It’s at this point that you can be pretty certain that the rest of the story will be terrible, but it somehow gets worse! Matthews responds by telling your character that he’s right – and then shockingly reveals that he was born with a congenital heart defect.

Your character shreds Matthews in the locker room for playing with a lack of heart on the field. Madden 21 flashes ahead to the first game of the season, and your team is down, 13-0. Upon joining the team, you become the backup quarterback to Tommy Matthews, your foil for the rest of your journey to the NFL. In Face of the Franchise, you begin in high school as a wildly talented athlete who hasn’t played football since his Pop Warner days. Check out these fantasy football player rankings instead! If you want to experience the story for yourself, you should stop reading. Warning: The following posts contains major spoilers for Madden NFL 21’s Face of the Franchise mode.

Madden 21 includes a story-based single-player mode called ‘Face of the Franchise,’ where you play through an amateur career before making it to the pros – and it might just be the worst story mode we’ve seen in a sports video game yet. EA Sports’ Madden NFL 21 releases on August 28th, but the game dropped early for EA Play subscribers.