Madden 22: Franchise Staff, Talent Points and more explained

EA has released the next set of Gridiron Notes for Madden NFL 22 and this time the developer is focusing on the major updates coming to Franchise. The developer already shared an All Access Deep Dive video for the Franchise improvements coming in Madden 22, but today’s Gridiron Notes provide an even deeper explanation.

The post covers everything from Franchise Staff to Weekly Strategy to the new Season Engine. But for this particular article, we are focusing solely on Franchise Staff because it’s a rather robust new feature.

What is Franchise Staff?

For years, fans have been asking for a deeper coaching staff. In the coach and owner mode of Franchise, you’ll have access to Franchise Staff which offers an expanded coaching roster that includes an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and player personnel department. With you as the coach (in coach mode), you’ll have to manage four different coaching positions.

Talent Trees

Franchise Staff is deeper than just hiring and firing coaches with random perks. You’ll be able to customize each member of your staff through an RPG-like progression system.

You can upgrade your staff through Talent Trees, spending Staff Points to purchase various boosts for each coach on your staff. Each of the four coaches will have two sub-trees associated with them and each tree is themed to that coach and the role they have in the organization. There will be some difficult decisions to make as some of the talents will lock the opposing branch of the tree.

Types of Talents

There will be a total of 60 unique Talents available at launch with some having multiple tiers (over 95 Talent purchases in total).

Talents are divided into four categories: Player Growth, Staff Changes/Improvements, On-field Performance, and Player Acquisition/Retention. The head coach will focus on general growth and development of the roster and staff; the offensive and defensive coordinators prioritize on-field play with talents representing position coaches; the player personnel department focuses on building your team through trades and free agency with perks like “trade discount for older players.”

At the end of each Talent Tree are “Renewable” and “Ultimate” Talents. As a reward for completing a coach’s Talent Tree, you’ll unlock these special, more powerful talents, which can include things like “access additional focus player slots through weekly training.” Another example was “Fountain of Youth” which slows regression by 1 season for your quarterback. Renewable talents are being kept under wraps but we do know they can be purchased multiple times (although they’ll have a varying cooldown).

Staff Points

Staff Points, which are used to purchase Talents, are earned by simply playing games, meeting gameday goals that you have selected and completing scenarios. Staff Points are collected in a singular pool so you can upgrade any coach on your staff. The cost of talents can be adjusted in the league settings, allowing for more flexibility, and Staff Points can not be purchased with real-life currency.

Filling Out Your Staff

At the start of your franchise, you’ll have a full coaching staff already assembled. But you can fire any of your coordinators or head coach (as an owner) at any point during the season and hire a new one from the pool of generated coaches. New coaches will be added through each year of your Franchise, and yes, some will be better than others.

Hiring a new coach will grant you a Staff Points bonus; however, it is inversely related to the number of Talents that the coach already owns. So hiring a more experienced coach means he’ll come with more Talents unlocked; however, you’ll get less Staff Points to spend and therefore less flexibility to shape him to your scheme. A lesser experienced coach can be molded to your vision as head coach or owner.

The pool of available coaches during the season is smaller than what will be available in the offseason. In the offseason, you’ll actually have the chance to hire former head coaches as coordinators and vice versa during the “Staff Moves” week which directly follows the Super Bowl. You’ll get more Staff Points as a hiring bonus in the offseason than if you make a change midseason.