The Millennials’ Guide to Beating Tweens Online in ‘College Football 25’

If EA Sports College Football 25 is the first football video game you’ve bought since the last NCAA Football in 2013, you have a lot of catching up to do. We’ve gone through two console cycles since the college game’s last release. And, as the sport itself has evolved, so has the EA version. The game now has more play-calling options to keep up with, more advanced controls for ballcarriers, and more pre-snap adjustments that allow users to create any concept imaginable—on either side of the ball. And while you, Elder Millennial who’s used to just running the play you called in the huddle with maybe a simple route adjustment or two, are trying to catch up, the Gen Z kids you’ll be playing against online have already mastered the new concepts.

They’re calling run-pass options that turn into 70-yard touchdown passes; the old NCAA games didn’t even have RPOs. They’re manipulating how deep their defenses drop in zone coverage to replicate Nick Saban’s schemes; do you even know what “Mable” coverage is? These little fuckers do, and they’re going to use it to pick off that corner route that used to work every time back in the PlayStation 3 era.

Nobody wants to give up 50 points to a 12-year-old who already knows how to trigger all the touchdown celebrations. Not only are you losing to a tween, but you also have to watch the same stupid Griddy animation over and over again as they run up the score. It’s a scary proposition, but we have to be brave. We can’t let these kids win. This is our game—even if it’s made for and directly marketed to kids. And playing against a random stranger online isn’t an experience we should miss out on just because we lack the finger dexterity to execute an RPO without getting flagged for an illegal man downfield. So I’m here to help.

My years of playing Madden throughout the college video game drought have allowed me to keep up with some of the tactics these little shits like to exploit. And while I’m complete ass at this game when playing against the computer—if you need help beating the AI on Heisman difficulty, seek God—I’ve had some decent results online. I don’t have any indefensible money plays or unblockable blitzes for you to spam—those can be found on YouTube. But I do have some easy-to-follow tips that will save you the embarrassment of hearing a squeaky-voiced twerp call you a washed-up loser. Welcome to the College Football 25 millennial survival guide.

Scenario 1: You’re getting blown out by Ohio State every game.

Every team in this game falls into one of three tiers, with the best populating Tier 1, middle-of-the-road programs occupying Tier 2, and the smaller programs making up Tier 3. You get to select your team for each online game, but what’s easy to miss is that you can also specify the tier you want your opponent to be from, to avoid getting stuck in a mismatch like, say, Navy (Tier 3) against Ohio State (Tier 1). If you’re an impatient button masher like me, the option is easy to overlook. Or maybe you just get the tiers mixed up and briefly think the worst teams are in Tier 1. See if you can pinpoint when I made that exact mistake:

Here was the end result of that blunder:

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I let down the troops (more specifically, the sailors), and it was not an enjoyable experience. Ohio State is the best team in the game, and the one you’ll run into most often when playing online because all of these kids are picking front-runners over any school allegiances. If you want to avoid playing 12-year-olds altogether, just pick a Tier 2 or Tier 3 team. And if you do wind up playing the Buckeyes, make sure you’re operating as one of the four or five teams that can actually block their terrifying defensive line and cover all of their skill players. Otherwise, I don’t recommend it.

Scenario 2: You can’t protect your QB.

I’ll give in to the millennial urge to make a dated movie reference here and ask you to recall Shane Falco’s quicksand speech from The Replacements:

Pure cinema. But try not to get lost in Keanu Reeves’s acting clinic and instead pay attention to the message: “You’re playing and you think everything is going fine,” Falco says in the clip. “Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can’t move ... you can’t breathe ... because you’re in over your head. Like quicksand.”

That’s what it feels like to fall behind the chains in this game. The offensive linemen can’t block. The quarterbacks can barely throw. If the defense knows you have to pass the ball, it can be impossible to get anything done. So unless you’re using a team with a top-level quarterback, you’ll need to play well on first and second down to move the sticks.

The best way to do that is to forget about deep dropback passes and instead learn how to run the RPOs and option plays that can punish opponents who sell out to stop the run. Call screen passes and jet sweeps to keep your opponent guessing. And if you do insist on passing on early downs, attack the flats with high-percentage throws that force your opponent to make a tackle in space.

About that …

Scenario 3: You can’t make a tackle to save your life.

Look, you’re not alone. I certainly can’t tackle in 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. These kids have no conviction—at least when it comes to calling a defense.

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.

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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.

Scenario 5: You can’t make a fucking extra point.

I can’t tell you how many extra points I’ve shanked in this game. And my opponents online seem to be having even more trouble. The kicking system is totally new this time around, so this seems to be an across-the-board problem rather than something unique to millennials. 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 people—your kick will be inaccurate.

You don’t need much power to make an extra point, so there’s no need to flirt with the red sliver of death at the top of the meter. I’ve been filling it up about halfway and have had no issues with extra points lately.

You’re on your own for longer field goals (which are impossible to make with a bad kicker). But don’t give away those free points. We need them.

Scenario 6: It feels like you can’t cover anything and the opposing quarterback has all day to throw.

I’ve been there before. And by “before” I mean like two days ago. Even when I was able to get opponents into third-and-long situations, I couldn’t get them off the field. My main problem was getting to the quarterback in a timely manner. It’s easy to complete passes when receivers have four or five seconds to get open. That doesn’t often happen in real life, but it’s a common occurrence in football games—out of necessity. The games would be unplayable if users were forced to make reads in one or two seconds. So the developers made it harder to get pressure without sending a risky blitz.

But I recently got a tip that seems to have solved my issues in obvious passing situations: The pre-snap “guess pass” function. Now, this has been in EA football games for as long as I can remember, so you may already be familiar with it. To “guess pass,” you hit R1/RB and push the right stick up.

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This will replicate a pass rush “pinning its ears back,” and you’ll get quicker pressure on the quarterback no matter how many rushers you send after him. Even if the offense ends up running the ball, the penalty isn’t that severe: Running backs will break tackles more easily, but in these instances, we can afford to give up an extra yard or two on the ground.

Another effective tactic, which requires a bit more thinking before the snap, is the new “coverage shell” feature, which allows you to create your own coverage disguises. Before you pick a play, use the right stick to switch the pre-snap look your defense will show, so you can call something like a Cover 3, but then have your defense line up in a Cover 4 before the snap.

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You’ll have to experiment to find the right combinations to trick your opponents, but one that has been awfully effective for me is calling a “2-Man” with a Cover 3 shell. Before the snap, it looks as if you are leaving your corners in one-on-ones on the outside:

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You can even press your corners (Triangle/Y and down on the left stick) to make those matchups look more inviting. Then, when your opponent snaps the ball and sees you’re in man coverage, they’ll assume your corner has no help over the top and chuck up a go ball only for your safety to rotate over and intercept the pass. I’ve been able to pull this off a few times, and the dopamine rush you get from outsmarting a teenager with real football tactics is indescribable.

I’ve also found success calling Cover 3 but aligning in Cover 6 before the snap. The coverage shells for those two defenses can look similar, since both are three-deep, four-under concepts, and it can really confuse your opponent.

But be careful: Some combinations don’t work well and could force one of your players to cover an unreasonable amount of ground to get into position after the snap. That will lead to wide-open throws downfield. Experiment in practice mode before deploying combos in an online game.

If you get to the point where you’re disguising coverages before the snap, you’ll have no problem beating these kids and sending them back to Fortnite, Roblox, or whatever the hell they’re playing when they’re not trying to embarrass us on the virtual gridiron. This is our game, and we can’t let them forget it.