The Madden 26 community is sounding the alarm over a major gameplay and stat issue: Sacks are piling up at an unrealistic rate in both simulated seasons and played games. A growing thread on the Operation Sports forums has multiple players reporting inflated sack numbers that seem immune to typical slider adjustments, directly contradicting EA’s pre-release claim of improved Franchise mode stat realism.
So, how bad is the issue currently?
Sim Stats Are Breaking Records In Madden 26 Franchise Mode
First and foremost, let’s give credit to OS user Extremeskins04, who was the first to notice this issue. According to Skins, Steelers edge rusher T.J. Watt was recording around 35 sacks in simulated seasons, with several other pass rushers topping 20 sacks per year. Even when setting the Pass Blocking slider to 100, simulated leaders still hovered around 20-23 sacks for one or two players. Lowering Pass Blocking down to 0 made little difference.
To put that into perspective, the current record for sacks in an NFL season is 22.5, which is shared between Michael Strahan and the aforementioned Watt. Therefore, players consistently reaching those numbers — and Watt eclipsing 30 — is extremely unrealistic.
Others in the OS community quickly confirmed the problem, adding that the issue appears tied to playbooks rather than individual ratings. Certain defensive schemes for teams such as the Dallas Cowboys or the Pittsburgh Steelers seem to consistently produce top-five sack totals, while quarterbacks in many playbooks refuse to scramble or throw the ball away, and instead resort to taking unnecessary sacks.
Played Games Aren’t Safe Either
While it’s bad enough that simulated games and seasons are being affected by this issue, it’s unfortunately not limited to them, as it’s also an issue in played games. Players are experiencing anywhere from 5-10 sacks per team (yes, per team) in played games, even with max pass-block sliders. Extremeskins04 reported one Commanders vs. Giants matchup that ended with 15 total sacks, 10 for Washington and 5 for New York. Another extreme example saw OS user Tdogg097 experience 17 sacks in a game. 17!
The causes appear twofold: Quarterbacks holding onto the ball for too long and offensive linemen consistently making poor blocking decisions. In some cases, the issue is compounded by pass-rushing traits being assigned to defensive tackles instead of edge rushers, leading to an unrealistic distribution of sack totals.
Sliders Aren’t Helping
Franchise mode veterans were quick to point out that gameplay sliders have no effect on simulated stats, making them useless for fixing inflated sack results in CPU vs. CPU results. A few users reported some success in played games by tweaking penalty sliders, such as raising Illegal Block in the Back to 90 to create a better pocket. But these fixes are inconsistent and don’t address the larger systemic issues.
Slow Sim users are also seeing problems, particularly with defensive tackles dominating sack numbers. The issue has even cropped up in College Football 26, suggesting a deeper coding problem shared between the two EA-developed games.
Obviously, none of this bodes well for the Madden 26 Franchise mode community. And unless a patch is released to address this issue, it’s unclear what the workaround will be, if one can even be found. And, according to some Madden veterans, this isn’t a new issue either.
We’ve linked this article with the original OS forum post. So if you’re interested in keeping up with this issue, read the comments!
