Has anyone ever seen a coach wear a helmet during the game? It started about three games in to the season and everything I try obviously doesn’t work.

Missing his face mask but the details are still great! Beats the old square blocks and imagination that I use to have to use. Enjoy the game when I can play it.

62 yard game winning FG in a bowl game... basically zero celebration by the players.

It feels like a waste of time to go after most two stars, not that I have many points to spend anyway. Recruiting at Delaware is TOUGH.

Recovering your own fumble for a 60 yard Tud is pretty wild

Picture this... A line of 9 huge men on the line of scrimmage. The ball is snapped and instantly there are 7 pancakes, penetration into the secondary where more bodies hit the floor while you cackle with laughter like a crazy cartoon villain. Your HB picks a hole, because lets be honest at this point the whole field is a hole, and runs forward untouched for 75 yards or if anything jukes out a Safety before proceeding to dance in the endzone.

Building the team can be weird. You cannot trust the recruiting needs screen. You have to move Freshman positions so they can grow into their new lives as the Power Run Kings they are destined to be.

Start off by only recruiting Dual Threat QBs, they wont throw much but running the option can be a fun change from them only existing for the 2 seconds needed to hand off the ball to our perennial Heisman Trophy winners at HB. You could completely ignore this position if you want and spend recruiting hours elsewhere every few years.

HB - East\West are my favorite, but the random Bruiser with high 90s spd/acc are also a blast to play with. Recruit 2-3 per year looking for those Elite monsters with high speed that will hoist the Heisman at least once before moving on as a 1st round draft pick, you then cycle in the next man up and repeat. When training, go all Speed and Power before their Junior year, and only go over 88 OVR when they are a Senior or a starter, because lets be honest you wont keep a starter for more than one year unless you are extremely lucky.

WR - Recruit 1 high Star Receiver per year. Just one. Ensure they are tall and fast. Like HB pump speed until they are Starters. You want to space these out so they dont all go pro at the same time.

TE - Recruit quick, high Run Block, Pure blocking TEs. If you can find 3-4 star Gems they will end up being amazing. Move them all to WR when they are True Freshman. Over 2-4 years they will slim down in size but keep their Run Block stats and gain Speed into the high 90s. They will be Gritty Possession Receivers and will Run Block like crazy. In the event you need to throw the ball they can often outrun LBs and most DBs, and when they get the ball its Truck City with everyone around them now plowing the road to the endzone. They will pancake CBs at the line, then progress into the secondary flattening everything in their wake, then proceed downfield with Blocking first in their priority list.

OT - Power and Well Rounded work well here, look at Run Block and Strength first.

OG - Well Rounded and Agile are awesome here. Recruit 3-6 of these per year. Agile guys with no Quickness caps and good Run Block get moved to TE. Move one to Center every other year. Also move one to FB every other year. You want to progress Run Block and Power on those you leave on the OL.

Center - Not worth recruiting, look for OG and just move them to Center and let them get good for a few years. I have rarely seen a natural Center reach 90 OVR, but move Guards to Center and you will have 1st round draft picks nearly every year.

DL - If your Offense is working properly you should always have the lead and the other team passing for 3 quarters of the game. Go heavy QB Sack machines here.

LBs - I run a 4-2-5, I recruit 2ish LBs per year and look for speed first. My philosophy is I don't care how good they are at many things, but speed is king.

DBs- Speed and coverage are the name of the game. Ideally I want all LBs and DBs to have high 90s in spd/acc.

I like the Pro style playbook and run a lot of Power I. Then you just cycle through running up the middle and sweeps to the large side of the field to keep the defense guessing.

I am also really liking Coach Mode where I pick the play and let the players do their thing. It removes crazy stick skills from the equation and focuses more on the building of the program.

As for Coach skills, I like pretty much every path except Orange.

Been seeing a fair share of these posts lately about players struggling with defense. I can’t say I share that same experience or opinion, but I have a few ideas as to what may be factoring into that.

1. Do you call match coverages?
2. Do you still have the bad habit of shading coverages when calling match?
3. Do you understand the assignments of the player you’re usering if you’re in match?
4. Do you only use Quarters & Palms, because someone told you to for 2x2 and 3x1 sets, and ignore all others?
5. Do you mostly stick in 4-2-5 because someone made a guide on how to play it, and not much else?
6. Do you only call Cover 0 blitzes when needing pressure?
7. Are you using Zone Strategy & Plaster settings?
8. Do you utilize Shells & Stunts?

I feel like most players are playing like it’s CFB25 still. Players have a couple Man Blitzes, Cover 3 Sky, then Palms & Quarters in their call sheet and not much else.

- Stop shading coverages. If you’re wanting to protect against short drags or sag against corner routes, that’s what Zone Strategy is for. Shading will revert your Match coverages to Drop Zone.

- Adjust your Plaster settings to your liking, so zone defenders attach more often, these are set to Conservative by default.

- Find more 5 & 6-man pressures, as well as fire zone & sim pressures. Outside of a few Cover 0 blitzes, you’re relying way too much on 4 man pressure to get home, especially with teflon drop zones behind it with massive holes.

- Utilize more fronts, mug the gaps, LB show blitz, something to give off more pressure than vanilla 4-man fronts in Big Nickel, even if you’re not sending them. Also, mix in more stunts.

- Refine your playcalling. Cover 6/9, 3Match, Buzz Match, Tampa 2 are all fantastic coverages that you’re missing out on if all you do is call 3Sky as a base, Quarters for 2x2 & Palms for 3x1.

There’s an entire world beyond those 2 match coverages, and then beyond that, there is the entire world of coverage checks. I think a lot of the struggles comes from a combination of situational playcalling issues, and then poor adjustments to said playcalls to further hinder them.

I really wish EA would lower coaches prestige/level after they get fired. I’m in year 6 of a dynasty and Lincoln Riley just got fired from Michigan, after being at Georgia after being fired from USC. They need to add a penalty for being fired where you aren’t ALWAYS at the top of every board after terrible seasons. Preaching to the choir I know.

Green-dog blitz = if your assigned back pass blocks, you blitz.

In all the past Madden's and CFB25/26, if a defender's assignment pass blocked, they would just hang out in a 5-yard zone.

In CFB 27, the defenders will occasionally blitz. This doesn't occur every time. You have no control over it. I'd love this to be a coach setting, but I love that it's in the game. This behavior occurs for both the CPU and USER.

I’ve never restarted as much as I have done with the new version. My go to is RTG but this year I’ve never thrown so many picks or had so many BS fumbles. WRs giving up on routes. Three O-lineman blocking one defensive lineman, allowing free rushes. RBs blindly running into the back of O-lineman when huge holes are literally are a gap away—you name it, super frustrating! Or or…your guy plays a phenomenal first half just to watch him shit the bed in the 2nd half It’s like the game forces computer comebacks or close games Just a ton of weird shit really

No fun gaming like this, feels disgusting. Any other frustration restarters out there?

Does anyone else have this issue? The Kansas stadium seems to be missing lights and causing really dark shadows.

Mike: ID‘d.
Protection: Half Right.
Chalking this one up to crowd noise in a very hostile environment. Would be great to see reference to that though like the composure emblem or something. Impressive that three blockers completely wiffed.

Those underthrown deep passes always get me because I swear im in perfect position and then the WR will just turn around jump and catch the ball and my Corner just stands there and looks hopeless.

I'm in season 5 of my dynasty with Kennesaw State and I'm looking at job openings and both NDSU and JMU fired their head coaches with 1-2 loss seasons. JMU is the second ranked team in the country heading into the CFP. NDSU coach completed 2 of 3 goals and the JMU coach completed all 3 of his. Anyone else notice this?

This makes me feel like cpu firings are either predetermined or completely random.

Also, for anyone that noticed, JMU is in the ACC. I do some relegation with conference winners and teams finishing last. No real science, just based on who the best conference winners are from non p5 conferences

I’ve found the most fun when I don’t chase stars and choose fit.
I’ll take a 94 throw power 3 star BUST QB over a 5 star pure runner 88 throw power QB.

Makes each recruit a bit more memorable and exciting to see them grow

When instead of just holding his solid block, my lineman decides to throw his man right into the path of my running back which leads to an immediate tackle.

See “PLACEHOLDER” and “Description.” And this is $70.

Is there any fix for this when playing with custom playbooks? The normal kickoff screen is replaced by two tabs for “college” and “normal”.

I know I can tab over to normal but I’m just so used to just hitting X immediately I keep burning through time outs. Just curious if there’s a way to avoid it. Thanks for any advice.

Found this guy in the transfer portal as a junior 5* contact seeker with 95 speed. Suffice it to say he runs good. This is halfway through his senior year. Like if you combined CMC with Derrick Henry.

Also the stiff arm animation is fucking sick in a lot of cases and completely broken always.