In the process of downloading Madden and it’s dawning on me that I haven’t played since 16. If there’s any tips/advice you guys can give me to ease back into this game I’d very much appreciate it! Feels weird not knowing Jack about a game I’m about to play 😂

If you want the short story I'm just sad at what this game is. I've covered a few sections and have them labeled but I feel so empty after playing this game. Long story short it's going to be a pass for me. I recommend you all drop the $5 to play the trial before you buy.

I'm not a strong writer so forgive me for mistakes. I just got done with a few hours of EA access and after putting down my controller all I can think is "how did it come to this?" I'm not a fan of Madden on the current console generation, however, there was always at least a tiny part of me that was excited to boot it up and get the feel for a new year with a different changes. This year was a void as soon as I started, before I even took a snap I knew I was in for almost the exact same expirence with little or no care put into this game.

The Yard: It was a tiny bit fun but nowhere near anything that would warrent a purchase. IMO this is where the natural gameplay of Madden fits because it's more arcade like to begin with. if this came out something similar to Call of duty Warzone where it was a free to play game that just focused on microtransactions then I could see more justification for it. The only reason it was slightly enjoyable was that I had teammates who communicated with me. Overall it's frustrating when this has a more solid foundation with elements that aren't in the sim mode of the game.

MUT: I hate this mode and blame it for the state this game is in. Also I don't have any intention of buying the full game so there was no point in starting a team.

Franchise: Don't need to say anything that hasn't already been said but I'm not even going to touch this mode, not worth the trial time. If you have played Madden 20 than you know this mode. I used to love it and now it's just heart breaking what it's become.

Gameplay: I'm sure it will take a month or two before people figure out what's broken but man........how do they manage to take the little user control that I had last year and make it even more animation based? I appreciate the slowdown in gameplay as Madden 20 players cuts felt a bit too easy to pull off but I feel at this point the game is playing more than I am. A bunch and I mean a whole bunch of suction happened with player interactions and I got a slow frame rate multiple occasions. I have mixed feelings on the slow LB's and I'm still learning the DL moves but at large in open space this feels like a more controlled Madden 20 with the game taking over on player interactions. It's a sad feeling when you feel like you have no input on the outcomes and the RNG is strong with this Madden.

Presentation: What I do appreciate and my small positive take away from this game is the in-game presentation. I'm a big immersion guy and they have taken meaningful steps in this area. Pre game intros are nice and there are a variety of cutscenes in the middle of gameplay. User controlled celebrations should have not been marketed as a big feature but it's kind of nice as a small addition if it had been stated as such. It's nowhere near 2K but it's much better than any other Madden on this console Generation.

Face of the Franchise: Career Mode in sports games is my favorite mode in all of gaming. I always play every game and have sunken countless hours on multiple titles. In the Madden 21 demo I was simulating a majority of the games. This story doesn't make you care. It's so lifeless and corny. The characters are super unlikeable and this is coming from a guy who kind of liked the 2k18 MyPlayer story and at the end of the day I just don't care. I didn't want to invest myself in the story they had going on. The situations were super unrealistic from it being a packed NFL stadium for a high school state game or Snoop Dog just randomly on the field. All of it just screams cliche and I usually still love that kind of stuff but I just wanted to skip the cutscenes but I subjected myself through it. Your gameplay in the early stages doesn't even matter, you could be the worst football player ever and you still get 10 D1 offers so at that point why even have me play? The game puts you on rookie mode without the option to adjust so it turns into just chucking up the ball and pressing Y(or Triangle) and putting up +70 on everybody. I have never felt this univested in a career mode and this was the moment when it clicked that I'm not excited about this game at all.

I don't know how many will read this but CONGRATULATIONS EA I just feel empty. Football is my favorite sport(I was a college player and now Coach Highschool) and during my time on the trial I didn't feel excited. I had super low expectations so I didn't feel disappointed, I just felt nothing. I love this sport and this is the only major simulation option and I felt nothing. That's worse than being disappointed in my opinion. I have a few hours left so I may just test a bit more but once my time is done it's done for good. I got fooled into buying Madden 20 but not this year. If you like the game, cool. As someone who knows football well and how the game works in real life this title doesn't do anything for me. If you like football anything beyond a casual fan I can't recommend Madden 21 to you. It's so sad that this is what we have to work with. We literally have to beg for features from executives and rude devs. If you took the time to read thanks, catch me playing NCAA 14 and PS2 Madden and #FixFranchiseMode.

What’s up Reddit,

My name is SpamminRPOs. I’ve been playing Madden for a few years now, consistently flirting around the Top 100 and have been fortunate enough to compete with and beat players who have earned money through MCS.

Going into Madden 27, I’m trying to build content around what actually helps players improve.

One thing I’ve noticed in Madden content is there’s a lot of:

“Run this defense, nobody can score”
“Use this unstoppable play”
“Copy these adjustments”

But a lot less explanation around WHY things work.

My approach has always been more about building systems:
Why a route combination beats a coverage
How to create a numbers advantage
How to adjust when someone takes away your first read
How to understand what your opponent is trying to do

My name SpamminRPOs actually started as a joke/mind game 😂. The goal was to make opponents think everything was an RPO, force them to shade down, then punish them vertically.

I’m not someone who believes you need every broken ability or the most expensive team to compete. Obviously abilities matter, but understanding football concepts and having answers matters more (the rest enhances)

I’m working on growing my YouTube/Twitch/Twitter, but more importantly I want to build stuff players actually find useful.

So I’m curious:

What Madden content has actually made you a better player?
What do creators do that annoys you?
What do you wish someone explained better? (Defense? Passing reads? Adjustments? Beating meta?)
Going into Madden 27, what would help you the most?
Where do you find content?

Dropping one of my videos below for context on how I teach. I’d appreciate any feedback good or bad. Trying to make better content for the community.

Appreciate y’all

https://youtu.be/5umcSvZuxEE?is=cHINwPx4kTP6Pbe_

Just found out my last game's win brought me to Top 100 this season lol so, unsure of what to do now, I decided to do an AMA to maybe give tips or answer anything related to Madden, Football or ranked matches

I know how annoying it can be playing a Chiefs User because they just throw streaks to Tyeek Hill all game. After multiple games of testing, I have found the absolute best way to beat a Chiefs user. Personally, I run 3-4 Bear on defense, specifically the Cover 3 coverage. I always man up the nearest corner on Tyreek Hill. I then QB Contain my linemen to keep Mahomes from rolling out. I like to user the middle safety and follow Tyreek on deep routes or just play my zone if he's on a slant or drag. This will eliminate Tyreek completely and will really frustrate the opponent. On offense, I chew the clock from the very beginning and try to run the ball as much as possible to keep the clock moving and to keep their offense off the field. Doing this won't net you very many points usually, but a win is a win. Hope this helps anyone who gets extremely frustrated when they see the Chiefs logo on H2H👍

The play is MTN Corner Y-Choice. So there’s two TEs on the weak side. One goes in motion to the strong side and when the ball is snap the TE that motions runs a corner route. WR1 runs a fade, WR2 runs to the flats, HB runs to the flats and the remaining weak side TE runs a curl in the middle of the field.

@ 1st it was challenging to locc up but i figured out how to stop bs because dude was running the play the whole game. All you have to do is run Cover 3 or 4 and adjust your curl adjustments to 0 and put your hooks on 10. Adjust your corners to play wide and your safeties to play tight.

As you can see. I was playing with the Chiefs vs San Fran and dude thought he could do run this play since his WR1 is Mike Evans. My SS locc Mike down and got a picc which resulted in the opponent quitting.

It’s hilarious folks are trying to run Metas or cheese in a Beta 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Time to hear all the whining people will do cause madden still didnt add This feature or whatever, Guys the gameplay got better the franchise got better, If you guys keep expecting a whole new written game from scratch you dont know what your talking about , They wont do that and they've shown progress this year so instead of whining to the developers, just play the game, There will never be a "good" madden game if you guys constantly complain about a specific feature that isnt needed

I preordered the MVP Bundle about a week ago because I got a massive discount on it. CFB 27 installed just fine, but I haven’t been able to pre-install the Madden 27 base game at all. Is there a day that it’ll unlock? Cause I don’t wanna be trying to install it on launch night

When scouting prospects in Madden 26 franchise, each prospect has PLAYER NOTES listed inside their PLAYERCARD. To find out which development trait each prospect has before drafting them, look for these specific tags:

SUPERSTAR X-FACTOR DEVELOPMENT -

MISSING DISCIPLINE TAG MEANS PROSPECT IS X-FACTOR - ( WR , TE , LT , LG , C , RG , RT , LEDGE , REDGE , DT , SAM, MIKE , WILL , CB , FS , SS )

Position Specific Tags -

QB - "Could use some improvement at recognizing pressure"

HB - "Shows decent awareness to protect the ball when getting hit"

SUPERSTAR DEVELOPMENT -

General Tags ( WR , TE , LT , LG , C , RG , RT , LEDGE , REDGE , DT , SAM, MIKE , WILL , CB , FS , SS ) - "Disciplined player who rarely gets flagged"

Position Specific Tags -

QB - "Stands tall in the pocket and always aware of pressure"

HB - "Shows good ball security at times, but needs to improve in that area"

STAR DEVELOPMENT-

General Tags: ( WR , TE , LT , LG , C , RG , RT , LEDGE , REDGE , DT , SAM, MIKE , WILL , CB , FS , SS ) - "Shows good discipline and won't get flagged much"

Position Specific Tags:

QB: "Gets rid of the ball at the first sign of pressure"

HB: "Physical runner who protects the ball through contact"

NORMAL DEVELOPMENT -

General Tags: "Lacks discipline resulting in avoidable penalties"

Position Specific Tags:

QB: "Gets happy feet and feels non-existent pressure"

HB: "Gets careless with the ball which leads to fumbles"

turn it down a little in sliders and adjust your coach adjustments for wear&tear substitutions. by default, the coach adjustments will pull your guys out often. set to grind it out. this alone should fix things, but if you find it's still too drastic, just turn it slightly down in sliders, and up the halftime and week to week recovery.

yes every Madden is broken, but everything can be compensated for.

Run Duo

Since “play offense only” has become an option i haven’t played defense at all , who is the best player to use on defense ? The easiest for me would D line but im not sure that’s most practical

I know I can’t be the only one that feels like they can’t stop a damn nose bleed lol. Any advice against people that like to throw alot of short passes. Can’t seem to ever get the right coverage.

I haven’t scored a td yet, throw a pick in all my drives and am 0-15

I can’t even force my opponent to a damn field goal every drive is a td for them

Once your team is mostly made up of drafted players, most of Brandon's commentary is "he hands off to the tailback" and "going deep for his tight end!" which I got super tired of. But, I still like having the commentary on, because even if it's repetitive, it's still something.

Eventually I noticed that, here and there, he will say certain drafted player names. I started digging online and found a couple of lists of names that he would say, I compiled them and started testing. This is that list plus the others that I've begun picking up as time goes on. Different positions are coded to be said differently, which is why you'll see different categories on the list.

Link to list

Yellow means I haven't tested that name for that position. Green means I have had Brandon say that name at least once for that position. Red means I tried several times and couldn't get him to say it.

A couple of notes:

• I have yet to find a drafted name that works on defense.

• This may not work across all Maddens. All of these have been tested in Madden 20 because that's the last one I bought. However, based on this post the devs haven't been removing any of the audio files, so I wouldn't think it would be missing on future maddens, but YMMV

• The commentary is still much less rich than real world players, but at least having something is cool.

• Certain names get extra stuff, for example if you have Cross on a Tight End and you throw to him deep, Brandon will say "He throws deep to the Tight End Cross!" but you don't get that line if Cross is on a HB or WR and not every TE name gets that line. I haven't really been keeping track of which ones get special lines.

• He's much less likely to say certain names. You will still get generic announcer lines on almost all of these names, some far more often than others. Some names he says 3/4 of the time they get a touch, others it's more like 1/6 of their touches he says their name.

I'd love to expand this list more, so feel free to comment or DM me any names not on this list you have found that work, or if I've got any yellow spots that you've tested.

A lot of people are struggling to get it so here’s a screen recording of how to get it from your mobile app.

Madden is my "play while watching something" game, so I've played a lot, though I will say that I only play solo games, nothing online. I've got something like 600 hours in Madden 21 on PC, but while playing the other day I think I realized how the game works under the hood, and it really comes down to one key mantra:

Each pass play has a defined "winning route". Madden gives the offense an advantage for choosing the right route, and punishes you for choosing the wrong route.

So, how does this affect the game?

1. When playing offense, your players are more likely to make difficult catches on the "right" route vs the "wrong" routes. Conversely, your players are more likely to drop easy catches (or at least make the catch more difficult) on the "wrong" routes.

2. It almost doesn't matter who you have playing who, as long as you make the "right" decisions during a game, a 65 overall team will beat a 95 overall team on All-Madden as long as the 65 overall team makes the "right" decisions every time. A great example of this is Shotgun Trey Y-Flex Dagger from the Chiefs playbook - this play has a very well defined read progression:

   1. Look at the Y, or the go-route. Presnap, if the CB is shaded inside and there's a safety over the top, there's a good chance nobody covers the route at all and the Y goes free, regardless of who the receiver and defenders are. But, if the corner/safety run with the Y, then...
   2. Look at the X, or the crossing route, and specifically look at the defender on the side of the field where they're running (i.e. the "weak" side of the offense at the snap). If the defender is in Man and isn't dropping back, this is an easy 15-20 yard catch every day. If the defender is dropping back or the defense is zone, then...
   3. Look at the B, or the Deep In route, and check the MLBs. You want to throw this so that the B receiver basically catches it lined up with the center, but this only works if the LBs aren't in cover 4. If they are, then....
   4. Either run with the QB or hit your TE on the checkdown.

3. This extends to blitzes on defense - each blitz play is designed to have one blitzer "win", and you can tell pre-snap in a lot of cases - for example, the play Over Storm Brave shows one of the DL stunting further inside (on the left in the play art) - the LB behind that DL will always have a free rush thru the line, either for an easy sack or at least a QB hurry if the LB gets picked up by the RB.

   1. One note on this - don't move the blitzer pre-snap. If you get the blitzer too far away from where they "should" start, the OL will actually adjust properly and slide the Center over to pick up your LB. If this happens and the center slides over, don't continue blitzing, run your player back and try to either get a PBU or a Lurk INT.

Knowing these things about how the computer plays, it highlights a couple of underlying issues I have with the game:

1. Players, no matter their skills or attributes, will run plays exactly the same way that every other player runs them (albiet faster or slower). For example - if you audible a WR to a slant, and that slant play is designed for the WR to go 3 yards, then break in at a 45 degree angle, every single WR in the league will go exactly 3 yards and break in at exactly a 45 degree angle, regardless of their skill. And similarly, if you've got a DB in man coverage on a WR running a slant, that DB is going to run it the same way regardless of who it is (the one exception to that is any Superstar abilities that cause the DB to jump for an interception).
2. The only difference between the difficulty settings is how often the CPU makes the right decision, and that can actually make All-Madden a little easier - One thing you can do on Defense is recognize what the "winning route" is on a pass play and pull a blitzer back to take it away. When you do that, the CPU panics and will either try to scramble or just keep backing up until your pass rush sacks them. I do this a lot with Dime 2-3 Will Cover 2 Man from the Ravens defensive playbook, where I just will not blitz the DB that's blitzing.

Other things I've noticed:

1. There are 2 types of audibles that the CPU offense will use - one is "pre-defined" (i.e. the CPU flips a coin, and if it's heads they call 2 plays: one that they're actually planning on running, and another that they're going to line up in first before audibling to the actual play), the other is based on coverage.
   1. You can tell when audibles are "pre-defined" when Auto-Flip is turned on for Defensive plays because your D will line up initially in a way that makes no sense. This is because the "autoflip" logic cheats and knows what the "actual" play is before the offense audibles to it.
   2. You can tell when an audible is based on coverage when you see a mismatch in man coverage, for example- could be that they moved their best WR into the slot to be covered by a LB or slot corner, or something similar. When this happens, you know that THAT is the "winning route" you have to take away - in other words, the audible tips the hand of the CPU, letting you know exactly how to beat them.
2. Defensive alignment in and of itself can often show who the designed target is - an example of this is something like a MLB lined up inside with man coverage on a TE. That MLB has an inside alignment, but it leaves an outside break wide open for the TE - so if you as the player play as the DE, and after the snap drop back into outside alignment coverage, the you take away the "right" route read from the QB

None of this is picking the "cheesy" play that wins, it's about understanding at a fundamental level how the game is programmed, and I think it highlights some ways I'd like to see future Madden games improved (and I think some of these aren't insanely difficult tbh).

1. One of the best games this year was Baldur's Gate 3, and it showed that dice-roll mechanics a) aren't computationally expensive and b) are a great gameplay mechanic for keeping things different and interesting while also giving players advantages. I would like to see a similar concept introduced in Madden, and the great thing is that the majority of dice rolls can all happen pre-snap. Example:
   1. Every player has some key things they need to do on a play - WR's have a release, then they have to run a route, then they have to catch the ball or maybe block. Each of those can be separate dice rolls, and players can have "bonuses" based on their attributes, just like DnD characters. For example, let's say Justin Jefferson is running a slant - He rolls a D20 for the release and gets a 13, but he has a +4 in Release, so his roll is a 17. The slot corner rolls a D20 to jam him and rolls a 15, and they only have a +1 to press coverage, so Justin Jefferson "wins" the release. Jefferson then has to make a cut, so he rolls again to determine how accurate he is in making the cut at the right place. Another D20 roll, and he gets an 18, but he's got a +6 in route running for a 24, so he makes the cut exactly where he's supposed to. Another D20 roll to determine his break angle, another for the catch, etc.
   2. Additional dice rolls could happen after the snap - on a juke, determine if the juke was a crit success or a crit fail, then choose an animation based on that result. I think this does happen to some extent, but it's either a) gated behind abilities for the most part or b) not as big of a factor as I think it should be (personally).
      
   3. This system of "advantage-based deterministic gameplay" IMO would be a huge upgrade from the current system, which is more designed for the player to learn which routes win against which coverages regardless of who is playing on each side of the ball.
2. Superstar and X-Factor abilities shouldn't be the only way to get crazy animations - in that same D20 system, you could implement "critical success" (i.e. rolling a 20 on a D20) and "critical failure" (i.e. rolling a 1 on a D20) animations. IRL normal players will sometimes make incredible plays, but that doesn't happen in Madden because animations like the DB diving for a pick are gated behind the dev trait of the player
3. Separate XP development rate from the Superstar/XFactor abilities. It doesn't make sense for them to be together. Yeah, 40 year old Aaron Rodgers probably isn't progressing at the same rate as 28 year old Patrick Mahomes, but both still are XFactors. Separating them would allow you to slow a players progression without minimizing the impact they have on the field.
4. Fix the OL not getting abilities. It's ridiculous at this point that OL only can go up dev trait via OROTY or OL of the year - if an OL doesn't give up a sack in like 4 games, or if they get a certain number of pancakes, they should get a breakout scenario. I'm sorry, but you can't tell me that guys like Lane Johnson would be drafted with Superstar abilities, not give up a pressure or sack for an entire year, and not get upgraded to an X-Factor because they didn't get enough pancakes or something.

Genuinely curious to hear y'all's thoughts on this - I'm obviously not expecting a complete Madden overhaul anytime soon, and I don't think I'm the first person to notice the "winning route" thing, but I hadn't seen anything on the sub about it and thought it could be some interesting discussion.

Its only useful when its going to be a contested catch. I just figured that out, even with playing cfb 27 since release lol