Your Defense Doesn't Suck, its a Bug!!

First, I want to thank EA for bringing College Football back to gaming. It’s clear a tremendous amount of work went into making College Football 25 and 26 a reality, and I truly appreciate your dedication to the series.

That said, I think many players would agree that defense in College Football 26 feels… well, broken. After extensive play, I finally discovered why even highly rated defenses perform like they’re completely lost on the field.

The issue doesn’t appear to be player skill—it’s a bug in the defensive play calling system. Specifically, I’ve noticed an extreme lack of awareness and aggressiveness when manually selecting plays compared to using the coaching suggestions. While this may have been an issue in the past, in this year’s game it seems completely broken.

Here’s an easy test: try picking any defensive play manually (and don’t just run Double Mug every down), then watch how your top defenders react. They’ll look unresponsive and ineffective. Now, try using only coaching suggestions—or even put the controller down entirely—and you’ll see the defense suddenly perform far better. I primarily play as Oregon in Road to CFP, and the difference is glaring.

EA, for the sake of gameplay balance, please look into this issue and address it. The defensive AI deserves to match the quality of the rest of the game.