How to win in College Football 25: Best strategies, tips and tricks

The highly anticipated release of EA Sports College Football 25 has finally arrived, ending an 11-year run without a college football video game.

As a football video game junkie, I preordered it the minute it was announced and jumped right into the early release Monday evening. I’ve played an embarrassing number of hours since then, staying up until 2 a.m. every night.

After all the hours I’ve put in already, I have a few tips to share — especially for those who may not have touched a video game since NCAA Football 14 — as the game gets its full standard edition release on Friday.

Try different passing settings

The “revamped passing” system is something that gives you a lot of options for how you want to throw.

But while “revamped passing” is the default option, I changed it. I’m a Madden player first, and last year the NFL game brought in something called “placement and accuracy.” This setting is defined as: “Enables a timing element for perfect accuracy on bullet passes on top of visual targets to control the pass placement and power.” Basically, it’s a timing method, but it also allows you to hold the left trigger when you throw to lead your passes more.

Underneath that initial setting is the “pass lead increase” setting, which allows you to dictate how far you want your pass lead to move. I have mine on medium, but I think small is the best setting for newcomers because it takes user error out of it.

You can try the new system; I used it for two days and didn’t see much that changed for me. I prefer placement and accuracy and think it gives me more freedom to place my passes.

Do you need to disguise coverages?

Something new this year is the ability to disguise coverages with the touch of a button, which could be valuable if you’re going to play online or against your friends on the couch.

When you break the huddle on defense, you’ll be given adjustments that can rotate your safeties however you want. For example, let’s say you come out in Cover 2: You can disguise your coverage into a one-high safety Cover 3 or Cover 1 look. The hope is to confuse your opponent.

There is a downside to it. If you run Cover 2 and disguise it as Cover 3 and somebody throws a streak to the sideline, your safety will be out of position and give up a big play.

I’m not a big fan of this mechanic. I think you’re better off adjusting the defense yourself or leaving it stock. More often than not, your opponent isn’t going to be that confused and instead you’ll give up a touchdown because you’re trying to disguise something that doesn’t need to be hidden.

Yes, kicking is harder than ever

The first thing I noticed when I booted up the game was the new kicking meter. For the past few years, kicking has been too easy on Madden. You can make kicks without even looking in that game.

College Football 25 brings a two-click process. You need to get the moving line as close to the middle as possible for accuracy and then hold it as the power meter goes up. Unless it’s a deep field goal, you want to avoid going to the top of the bar, in the red. Too much power will impact your accuracy.

Unfortunately, no matter how good you are at timing the field goal meter, it’s going to be significantly harder to kick on the road, especially at one of the toughest stadiums. I wasn’t a fan of that at first, but it’s sort of realistic. #CollegeKickers frequently trends on Twitter on Saturdays for a reason.

Kicking isn’t impossible, but it’s undoubtedly a challenge that takes practice and patience.

Simplify your strategy in big road games

The first thing I did when I got the game was start a dynasty with my alma mater, Bowling Green. I’m playing on Heisman difficulty and went on the road to Penn State and Texas A&M in two of the first three games. That was a wake-up call.

On the road, your play art won’t come up correctly on the field every time, and it shakes all the time if you’re trying to view your play. If you are like me and put a bunch of hot routes on the field, you can still do it, but there’s no guarantee players will run the right route. I couldn’t even block for my running back against Penn State. I lost to the Nittany Lions by three because my running back ran the wrong route and I got sacked on fourth down.

Add in the fact that it’s hard to kick, and you will struggle on the road. The best thing to do is keep things simple.

After I lost to Penn State, I had to play at Texas A&M and I won that game easily because I focused on controlling the clock by running the ball, running a lot of RPOs to get some easy reads and keeping the route combos simple if I had to pass.

A concept that works well is orbit motions. Find some in your playbook and get easy yards against the computer.

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Wait to sprint

If you haven’t touched a football game in a decade, you may have a tendency to sprint with the right trigger once your running back gets the ball. Don’t do it.

Instead, once you get the ball, run without sprinting in the backfield, find your hole and hit it. Once you get in the hole, then press the right trigger to get away.

The best way to think of the sprint button is actually as an acceleration button. If you hold it right away, you’ll struggle to hit the correct hole, you’ll lose movement speed and you’ll bounce off your linemen. Often, once you start sprinting there’s some coding in the game that triggers the defenders to start shedding blocks.

You won’t be great at this right away, but take some time to really try it in games and you’ll see a difference.

The best skill move in the game is the juke

This is another thing College Football 25 got right as a nice change from Madden.

In Madden, the best open-field moves happen when you let go of the right trigger, juke and then hit the trigger again to run away from the defense. In College Football 25, you need to hold down the right trigger to get the best moves.

If you’re in the open field, you’re likely already holding the right trigger to accelerate, and all you have to do is flick the right stick to the left or the right, depending on which way you want to juke. If you want to get a little more advanced with it, you can juke right, and once you execute that move, press the spin button and guide your left stick in the direction you want to move. This will give you the ability to juke away from the defender in front of you and then also spin away from the defenders you juked into and get up field faster.

Think of it like this: Don’t press sprint after the ball is handed off, but in the open field hold it and your jukes and spins will be significantly better.

If you’re playing Road to Glory, be patient. You’re going to sit on the bench for a while.

I was playing in a Madden tournament two years ago and went through a week of qualifying for the two-day bracket play. The bracket started on a Saturday, and I went 3-0 in the double-elimination tournament to qualify into Sunday. I played great just to find out I couldn’t play on Sunday because of a last-minute emergency. Four hours of a tournament, not to mention the hours of practice and qualifying, just to forfeit. At that point, it was the biggest waste of time on a video game I’ve ever had.

Until I booted up Road to Glory in College Football 25.

I love the game mode in general, but if you’re going into it thinking a one-star underdog story will be fun, you’re wrong. I spent hours going to practice and training trying to get into a position battle. I didn’t sniff the starting job until my senior year. It was a big waste of time, as I spent more time studying than playing on the field.

If you have the patience for it, go for it, but my suggestion to you all is to be a three-star or blue-chip prospect. It’s a much better gameplay experience.

GO DEEPER

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It’s not just you: Defense is harder for everyone

When you jump into your first game you’ll think, “Wow, I can’t buy a stop.” Don’t worry, nobody can. EA made a game that plays extremely fast with free-flowing movement, which helps the offense more than the defense. It also made it so running backs can turn into prime Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith, randomly running through tackles and around everybody. It’s hard to tackle in the game.

There are three ways to tackle: You can dive tackle, conservative tackle or hit stick. I would advise against flicking the hit stick button much unless you have a tackle lined up perfectly. You might get a fumble if you land it, but the penalty of missing a tackle in this game is too much to risk.

The dive tackle isn’t as good as in past years, either. Suction tackles have been an annoyance for anybody who has played Madden, but EA got rid of those in College Football 25. Now, when you dive, you’re either going to get a tackle, trip the running back or miss. I’ve noticed that dive tackles, even if lined up, get broken far more than any other tackles. There’s a time and a place for dive tackles, but it shouldn’t be how you tackle every time.

I’d suggest getting used to conservative tackles, which are less flashy but will more than likely wrap up the ball carrier or at least trigger a tackle battle. It’s the A button on Xbox and the X button on a PS5. It’s the safest way to tackle in the hole and out in space, because if you miss a tackle on the sideline or in the second level, the offense is most likely scoring.

Your focus should be to make tackles and force the offense to score in the red zone, relying more on a bend-but-don’t-break strategy that avoids giving up big plays. If you can do that and find some red zone defense, you’ll win plenty of games.

Use the switch stick

This is an advanced tactic, so I won’t stay on it for a long time, but the new switch stick is such a good concept by EA.

I’m sure many of you control a player on the defensive line, but I prefer to use a linebacker or safety to take away passing lanes. In previous years, your coverage had to be perfect because switching to a different player was nearly impossible until the ball was thrown.

This year, EA has created the switch stick, which will allow you to switch your user-controlled player before the ball is thrown.

Did you play Cover 2 and realize the deep right side of the field is wide-open for a corner route? You can switch to the safety and cover it yourself before the ball is thrown simply by pushing the right stick into the direction of the player you want to control.

This, like some of the tips above, is going to take time to get down, but it is worth using — especially online or against your friends — because it will confuse the offense about where to go with the ball.

GO DEEPER

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Be realistic when recruiting in Dynasty mode

One of my biggest problems in Dynasty is that I want my recruits as soon as possible, but that’s not how it works in College Football 25.

Recruiting begins with setting your board during the preseason, and you’re given a set amount of hours you can spend on recruits each week. After you advance each week, the points you spent on a recruit stay on him unless you want to move them around and adjust your plans.

That’s similar to NCAA 14, but recruiting as a whole is much more challenging this year. After my first year at Bowling Green, I had three commitments going into bowl season. I realized I stretched my hours too much to try to get too many recruits.

My advice is to focus on about 15 recruits you really want, go all in on them and adjust after that if you get them or not. You’re not going to sign a lot of four-star and five-star prospects right away if you’re taking over a small school. You’ll need to take your three-star prospects and be patient as your program gains more prestige and blue-chip players get more interested.

If you’re like me and plan on taking over a smaller program, you’ll have to be patient and realistic when on the recruiting trail. Don’t fight for a player against Notre Dame and Texas like I did and then miss out on other recruits who are actually attainable.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic)