YMMV / Madden NFL

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Madden 23 face scans for rookie player models have an alarming tenendency to blow up into an eldritch mish-mash of stretched fleshy patches with teeth and eyes. Behold◊.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Madden 22 includes Home Field Advantage factors which are unique to each stadium. The advantage for Buffalo made the away team's kicking arc swing wildly, while the home Bills' was normal. Buffalo's stadium is notorious for unpredictable swirling winds, and previous coaches have admitted to opening and closing specific field doors to create a wind tunnel effect while opponents were kicking.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • Anywhere in the game where the CPU gives "advice". They range from blatantly obvious statements (suggesting the QB Kneel when your team is leading with 10 seconds to play), to complete headscratchers (suggesting that you select a punter in the 1st round of the draft when you already have a 99-rated Pro Bowl punter on your roster), to flat out insanity (accepting a trade for your elite franchise quarterback of some scrub players and mid-round draft picks).
  • 22 has an "Assistant GM" in franchise mode who will ping you with roster management "advice". Most of it is outright terrible, such as releasing your league MVP starting QB simply because his contract only has one year left, performance be damned. Worse, moves can be made directly from the Assistant GM screen with the cursor defaulting to "Yes", so an accidental click can ruin your team.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • "Madden Moments" (and its similar follow-up names like Ultimate Team Solo) tasks you to replicate (and in some cases, reverse) some of the greatest feats in football history. However, in the late 2000s, EA lost the ability to re-create historic teams due to a lawsuit, which means that these scenarios are now often run against the current version of the team, rather than the historic one. In many cases, the current version of the team is significantly worse that the one involved in the classic moment, making them far easier to accomplish.
  • As noted under "Game Breaking Bugs," in 22, the AI did not properly handle progressive fatigue and exhausted its own players with grueling practices. This meant that human players would frequently end up in the playoffs facing off against the opponents' backups.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • During the PS2/XBOX/GC era, Madden was not only one of the best-selling series in gaming, but also one of its best regarded in terms of quality. However, that quality took a dip with the jump to the leap to the Seventh Generation of Consoles which saw a massive drop in sales, quality, and critical reviews. By their own admission, following the golden era on the PS2/Xbox/GameCube consoles, EA struggled to bring the games up to their previous level of quality on the newer technology. Madden 25, for example, had a 40% drop in year-to-year launch sales over the previous iteration and the sales and scores of the series overall have not yet hit the peaks of its heyday in the early-to-mid-2000s, while the brand has become a punching bag among gamers on the Internet. Despite improved gameplay, long-persistent problems such as canned animation and lax defensive-back AI still remain due to the weaker foundation the game engine was built on, and fans have been outspoken over features and details — such as field degradation and Owner Mode — mysteriously disappearing and re-appearing year-to-year. Further, this era also coincided with the inclusion of some extremely unpopular mechanics (like the QB Vision Cone) and came just a few years after EA got the exclusive NFL license, which meant there was no competition pushing them to create a better product.
  • The increased emphasis on the micro-transaction laden Madden Ultimate Team mode through the late 2010s and into the early 2020s has alienated many long-time fans of the franchise. In particular, it has shifted the emphasis away from the classic, single-player Franchise mode which seems to be more stripped down in terms of features and struggles with more bugs/poor AI decision making/odd simulation results which get worse each year. It isn't uncommon in fan communities to see long-time fans, in some cases who have been playing for decades, swearing off the series in this time span.
• Base-Breaking Character: Colin Kaepernick in 21. After four years out of the league, he was added into the game as a free agent. Naturally, a not insignificant amount of the fanbase objected to his inclusion. However, even people who didn't mind him being added back into the game objected to his 81 overall rating, which is both significantly higher than his previous rating of 74 in 17 and higher than half the quarterbacks in 21.
• Broken Base:
  • The continued emphasis on the micro-transaction loaded Madden Ultimate Team mode. Ultimate Team first debuted with FIFA 09, but it was Madden 2010 where it became free to play and began the billion dollar juggernaut that has seen the microtransaction laden, money-spinning mode rewrite sports games from being about simulating games between the actual teams involved in that season's real life competition into a collectable card game with an arcade sports game tacked onto it. Long-time fans and those not interested in playing online consistently complain about the focus on MUT, to the increasing detriment of other features including the classic single-player Franchise mode. Ultimate Team (along with Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online) is considered to be the worst things to happen to gaming as every company on the planet has shifted to chasing ongoing revenue streams at the expense of well made single player games and online modes that don't require ongoing investment of real money to play.
  • The announcement that the PC version of 23 would not be getting the "next gen" updates available to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions, instead being based on the version for the previous gen consoles, made the PC gaming community absolutely livid. That version was already on hiatus from 08 until 19, making the news that (for at least one year) it would be deemphasized yet again hit extra hard.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In every iteration, there is usually one team that is considered the best and attracts the majority of players. Commonly, this is a team with a mobile QB, elite defense, and at least one dominant receiver.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Players getting run over by the ambulance in the older versions should be terrible...but at the same time, the thought of them having such Skewed Priorities to go to one injured player while running over all in their path, combined with the way it's presented, makes it go back into being darkly hilarious.
• Ending Fatigue: Franchise mode extends for 30 years, long past when all real life players and coaches have retired leaving you with a league of CPU generated players. Any semi-competent Madden player can, by that point, have established such a dynasty that the expectation becomes an undefeated season and Super Bowl win, every year. Due to the team's extended run of success, even depth players develop to their ceilings and see their attributes shoot up, leaving you with a powerhouse team that can squash any opponent, taking a lot of challenge out of the game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Invoked due to the game being part reality, part speculative. Some players who have not achieved anything of note in real life are very popular with fans of the series due to being great in the game. Some notable specific examples:
  • This seems to most commonly occur with freakish athletes who possess elite speed for their positions, since the Speed attribute is the One Stat to Rule Them All and because them being player-controlled typically covers for their real-life lack of experience and polish. RB Michael Bennett is a classic example, having a single 1000+ yard rushing season and one Pro-Bowl nod in real life, but being a Madden legend to this day thanks to his maxed out speed.
  • Brian Finneran was a receiver for the Atlanta Falcons coming off of his only noteworthy season when his quarterback, Michael Vick, was selected as the cover athlete for Madden 04. Playing with Vick, an infamous Game-Breaker that year, caused Finneran to explode in popularity despite regressing and having a mediocre season in real life.
• Executive Meddling: The NFL has insisted on removing things from the franchise over the years for public relations reasons. Most notable being off-field discipline and head injuries. They have also poured resources into Ultimate Team and left franchise and career modes to rot.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Fans of the 2K series of football titles, which were forced out of the market when the NFL sold the exclusive license to EA.
  • There's Backbreaker which, unlike the 2K series, doesn't even have any sort of legacy or what not associated with it. Thus resulting in a series with 15+ years of experience, technology, time, and budget being compared against a series with none of that and expecting the latter to be the former 'but different'.
  • More than a few fans of NFL Blitz were upset... though the disappearance of that franchise is arguably more due to Midway's bankruptcy than anything else. The NFL also leaned on the makers of those games to make them more kid-friendly, which killed the spirit of the game.
  • The hatedom of EA reached its apex in 2013, when they settled two massive class action lawsuits regarding their football franchises. One, concerning the use of student athletes, killed the NCAA Football franchise for a decade, while the other forced EA to pay out millions for supposed price-fixing after NFL2K was forced off the market by the exclusivity deal.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Fast quarterbacks capable of gobbling up double digit yardage when scrambling have always been effective by way of bailing out players when the pass rush would sack them, or when the coverage up field locks down passing lanes. Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick (whose 2004 iteration is widely regarded as the greatest individual player in any Madden game, and arguably any sports game ever), Steve McNair, Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, Patrick Mahomes, Taysom Hill are all examples of these dual threat quarterbacks.
  • Some plays will always work, no matter what defense is called, because they exploit holes in the AI. There has been an enormous Internet argument raging for years over whether this is appropriate play or not. One of the most important parts of e-sports competitive Madden is players working out how to audible the offence into glitching the AI until they get patched out or banned from use.
  • Some teams are so insanely good that it is nearly impossible to beat an experienced player who decides to use them against you.
    • The Falcons in Madden 2004 are the most infamous of them. Cover athlete Michael Vick is notoriously good, excelling at both scrambling and throwing unerringly accurate passes all over the field.
    • Any Colts team during the Peyton Manning era qualified, as well as the Broncos once Manning went there as a free agent.
    • Following his 2018 breakout, Patrick Mahomes earned a 99 rating for several iterations and his Chiefs teams in that span were dreaded by opposing players.
    • The Brady-Belichick Patriots were almost always one of the top handful of teams in the game and very hard to defeat when played by a user with good quarterback pass selection ability.
  • The Hall of Fame edition of Madden NFL 12 also comes with some of the most infamous game breakers in series history included as a special bonus.
• Gameplay Derailment: The AI treats players differently depending on where they are lined up in the formation. This can lead to some mismatches that are easily exploited. A particularly notable example is substituting in a wide receiver or halfback at the QB position. The defense still stays in proper coverage, respecting a non-existent pass threat, while the speedy WR/HB scorches around the outside for a big gain. Another is subbing wide receivers in as tight ends, because they often block just as well on running plays and the AI can't jam them at the line. The former was eventually fixed by substitution restrictions years into the franchise, the latter remains an issue.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The series has had a number of persistent examples over the years, with them being "good" or "bad" depending on whether you're the one exploiting them or being victimized, respectively. To note some of the more prominent:
    • "Rocket Catching", where the receiver gets a speed burst (beyond what his ratings should allow for) in order to catch the ball.
    • "Jet Packing", where the receiver jumps several feet into the air (again beyond what his ratings should allow for) in order to make a catch.
    • The "Instant Snap Pass" present since 09, where a series of audibles is used to abuse the AI until the center snaps the ball directly out to a wide receiver in physics-defying fashion, allowing for an easy catch-and-run. Similar is the abuse of the "option" plays while in the Wildcat formation. Simply motion the receiver out wide and then "pitch" the option as soon as the ball is snapped. It results in an unerringly accurate and lightning-fast throw turning the play into a defacto WR screen pass for easy yardage.
    • "Nano Blitzing", where a series of pre-snap adjustments are made by the defense in quick succession which breaks the offense's blocking AI, creating unstoppable blitzes. EA has attempted to address this one a few times over the years (most notably in 08 where manually moved players return to their original position once the player switches control), but new versions are always discovered and quickly exploited.
    • Run Commit cheesing appeared in Madden 22. The Run Commit feature is a pre-snap decision that sends all 11 of your defense flying to the right, left, or downhill straight to the ballcarrier. It is meant to be a high-risk, high-reward choice for guessing correctly on a play. However, if you have exactly three pass rushers and run commit, the game would automatically cancel it on a pass play. Meaning, you'd get the best of both worlds - downhill crashing on a run and 8 men in coverage on a pass without having to guess.
  • Typos in player attributes have led to several over the years. Some of the more prominent examples:
    • The spreadsheet for player statistics in the Xbox 360 version of 06 only properly interpreted two-digit numbers. One roster update saw the developers mistakenly input Michael King's height as 727 inches, which resulted in him only being seven inches tall. He was still able to interact with the rest of the players as if he was full-sized, which led to some hilarious animations.
    • Browns linebacker Christian Kirksey was mistakenly listed at 1'2" rather than 6'2" at launch in 15, and was incorrectly depicted as a member of the Tennessee Titans. One video of the glitch that showed him picking up a fumble with the ball twice his size was particularly hilarious.
    • This can also occur with player ratings, leading to some humorous and even useful results. Frequently, digits will be swapped, leading to, for example, a defensive tackle who was supposed to have a 69 Acceleration rating instead getting a 96, turning him into a massively disruptive monster. (These are almost always patched in the next roster update.)
  • John Madden Football '92 features an ambulance that retrieves injured players, which also end up running over any other player that get in the way. See the hilarity in all its 16-bit glory.
  • In the late 2000s iterations of the series, AI controlled teams largely devalued their own draft picks during the season. If your team was doing well, you could trade your draft picks for equivalent-round picks (and sometimes more, particularly in 06) of the worst team in the league right before the trade deadline (just before the midway point of the season). While you couldn't guarantee the team you swindled would be the worst overall by the end of the season, they would almost always end up picking in the top five. Having an almost guaranteed top-five pick every year made it substantially easier to keep your team stocked with top talent in a long-running franchise. Late iterations would heavily Nerf this strategy.
  • The performance-based ratings progression from the late 2000s installments was extremely flawed when it came to quarterbacks. While all players got some sort of rating increases or decreases after each quarter of the season based on how they performed, quarterbacks had especially high benchmarks for progression. This meant that very few of the quarterbacks generated for each year's draft class would progress, leading to a dearth of quality quarterbacks in the league once you played through a few seasons and had the real life quarterbacks start to retire. Winning consistently was quite easy when you had some of the only good QBs in the league, but it did make things less interesting...
  • Madden 25 in particular had a few of these:
    • A glitch causes a quarterback's throw power, ordinarily one of the most expensive ratings to improve, to get cheaper with each rank. While it's still expensive, a user skilled in achieving goals as a QB can have it raised to 99 THP in only a few seasons.
    • In Connected Franchise mode, one of the fictional head coaches you can hire is Tomas Single. Sometimes in the middle of the game, his face will vertically stretch and his eyes will become blank.
  • In Madden 20, there are occasions where a lateral or a turnover doesn't correctly register that a player has the football. In the former case, this leads to the ball carrier being tackled over and over again because the game doesn't recognize that he's down. In the latter case, this leads to the ball carrier being chased down by his own team.
  • Madden 22 includes a bug where a dropped pass or batted ball will sometimes suddenly shoot to the dead-center of the field at the 50 yard line and incorrectly register as a fumble. At that point it becomes a footrace to recover, potentially being a free turnover for the defense or a big gain/loss (depending on where you were previously at) for the offense.
  • Madden 22 apparently generates scenarios that will take place during the season before it actually begins. This means that if the team cuts or trades a player mid-season, they can still show up in scenes. Including the player giving his old team a hype speech while wearing his new team's uniform. Amusingly, this happened in Real Life - In the same NFL season, then-Washington QB Ryan Fitzpatrick appeared at the Buffalo Bills' [his former team] home playoff game to cheer for them.
  • Madden 23: The QB Kneel play has the OL stand up slowly without engaging, which is typical in real life as the players typically save themselves the wear and tear. However, the animation of the QB kneeling plays out very slowly, so a poor loser human opponent can often take a DT and run through unblocked for a free hit on the QB before he does.
  • Madden 24:
    • Includes a "Team" endzone celebration where the scoring player is supposed to be picked up and spun around by a teammate. However, the animation often glitches so the teammate never arrives, and the scoring player levitates into the air of their own accord.
    • Sim results often include freakish numbers of dropped passes, regardless of the quality of the receivers. People have shared screen shots showing 20+ combined drops between the teams which would set records in reality (and make for some pretty unwatchable football).
• Growing the Beard: The PS2/Xbox/GameCube era of Madden games were not only the best selling in the series history, but also the best regarded in terms of innovation and quality. The series entered an Audience-Alienating Era at the start of the PS3/Xbox 360/Wii era during which, by EA's own admission, they struggled to bring the game up to that level of quality on the newer, more powerful hardware.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The memetic Darren Sharper Madden videos put up by Demetry James on YouTube ("HARDEST HITTING SAFETY IN THE LEEEEEAAAAGUUUUEEEE!!!"); Sharper was arrested in 2014 and charged with, and eventually pleaded guilty to, several counts of rape and sexual assault over the years, with each victim claiming they were drugged via laced drinks by Sharper beforehand.
  • One of the announcer's lines in Madden NFL 15 is "A Baltimore Raven who will beat you in many ways is Ray Rice." Rice became the center of the NFL's domestic violence scandal that season.
• Heartwarming Moments: As a tribute to John Madden after his death on December 28, 2021, EA Sports unanimously decides to make him the cover figure for Madden 23, even adding in the "Thanks, Coach" as a final touch.
• High-Tier Scrappy: At least one team in each iteration is lambasted by the fanbase for being the "cheese" team - basically, whichever team runs the Game-Breaker play of that year most effectively. Common candidates are teams with a fast, mobile QB and a monster defense that doesn't require much strategy to run well. This is doubly annoying to fans of that team, who are excited to play as their guys online, only to be mocked for it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Released in August 2014, Madden NFL 15 has a Cold Open tutorial that has you in a playoff game between the Carolina Panthers and Seattle Seahawks, in which you guide the Panthers to a last-second victory. The teams would meet in that season's playoffs, and the Panthers wouldn't even come close to winning.
  • Before Super Bowl XLIX, EA performed a simulation of the Super Bowl in Madden NFL 15, in which the Patriots beat the Seahawks 28-24, after being down 14-24 in the third quarter. Guess what the third quarter and final scores of the real Super Bowl was.
• Hype Aversion: Madden is undoubtedly the single most popular multi-platform sports franchise, but there are some people who will refuse to play it precisely because of that popularity.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Just about every new iteration has only token gameplay changes over the last installment, leading many to complain that the game is too similar. On the flip side, since people have been playing virtually the same game year after year, there would be a significant backlash if it changed significantly. Furthermore, some Madden veterans hold that this is complaining about games you don't play, since those seemingly "token" changes can have significant effects on the Metagame, much like in fighting games where hit boxes and special-move priority are undiscovered by casual fans but are vital to high-level, competitive play. And, of course, there are only so many changes that can be made to something based on a real-life sport with a concrete set of rules and play.
  • It's said to be even more true when there's a new console generation on the market, and the older consoles get versions that are literally just reskins of previous installments with a different roster, since the time to actually make a new game is spent on the newer hardware.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • This game is so popular that there are a not-insignificant number of people who buy game systems just to play it, and never play anything else.
  • On the flip side, the pre-order bonus for the $100 Madden 25 Anniversary edition was a yearlong subscription for NFL Sunday Ticket. Which usually cost $300 + a DirecTV subscription on its own. Many people bought it just for Sunday Ticket and promptly sold the game itself.
  • Some people bought Madden 18 solely because it was the first game in the series to finally have a proper story mode.
• Low-Tier Letdown: There are always a few of the worst teams in the league who have no star players or redeeming qualities. Expect even the most popular online leagues to struggle to find players willing to take these teams.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • HI EVERYONE AND WELCOME TO JOHN MADDEN FOOTBALL!
  • "Oh shit, DARREN SHARPER! One of the most hardest hittingest safeties in da league!" (NSFW)
  • "FUCK YOU GUMBY!"
  • "BITCH! WOOOOOOOOOO! GIMME DAT FUCKIN ROCK!"
  • Hold My Diiiiiiick!
  • Whenever a real-life NFL player makes a big play, it is now customary for someone on a forum to say that "PLAYER X PUT DA TEAM ON HIS BACK DO"
  • Greg Jennings said that defensive backs will yell "put the team on his back do" at him, even when he makes a big play against said player.
  • Fans took to calling the Madden hologram in Madden NFL 11's virtual trainer mode as Jedi Madden.
  • A fake letter from Ethan Albright, the lowest rated player in Madden 07.
  • FOUR FACES!!! THE SAME (FOUR) FUCKING FACES!!! ^ExplanationAngry Joe found that the Create-a-Player mode in Madden 20 leaves the number and selection of faces per skin tone unchanged from that of 19.
  • Thanks to Scott The Woz, Madden 08 has gained a sort of ironic Cult Classic fanbase. Similarly, Madden 09, also thanks to Scott, has been given a rather exaggerated case of Sequelitis.
• Misaimed "Realism": Coaches Challenges in real life are designed to cover for mistakes made due to human error by human officials. The in-game officials, being part of the same computer simulation as the game being played, do not err in this way (outside of bugs). However, the game still includes Coaches Challenges and officials are specifically programmed to make mistakes to give you an excuse to challenge. Simulating human error is one piece of realism the series could certainly do without.
• Misblamed: 2K supporters tend to blame EA for buying out the NFL license as a way to kill 2K's series. In reality, the NFL put up the license exclusively for sale to a single bidder as part of a movement to solidify all their merchandise under one individual company per medium, as to have increased autonomy on licensed products. Ironically, 2K5's $20 price point was a bigger sticking point for the league than it was for EA (Madden still handily outsold its competitor in its final head-to-head licensed clash), as the league viewed it as too much of a "discount" on a new premium product, something they could reject under their new single-brand agreements. Furthermore, Sega was already looking to offload Visual Concepts and their sports licenses in general (which they did to Take-Two by the end of 2004), as the company was struggling financially in its move to being software-only and sports licenses were escalating as games became more lucrative.
• Narm Charm: The three menu songs in Madden 2001: "Leave 'Em in the Dirt", "The Mad in the Game", and "The Score". Clean rap lyrics about football? So cheesy but so awesome.
• Nightmare Fuel: The intro to John Madden Football 1988 with an accidental jumpscare complete with a creepy looking John Madden.
• Obscure Popularity: The series routinely sells millions of copies year after year, with even a small community dedicated to finding the differences between games and debating which one is the best, but the games are rarely discussed outside of their fanbase, with most of the discussion they do get either being about how the games are often the same year after year, or whenever a controversy hits, like when a game gets released in a particularly glitchy state or when microtransactions get involved, sometimes both.
• Obvious Beta: Many, many glitches abound. Some of them are alarmingly obvious. For example, in Madden 10, the clock doesn't stop when a tackle animation begins in bounds but ends out of bounds, despite the fact that 09 correctly implemented the clock stopping on such plays. Many of these elements can be attributed to the franchise's production schedule. They come out with a new version every year, and the title must be released by when the start of the real NFL season. This means there is only a fixed window in which bugs can be fixed and features iterated, and the vagarious possibilities in any software development mean that some things get lain by the wayside to make the ship date. Their testers have to crunch hard, but they only have so-much time to find bugs and have the development team correct them, so some inevitably fall through the cracks.
• Older Than They Think: Much like Call of Duty: Ghosts boasting about the interactive fish, Madden NFL 25 boasted having an interactive sideline that would react to actions like real actual people, despite the fact that their former competitor showed off that feature a few years ago. To twist the knife further, Madden NFL 25's own interactive sideline looks pretty static compared to 2K8's.
• Pandering to the Base: EA decided to make Madden 21 appeal to supporters of Colin Kapernick by including him as a free agent even though he had been out of the NFL for four seasons following his activism in 2016. While many appreciated his inclusion, a few of his supporters saw it as hollow pandering to increase sales, since the company previously censored his name from the lyrics of the song "Big Yank" in Madden 19 and they gave him an overall rating of 81, which is both significantly higher than his previous rating of 74 in Madden 17 and higher than half the quarterbacks currently in the NFL, including 2019 Rookie of the Year Kyler Murray and 2019 passer rating leader Ryan Tannehill. The fact he was kept in '22 with the same rating, which was higher than 2020 Rookie of the Year Justin Herbert (whose passing stats in the previous season had surpassed every single one of Kaepernick's career highs) exacerbated these accusations.
• Retroactive Recognition: Inevitable when replaying older titles, as reserve players improve their skillset and get promoted to the first string. This trope most strongly applies to undistinguished players who achieved more success and notoriety from being coaches, such as Doug Pederson and Dan Campbell.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Virtually every front office mechanic. Users cannot design their own contracts, and Madden assumes you want all deals to be backloaded. In some iterations, teams can only sign their players to extensions during the last year of their contract, and not every player is even available to speak to until just before free agency (where you have one shot to sign them or they get dumped in the FA pool). There are no collective scouting events such as college "pro days" or the NFL combine, forcing users to scout every attribute of every player they are interested in drafting. Users cannot create a draft board, forcing them to find the player they want to draft and compare him to other players on the fly while under the 2 minute clock. And so on and so on.
  • Madden 06 added the infamous "QB Cone". Basically, your quarterback has a vision cone extending outwards from his body, and he can only throw accurately to receivers in that cone. The size of the cone is determined by the QBs Awareness rating and, as such, top-tier quarterbacks like Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady have huge cones, whereas lesser QBs have tiny slivers. It's frustrating to use and in some ways counterproductive, since a smaller vision cone can be used to "look off" defenders from covering a receiver you actually want to pass to. This feature would be removed for Madden 09.
  • The QB cone made the game damn near unplayable on the PC version. Previous installments had the player aim with the mouse and throw by left clicking while using standard WASD keys (and those directly around them) for moving the QB. However, once the vision cone was implemented, you still aimed with the mouse but needed to press a separate key on the keyboard in order to actually throw the pass to that receiver. Trying to do that while moving your QB away from pressure seemingly required a 3rd hand. It's little wonder that the PC version of the game would take a decade-long hiatus shortly thereafter...
  • The mobile version of 12 has a mechanic that makes an open receiver on a go route virtually impossible to tackle if you're playing man coverage.
• Scrub: A long-running debate among fans of the series is how much players are expected to hew to real-life football strategy (punt on 4th down, no unnecessary 2-point conversions, etc). Some versions of the game actually have an optional toggle that bans these types of strategies.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Some players don't bother playing the games themselves, and prefer to play Franchise Mode like a "management sim" instead. They'll build teams, hire coaches, and generally run the franchise while merely simulating the actual football games. There exist numerous editing programs for Madden 08 (the last Madden released for PC until Madden 19) which give players control over nearly every aspect of this style of play.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Due to the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic as well as some late changes to uniforms or rosters, EA could not do its traditional photoshoots of athletes on new teams or collect images of new uniforms for Madden 21. For the Superstar and X-Factor images, they attempted to photoshop many players into those uniforms by hand, with some spectacularly poor results.
  • The Cover of the Madden 24 Deluxe Edition includes a very noticeable third bar on Josh Allen's helmet, which was photoshopped out to show his mouth.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • In the real NFL, many stadiums play the Jeopardy! Thinking Music while the refs perform reviews. In Madden, they play a version that is close, but not quite. A knock off of Zombie Nation's "Kernkraft 400" can also be heard as well. (The exception is Madden 11, which actually did license out the music.)
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The new art style of Madden NFL 10 on the Wii, PS2, and PSP. Cue cries of "ruined!".
  • Similarly, some features (Owner Mode being a prime example) have an annoying tendency to disappear between iterations only to return a few years later, leading some to suggest that they are being deliberately held back.

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