The basic foundation of college football - broken in 26

Running the ball. Simple as that. The blocking logic, ID of targets, and thus execution doesn't work.

**bleep** poor since run game is the base foundation of football and should be the case in this game, instead of a pass happy Madden environment. 

FBs, pulling guards......they don't ID threats, go off to block some non-threat....or don't block anyone at all.

Inline TE will inexplicably crash down to target a defender that doesn't make any sense across the formation or field, interfering with the tackle and/or guard, and thus messing up their path to blocks.

The blocking is just plain wrong. And I'm perplexed why since, if memory serves correctly, the blocking worked well and made sense on 7/7 early release day! Honestly don't recall to be fair, but it couldn't just be the LB speed change alone in the first patch.

Agreement from elsewhere, credit to original author PowerofRed:

I am getting more and more frustrated with the game play, specifically in the running game, specifically after the game play patch in the last few weeks. The blocking design on most plays is simply wrong. Not mistakes, not glitches, players are programmed to do the wrong thing based on the play. I'm seeing inside zone blocking on outside zone plays, power blocking where the backside guard just roams off rather than hit the hole to lead, counter is just broken.

So many plays, especially the new plays for 26, either don't work or have inconsistent animations. Again, counter is simply broken. Power is largely broken. Outside zone is hit or miss, some are blocked correctly, some are blocked like inside zone. Trap suffers from the same issues power does, the puller just roams around looking to block a random guy rather than the first level player he should be blocking. Receivers don't block, backs don't block. Doesn't matter what the sliders are or what the difficulty is, the core issues with the run game remain, the plays are just designed and executed incorrectly. Most of the damage was done with that patch, but not all of it, many of the core design and animation issues existed from the beginning.

On the human side, I can adjust around this stuff and find some semblance of a running game but it isn't fun because it isn't realistic. On the CPU side, they can't adjust and so the CPU run game is non-existent. Every so often I'll run into a CPU opponent with a scrambling quarterback that can gash me, but CPU opponents with a traditional run game can't run at all because the CPU doesn't know that so many of these plays don't work.