With both football games being out, there is a lot of crossover that can relate to both. This includes passing settings, among other things.
And while Revamped Passing does not exist in Madden 25, Placement and Accuracy does exist in both (and feels a bit more refined in Madden 25, but that’s not important for this guide). Even with Revamped Passing only being in College Football 25, I put both games together here because the passing settings for Placement and Accuracy relate to both games.
With that in mind, let’s first cover my preferred passing settings and where I think you should start when trying to find your own “sweet spots” in these games.
Preferred Settings For Placement And Accuracy
For both games, I prefer to have:
- Pass Lead Increase: Medium
- Reticle Speed: 15
As a reminder, you need to press L2/LT in order to “activate” the reticle and start moving it around when you throw when using Placement and Accuracy. The Pass Lead Increase enlarges the circle size you can move your cursor/reticle around in when using L2. We used to have “far” and “near” settings as well that would place the reticle in different parts of the circle to start, but I believe those options have been removed.
To be clear, my preferred settings are aggressive settings that come with some risk. I have played these games long enough that I feel I can time things up and feather the stick enough while holding L2 to mostly hit my spots while still hitting the “green” parts of the meter as well.
If you’re new to this, I would actually start at 7 for Reticle Speed and put the Pass Lead Increase to Small. I believe a lot of high-end players even just prefer “Small” but do end up closer to the 15 for Reticle Speed. Head into practice mode and just feel things out. There will be growing pains, and it’s very normal if you actually fluctuate between Small and Medium for Pass Lead. I stay away from Large because the benefits just don’t seem to outweigh the negatives. The times where you want to have that big of a gap between where the “normal” throw would go and the one you adjust it to are minimal.
One other thing I would recommend if you’re new to this is go to your Accessibility settings and turn on Enlarged On Field Graphics for a bit:
This way you can get a good look at the meter and understand each colored part when throwing. Here is a look at the enlarged graphics:
You can even turn on Passing Slowdown in your settings if you really want to see how the meter fills up — plus get a handle on the size of the circles as you change the Pass Lead Increase setting between small, medium, and large.
I will also note that putting touch on balls over the middle (over the linebackers but in front of the secondary) and throwing as receivers are about to break on their routes feel better to me so far In Madden vs. College Football when using the same Placement and Accuracy method.
Preferred Settings For Revamped Passing In College Football 25
Maybe because it’s a new passing system mixing with the old Placement and Accuracy system, but I have actually toyed with these settings a lot before settling on the above you see in that screenshot. This is because I wasn’t sure how much Reticle Speed and Pass Lead Increase mattered together and independent of each other because we don’t actually have a Reticle you can see for Revamped Passing. But I do believe each does matter, and so I have settled on these settings:
- Pass Lead Increase: None
- Reticle Speed: 20
The thing to note is you don’t need to use L2 to start leading a receiver like with Placement and Accuracy, you just use the left stick as you throw. In addition, just because Pass Lead Increase is set to “none” does not mean you don’t get to pass lead. With this in mind, I got to a point where I just removed the mixing and matching between the two settings and “zeroed out” Pass Lead Increase with the “none” setting and maxed out Reticle Speed at 20.
You can do your own testing and see if maybe you want to use Pass Lead Increase, and it’s valid to try it out. I have even done Large and 20 and been comfortable because the margin of error is still easier to manage than Placement and Accuracy. You can misfire and overthrow it at 20 and Large, but the misses are still generally much smaller than equivalent misses with Placement and Accuracy.
With that in mind, I basically can’t truly “miss” even with the None and 20 settings unless I have a red or yellow throw — almost every pass I throw is catchable no matter what I do. This means I can be more aggressive with how much I push the left stick when throwing the ball without worrying as much about the consequences.
The Pros And Cons Of Each System
In the broadest strokes, Placement and Accuracy has a higher skill cap but it’s much easier to be inaccurate when using it. Revamped Passing has better “touch” and more arcs you can put on the ball. This means it’s easier to “layer” throws with Revamped and so it’s generally easier to throw over the middle or between sets of defenders.
We’ll get into these aspects below, and I’ll use a couple type of throws to highlight where each system shines.
The first type of throw that separates the two styles are back-shoulder throws. Much like most of this discussion, it’s not that you can’t do back-shoulder throws with both systems, it’s just that they’re easier and work better with Placement and Accuracy. This is the hardest throw to consistently make with Revamped Passing. In fact, any throws where you pull straight down on the stick are the ones I have the least faith in when using Revamped.
Here is the “best” possible outcome for a back-shoulder throw with my settings using Large and 20 (so the most extreme the settings can be).
This is a “yellow” throw so technically it could end up being inaccurate, but this is where I wanted the ball so it’s fine. (A reminder, red throws are bad throws in both systems. In Revamped if you want to do a bullet pass, you want to fill the meter up until the end of the blue section but don’t let it go into the end yellow section to avoid a potential inaccuracy penalty.)
But if that’s the most extreme I can make a back-shoulder throw, it doesn’t quite have the “snap” I want to see to make sure my receiver is the only one who can come back to the ball to catch it — especially because these aren’t my preferred settings, they’re exaggerated for the example.
Here is how it can look when using my preferred 20 and None settings with Revamped:
Kind of scary, and not really what I want to see on a consistent basis for my back-shoulder throws.
Here is the same throw now using Placement and Accuracy with my preferred Medium and 15 settings:
And because it’s my favorite throw in both games against one-on-one coverage deep, here’s how it looks in Madden 25 with Placement and Accuracy:
Very clean, and my receiver is the only one who can get back to it after I user with the receiver.
Conversely, when throwing layered balls over the middle, this is where Revamped shines brightest. Again, I’ll show both systems being able to do a layered throw, but it’s about consistency. After some practicing, you’ll get a feel for how much you need to fill up a Revamped meter to get the right sort of blue throw. Your arc and power are being controlled by that meter in a way that’s harder to decipher when using Placement and Accuracy.
With my preferred 20 and None settings, I feel so confident as I throw this ball over the middle 30 yards down the field. I fill the meter halfway and know that’s going to get over the linebacker’s head and drop between the safety and corner.
Here is the same sort of route now using Placement and Accuracy:
Since I don’t have the same control over the arc, I’m a little more concerned about getting it over the linebacker’s head. Maybe I could have pushed down rather than up the field to make this less scary, but you can tell the window is a lot tighter on this throw. And I “perfect” this throw as well, who knows how bad the outcome would have been if I had missed at all.
Other than that, I don’t think you need many more examples to see how the two systems differ. The pros and cons are very straightforward, and it’s just on a couple specific sort of throws where you need to go a bit more into the weeds.
But I have one more section below for “sim” heads that’s College Football 25 specific.
Why I Use Large And 20 For Revamped Passing In Dynasty Mode
I do want to return to Revamped Passing one more time to showcase the difference between “None” and “Large” for Pass Lead Increase to highlight how “Large” opens up more opportunities to miss throws (and theoretically increase the challenge if you’re simply looking to create more “imperfect” throws in this system for simulation purposes).
A straight go ball is the best way to showcase this so here’s how it looks pretty much every time when pressing up on the left stick with the None and 20 setting:
I can’t overthrow my receiver no matter what I do with None and 20 when pressing and holding up on the left stick, but I can always ensure that my receiver is the only one who can get to the ball in this scenario.
With the 20 and Large setting, here’s how it looks:
It may not look that uncatchable, but I promise this is how it will look almost every time if you hold up on the left stick and throw this ball with Large and 20. This is why I do use Large and 20 in my dynasty mode when playing the computer. It creates a little more “realism” for me. I have to properly feather “up” on the stick (rather than fat finger it) as I do this throw in order to make it so my receiver has a chance to make the catch.
The last reason I use Large and 20 offline is because I also can be majorly punished for being wrong in a way I like — increasing the true “error” windows. In the example below, I push the stick hard to the right to show how large the area is I can throw to on this go ball.
I am the luckiest man alive, so it bounces off the safety and into my receiver’s hands, but you can see how wild that throw is from a top-rated QB (Ewers) because I intentionally screwed up my inputs. In a “normal” situation, I would want to push that ball down and inside a bit (well, in a normal situation I wouldn’t throw into double coverage), but you can see how the range of outcomes has increased using Pass Lead Increase at Large and Reticle Speed at 20. So, think about maybe trying out those settings if you want to increase the volatility of QB play in your dynasty mode.
Published: Aug 15, 2024 01:00 pm