays in the playbook and narrow down to those that best match what each team would most likely call in the given situation."

There's a lot of talk in the Gameplay Deep Dive blog about how specific coaches will behave more like their real-life counterparts when playing against the CPU. It might be true that you're liable to see the Lions going for it on 4th down more often just like you'd expect Dan Campbell to do, but it's hard to get too excited about this when legacy coaching issues remain that are inexplicable to see from any NFL coach.

For instance, the most confounding of these that still persists is how CPU coaches will use timeouts when time is running out in the half or 4th quarter. It's not uncommon to see an offense trying to lead a scoring drive in a critical situation rush up to the line after a play where the clock is running only to then call a timeout. Obviously, it's impossible to imagine any professional (or even pee-wee) coach allowing precious seconds to needlessly run off the clock like that with the game on the line.

If you want to know what goes through the head of a CPU coach in Madden 26 at any given moment of game though, look no further than the Coach Suggestions menu that you can use yourself to call plays. As in past years, there's little variety to the plays that will pop up here considering the size of team playbooks.

On 1st and 10, it's common to see the exact same 6 or 7 plays offered to you without fail while so many other plays languish at the back of the playbook and are never presented as possibilities. On some downs, the "coach" will get redundant by suggesting an assortment of HB screen plays within the menu — as if they believe this call will work no matter what or they’re too out to lunch to come up with any other ideas.

What else can you say about the limitations of a coach when they won't even suggest bringing in your goal line package on the 1-yard line. Well, when else are we going to use it then, coach?

Thanks again to Kevin for his work here. Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase