Can you really say you’re playing Madden if you aren’t occasionally using it to play out your most intriguing imaginary scenarios, the more dysfunctional the better? Here at Operation Sports, we had a question: What would happen if everyone in the league were as good at making it through the year unscathed as Christian McCaffery?
To find out, we ran a season of Madden NFL 26 with the settings customized to maximize the number of injuries picked up by all teams to see who could weather the storm and who would find themselves thrust from fourth choice to first choice before the leaves had even started changing colors.
The Settings
To make sure that as many players as possible found themselves taking involuntary vacations, we took things to the Settings tab to have a little tweak under the hood. Obviously, the first step was to turn Injuries to 100, along with a matching 100 to Fatigue, to ensure everyone on the field is sucking wind and being extra vulnerable as quickly as possible. For good measure, Holding, Face Mask, Defensive Pass Interference, Illegal Block In The Back, and Intentional Grounding penalties were all put to 0.
To let all players be free to listen to their intrusive thoughts, we moved the Offensive Pass Interference, Kick Catch Interference, Roughing Kicker, Running Into the Kicker, and Illegal Contact switches to OFF. Everyone is made of glass, and nobody is discouraged from doing anything and everything they can to beat, bludgeon, and batter the opposition.
The Carnage Of Preseason
As the physical demands on NFL players have grown through the years, the preseason has become viewed less and less as a tool to prepare for the season and more and more like a test to be endured with as minimal harm as possible. Consider that mission failed by nearly the entire league in our simulation. While it’s not clear how much rotation teams tried, or had the bodies to actually pull off, what’s clear is that it did not work if the goal was having NFL starter-caliber players on the field come Week 1.
By the time everyone in the league had wrapped up their final preseason game, there was not a single team with a clean injury record, and very few without at least a half dozen players with injuries expected to keep them out for half the season or more. Many teams in the league had already blown past the game’s on-screen limit of nine players before needing to scroll, with injury logs extending well into the teens before a single meaningful down had been played.
The Easiest Job In Football Just Got Very Hard
Would you love to get paid eight figures to spend your Sundays holding a clipboard? Well, tough luck, because the cushiest job in sports just became a nightmare with backups and backups to the backups (and backups to the backups to the backups, and so on) finding themselves under center all over the NFL, with nearly every starting quarterback in the league ending up on the IR.
Dislocations were a prime concern, most notably the ankle (Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Patrick Mahomes, Drake Maye). JJ McCarthy and his backup, Sam Howell, both did their elbows, while Joe Burrow (hip) and Jordan Love (knee) also saw their joints revolt. Broken bones took out Lamar Jackson, Aaron Rodgers, Baker Mayfield, Jalen Hurts, Bryce Young, Geno Smith, Brock Purdy, and Matt Stafford.
One hack to get around QB controversies? Just put the whole room on the IR! Cam Ward and Will Levis both dropped, as did Justin Fields and Tyrod Taylor. The Browns added Mac Jones to their crowded QB room, where he promptly became the fourth QB on their IR. Russ and Jameis both went out in New York and were joined by third choice Brady Cook on IR with injury “None” listed, having apparently decided the job seemed unsafe and withdrew. Neither Drew Lock nor Sam Darnold could suit up by midseason, while Kirk Cousins and Michael Penix Jr. both tore their labrums.
Tyler Boyd: Wide Receiver Of The Year
Thoughts and prayers for the virtual fantasy players pulling their hair out week after week. If you expected a big year from a skill position player, tough luck. Tough luck if you were holding an unexpected player, too, of course, as not a single player topped 1,000 receiving yards, with real-world free agent Tyler Boyd’s 960 yards and 9 touchdowns on 68 receptions for Denver all leading the league. The top of the charts was a who’s who of “who?” as nobody who even shows up as a current starter in any of their team’s wide receiver or backfield positions cracked the top five on either list.
On the ground, things were slightly more profitable as two men went past the 1,000-yard mark. In a season where everyone is dropping, it turned out to be quite a handy advantage to be a rookie playing their first year in this nightmare NFL, as Seattle’s fourth-choice rookie Damien Martine topped the field with 1,110 yards, followed by third-choice rookie Cam Skattebo for the Giants with 1,027. Hot on their heels was a second-year veteran, and Lions’ fourth in line option Sione Vaki, whose 943 yards and 7 scores make him an elite performer on the year.
In A World Of Broken Starters, The Healthy MVP Is King
If one name seemed notably absent in the above list of quarterbacks, you are not mistaken. While Josh Allen may not need help to win another MVP this season, having proven perfectly capable of having the kind of year you simply can’t deny, he got it anyway. Allen made it through the entire year completely unscathed, never picking up so much as a minor tweak that forced him to miss a game or two.
Technically speaking, Allen was a step back from Joe Burrow’s performance as 2024’s leading passer with three fewer touchdowns and nearly 400 fewer yards. It also saw him post 50-percent more yards than his closest rival, a mostly-healthy Jared Goff, who went for 3,054 yards with 31 touchdown passes.
Unsurprisingly, in a modern NFL that is all about passing, the team that kept its reigning MVP healthy while every other star passer stepped on multiple rakes and landmines was dominant. The Bills’ 15-2 record led the NFL, and they waltzed through the playoffs to finally undo the hurt of the 90s by raising the Lombardi Trophy in their fifth time of asking. Having the only true starter in the league on the field was a great strategy, and teams are in trouble if they can replicate it in the real world this year.
That wraps up our look at what happened when big hits were legal and any kind of physical care or monitoring was apparently outlawed. What wacky scenario would you like to see Madden take a crack at to explore the NFL in an alternate reality next?
