5 Things I Loved And 5 Things I Wish Were Better

College Football 26 was the most beautiful sports video game I’ve ever seen, but Madden 26 looks even better—especially on a 4K monitor. The player models and lighting are excellent, with equipment shining and time of day delivering the appropriate immersion. It’s hard to look at this game and not feel the gridiron vibe.

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Quite honestly, the game’s increasing beauty makes it all the more difficult for titles like Maximum Football to steal a share of the football audience. Gameplay and customization matter—and it’s not as if Madden sucks in those areas—but whether most are willing to admit it or not, looks still matter more for most gamers.

The Nuts and Bolts of the Franchise Mode Experience Are Still Ascending

For years, Madden franchise was treated like the gifted older child in the family who’s been devalued and deprioritized in favor of its flashy younger sibling—aka Ultimate Team. Finally, over the past several years, the mode has seen some serious upgrades.

This year’s game introduces a deeper focus on the importance of coaches and coordinators, which helps drive the narrative during franchise. And EA has found intriguing ways to gamify those areas with skill points.

Improved draft and free-agent logic have improved the all-important offseason segments, and EA has addressed its once woeful customization options with the stellar TeamBuilder app.

We’re almost there and yet in a solid place.

The Game Feels Really Smooth to Play

Gameplay-wise, the action feels really smooth. Great players really stand out, with speed and wiggle truly setting game-breaking talents like rookie Ashton Jeanty, cover star Saquon Barkley, and others apart from the rest.

The passing and pass defense have been improved, though that pass rush can still be a little too otherworldly at times.

Madden 26 plays an honest, entertaining, and deep game of digital football that doesn’t kill its own immersion or your ability to enjoy the overall experience.

Updated Position Names

This might seem like a small thing, but I love seeing the position designations change from traditional defensive end, MLB, ROLB, LOLB to Edge, Mike, Will, and Sam. The previous designations didn’t match the modern NFL.

In the past decade, NFL defenses have blurred the lines between defensive ends and outside linebackers. In many schemes (3–4, hybrid fronts, nickel-heavy sets), a “defensive end” might rush like an outside linebacker, and vice versa.

Scouts, analysts, and teams often call those players Edge defenders, regardless of whether they line up in a two-point or three-point stance.

The SAM, MIKE, WILL naming fits linebacker roles instead of fixed left/right positions. This makes more sense in-game for play art, substitutions, and AI, because your “WILL” isn’t always the left OLB—it’s the weak-side LB, which changes depending on offensive formation. You could argue EA should have already made this change, but better late than never.

Variable Outcomes with Superstar Abilities

I love perks, badges, abilities, and the whole nine, but devs do have to be careful not to make them so overpowered that they are annoying. In Madden 25, some of the Superstar Abilities fit that description.

This year’s game has the ability working around 50 percent of the time. So there are no more guaranteed outcomes attached to Superstar abilities.

5 Things I Wish Were Better in Maden 26

Weekly Recap Show and Halftime Show

I’ve wanted to see EA spruce up these areas of the game for years. They did that this year, but I must say, it is very underwhelming. You only see one replay per game, and there are only three games featured in the weekly recap and halftime show.

As for the Weekly Recap, there’s no focus on injuries, player movement, or anything beyond the scores of the games that were featured. Comparing NFL 2K5’s versions of both concepts to what Madden 26 has done this year is natural.

However, it is important to know that EA is not 21 years behind from a tech standpoint. They’re more about 18 years behind philosophically. The tech is there to do what NFL 2K5 did with its Weekly Recap and Halftime Shows and more, but it takes time.

The issue with EA’s approach to the concept is that they only recently began to value this type of presentation. Therefore, this first step in the right direction falls well short of the mark. Sports games on an annual cycle only have so much time to deliver brand-new concepts. Basic introduction and incremental improvement is the only reasonable expectation in these cases.

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That said, it’s great to see Weekly Recaps and Halftime Shows, but there is still a ton of room for improvement.

Injury Presentation

Likewise to the section above, I’ve longed for a more realistic injury presentation in games. We’re at least past the period of giving complete diagnoses for injuries within two minutes of the owie happening, but there’s still not much in the way of in-game updates or between-week drama as you wait for your players to heal.

There is some needed ambiguity to recovery time, but we’re still missing needed presentation in these areas.

Heavy Snow

Heavy weather conditions are dope, but the visual impact on Heavy Snow needs to be tweaked a bit. If you’re playing the game, the limited visibility is kind of cool as you struggle to see down the field. However, in sims, you cannot see anything, which makes the conditions unusable.

While the sim crowd is obviously smaller than the play-every-play group, there shouldn’t be any visual effects that render any part of the game unplayable.

CPU Late-Game Logic

This is something that appears to be very fixable, but needs a mention nonetheless. In a game against the CPU, the Minnesota Vikings were trailing in OT after the Chicago Bears scored a TD on the first possession of the extra session. The Vikings got to fourth down and punted as if they were unaware of the OT rules.

The punt effectively ended the game, which is something no one would ever do. That needs to be fixed.

Legends Access

I will continue to beat this drum as long as I can. EA needs to stop locking legends in Ultimate Team. Legends should be playable in franchise mode without needing to create them. Even if we needed to play Ultimate Team to unlock them across the entire game, that would be better.

Until this changes, it’ll always be an aspect of Madden that I hate—and that’s not sensationalism. It’s how I feel.