Try These Teams in Franchise Mode for a Fresh Experience

It’s the time of year where a handful of sports are becoming their most exciting right as the video games are becoming “free” because they’ve been out for months and are getting less exciting by the day.

NHL and NBA playoffs start this weekend, the NFL Draft is a little over a week away, and as of Friday NHL 26, NBA 2K26, and Madden 26 will all be on either Game Pass or PS Plus.

We have an official OS Account that you all can sign-up for now. I implore all of you, whether you want to subscribe to a paid tier or not, to go that site and sign-up. Go there, click the “Sign In” button and then use either Discord or your OS name to log-in and connect everything together.

Also, please join the OS Discord.

This means if you’ve been on the sideline all year, you’re a game subscription away from playing these games — if you want to take the plunge. And since I consider this a franchise mode-forward newsletter, it’s the right time to talk about teams you could be in those three games if you want to have a fun time in franchise mode.

I’ve done this before with CFB, but the format won’t be the exact same since we’re covering three games rather than one. I’m also not covering The Show because it just came out, and because I already did the entire NL and AL under two months ago.

And because I cherish all of you equally, I’m going to focus on franchise mode teams that people could use even if they’ve had the games all year as well. This means I won’t be picking the “obvious” teams (with one exception), and I’m also going to point out a couple things you can do to freshen up your rosters before taking the plunge.

Lastly, I’m going to call out one “alternative” game you can play if you’re simply bored of these games for the year but still want a video game that covers that specific sport.

Okay, let’s jump into things, and let’s start with the game that has been out the longest: Madden 26.

“Fresh” Madden 26 Franchise Mode Teams

Madden 26 is the easiest one here to keep fresh because there’s a plethora of user-generated content that you can find. If you are on PC, I also highly recommend grabbing the game there, joining the Madden Modding Community Discord server, and immersing yourself in that scene because that’s the best way to get the most out of Madden’s franchise mode via mods.

In terms of offseason rosters and draft classes, it’s going to vary by platform a bit, and things are subject to change after the draft occurs, but a couple mainstays are out there. On PC, use the aforementioned Discord server to figure out the best path forward. On current-gen consoles, look to someone like Eli2Manningham/E2M for draft classes, and then various offseason rosters exist, so it’s a little down to personal preference there. I last used a version from JCameron181 on PS5 for an offseason roster.

As for the three teams I suggest using.

Las Vegas Raiders

Remember how I said there was one obvious choice on this list. Well, this is the obvious choice. The team with the first pick in the draft is always an easy sell for a franchise mode playthrough, and you already know who it’s going to be — unless you choose to go a different direction.

But assuming you want to get the Fernando Mendoza experience started, you can start your franchise today and know you’re on the right path before the draft even happens in real life. This is why they’re such a good choice if you have an itch to start your franchise mode right away.

With a lot of other teams, you might want to wait until after the draft to preserve some more realism — after all, it’s not very clear who is going anywhere but the top spot right now in a very odd draft year — but the Raiders made it clear with their moves this offseason where things are going for them with the first pick.

They blew past the previous record contract for a center (by millions and millions of dollars), giving Tyler Linderbaum all the money to leave Baltimore, and Baltimore may or may not have taken that personally and voided the trade for Maxx Crosby. The Raiders also re-signed Kolton Miller, and you don’t do these two things unless you’re planning to get a young QB involved.

For our purposes as Madden players, even with the Raiders giving out a bunch of big-money free agent contracts, it’s not possible for the Raiders to spend all their money at this point, and so your cap situation is very free and easy moving forward. Even with Crosby’s roughly $30 million AAV back on the books, the Raiders can easily stomach that and more.

After all, you need good players — or at least promising players — to have a cap issue, and the Raiders didn’t have a lot of those promising players heading into this offseason. This means there’s still plenty of work to do, and this is why they ended up with the first pick.

But it’s actually a pretty fun video game situation. You get to have Jeanty and Bowers on rookie contracts, and now you have a QB and at least 2/5ths of an offensive line. The offense should be video game good in short order (a good tight end is probably more invaluable in Madden than even real life), and you have nothing but your own imagination that can stop you otherwise because you will have endless cap space and replaceable players at most other spots.

What you choose to do with Crosby is your first big decision, and after that it’s figuring out how to rebuild the receiver room and the secondary. While the Raiders do need help everywhere — they have arguably over-performed on defense these last couple years in spite of their weaknesses — those are the two position groups that are most dire in my book.

Free 30-day trial to The Supporters Club to read the rest.