‘EA College Football 26’ hands-on impressions: How gameplay, Dynasty, Road to Glory look in new game

After more than a decade without a college football video game, fans couldn’t wait to get their hands on “EA Sports College Football 25” after it launched last summer, making it the best-selling sports video game in history. 

The follow-up title, “EA Sports College Football 26,” will release July 10, and while there is not nearly as much anticipation as last year, fans of the first game had plenty of things they wanted to see improved upon or added for this year’s game. On Thursday, I got a chance to play an early version of the game down at EA’s studios in Orlando, Florida, and spent nearly five hours digging into the new gameplay changes and updates the two major career modes: Dynasty and Road to Glory. 

Below you can find a detailed account of my thoughts after some time on the sticks, but the overall feeling I left with was that they had genuinely improved the game — some areas more than others — and built on what was a solid foundation from their first year back making a college football video game. 

Gameplay

I think the general takeaway from most folks that played last year’s game was that it was fun, but had room to grow and improve in terms of gameplay. After playing for a few hours (on an early version they promise will get even better), I am pleased to say they certainly made some big strides with the gameplay. It’s smoother, smarter and a few key elements that were lacking last year are much improved this year. 

Presentation

We’ll start with presentation where they added a ton of stuff, including some iconic entrances that were missing from the first game — for example, Virginia Tech runs out to “Enter Sandman” and South Carolina has “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Sandstorm.” The bands play a lot more songs, there are more songs that play over the PA that crowds sing along to, there are more mascots, they added a bunch of turnover celebrations, and teams have more varied and unique runouts that can change depending on how big the game is (with special presentations for night games) — with their real coaches in the front now that (most) coaches are in the game. 

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Anyone that played the first game a bunch noticed that a lot of things were repetitive, and it certainly seems like that will be less of the case this year. 

Defense

I’m shocked to be talking to you about defense because I have never really enjoyed playing video game football defense, largely because I’ve been terrible at anything other than line play. I have been a staunch “offensive coordinator mode” user of this game for a very long time, allowing super sim to handle the defense. 

However, the two hours I played on this game were genuinely enjoyable and I felt defense was far more intuitive and less frantic than in the past. Physics-based tackling, which debuted in “Madden 25,” has come to EA CFB 26 and makes for a much better experience, as it’s been tuned really well to be a smoother function. Hit sticks are far less of a crap shoot, you can trip guys up and big defenders bring down small guys easier and small defenders struggle to bring down big guys. 

I’m still not great in space (skill issue, not game issue), but they also have a new block shedding feature I loved that allows you to move a lineman with your left stick movement when engaged as a defender and still have an impact as both a pass rusher and run defender. They also have the option to choose different line stunts for every play in the playbook, allowing you to customize each play to throw some new wrinkles at the offensive line. 

Running the dang ball 

The weak point of last year’s game was running the football. I can’t tell you how many times I got mad because I’d be following my guard through a hole and he wouldn’t even consider blocking the safety in front of him and just run down field aimlessly and I’d get tackled. I’m thrilled to inform you that doesn’t happen anymore. The new blocking engine is fantastic and your linemen will make the right reads and right decisions within the scheme you’re running. That, plus the physics-based engine that means your big back can run through arm tackles by a DB means long runs that were nearly impossible to create between the tackles are now very much in play. 

CPU AI improvements 

The game is smarter than last year, which makes for a good challenge. Defenses will disguise blitzes and coverages until right before the snap, and they read tendencies much better than they used to. If you’re running inside zone a bunch, they might start going to an under front to take away that double team with the center and guard and slow you down. If you keep throwing drag routes and underneath stuff, they’ll adapt and try to take that away. This happens much faster the higher level you go, with Heisman mode being a very legitimate challenge — but one I didn’t find impossible — that will force you to vary not only your play calling, but where you’re going with the football on those plays. 

Road to Glory

I think the game mode that felt the most vanilla last year was Road to Glory, and the big news for the mode this year is that they heard the complaints about starting in college and brought back the high school portion of the game. Not only that, they made it a legitimate recruiting process, which I found fun (and frustrating) to play. You once again pick your star level to start at, which impacts your attributes and ratings, but you have to try and maintain or improve on that star rating with your play on the field and get the offers you want — which was not easy. 

I did a quick run through the high school portion starting as a 3-star QB and dropped to a 2-star. As a Dynasty guy mainly, I still am not used to the Road to Glory camera angle (even zoomed out), which played a role, but also, they do a good job of giving you the high school experience where both you aren’t that great and your teammates can be even worse. While frustrating throwing good passes that got dropped, it also made it feel real and made the successes even more fun. 

The quick breakdown of the recruiting process is you pick 10 schools to be in your top 10 and play five weeks of a high school season. For each school you can see their depth chart and where you project, their other recruits on their recruiting board, the team’s coaching style and scheme fit for your archetype and more. From there, you have a “tape score” that you earn points toward with your play by hitting your goals, with some goals getting boosts for certain teams. You can also get a challenge goal from a specific team that can give you a big boost with that school. 

Instead of playing full games, you pick four moments from a list before each game to play that have a basic goal worth 50 points and a bigger goal worth 200 or more. The better you do in hitting goals on those four drives you get each game, the more interested schools will get and once you meet their threshold, you’ll get a scholarship offer. You can commit at any time, but as you keep playing, if you do better, you can get more incentives and boosts to skills if you sign with that team as part of your offer — this feels like their way of doing NIL without NIL. However, if you play poorly you can lose incentives, and if they sign another player at your position the tape score threshold could jump up and you might lose your offer. 

Finally, you narrow your list to a top three and get to do a hat ceremony if you haven’t already committed, and in the hat ceremony you can fake out a team and throw a hat off the table. That was pretty enjoyable. 

I didn’t get any farther than that as we had limited time and I wanted to see as much of the game as I could, but I will say this portion of Road to Glory was quite fun and felt like being on the other side of Dynasty mode. We’ll have to see if they did enough to make the in-college portion more enjoyable and have more variance, but this was a much better starting spot for the mode. 

Dynasty

Dynasty was the mode I spent the most time in, as did most folks who played the game, and for the most part they kept the main elements the same, which is a positive in my eyes. Their main focus on Dynasty this year seemed to be improving the user experience and providing more customization options so you can get an even deeper experience if you want it. 

The big updates for recruiting that I could see were changes to the presentation of the recruiting board, most notably your team needs being at the top of the board rather than a separate page you have to toggle in and out of, which was a huge improvement. There is also more information in the main recruiting board screen, like where a prospect is in the process (top eight, top five, top three), a red dot when they’re ready for a visit and green and red flags for when you’ve moved up or down on their list. All of it allows you to see more information without having to go in and out of each recruit’s name and toggle through the various screens. 

The other big change to recruiting is the time cost for scheduling visits is now no longer 40 hours for every recruit, but instead varies based on their proximity to your school and your pipelines. That allows small schools with fewer recruiting hours to more easily recruit local prospects, because a kid in your backyard only costs 10 or 15 hours instead of 40. 

The trophy room is back along with rivalry trophies, bowl trophies and real awards — so, Doak Walker Award instead of Best Running Back — which is another element that makes the game feel more real. 

Another interesting thing is the game and coaching carousel feels a little more lively with the actual coaches in the game. Not only are most of the 136 head coaches in the game, but a lot of real coordinators are as well. That means they all have attributes, traits and coaching levels (which now go above 50), which are fun to parse through, and you can choose to start your career as one of those coaches and pick up all of their skills from the jump. It’s also funny seeing things in the Staff Moves page like Dabo Swinney going to the NFL, which happened at the end of the first year of my quick Dynasty play through. 

From a customization stand point, some things that didn’t quite make it into last year’s game that they wanted to add but weren’t able to get functioning properly for launch are in this year’s edition. Big ones include formation subs, protected rivalry games for custom conferences and being able to sim to any week of the season. In general, players are given more tools to customize the experience across the board, whether you want to have more or less control. 

There’s also a change to wear-and-tear to expand it from a single game thing to an element that players carry with them over the course of a full season and career. That makes managing player usage even more challenging, but if you’re getting fed up with injuries happening too often you can also customize wear-and-tear impacts for various hit types with sliders. 

Overall, it feels a lot like last year, with just a bit more going on and a better user interface. To me, that’s a win, because I enjoyed Dynasty mode in 25 and will be ready to sink some more hours into this one.