Rebuilding a team in Madden is an annual tradition for any armchair GM or fan of franchise mode. It’s arguably one of the best ways to play the game mode. It is usually what I end up doing as I almost always boot up a Giants franchise (I’m unfortunately a lifelong fan). The only way to play as them for the last decade or so has been to rebuild that roster, which has been stuck in a mediocre stasis for half of my life. I enjoy rebuilding the Giants’ roster every year. It is a cathartic experience that allows me to see the Giants actually win games during the season and gives me a little shot of accomplishment that says, “hey, maybe I could be the GM of the team,” only to remember that I dropped out of college after two years and have zero management experience. All that is to say: what I have experience in, however, is Madden rebuilds!
In Madden 26, I’ve already rebuilt the Dallas Cowboys and built up a team with next to no money in a moneyball experiment. I’ve also studied some of the rebuilds my fellow writers did, including the Pittsburgh Steelers rebuild and the Miami Dolphins rebuild. If I’m not an expert at Madden rebuilds by now, I don’t know who is. So, as an expert, I want to give you a little bit of a rebuild guide/advice article to help you in your future rebuilds.
Realism
A huge factor that I find helps keep the enjoyment and excitement alive while playing a somewhat unbalanced and slightly broken simulator like Madden franchise mode is to try to maintain a sense of reality. What I mean by that is that you aren’t going to go out and trade someone like Darius Slayton for a first-round pick; in fact, in real life, you’d probably be lucky to get a fifth-rounder. You’re also not going to be able to pry Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson away from their teams in a trade, no matter how many first-rounders you offer.
Another unrealistic scenario that is tempting, but I recommend not doing it, is signing players in free agency only to turn around and trade them right away or within the following season. That is something that basically never happens in the real NFL and shouldn’t happen in Madden either. As a general rule, if you don’t think it could or should happen in the NFL, don’t do it in Madden, as it ruins the experience for yourself.
Blowing Up the Roster
Now that we have the ground rules for how to play, you are first gonna want to get accustomed to your new team’s roster. No matter what team you pick, you’ll want to make changes to the roster right away, the more talent you let go before your first season, the better your draft position will be, and the better your draft position is will often determine how fast your rebuild will progress especially if you are rebuilding a team without a young QB established as the franchise guy.
I usually take stock of which players on the roster have any actual trade value; these are going to be guys with 80+ overall. I would trade anybody with an expiring contract in order to squeeze value out of them before free agency. I’d also trade anybody over 30, since the goal of this phase of the rebuild is to blow up the roster to build it up from scratch. We want to get as young as possible. I would be careful trading anybody on a large long-term deal, as trading them will create a huge dead money penalty for the following offseason. This is what happened to me in my Cowboys rebuild.
The goal for these trades is to get as much draft capital as possible (while maintaining realism) for the upcoming drafts. I usually don’t focus on player-for-player trades at this stage in the rebuild, as we aren’t looking to make the team better, but actually worse.
Scouting, Scouting, Scouting
Talent acquisition in the draft is incredibly important, and you can get a huge advantage in this aspect of the game by being proactive on a week-to-week basis in scouting. This is usually the difference between a successful rebuild and an unsuccessful rebuild. In my failed Moneyball experiment, I summed the season in chunks and let the CPU scout for me, and my drafting was much worse than the Cowboys rebuild, where I manually scouted players.
I don’t have any incredibly insightful tips or tricks on scouting in the game besides the obvious ones you’ll see everywhere: hire scouts with diverse skill sets, align the scouts in regions that match their strengths, make sure your national scout is as skilled as possible, and equip scouts honor as a coaching ability which will unlock a ton of info on more players. You should also pay close attention to those final weeks before the draft when the combine/pro day numbers come in. This info can be very useful, especially if you want to build up certain skill sets like speed, strength, or athleticism on your roster.
Add Young Talent In Free Agency
Free agency in Madden takes a few years to really ramp up. The first few seasons aren’t going to be chalked full of talent, but you should be able to add to pieces to your team, especially if you blew the team up in the prior season.
Remember that patience is vital; most real-life rebuilds fail because GMs try to rush them by adding veterans too quickly. You want to start fairly slow and build up a couple of bad seasons to start your franchise.
Build From Around Your QB
Between your traded-for draft picks, your own draft picks, and free agency within the first few years, you are going to want to focus on getting a franchise QB and then building inside out around them. Go for offensive and defensive linemen first; good teams are built in the trenches first and foremost. Build a strong run game with a 1000+ yard runner behind a run-first line, a solid tight end, and some big-bodied receivers. As your team develops, you can add better pass catchers to the team, but at first, I like to focus on the ground and pound. On defense, having an aggressive and fast pass rush will do wonders for the secondary, so start with edge rushers off the edge and run stuffers up the gut. I usually like having a couple of huge Defensive tackles in my top five best defensive players to help stop the run. A speedy middle linebacker and a couple of hard-hitting safeties could also be a priority.
Be Opportunistic
Jump at opportunities to add talented players, leverage trades and free agency to your benefit, and continue upgrading your players. Try identifying your ten weakest positions and make it your goal during the offseason/season to upgrade each one by at least 5-10 overall points. If you do this for five seasons, you’ll have a fully upgraded team. Factor in player development and the occasional late-round draft gem, and you’ll have an unstoppable unit.
Manage Salaries And Re-Sign Stars Early
As you cross into the fourth and fifth years, you’ll enter a fresh new phase of your rebuild, which at that point won’t be a rebuild anymore and instead it will be a budding young dynasty. It’s important here to be smart with player contracts and to sign guys early before they develop more and request more money. You don’t want to be Jerry Jones and the Cowboys; you want to be Howie Roseman and the Eagles.
