Madden 26 scouting guide

How does Madden 26 scouting work? Taking the worst teams in the NFL all the way to the Super Bowl means rebuilding the roster through the draft. To do that, you need to ace your scouting and gather as much information as you possibly can.

Madden 26's scouting is very limited, but it is easy to get wrong. So, if you want to turn over your roster and snatch up the best prospects around to make the most of your Madden 26 playbooks and not have to go after trade targets, you need to follow this scouting guide. Madden 26 is making a play to be one of the best sports games of the year.

How to set up scouting

The road to the draft starts in Week 1, when you get the chance to hire your scouts and assign them to the five regions of the country that you will be scouting. This first step should be the most time-consuming, but it will all pay off come draft day.

Each team can have one 3-star, one 2-star, and three 1-star scouts. You should be able to improve this through upgrading the Scout's Honor head coach perk and equipping it in the Weekly Strategy section, but at the time of writing, this is bugged and has no impact.

Each scout has two areas of expertise, and these are positions that usually have some crossover, like Edge and DT, or oppose one another, like WR and CB. 

When hiring your scouts, you want to blend their expertise at the positions your team needs with the regional strengths of the draft class. This will give you a great overview of the relative strengths of the players you could end up drafting.

There is also an option to fully cheese the draft class here. If you need a lot of help along the offensive line, for example, you can just hire five scouts who have expertise at OT or IOL, and this will give you a very clear picture of the whole draft class of offensive linemen.

This comes at the cost of information at other positions, but it is a quick way of turning over a problem position group in one go.

Focus Scouting

The next moment for scouting comes in Week 3, when you get to set your focus scouting for each region, but not your national scout.

This directs the scout to intensify their energy into one particular position, and is why you spend so long lining up scouting expertise, region strength, and team needs.

Once you've done that for your four regional scouts, you have to wait until Week 8 for your national scout to get their focus scouting unlocked.

Again, you can go completely after one position here, which is especially good for the likes of cornerback or offensive line, where you really need multiple quality starters. But if you have a lot of holes to fill, the ideal method for the first season is to just grab the best players you can across your positions of need.

You also need to maintain your discipline with scout expertise and area strengths here. Just because you've had a bunch of injuries at running back doesn't mean you should suddenly switch scouting focus to that position.

Super Focus Scouting

The next step in scouting comes in Week 13, with the inventively named Super Focus Scouting. Here, you get to pick three players to truly take under the microscope.

This is where understanding both your needs and your likely draft position is vital. It might seem straightforward just to make your super focus players the top three prospects, but if you are going to make the playoffs, it is unlikely those players will still be available when you come to draft.

Mock Drafts

There are five mock drafts spaced throughout the season that will give you a rough idea of how the first round is shaping up. The first mock draft is available in Week 6, with the last three all coming in the offseason. 

You can use this to estimate the potential ability of players. While the final mock draft is a good estimation of how the first round will go, it is only an estimation. Just like real-life mock drafts, there are no guarantees that this is how the draft will actually go or that each player is really that good.

Combine & Pro Day

All that scouting is great, and it gives you letter grades across a number of attributes that give you a great idea of how good the prospects will be.

What scouting doesn't tell you is the physical attributes like speed, jumping, and change of direction. These are absolutely crucial attributes, especially if you are playing the games rather than simming.

For those, you need to look at the Combine and Pro Day results. These are the physical tests college prospects go through in the offseason, and they give you results for the 40-yard dash, bench press, and other tests.

Here, you will get a range of "great to poor" assessment markers for physical attributes that will help you identify the speed demons and physical monsters that you want to draft and the misfits that you want to avoid.

Pairing this physical data with your scouting results will give you a good idea of who the best players are, where the depth of the draft is, and if there are some holes you'll have to fill through free agency.

How to build your board

Once draft day arrives, it's time to build your board. If you've set your scouts appropriately, you will have a very high percentage of scout knowledge on a good number of players at positions you need.

Now you can start setting up your favorites board, so that when the clock is ticking, you will have all your well-scouted players at your fingertips.

This isn't an absolute necessity, as you can pause the draft and take all the time in the world, but if you are in an online franchise where that isn't possible, then building your board through the favorites selection tool will stop you from making panicked selections.

When it comes time to make your selection, go with your scouting knowledge and Pro Day results to find the best players and avoid those highly touted busts.

With all these tips to hand, you should breeze through the draft, uncovering diamonds that the rest of the league missed, and create the sort of roster that will make you a Hall of Fame coach. For help running the game perfectly, check out the best Madden 26 settings and the Madden 26 system requirements.