But before I get started, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that EA has actually partially addressed some of the issues that I've discussed in a previous installment of this essay series. Specifically, Madden 24, Madden 25, and College Football 25 have substantially improved player logic in loose-ball situations. Since I published the 5th essay, about loose-ball situations, EA has added a number of new animations of players diving or falling onto fumbled footballs. This has mitigated some of the frustrations that I expressed in that essay. Scooping-and-scoring does not happen nearly as often, and players are now also able to recover their own fumbles.

There are still problems with fumbles and loose ball logic, so I won't be rescinding the entire essay. Many of the criticisms are still valid. Most notably, fumble recovery animations often appear pre-determined and break the laws of physics and human anatomy. Awareness during loose-ball situations is also still hit-or-miss.

Nevertheless, EA did actually improve this area of the game, and I want to acknowledge that. As I've said before, I don't make this content simply to shit all over Madden and EA for the sake of it. I make this content because I love football, I love football video games, and I want EA to give us a better product. All my criticism is intended as constructive criticism that I hope is taken in good faith by anyone who watches. As such, I always want to give credit where credit is due.

In any case, I previously started talking about off-field strategy and team-building. Now, I want to talk more about what to do with that talent once they have been scouted, drafted, and evaluated. Today I'll be talking about another one of Franchise Mode's most glaring high-level flaws. It's finally time to talk about how Madden handles (or fails to handle) gameplanning and preparation.

At a very high level, Madden focuses its game strategy almost exclusively on what you like to do! Not off of what the opponent likes to do, nor even off of what you team is built to do. This is not really representative of how real NFL teams prepare for games. In real football, teams do not generally take their entire playbook into any given game. They install, tweak, and practice a different subsets of specific plays each week, based on what they think will work best about their upcoming opponent.

However, modifying your playbook for a given opponent has just never been a part of Madden. This is especially frustrating, because the game has a mechanism for doing this. There is a Custom Playbook and Gameplanning editor that was introduced in Madden 11, and which is still in the game after all these years. While Madden games from over a decade ago did encourage users to use this feature to customize your play-calling to your personal preferences, newer games have pushed this feature more and more into the background, in favor of EA pushing updates to the pre-set playbooks, based on the play calls from real-life teams as the real-life NFL season progresses.

This seems good on paper. Why wouldn't we want realistic playbooks based on the plays that real coaches are calling this season? Don't we want those plays and play-calling frequencies to change to more closely reflect how those coaches call plays in real life? After all, that more closely reflects how the real NFL season is unfolding, right? Sure. Those are great things for Play Now pick-up games and Ultimate Team matchups against randos. But it's not exactly ideal for playing in a simulation Franchise Mode, in which the user is ostensibly taking on the role of a head coach or general manager over the course of multiple seasons, and in which coaching decisions should be based on the events and situations within the Franchise Mode, and not on how things are happening in real-life. And that is where Madden's Franchise Mode falters.

Madden 11 introduced a gameplan editor along with its playbook editor 15 years ago.

The Bears got the head coach that they wanted, and which (I think) all of us Bears fans expected them to hire. Within a day or 2 of the Lions losing to the Washington Commanders in the divisional round of the playoffs, former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson signed on to be the Bears' next head coach. This is something that, honestly, should have happened last year. Matt Eberflus' coaching tenure was a train wreck, and as soon as the Bears decided they were going to move on from Justin Fields and draft Caleb Williams, they should have also parted ways with Eberflus. Instead, they repeated the same strategy that has already failed for them twice before: of drafting a new quarterback, who's rookie development would be stunted by a lame duck coaching staff.

Such unbelievably incompetent management!

So are Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams doomed to repeat the failures of John Fox and Mitch Trubisky, along with Matt Nagy and Justin Fields? Obviously, only time will tell.

There are a few positive signs here. Johnson successfully rehabilitated Jered Goff's career after Goff was traded to Detroit. So he does have that history of turning things around for a struggling quarterback. Goff has been fantastic as a Lion (except for that final playoff game). He's been highly efficient, and has been good at protecting the football.

Photo credit: Photo/Paul Sancya / AP.

Ben Johnson has already shown that he can help rehabilitate a struggling quarterback.

A lot of Goff's success can be traced to Johnson's success as a schemer and play-caller. So Bears fans should also have some confidence that the Bears' play-calling, blocking, and route concepts will be much more competent in 2025 and beyond. We hopefully won't see all the schematic failures that we have seen the past few years.

I generally do not play free-to-play games. I usually associate such games with scammy, exploitative micro-transaction economies. However, I do feel that one genre of video game that could actually be a very good candidate for a free-to-play model is sports games. Sports games have long been criticized as being "full price roster updates". This has become painfully more true as games have become bigger, more complicated, and more expensive to create. There just isn't enough development time in between annual release schedules to implement comprehensive updates to a sports game, and so they typically only receive minor, token changes, which often feel under-developed and poorly-tested and balanced.

In a free-to-play model, however, the developers aren't constrained to rush a "full new game" out every year, in time for the start of the new sport season. They can continue to update the same game, adding new features -- no matter how small or large -- on a much more liberal schedule.

More importantly, gamers aren't forced to buy a whole new game each and every year and reset all their progress. If I play a particular release of Madden for a few in-game seasons, building my team through the draft and developing my players, I eventually get to the point where it feels pointless to continue playing. The new Madden will release, and all my draft picks, player upgrades, and roster moves will be erased and replaced with whatever happened in the real NFL season. Even indie games that aren't tied to a real-life sports league (and its rosters), such as Axis Football, have this same problem. Every new year's game release requires restarting my franchise or dynasty from scratch, erasing dozens (or hundreds!) of hours of play and progress.

My rosters and progress won't get reset every year when a new game releases.

With a free-to-play model, there isn't going to be a "new game" every year, and supposedly, I will be able to continue playing the same dynasty or franchise for as long as I want, and still be able to receive any gameplay updates or new features that are released.

Honestly, I've been wishing that Madden would go to this sort of model for years now. Just have a single, live service football game that is funded by Ultimate Team and other in-app purchases. Maybe annual roster updates could be like a $10 DLC or something?

Dynasty season pass?

But this does beg the question: how will Maximum Football's publisher make money? The method of monetization was always a concern for Maximum Football's reboot. They wouldn't have the names and likenesses of real football players to slap onto digital trading cards for their version of an Ultimate Team. They could potentially get by with selling cosmetic-only items. But would there be enough of a market for such purchases? Maybe they would have to resort to micro-transactions that feel more like pay-to-win mechanics, such as paying for progression boosts for Dynasty players, or literally just buying recruiting prospects (think of the original launch of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War).

The good news is: there is no trace of any pay-to-win mechanics in Maximum Football's Dynasty Mode that I could find. The bad news is: Dynasty Mode is still monetized.

Even though Maximum Football does have its own equivalent of Ultimate Team, complete with in-app purchases for card packs and power ups, the Dynasty Mode is pay-walled by ... <sigh> ... a season pass.

If you want to play more than 1 or 2 seasons of Dynasty, you have to pay (or grind).

You can download Maximum Football for free. You can create and customize teams for free. You can play as many exhibition games as you want (using your created team(s)) for free. And you can start a Dynasty and play through a full year or 2 for free. But if you want to carry that Dynasty into a second season, well then you gotta pay. Additional seasons of Dynasty are locked behind a $20 season pass. Or you can use the 2 Dynasty Tickets that you start with to play 2 seasons, and then try to earn more Dynasty tickets from daily login rewards or from grinding other game modes.

New Dynasty tickets seem to be earned every 14 days that you log into the game. I guess if you're playing 1 Dynasty match per day, then the daily login rewards should be enough to keep your Dynasty going indefinitely.

The game says that the $20 Season Pass grants "unrestricted access" to Dynasty Mode. So I'm assuming (and hoping) that this means Maximum Games isn't going to charge us for a season pass every year if we want to keep playing Dynasty -- effectively turning Dynasty Mode into a subscription service. But I guess we won't find that out for sure until next year.

In fact, there's a season pass for the Franchise Mode too, even though the Franchise Mode isn't even actually in the game yet. The game is techncially in Early Access, so the idea of paying for content that isn't actually in the game yet is a little more forgivable than retail games that sell season passes for future DLC that doesn't exist yet. But still, I'm wary of any game that sells content that isn't actually in the game yet. If Maximum Football flops, and this Franchise Mode never actually releases, then that's $40 down the drain.

UNLV managed to pull off one final, pleasant surprise this year by actually beating Cal in the L.A. Bowl. After the news that head coach Barry Odom left UNLV to take the head coaching job at Purdue, UNLV went from being a 4-ish point favorite to being an underdog in that game. Things started out shaky, with the offense having difficulty moving the ball in the first quarter. But the defense played well, and the offense eventually got its footing just enough to seal an 11-point victory.

Credit to interim coach Del Alexander, who kept the team focused, and called a pretty good game, including a masterful fake punt on a 4th and long inside UNLV's own 40 yard line! UNLV's scouts did their job and identified that Cal would be vulnerable to a play like that, and Alexander had the guts to call it in a completely surprising situation to steal all the momentum back in UNLV's favor.

In any case, I was pretty sour on the idea of the bowl game. I wasn't going to be able to attend the L.A. Bowl in person anyway, because it was in the middle of the week on a Wednesday, and I couldn't get the time off work, since I had already committed all of my remaining time off to the week between Christmas and New Year. But after Odom abandoned the team, and offensive coordinator Brennan Marion was snubbed for the head coaching promotion, I was kind of mad at both UNLV and the NCAA for allowing this collapse to happen. Though I did end up signing up for a 7-day free trial of Fubo in order to watch the bowl on TV, out of a sense of obligation.

Complete changing of the guard

Dan Mullen seems like a fine hire. He's had success in the SEC, which is the most difficult conference in college football. If a coach can win there, they can win anywhere.

I was really hoping for some consistency in terms of the team's identity. In that regard, I was rooting for Brennan Marion or defensive coordinator Mike Scherer to get the head coaching job. Marion's offense was as much a part of UNLV's recent success as Odom's head coaching was. And Scherer's defense was the best defense I've ever seen from this team. Odom, Marion, and Scherer successfully turned a perennial basement-dweller into a potential powerhouse that proved it could compete in a big boy conference like the Big 12. I wanted that identity to become fundamental to the team's DNA in the way that the Flexbone Triple Option is fundamental to the identity of the service academies. I wanted the Go-Go Offense to be "the UNLV offense" to the layman and casual college football fan. That success should have been rewarded by UNLV. Honestly, I thought that Marion would be a shoe-in.

But it seems like Marion may have some personality issues that make him difficult to work with. He may have been the one who promised NIL money to Matt Sluka, which the university couldn't actually afford to pay. I've read that he was almost fired for that. Maybe Odom wanted to fire him, but Harper over-ruled that decision, and maybe that's part of the reason why Odom seemed like he couldn't get out of Vegas fast enough. More generally, I've heard that Marion has a very abrasive personality, and that's not a good quality in a head coach.

Odom did not invite Marion to follow him to Purdue the way he invited Scherer. Instead, Marion is going to be the head coach of the Sacramento State Hornets in the Big Sky conference of the FCS. It doesn't seem like there were too many FBS schools banging down Marion's door to invite him to coach their teams. And maybe that is for very good reason. If that's the case, then the Sacramento State football team is a powder keg waiting to explode.

UNLV passed on OC Brennan Marion [LEFT] in favor of former SEC coach Dan Mullen.

So in summary, UNLV has lost is entire winning coaching staff, and it will be losing a majority of its starters to graduation (including a few potential NFL draftees). Ricky White, Jacob De Jesus, Jackson Woodard, Tiger Shanks, Jalen Catalon, Cameron Oliver, Hajj-Malik Williams, Jett Elad, and others will all be graduating, with White, Woodard, and Oliver having already declared for the NFL Draft. Some of UNLV's top recruits have also already switched their commitments to follow Odom to Purdue, and who knows how many under-classmen will follow suit and transfer to Purdue? Will Jaiden "Jet" Thomas still be a Rebel next year? Or Antonio Doyle? Or Fisher Camac?

Mullen will certainly have to do a lot of building through the transfer portal.

The NCAA needs to regulate in-season talent poaching!

This story is also bigger than just UNLV. The NCAA should really be paying close attention to what's going on here. You have a team that was 1-game away from making the inaugural College Football Playoff, and they had their head coach poached out from under them the week of a conference championship game. That should not be happening!

The dream of crashing the inaugural College Football Playoff is over for UNLV. They lost the Mountain West Championship to Boise State for the second year in a row. Boise will be the automatic Group of 5 representative in the playoff. What's more, 3rd-ranked (in the CFP rankings) SMU lost its championship game to Clemson, which demoted them to the "at large" 11th seed, and leapfrogged Boise State to the 3rd seed in the playoffs. Boise will have a first-round bye in the playoff, and will host the winner of Penn State and SMU.

The loss pushed UNLV back to #24 in the playoff rankings, and they are expected to be invited to the L.A. Bowl.

Boise State beat UNLV in the Mountain West Championship and will be the 3rd seed in the inaugural playoff.

This loss was rough. I really thought that UNLV had a good chance to beat Boise State. UNLV lost by only 5 points when they first played in Vegas in the middle of the season. UNLV was one of the few teams to actually make Heisman candidate Ashton Jeanty look almost pedestrian -- though he still ran for well over a hundred yards and multiple TDs.

My dad and I drove out to Boise to watch the game on the blue turf, only to see UNLV play, by far, its worst game of the season. I'm not sure if it was the cold (the temperature was 27 degrees at kickoff), or if they finally succumbed to the pressure, or maybe there were other distractions (which I'll talk about later). UNLV's offense looked inept, and the defense failed to make any big plays to swing momentum.

Missed opportunities

Usually-reliable kicker Caden Chittenden missed a field goal in the first half that doinked off the crossbar. UNLV failed to convert a 1st and goal at the 5 yard line into points following a 90-yard run by Kylin James. A penalty backed them up, and they failed to convert the ensuing 4th down. The back-breaker, however, was the defense blowing gap containment and letting Ashton Jeanty run for an 80-yard touchdown just before halftime.

Those 3 mistakes accounted for a swing of 17 points, in a game that ended up being decided by 14. And those weren't the extent of UNLV's opportunities to swing the game. Defenders dropped at least 2 opportunities for easy interceptions, and quarterback Hajj-Malik Williams missed several receivers downfield.

My dad and I drove out to Boise's blue turf to watch the championship game.

Largely though, Boise's coaches did a great job in gameplanning. They seemed absolutely committed to preventing Hajj-Malik from running the ball with the option. They played edge containment and kept spies on both Hajj-Malik and any potential pitch backs, completely killing UNLV's option running game and forcing UNLV to have to call traditional handoffs and pocket passes. UNLV is certainly built to run the ball, but the offensive line looked lethargic and just couldn't open up holes for any of the running backs, with only a few exceptions. Greg Burrell scored the team's only touchdown in the second half.