When you start a new Franchise in a Madden NFL game, you get 2 options:
- Use preseason rosters,
- Use current active roster.
For simulation users looking to start a new Franchise in the preseason, neither of these options is ideal. The preseason roster gives you all of the preseason players, but it does not include ratings changes, updates to player likenesses, or roster changes that occurred during or after preseason. The current roster, on the other hand, is up-to-date, but only includes each team's active 53-man roster. Practice squad players are all independent free agents.
If you choose the active roster, then every team will start the preseason with only 53 players, and CPU teams don't bother to fill their rosters during the preseason. This wreaks havoc with preseason play, since CPU teams will go into preseason with only 2 quarterbacks, or only 3 running backs, and so forth. So when it comes time to sub in all the backups in the 2nd half, things potentially break down, since the rosters aren't really deep enough to facilitate pulling out all the starters.
So I have taken it upon myself to try to partly resolve this problem. I have uploaded a shared roster file that restores most practice squad players onto every team's rosters. I went through every team, and added all of their practice squad players to their rosters. I used the rosters from ESPN, going into week 2, and looked for every practice squad player in Madden's free agent pool, and added them back to their team's roster. This included any currently inactive players who were listed on each team's injured reserve.
I have manually restored many practice squad players onto their team's roster.
This roster will allow sim Franchise players to use a roster that maintains major roster transactions that occurred during or after preseason (such as Micah Parsons being traded from the Cowboys to the Packers), as well as any ratings updates that EA applied after the preseason, while still giving all the teams some of their practice squad players back. These extra players can play in the preseason, and can be added to teams' practice squads after the preseason.
This roster is called "PLUSPRACTICESQ", and it is currently available on Madden 26's in-game roster share menu. I created this roster on PS5, so I'm not sure if it's available for XBox or PC players to download. Does EA have "cross-play" for file sharing? If you're playing on XBox or PC, and cannot find or download this file, then don't get mad at me; direct your anger towards EA.
Also, EA released a title update a few days after I had uploaded this custom roster. I was afraid that I might have to go and re-do the whole thing in order to get this roster up-to-date as of the time that I published this bog about it, but to my surprise, that was not the case. Apparently, EA has some logic that allows custom rosters to be forward-compatible with new official updates. Presumably, the roster file itself only saves the changes that the user made, relative to the default roster. This means that my custom roster does include the ratings updates for players like Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovaiola. So kudos to EA for having a smart and convenient roster update system. It's possible that the practice squad players who I moved will not be updated by future ratings patches, but those players are unlikely to change unless one of them has a breakout performance.
There are a few limitations to this roster. First and foremost: not all real-life practice squad players are in Madden's rosters. I could only restore the players that were already present. I did not create any new players So that sadly means that UNLV alum Jackson Woodard is not in this roster file, since I didn't find him in the current free agent pool anywhere.
For most teams, I found 6-10 practice squad players to add. So I don't think any team's practice squad will be full.
I also did not modify any of the players. Some of the Madden players are not in the same position as their real-life counterparts. For example, some players who are listed as Defensive Ends on a real-life roster might actually be Defensive Tackles in Madden, and some Offensive Tackles might be listed as Guards in Madden, and so forth. I did not change any of these positions to match the actual players' real-life position.
Another major limitation is that I have no control over what CPU teams will do with these players once the Franchise actually starts. CPU teams may cut some of these players, or they might keep them on the 53-man roster and either cut other players or demote them to the practice squad. This may be especially problematic in the case of veteran players. The NFL now allows long-time veterans to be on practice squads, but I'm not sure if Madden ever updated its own practice squad rules to allow for players with more than 2 or 3 years of experience to be eligible for the practice squad. This may mean that a team in a Madden Franchise may not be able to put a 6 or 8-year veteran on the practice squad, and so that player will either remain on the active 53-man roster (possibly taking a younger player's place), or that player might be cut entirely. That's out of my control, and there's nothing I can do about that. The custom roster file doesn't allow me to specify which players are on the practice squad. Again, complain to EA if this leads to inaccurate rosters.
I also couldn't change the injury status of players. So some players who became injured during preseason or in week 1 may be listed as injured going into the preseason. Madden also doesn't seem to apply the injury status to free agents, so none of the restored practice squad players had pre-existing injuries. Again, there's not anything that I can do about that, as it's a limitation of Madden's roster-editing tools.
The final limitation is that I did not have time to review team rosters from the preseason to restore any additional players who were cut by teams during or after the preseason. So this roster is not entirely accurate as of the beginning of preseason; it is based on team rosters after week 1.
I hope other sim Franchise players find use out of this roster, and that it provides a satisfactory middle ground between starting a Franchise with a default preseason roster or with the current active roster. Have fun! And if you do use and like this roster file, remember that you can support the creation of content like this by becoming a Patron.