If EA Sports College Football 25 is the first football video game you’ve bought since the last NCAA Football in 2013, you have a lot of CFB 25 Coins catching up to do. We’ve gone through two console cycles since the college game’s last release. And, as the sport itself has evolved, so has the EA version. The game now has more play-calling options to keep up with, more advanced controls for ballcarriers, and more pre-snap adjustments that allow users to create any concept imaginable—on either side of the ball. 

They’re calling run-pass options that turn into 70-yard touchdown passes; the old NCAA games didn’t even have RPOs. They’re manipulating how deep their defenses drop in zone coverage to replicate Nick Saban’s schemes.

Welcome to the College Football 25 millennial survival guide. 

Scenario 1: You’re getting blown out by Ohio State every game.
Every team in this game falls into one of three tiers, with the best populating Tier 1, middle-of-the-road programs occupying Tier 2, and the smaller programs making up Tier 3. You get to select your team for each online game, but what’s easy to miss is that you can also specify the tier you want your opponent to be from, to avoid getting stuck in a mismatch like, say, Navy (Tier 3) against Ohio State (Tier 1). If you’re an impatient button masher like me, the option is easy to overlook. Or maybe you just get the tiers mixed up and briefly think the worst teams are in Tier 1. See if you can pinpoint when I made that exact mistake: 

I let down the troops (more specifically, the sailors), and it was not an enjoyable experience. Ohio State is the best team in the game, and the one you’ll run into most often when playing online because all of these kids are picking front-runners over any school allegiances. And if you do wind up playing the Buckeyes, make sure you’re operating as one of the four or five teams that can actually block their terrifying defensive line and cover all of their skill players. Otherwise, I don’t recommend it. 

Scenario 2: You can’t protect your QB.
I’ll give in to the millennial urge to make a dated movie reference here and ask you to recall Shane Falco’s quicksand speech from The Replacements: 

Pure cinema. But try not to get lost in Keanu Reeves’s acting clinic and instead pay attention to the message: “You’re playing and you think everything is going fine,” Falco says in the clip. “Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can’t move ... you can’t breathe ... because you’re in over your head. Like quicksand.”

That’s what it feels like to fall behind the chains in this game. The offensive linemen can’t block. The quarterbacks can barely throw. If the defense knows you have to pass the ball, it can be impossible to get anything done. So unless you’re using a team with a top-level quarterback, you’ll need to play well on first and second down to move the sticks. 

The best way to do that is to forget about deep dropback passes and instead learn how to run the RPOs and option plays that can punish opponents who sell out to stop the run. Call screen passes and jet sweeps to keep your opponent guessing. And if you do insist on passing on early downs, attack the flats with high-percentage throws that force your opponent to make a tackle in cheap NCAA Football 25 Coins space.