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Removing Owner Mode in Madden NFL 26 Is an Unacceptable
I’ve been playing Madden Franchise mode for years now. And one of the defining features that kept me engaged season after season was owner mode. Finding out that it’s been outright removed from Madden NFL 26 is beyond disappointing it’s a baffling decision that actively reduces player choice, variety and depth. Owner mode base always appealed specific segment of the Madden community those of us who enjoy not just coaching on the field, but running the team as a complete organisation. It gave players the freedom to shape the teams future through financial management, stadium upgrades, relocation decisions, merchandising and more. It was about long-term strategy and immersion. Now we are being forced and told that we can only be and play as coaches. That would be one thing if coach mode had been dramatically expanded to absorb the responsibilities and features of owner mode but it hasn’t. This isn’t a reimagining of franchise mode. It’s a subtraction. A narrowing of gameplay. A forced shift in how players are “allowed” to experience the game, with nothing meaningful added to make up for it. From a design standpoint, removing established and beloved features without a compelling replacement is a massive step backwards. It gives the impression that decisions are being made based on cutting corners rather than improving the product. Over the years, we’ve seen madden remove or neglect features that once made it a truly deep and replayable sports sim, and this feels like yet another example in that troubling trend. I understand that EA’s relationship with the NFL license might have its own complexities, but that should never translate to shipping a less complete game. If anything, with competition in the football game market still limited, there’s even more responsibility to deliver the most feature-rich and immersive experience possible not less. Right now, EA is telling a portion of its most dedicated fan base that: “The way you like to play doesn’t matter anymore.” That’s not how you build long-term loyalty, and it’s certainly not how you keep Franchise Mode alive for the fans who have stuck with it through years of incremental changes and missing features. I truly hope EA reconsiders this decision and brings Owner mode back, whether through a future patch or the next madden game. I would love to be proven wrong about my skepticism. But given past history, it’s hard to feel confident. Removing Owner mode doesn’t just hurt Franchise mode it undermines the very variety and player freedom that made it worth returning year to year.
M26 FRANCHISE FEEDBACK
So after a pretty good Play Now/H2H experience, I'm kind of at a loss for words on how to describe the difference in experience Franchise has been. I'm only half way through my first season, but there's enough issues I feel that need addressing that it's best to just put this out here and hope it sheds some light on things that EA needs to address asap. In saying that, I'll just get right into the negatives, then the positives, but since this is much longer than expected, I'll likely post bugs found within the negatives, or create a separate post for them. For the record, my User ID is BrandOG-182; Platform is PS5. NEGATIVES: INTERFACE: Slow; Sluggish; Laggy. It's 2025, I really don't understand how it's this bad just trying to navigate. It's not just Franchise either, it's a whole game issue. Speaking of lag, there's been a bit of that with celebrations in game and cutscenes as well. OWNER/PLAYER MODE: The removal of these from the game is actually stupid and limits how people get to experience and enjoy the game. Literally last years surveys showed people wanted more options/customization, and it was even mentioned in the deep dive if I remember correctly...and yet this is literally the opposite of that. Like, why? This is how to alienate your player base and hurt business 101. STOP REMOVING OPTIONS FROM THE GAME!!!!! People are not happy about this, and understandably so. If I'm being objective though, Owner Mode definitely needed a serious makeover, and honestly, apart from setting prices to manage money better, getting to hire/fire your staff and choose different coaches, there's not much your missing out on that you can't find in the new GM's Office selection on the Franchise Main Menu. Breakouts never worked right, and overall it just needed to offer more. I still enjoyed creating a GM with Owner Mode though, and this was my primary go to for Offline Franchise every year. I have hopes that they removed it to revamp it and re-release it in a later title, but we'll see. No excuses for removing Player Mode though...BRING THESE OPTIONS BACK PLEASE!!!! UNIFORMS: Speaking about removing things from the game, what is going on with these? We literally went from being able to create multiple combinations from every available uniform and save multitudes of them in years past, to now being left with 2 custom options last year, and now 2 superstar options this year. Though worse than previous years, it could be okay if we weren't very restricted to very limited options for customization (no access to past uniforms?), and to top it off, we're locked from making our own combos when beginning a game now too. Just another thing that leaves me asking, why? Just go back to '22 or '23 and let us mix and match and save as we please. STOP REMOVING OPTIONS FROM THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CPU: It's frankly just ridiculously extra/overpowered far too often than is necessary. Literally everything seems to favor the CPU... catches, knockouts, swats, speed bursts, blocking, tackling, juking/trucking/spinning...pretty much everything. I've seen many complain about this on both All-Madden and All-Pro, and I'm told this is on EA's radar, so that's good. However, this is exactly why people complain and say the game feels scripted...it's just too much. The stuff I've witnessed within games is absurd at best, and is actually cheating at worst. QB's never miss a throw; guys warping/glitching/transporting into places to make unrealistic plays at unrealistic speeds; super low overall CPU players consistently getting the better of higher overall User players; CPU always has the upper hand on reaction time; absolutely cranked tackles/hits on pretty much every play. Most losses feel scheduled. Ratings don't matter; Sliders don't matter. Just what is actually going on here? How is this such a different experience from Play Now/H2H? I'm not sure how this game is coded, but this is what makes the game unfun, unfair, and unplayable to many people. There needs to be balance; ratings and sliders need to matter and work as intended. This is unacceptable. TRAINING CAMP: This was actually fine the way it was last year, and for some reason EA just had to mess with it. Overall the changes made weren't for the better. Bucket drop is objectively garbage. Removing a couple mini games so less players get training was dumb (I deleted M25; am I imagining this?). Training camp is really where the mini games I feel stand out and shine. I really feel there should be more of an emphasis on Training Camp for the mini games and less on the week to week, which can become tedious, especially in user leagues. Allow more players to train and gain some XP/skill points. Offer more mini games in general. Week to week training allows you to choose which mini game to play, allow this for Training Camp as well. Only positive I can think of about Training Camp this year is, I think, two mini games got a skill point increase to 2 if you get gold. Other problems I've found with Training Camp are that many seem, or are in fact, extremely bugged. 1) Can't get a consistent pass in Bucket Drop as the cursor snaps back to its original position more often then not. This does not happen to me in game. 2) Chase & Tackle is either extremely broken or someone at EA has a seriously sick sense of humor, because not only does the runner not hit the proper gap more often than not, but literally runs you in circles like a hamster behind the LOS. It's extremely frustrating. 3) WR Battle - Red Zone Attack has the quarterback lobbing passes out of the end zone, making the ball uncatchable and impossible to gain gold. I do believe this might be related to Traits, specifically the one that gives QB's the tendency to throw more lob passes. This theory needs testing though. But taking that trait off my QB did fix it for me at least. 4) Rushing Attack - Close Quarters; FB does not consistently block as necessary leading to high improbability of gaining gold. I'm sure I'm missing some, but I'm over it...moving on. SCHEMES/DEPTH CHART: I haven't completely gone through these yet, but I know for a fact some are wrong; Detroit being my first and primary example. They are listed as 3-4 Under Defense when in fact it should either be a 4-2-5 after googling it, or Base 4-3 if you were to check ESPN. Idk if there are more of these, but I remember it was a thing last year with Lions, Packers, Eagles, and Jags to name a few after irl changes were made with coaching staff and whatnot. I hope these get addressed. Literally just google these or go to ESPN and get the schemes and depth charts right please. RELOCATION: Mostly I'm just disappointed to see that more cities weren't added. At the least, it would be nice to have some cities where current franchises already exist, like Miami, Detroit, or LA for example. That way you could change the name/uniforms of a current franchise to different ones if you wanted. Team Builder import is nice for this when creating franchise, but I don't think there's a way to change a team name after starting a franchise. Would be nice to see a couple of new additional cities like Phoenix, or Boston, and some international ones as well. The uniforms and basic team names could use work too. Just a bit too bland and basic despite the helmets looking better after they redid them last year or the year before. ROSTERS: Still no older rosters for nostalgic franchises. This was a thing back in like '05 even. It made the game really fun, and again, it just goes to show how stupid it is to just keep removing options from the game. I really need to see these added back to the game if I'm going to keep buying and running into so much broken crap every year. Make the frustration worth it. I could easily do a ten year franchise if I could go back to 2015. EA has the Download Center for them...at worst, they could even create an in game store as part of the DLC, and put them up for purchase since we know EA loves their profit. Wouldn't love having to purchase them, but having them is better than not. OR, add them to Premium Team pass...just do whatever you need to get them back into the game please. This goes for All-Times Teams as well. POSITIVES: SETTINGS: These remain a strong positive. The only thing I'd say, and have seen posts about, is add the ability to import and adjust Wear & Tear/Weather sliders within the franchise settings. COACH CENTRAL/COACHING ABILITIES: I've really been having fun with this, and I really feel it was a great idea and implemented pretty well. I love the variety of different abilities. If you're an underdog team, there are great abilities to close the gap and make yourself more competitive vs better teams in the league. From attribute boots that help give your team an edge vs stronger opponents, to XP/Training boosts to help get your team up to par faster in order to compete better, there's a lot of great options here. And if you're a team on top of the league, there are great abilities that can help ensure you stay there too. At higher levels, abilities that help retain staff and improve scouting can help maintain staff with unlocked maxed abilities and ensure generational talent remains within the franchise despite the players that eventually leave. There are a few changes I would make however: Make more slots available. I think there are currently 6 for coach abilities, 4 for playsheets, and 2 for trainers. I wouldn't mind if those numbers were bumped up to 9 or 10 for coach abilities, 5 for playsheets, and 3 for trainers at higher levels. More slots especially seem better when there are certain abilities, such as the scouting abilities, that remain in the loadout for several weeks without the ability to remove them. Not only would more slots be nice, but I would love to see them distributed differently. Right now there is just one uniform loadout for coach abilities, playsheets, and trainer abilities respectively, in which you can activate whatever ability or playsheet from your coach and/or coordinator each week. To make each coach and coordinator feel different and special though, I would like to see the loadout sorted by each coach and the trainer instead. Give each coach and the trainer 3 abilities max to activate each week, maybe 4 for the head coach if you bumped the number up to 10 max coach abilities, then give each coordinator 2 playsheets for max activation, and the head coach 1. This makes coordinators feel more important as they can give you access to more plays per game while the coach has more of his/or own special abilities to activate that the coordinators don't. I would like to see some better spacing for ability and playsheet unlocks. Some unlocks seem they could be too far apart, but I have yet to max a coach out, so we'll see. TRAITS: These are pretty nice actually, and the fact you can add them on any player within your franchise is nice too. I'm sure there are plenty of things I'm either forgetting or have yet to stumble across, but no matter, that's what discussions are for, so others can add to them, so feel free to do so if you happen to come across this and read it. Haven't gotten to draft yet, so we'll see how that pans out and what issues arrise with that. I also have yet to try Team Builder, so hopefully I'll get some feedback for that soon as well. Overall though, considering the hype, Franchise has been a bit of a disappointment. I'm hoping a lot of fixes are coming with the first update, but that always comes with it's own problems too, usually.Sim stats are terrible
Sim stats are not very realistic. Far too few pass attempts. Completion percentage is too high. Not enough interceptions. Too many sacks. Running backs don’t break off enough long runs. Non superstar running backs struggle to be above 3.5 yards per attempt which is horrible. Can we get more transparency on how this sim engine works, and if there’s any way to fix it without rebuilding the sim engine from the ground up?Error: Unable to access franchise
My online league, which is in its 4th season, started getting this message in the attached photo: "The requested league is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience. You have been returned to the Franchise Launcher.", last night when one of my league members tried to open the franchise. Everyone in the league is unable to access the league. Is there any way to fix this? We have put a lot of time into this league, and would be disappointed if we are unable to save the league.Franchise Mode Feedback
I buy madden every year. Every. [removed]. Year. And I’ve NEVER complained about the severe lack of effort being put into the game year after year. Even tho its usually just a reskin with updated rosters from last years game. But madden 26 actually seemed different. It looked like a bunch of much needed love was put into franchise (my preferred game mode). And the gameplay actually looked like it was overhauled and perfected. Specifically the players movement/ physics and the blocking. And I gotta say I genuinely had so much fun playing for the first 2-3 hours. But after a few hours of gameplay I began running into game breaking bugs that completely made my love and excitement for the game take a full 180. For starters I can’t even use my favorite plays tab without the game crashing. This is because of a bug that duplicates your selected favorite plays ten fold every week. I’ve tried deleting the franchise I was in, deleting all saved data for madden 26 on my Xbox’s hard drive, and uninstalling and reinstalling the game on my Xbox. Nothing works. And somehow the issues transcends just franchise, as I have the same issue with the favorite plays tab during online games. In addition to the favorite plays glitch there’s another game breaking glitch that permanently forces all my players into an extremely fatigued state in my franchise. My first solution was to simply sub out the tired player for a fresh one. However even players that have never taken an in game snap experience game breaking fatigue. I tried turning the fatigue sliders down, and even turning fatigue off completely and the issue still persists. I’ve yet to be able to complete a single in game season without having to delete it and restart from scratch. Which is SOOOOO extremely frustrating. 26 has so much potential but it’s being held back drastically,I just want the bugs addressed and fixed. (cm edit - removed language and title)Draft class/player creation
Really EA, you guys swore you focused on franchise yet you didn’t bother to fix the two biggest issues with the draft classes last year. Bug #1 being your new name filter bugging out multiple players in draft classes, they will have names that aren’t banned yet when saved in the draft class their first and or last name will become multiple # like so (John #####) . There’s no fix to this because editing it and saving it doesn’t change it as you’ll go back and they’ll still be messed up. Lastly, your other bug was that you can’t create a variation of player body types like what we have in the career modes. Instead it’s just height and weight, you used to give us some morphing tools to fix this but got rid of them now 300lbs lineman look the same as 180lbs wide receivers. Speaking of stuff in the career mode but not in the rest of the game, how come you allow in the career mode for players to have an arm sleeve paired with a compression T shirt but it’s not in the rest of the game?Training Camp Mini Games are TERRIBLE
Bucket Drop QB Drill - placement and accuracy passing is entirely too difficult and takes too much time to master for the average player. HB - The running area needs to be wider, the FB misses blocks half the time (especially on tosses). Redzone WR - The QB throws lob passes and throws the ball out of bounds the majority of the time, nearly unplayable. Chase and Tackle LB - Half the time I try to tackle my linebacker hesitates and the RB cuts and runs for a TD. The other half the running back runs clear back across the line while my line backer gets stuck into the line dummies. Gauntlet EDGE - Sometimes the rusher will get stuck in an animation where the o line is holding and ends up pushing the rusher out of bounds. The rusher cannot block shed and doesn't respond to pass rush moves in any way when this happens. Also complete side note, please fix the translucent prospect list in the draft when you make your first selectionvery little traits assigned to players in franchise
Edge rushers dont have access to pass rushing traits? makes no sense. cant be a big hitter and attempt a strip sack/tackle? again makes no sense. before every game i go through and assign opposing team traits to their starting lineup because you guys didn't do it.Franchise Deep Dive promised something different
"When we generate Draft Prospects, they’ll all have these new traits, too!" Yeah, they don't. They don't have any trait equipped. Do you expect us to manually give them to Draft Prospects post Draft by ourselves? In our Franchise Saves will the NFL in 10 years only contain players that all behave the exact same because not a single player has traits equipped? I REALLY hope this is fixed by "official" release day August 14. Tho, I thought "Game's ready"?Ratings aren't mattering for CPU
The CPU accuracy is not working properly. There are no off target throws even at lower rated QB's for the CPU. For the User, it's perfect, but when playing the CPU every pass is a on target pass. They just do not miss. Everything is a catchable pass. i have tested this. i took Penix down to 1 Accuracy in SAC, MAC, DAC. I didn't play with any abilities. Penix wound up only missing 4 passes. Only 4 of the 23 passes he threw were bad passes (uncatchable). This is a 83% on target pass percentage. This is at 1 for the player! Penix has an overral on target percentage of 67% last year. With 1 accuracy we should be balls sailing all over and we just don't see that. Madden (and CFB) CPU is not taking in the player ratings when we play against them. Please test this out for yourself. This needs to be fixed.
FRANCHISE DRAFT PLAYERS ARE BROKEN
why when I edit my player and make my QB 300 pounds is he still skinny? Did you all not include the body types like in NCAA and previous maddens? Will this be in a title update to fix this? In NCAA there are lean, standard, and skinny and heavy body types and in Madden there is nothing. I just edit the height and weight. I need to be able to at least change the arms. I paid around 70 dollars for this
Franchise problems STILL!
Spent staff points on after school tutoring to get the three extra focus players to train, but it’s not unlocking them plus when you do weekly strategy and you’re focused on a defensive lineman the right joystick is useless. There’s no swim move rip move bull rush, move. It will not prompt the reaction no matter which direction you push the right joystick making it almost impossible to get off the block.
Add a way to export data like we had in the Companion App
In previous years, Franchise commissioners had a way to export rosters, stats, and game results as JSON to an endpoint of choice, and it allowed us to use external tools such as Neon, or even Excel, for helping us manage our online leagues. These tools were extremely useful for things like helping evaluate and approve trades as well as aggregating stats to build out league storylines. We have not gotten a Companion App for College Football in the two years it has been out, and it is not looking like we will be getting a Companion App for Madden 26 either. EA has given us zero communication about this, they have just pulled the rug out. We need a way to export these stats if we want to effectively run online franchises to be the best they can be. Ideally, we don't need a separate app. Just add a screen in the franchise menu where commissioners can set a URL to export to, and it exports the data the same way the companion app has done in past years. It would be awesome to have this in both CFB and Madden so we can once again utilize tools to enhance our online franchises. Thanks.
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