One of the most exciting plays of the 2024 football season was Tennessee Titans' rookie defensive lineman T'Vondre Sweat's fumble recovery and resulting "Angry Run." The 366-lb. stud showed off improbable speed and a stiff arm. There was no other real contender for the Week 15 Angry Runs award handed out by NFL Network's Kyle Brandt.
Madden 25 honored it with a card in its Angry Runs program in Ultimate Team, and that was fine. But Madden isn't letting it go. Now there's a 99 overall Sweat card that has zero basis in reality. A nearly 400-lb running back with a spin move like Barry Sanders is game-breaking, as evidenced by a price of over 3 million coins currently.
For a lot of players, this ascended meme encapsulates everything wrong with MUT. By almost April, Madden has released multiple versions of every real life football player it has the rights to. What's left? Throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks, and charging the few remaining players for the privilege.
A player selling for nearly 4 million coins is the definition of pay-to-win, any way you look at it. EA can't feign ignorance at this point. They know this card is broken, and they know what the market does with broken cards. It's profit over game balance, betting that the people still playing Madden Ultimate Team in April are essentially addicts and can be treated as such.
Thank God I don’t play MUT anymore. This isn’t Madden pic.twitter.com/rvdl1qjyeU
— Drini (@Drini) March 28, 2025
"If it's in the game, it's in the game" shouldn't mean this incredible play that happened exactly one time will now happen 17 times per game with an overpowered fantasy player.