Scenario 3: You can’t make a tackle to save your life.
Look, you’re not alone. I certainly can’t tackle in CFB 25 Coins this game, and based on the comments I’ve seen online, nobody else can either. Defenders take awful pursuit angles when chasing down ballcarriers, often getting into a trail position to tackle them from behind—even if it means giving up an advantageous angle. So the game’s programming is the main culprit behind your tackling issue. But it’s not the only problem.

When you last played an NCAA Football game, you had only two options for making a tackle: The square button (or X button on the Xbox) for a diving tackle and the hit stick for a bigger hit that’s easier to whiff on. Then, about two years after the NCAA games were shelved, Madden added a third option: the conservative tackle, which is triggered by hitting the X button (or A button on an Xbox). I’ve played some of you old-timers in this game, and it appears you guys are not aware of this third, more reliable choice.

I know it’s hard to rewire your brain after playing football games a certain way your entire life, but this will solve a lot of your tackling problems. The X/A button is your friend.

Scenario 4: Your opponent is spamming Cover 0 and you can’t block it.
Gen Z kids are impatient. Years of staring at screens and endless swiping have turned them into monsters who consume content seven seconds at a time—a problem we definitely don’t have ourselves—and they call their defenses with the same spirit. I swear, these kids are like little Wink Martindales, spamming all-out blitzes no matter the situation. Now, this isn’t exactly a new development. Those blitzes have always been one of the more popular metas in football games, but this new generation has taken it to the next level. In online play, you will run into opponents who call blitzes on 80 percent of their defensive snaps routinely.

This was a major problem for me when playing last year’s Madden game online, and I spent a fair amount of time in the lab trying to cook up responses. I quickly realized there are only a handful of viable concepts against Cover 0 in these games—but fortunately for us, you don’t need more than a few. As long as you have three or four plays that can exploit a blitz, you can scare your opponent away from sending the house on every play.

Some concepts that have worked for me include quick out-breaking routes, curl routes, and RPOs. Out routes, in particular, are quite effective. And if you want to throw a deep route, just make sure you keep your running back in to block. Six-man pass protections usually pick up those blitzes, which gives you plenty of time to exploit the one-on-one matchups across the field.

Bonus tip: Use the coach cam to ensure you have all the potential blitzers accounted for in the protection scheme. Hold down the L2/LT button and push the right stick to the left to see the blocking assignments.

If you can learn the new pass protection adjustment system, it becomes even easier to exploit these aggressive tactics, but that might take some time to figure out. Just stick to the quick out-breakers for now.

With the new system, you press the X/A button to set the accuracy on the horizontal bar, and hold it to determine the power of the kick. At the top of the power meter, there is a tiny red sliver. And if you hold the button too long and end up in the red—which is what seems to be happening for a lot of cheap CFB 25 Coins people—your kick will be inaccurate.