EA Sports College Football 26is missing an important feature, and it may have everything to do with its built-in integration withMadden 26.College FootballandMaddenare interconnected in just one major way: you may transfer your Road to Glory player fromCFBinto the professional leagues at the end of their college run. This is probably the most intuitive way to link EA’s two football games, which aresold together in a discounted bundle, and may make players feel like they have a little more control over theirMaddenplayers in Superstar mode.
That said,the lack of a certain feature inMaddenmay be holdingCFBback. From what we’ve seen thus far,CFB 26looks to be the most customizable gamethe series has ever seen. That’s a good thing: players will have more control than ever over how their teams look and play. But all of those new customization features also need to be compatible withMadden, which causes certain issues - namely, missing features that can’t exist in one game until they exist in the other - and even this year’s iteration on theMadden-CFBformula doesn’t seem to fix it.
College Football 26 Hasn’t Added Key Positions
CFB Positions Are Frustrating
College Football 26lacks certain key positionsthat would make it much easier to build teams, set plays, and train players, but this is anything but a new issue. Real-life football positions - things like Edge, Safety, or Long Snapper - aren’t officially available for assignment to players. Some players have related skills or stats, like Edge Threat or Strong Safety, but you’re able to’t assign them to the appropriate positions. This can be incredibly frustrating when you’re trying to use certain players to the fullest potential, and you’re forced to assign them to less specific positions where they won’t always work best.
But this is nothing new - beforeCFB, it was (and still is)a common complaint aboutMadden. Players have called for these important positions to be added toMaddenfor years now and yet, despite the existence of related stats,Maddenstill makes it needlessly difficult to use them.Maddengames rarely change all that muchyear over year, but still, it’s a little baffling that such an important inclusion is still lacking from the series, even after multiple years of player complaints. And the lack of these features inMaddenmay be directly related to their failure to appear inCFB.
One Game Can’t Have What The Other Lacks
The issue is thatthese key positions can’t be added toCFBuntil they can be guaranteed to work inMaddenas well. The two games' integration is pretty limited: you can’t do much between them other than transfer over your custom players. But even that could cause problems if one game has features the other lacks. If your Road to Glory player ends up as an Edge or a Safety, andMaddendoesn’t have those positions, transferring them over would be difficult.
Even if you could upload players from one game to the next, you’d have to place them in a less appropriate position. This would likely be a major setback,potentially leaving them at a disadvantage once they get into the big leagues. No one wants that for their custom players.
There are lots of ways to fix thisMaddenoversight, but first,new positions need to be added to bothMaddenandCFBat the same time. These new additions need to be considered, balanced, and developed for two games at once - no easy feat. This would also likely require a lot of revamping tohow player stats work, which could cause further difficulties when it comes to connecting the nextMaddengame to the previous.
Ultimately, while an updated list of positions like this has been on most players' radars for years, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, due mainly to the difficulty of what already exists within theCFB/Maddenecosystem. Unfortunately, bothMaddenandEA Sports College Football 26are suffering for it, missing important features that would improve gameplay and increase customization.
