Head to the underground bunkers, because a bombshell just dropped.
NBC’s Pro Football Talk recently revealed that both the NFL and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) had conspired to hide the findings of a collusion case as a result of a lawsuit. While the details of the findings are way too extensive to give them any kind of justice in a summary (the full report can be found here), it essentially boils down to NFL owners colluding to not give veteran players guaranteed contracts following a closed-door meeting.
Apparently, this meeting took place after the Cleveland Browns signed DeShaun Watson to his massive 5-year, $230 million contract, all of which was guaranteed. Granted, Watson wasn’t the best person to give guaranteed money to. Since singing with the Browns, Watson’s performance has been abysmal at best, and his litany of alleged off-field misdoings has pretty much made him the poster child for overpaid athletes. That said, for owners to collude in order to make this a unilateral decision as opposed to approaching things on a case-by-case basis is nothing short of wrong.
This got us at Operation Sports thinking: Is it even possible to short-change veteran players like this in Madden? We fired up Madden 25 to find out.
There’s No Owner Collusion In Madden’s Franchise Mode
So, right off the bat, the answer is no — you cannot collude with other owners in a single-player franchise mode in Madden 25. The reason for this is that Madden‘s franchise mode isn’t very realistic. After a few years, high-rated players who are free agents typically have high demands. And because the salary cap is never escalated throughout a playthrough, veteran players who demand high wages eventually become too expensive and often languish in the free agency section.
This is largely due to Madden‘s simplistic contract system in which virtually all things are boiled down to salaries and signing bonuses, the latter of which is often way more pricey than the former. Sure, things like contract restructuring and options are a thing. But players are often penalized for experimenting with these functions, especially when cutting players.
The only way something of this magnitude can be replicated is an online Franchise mode in Madden 25, where all 32 teams are user-controlled. But even then, the lack of a sliding scale in terms of salary cap and demands doesn’t exist. So who knows how much mileage can be gotten from doing such a thing.
