EA Sports’ Madden NFL 21 releases on August 28th, but the game dropped early for EA Play subscribers. 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.

Warning: The following posts contains major spoilers for Madden NFL 21’s Face of the Franchise mode. If you want to experience the story for yourself, you should stop reading. Check out these fantasy football player rankings instead!

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. Upon joining the team, you become the backup quarterback to Tommy Matthews, your foil for the rest of your journey to the NFL.

Madden 21 flashes ahead to the first game of the season, and your team is down, 13-0. Your character shreds Matthews in the locker room for playing with a lack of heart on the field. Matthews responds by telling your character that he’s right – and then shockingly reveals that he was born with a congenital heart defect.

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!

You get the choice to either encourage Matthews not to play or to stay quiet and keep his secret. I chose to tell Matthews not to play, but he brushed off my advice. The scene cuts to the start of the second half, with the coach of the team calling Matthews to the sideline and telling him to sit, as my character had apparently snitched on him in between scenes.

If you manage to get past this bizarre scenario, the rest of the storyline is filled with unrealistic and unbelievable obstacles. Matthews eventually returns with a clean bill of health and switches to wide receiver, and implores you to feed him the ball so he can earn a ride to college at a different position. You eventually get to choose which college program you’d like to join, and Matthews chooses the same college – but inexplicably decides to switch back to quarterback.

The game picks back up in my junior year at LSU, where Ed Orgeron has been replaced with a cartoonish representation of a no-nonsense defense-first coach who has absolutely no interest in your offensive capabilities. The head coach decides to start both of you on a rotating basis throughout the season, regardless of how many touchdowns you throw in user-controlled games. You get the start in the College Football Playoff semifinal and lead your team to victory, only for the coach to bench you in the final (even if you just lit up Oregon, 77-0).

Matthews exits the national championship game at halftime as his grave health issues recur, and after you beat Clemson, you deliver the Playoff trophy to him in the hospital. It would seem that Matthews’ career has come to an unfortunate end, but at least you’ve settled your differences and forged a close bond, right?

Nope! Before your senior season, while you’re waiting for Matthews to come home from the hospital to your shared apartment, your head coach shows up and tells you that he intends to start Matthews – the guy who nearly just died on the field due to bad medical advice! – at quarterback for the entirety of your senior season. You are then given the choice to either leave for the draft, or switch to wide receiver or running back.

I left for the draft, obviously, but was unable to proceed any further, as I hit a black screen while loading the Combine that I couldn’t get past – one of Madden 21’s many glitches and bugs.

Face of the Franchise is an absolute mess. Instead of reflecting your on-field performance or giving the player any sort of power over the narrative, Madden 21 relies on a truly ridiculous story arc that only delivers frustration. You might want to stick to Ultimate Team and franchise this year.