After the Madden 26 ratings were published, the EA Madden players were explicitly frustrated. The official Madden NFL Twitter was asking who the most underrated running back in the league is. The Madden NFL Twitter account captioned the graphic with “Surely none of these guys” and featured the top trucking ratings. The replies? Pure chaos.
The graphic had Kyren Williams of the Rams with a 93 trucking rating, placing him above Derrick Henry who has a 92 rating. Not only is that incorrect, it’s disrespectful to Henry, who has been running over defenders for years and is built like a semi-truck. Twitter’s response was as expected.
As @javiergx52 put it, “Kyren Williams with the highest trucking? Lmao alright bro,” perfectly capturing the sentiment shared by most. There’s no clear explanation for what is going on. @That_Hurts expressed the completely valid frustration of “In what world does anyone have a higher truck rating than Henry 😂,” which is like saying a Prius has a higher towing capacity than a Ford F-350. It simply doesn’t make sense.
And it wasn’t just Henry getting disrespected. With everyone pointing out how ridiculous the ratings were, @MuuuuuthNation was confused and asked, “In what world does Zach Charbonnet have a higher trucking than Najee Harris?” which seems reasonable. Najee is a huge man known for falling forward, so the ratings just seem…off. @jnmegatron joined the conversation, saying, “I’m sure Kyren Williams is better at trucking than Derrick Henry,” which has to be sarcasm, right? Please tell me that’s sarcasm.
But starting with the madness of the trucking ratings, the comment feed soon turned into a Madden 26 gripe thread. The Madden community has been increasingly vocal about the game’s ongoing issues. Most of the comments were asking for the issues to be fixed.
User @deathbydurk didn’t join the ratings thread and instead said, “Fix the H2H SERVERS!!” which, yeah, is another problem that carries over with every Madden update. @KrmaIsWaiting4U said, “When are yall gonna make a good game for once, or atleast fix this one,” which can be said to a lot of games right now. @Arbytwo said, “UPDATE THE ROSTERS,” also in all caps and in response to the fact that the game doesn’t have official Week 1 rosters despite the NFL season commencing soon. And while @antalberti63 wanted to know the date, @RemyThaGr8 told him that it’s the tradition to have it on the first game’s day, so on Thursday. But even so, that is delayed.
There were also criticisms about a few other players. Expressing disbelief about the ratings, @LimitlessL1ves asked, “Trucking 93 for Kyren? wtf? Saquon not there? lol,” calling out Saquon Barkley’s absence. @Herb5BG was furious, publicizing the “major disrespect to CMC” calling it “bananas…how quickly do they forget 😤.” With Christian McCaffrey largely regarded as the best all-around back, his omission didn’t go unnoticed.
But it wasn’t only the headline players. People were complaining about the ratings of rookies and lesser-known players. For one, @dberry1402 said that rookie Kaleb Johnson is “so underrated that u gave him a retired o-lineman’s picture,” begging for the rookie pictures to be fixed. @Zetsubonotensh_ spoke for Tyrone Tracy Jr., saying he’s “disrespected like crazy” by the ratings group.
attempting to cut through the anger, there were a handful of people with sense. In his defense of @tkphx, he said “Those look pretty good…” which is a bold comment as my dude. And @Rome42878458 was just grateful for James Conner, stating, “About time, James Connor got a little respect,” so I guess not everyone is pissed off.
However, it seems the vast majority of the community is. With everything, there seems be a general annoyance stemming out of the ongoing issues with the servers, out-of-date roster patches, and the perceived inaccuracies in ratings. Especially with the start of the new season, they want a game that truly embodies football. The Madden team tries to foster a sense of community by sharing the ratings, but the reception to these reveals how disconnected EA is to the actual problems everyday users of their product face.
It’s the sort of thing where the developer probably wanted to create some hype but instead got drowned out by criticism and from an audience they most likely weren’t expecting it from. It’s not clear if any of the criticisms will lead to faster ratings corrections or roster updates. One thing is clear, though, they are incredibly loud and definitely not shy in telling EA how to do their jobs. For now, people just want to know if Derrick Henry will be running through a wall this weekend, proving his ratings.
