I haven't played Madden in almost a year...

I'm surprised but happy to be back.

I tried out EA College Football 25, and I think it's the best Madden ever. 🙂

The gameplay improvements (like blocking) are incredible, and the game is just tons of fun.

My hopes and expectations are that this will translate to Madden 25.

With that, I wanted to provide updated feedback from my time playing college football. Once Madden 25 has been out for a month or so I'll come back and update my feedback.

The Good:

College Football 25 run blocking is the best. It makes sense. There are very few ways to consistently glitch it out. It's obvious that the team focused on making the plays work using fundamental football rules. You don't have enough men in position to make a play, you lose. You don't have big enough people to stop the run, you lose. You don't properly substitute your players to avoid fatigue and injury, you lose. It's fantastic!

And that is why I was so depressed when I learned that the Wear and Tear system in college football would not be in Madden 25. Please, add this in immediately (ASAP), next year, whatever! Get it in there, it's a masterpiece!

And when I say it, I don't just mean Wear and Tear, I mean College Football 25. It's just an amazing game. I really need to go over to the CF25 boards and right up all the cool stuff that's in this game, but I'm having so much fun playing that it's a chore for me to do that.

I'll add one more thing here because I liked it so much. I loved that there were team chems around offensive and defensive schemes. I thought this was a wonderful way to do this in CUT and I was extra excited about it. (too bad that didn't last, read The Ugly below for details)

The Bad:

Pocket Passing is just not right. There's no real pass rush. I know it's college, and if you're Ohio State playing against Akron, it's expected to see Will Howard taking a nap and making himself coffee while casually waiting for a wide receiver to jog down the field on a wide-open crossing route. But not when Akron is rushing four every down, and not from the first play to the last play of the game. I mean, Ohio State is great and all, but they don't call the same play all game long. We have to fix the pash rush to be as realistic as possible.

The reason this is so important, is that for competitive purposes passing is just stupidly easy. For the most part you know you're not going to get a real pass rush from 3 or even 4 guys. And you also know that if you can just get enough time, you can bomb it all game long. So, you max protect on nearly every play and your first read is usually a corner or a streak. That's not football, that's not how football works (not all game). And it's just beyond frustrating that you don't give players the tools (CF25 and Madden for the last 30 years) to make the QB read the defense and not just sit there waiting for people to always be open.

Zones simply can't work if you can't generate pressure rushing 4 guys. Which is problematic for probably more reasons than I can even think of, but one of the biggest reasons is that not all players are capable of playing man defense.

Here's what I wish to god you would do. Make a competitive mode where the pass rush is real, just like it is in the NFL. Which means you have to read the defense quickly, and there's never enough time (even with max protection) to just stand around throwing deep crossers all game. Like what's the deepest crossers that teams in the NFL actually throw per game? That number must be about 10 less than the average game of Madden.

I'm not suggesting every mode in Madden (or CF25) needs to be like, I'm just saying that the competitive mode needs to be like this. Why? Because it's not competitive to make the game into a single meta of getting all fast guys on both sides of the ball and constantly throwing it deep on every play while one side zero blites against the other side in max protection. If we could just stop this, we'd be like 90% of the way to fun AND competitive in Madden.

The Ugly:

MUT and CUT are just the worst part of CF25 and Madden. I can't stand them anymore. I'm not putting money into it anymore. I just can't. It's not fun.

Here's some quick reasons why.

1. I was so happy that the option was back in CF25, I built my whole team around it. But guess what? CUT (just like MUT for the last 10 years) doesn't support my style of play. Could I get blocking TE's and FB's? Nope. Not really. But I could get 25 WR's with 95 speed. Could I get players that fit well into the Option offense that I run? Nope, there were only like 46 total players that fit an option scheme, but there where like 150 players that fit a pro passing scheme. 

It's the same old thing every year. And I'm convinced that you like the meta because it's easier to manage, it's easier to make money off that, and you'll sell 200 different WR's for every 1 blocking FB that you sell. Which means that I can't make the teams I want to play in MUT or CUT, because it's all about the stupid meta.

I think that's also why the pass rush stinks and contains are always broken. I think that's why the game takes so long to improve (and I'm not ignoring or ignorant of the technical legacy issues that are very challenging). I think that the improvements I saw in CF25 make it clear that you guys can fix anything! You just have to focus on it.

So, here's my list of things that need fixed 30 years ago: (in no particular order, they're all equally important)

1. Contains. Make them do what they're supposed to do, please!

2. Pass Rush, make it just like the NFL (or college for CF25). At least do it for competitive play.

3. Make passing harder in competitive play. I think that in competitive play, all passing should be free form. NO OPTION TO TURN IT OFF. You want to throw down the field 50 times a game, great! Learn how to read defenses and throw the ball like a big boy. None of this press one button after waiting for a crosser to get open. 

4. Add Wear and Tear to Madden! It's my favorite feature in CF25, I love it. It makes the game so much more strategic. It needs to be in competitive play. In fact, here's my dream competitive play narrative:

Johnny Madden is the best competitive player we've ever seen. He can read defenses, he plays smart. He can make every throw in the game. His offense? He plays a balanced two back under center formation and methodically moves the ball down the field. But when he needs to, he's not afraid to go into the shot gun and pick people apart. He knows how to avoid the rush and buy more time in the pocket, but he's fundamentally sound and doesn't drop back 15 yards from the LOS because the Madden devs fixed that and he doesn't like getting sacked every play. When he throws the ball he throws to open receivers, he doesn't rocket catch and glitch out the AI. He doesn't gurdle his way into the endzone. He doesn't use the same overpowered abilities on every player to min max a broken game. Johnny knows football, and he plays the game so well that he's nearly unstoppable in competitive play.

Who are the best Madden players? Not a bunch of guys that max protect and throw corner routes and streaks all game.

On defense, Johnny blitzes a lot. Not because it's the meta, but because he understands pass blocking and how to confuse other great players. It's a chess match and he knows how to mover all the pieces on the board. Not because he's glitching out the AI, but because he's playing sound football and minimizing risk. He's not putting his entire time shaded down without safety help on every other play. Because the other competitive players have options in their custom playbooks that allow them to identify and audible to plays that would exploit such a stupid strategy. Johnny uses the switch stick to move around the field on defense, because he can no longer be on the other side of the field and somehow intercept a curl route on the opposite sideline. This is because the Madden devs said "ok, if you're playing the Will or the Middle Lineback, there's no possible way that you can get to the strong sideline on a playaction fake that you bit on and intercept a comeback route 20 yards down field. That's just silly! (yet here we are in CF25 and probably M25 in 2024)

In summary, can you please take all the possible improvements in CF25 and use them to fix all the other stuff that's arcade-like or broken, and get this game as close to real football as possible? That's where we need to be. That's what makes this game so much fun.

This is without a doubt the most rambling post I've ever made. But at this point after so many years of feedback, I think you guys know what's broken and needs fixed, you just have to keep doing it. FIX THE PASS RUSH and the CONTAINS!

ONE LAST THING:

I want to play competitively. What I don't want is to play META mode with players I don't like and that don't fit my style of play. I don't want to have to grind out solo missions. I want what College Football 25 Dynasty mode offers. It's a brilliant mode. The only problem is that I have to play against the computer or strangers in a non-competitive environment. To me, competitive mode should be MUT/CUT with a salary cap that gets exponentially worse the more speed/OVR you put on your team, there should be full scouting of other teams before you play them, and there should be very hard mechanics like forced free form passing. The competitive mode should be as close to real football as possible. Please do that. Please make the MCS around that environment, and please offer an MCS version of CUT.