How do abilities work in EA Sports College Football 25

Abilities are a new feature in EA Sports College Football 25 that differentiates players from the competition and gives your team an extra edge on game day. Here is everything you need to know about the multi-layered system.

Unlike the NFL, which has 32 teams featuring the best professional athletes in the world, EA Sports College Football 25 includes 134 schools, meaning there is a huge gulf in talent. Five-star recruits in high school go to huge programs like Alabama, while two and three-star recruits will find themselves at smaller schools in a less distinguished conference.

To achieve that authentic feeling of a gap in skill between different programs, EA created abilities, so players who are destined to be drafted into the NFL one day or were the best athletes in high school feel like that on the field.

What are abilities in EA Sports College Football 25?

In College Football 25, there are 80 different abilities categorized into physical or mental categories. Each group is further divided into four tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. A player can have five physical and three mental abilities at most. For example, the Field General mental ability allows a player to identify blitzers post-snap for the bronze tier. As for the Platinum tier, the player can identify blitzers, a coverage shell, and disguised coverage pre-snap.

An example of a physical ability is Downhill. The player will get slightly more broken tackles at Bronze after reaching max speed, and at Platinum, earn the ultimate ability to break tackles after reaching 80 percent of max speed.

EA committed to making sure that the abilities aren’t too overpowered. In a blog post, the development team used the Pocket Shield ability as an example. Offensive linemen will hold blocks better on standard passing players, but even at the Platinum tier, the distance to the first down doesn’t apply if it is more than 10 yards. Every ability is situational and won’t be available for every play, to make games still feel balanced.

EA didn’t go into detail on how players go about acquiring abilities and upgrading them. We will learn more about abilities and their impact on every game mode closer to launch.