The 7 Levels Of Passing | College Football 26

TL;DR: Most people are stuck throwing hospital balls and getting sacked because they're Level 1 passers who just call random plays. To become a Level 7 passer, you need to master seven skills in order: finding money plays, making multiple reads, pass leading, protecting yourself from blitzes, building complete schemes, and freestyling based on what the defense shows you. Start with two money plays from BYU's Gun Y Off Trio Close — Flood and Smash Return — then work your way up.

What are the 7 Levels of Passing in College Football 26?

Here's exactly what separates bad passers from elite ones:

1. Level 1: Chaos — You're calling coach suggestions and lobbing prayers
2. Level 2: Finding Stability — You start running money plays from YouTube
3. Level 3: Get In Rhythm — You make multiple reads instead of staring down one route
4. Level 4: Give Your Offense A Chance — You master pass leading to avoid defenders
5. Level 5: Buy Yourself Time — You recognize blitzes and adjust protection
6. Level 6: Building A Machine — You run complete schemes that all look the same
7. Level 7: Becoming An Artist — You freestyle plays based on defensive tendencies

Let me break down each level with the exact plays and adjustments you need.

Why am I always getting sacked immediately in College Football 26?

You're a Level 1 passer. This is what Chaos looks like:

• You're just calling plays from coach suggestions
• You never know what the actual play calls are
• You don't know what reads you're making
• You probably don't ever throw the ball
• When you do throw it, you just lob it up — there's no type of finesse or anything
• You throw something and hope for the best, which almost never actually works

We want to get out of Level 1 as fast as possible.

What are the best money plays to start winning more games?

Level 2 is where you start calling actual good plays. These are called money plays.

I'm going to give you two different money plays from the BYU offensive playbook from the Gun Y Off Trio Close:

Money Play #1: Flood

The big deal with this is that all we need to do is take our ISO wide receiver and put him on a return route.

When we do this, here's what the play looks like:

• We're going to snap the ball
• We're going to make our reads

Money Play #2: Smash Return

Here's what this next money play is going to be:

• Take our ISO wide receiver, put him on a streak
• Take my point wide receiver (this middle guy), put him on a deep cross — it's going to be up on the D-pad

There's a lot of them, but one of the big ones you'll run into quickly is that when you start playing better opponents — whether it's better overall defenses against CPU or players online — if you can't throw your money plays, you're kind of just bad.

How do I stop staring down one route and throwing picks?

Level 3 is an area where a lot of people try to get to, but they just never master.

A lot of times what happens is that people stare down one route. For example, on this play, a lot of people — myself included — love throwing this tight end Zigg. But against good players, they will sniff this out and they'll start to take away this money route.

Every route is stoppable.

What we need to do when we're calling these types of plays is to actually make reads and be able to hit more receivers than just one or two.

On Flood, we're going to go all the way from the outside right and we'll work our way in. This is really a three-step read:

1. Outside wide receiver on the out route
2. Eyes go into the zigg
3. Eyes go all the way back to the return route

A lot of people never get that transition of their eyes all the way back.

Here's Smash Return. So many people here either stare down this drag or this crosser. Both are good routes, but you got to be able to decipher between the two.

The way I look at this:

1. Drag quickly — if he's there, awesome
2. Work my eyes up to the crosser
3. All the way back to our return route

You got to be willing to hit the return route because if you're not, this play isn't as good as it should be and it makes it easy for the defense.

This is one free tip on passing progressions. Members get the full BYU offensive scheme with 15+ more money plays, updated weekly. → civil.gg/become-a-member

What is pass leading and why does it matter?

Check out this pass right here that I'm about to make. It's going to be a dot. Pretty cool.

Now look at my play art again. This is same offense, same defense. I'm going to call the same play and watch me throw the same ball. Instead of being a dot — that's a hospital ball right there, brother.

This is one of the biggest skill gap things in the game.

If I push the left stick while I'm passing, right when I'm hitting that icon, I can put that ball essentially wherever I want it. You got to make sure you get good accuracy on it by when you release it, etc., but you could put that ball in different spots.

There's no exact rule of thumb for where to pass lead besides the fact that you want to pass lead to wherever the defense isn't.

Learning how to pass lead will:

• Increase the amount of YAC you're able to get after you catch a ball
• Increase the amount of completions you have
• Prevent interceptions because you're able to fit it into tight windows

Easy rule of thumb — you almost always want to bullet pass. That's just by holding the receiver icon down. That's just going to get the ball there faster.

How do I stop getting blitzed every play?

This is a backbreaker for so many people in this game. Level 5 — pass protection.

On offense, whenever we show our play art — right trigger up on the right stick — we can see our blocking.

If you do not have enough blockers on the line of scrimmage to account for every defender on the line of scrimmage, you got to be willing to throw this ball fast.

We have to attack this in one of really three ways:

Method 1: Block Everyone

We can literally just block as many people as they have on the line of scrimmage. Press Y/Triangle, select my tight end, and block him. Now we have seven on seven.

Method 2: Five Out the Blitz

Say, you know what, I'm actually going to five out this blitz. I'm going to pass the ball before the blitz gets in. We're gonna snap this ball — bang, throw it and then you get potential YAC.

Method 3: Set Up Actual Protection

If I know that they're blitzing a lot of people, but I also know this user isn't blitzing at me:

1. Flick up on the right stick and untarget the user
2. That's going to tell my offensive line, "Hey, don't block him"
3. Half slide away from my halfback — that's left bumper and then use the right stick to go away from the halfback

If we can't block a blitz, it is over. Doesn't matter how good the plays are.

What's the difference between money plays and a complete scheme?

Level 6 — we don't want to just have a couple of money plays. We want to have options against everything and we want to get deep into a specific formation.

That way we can make things look the same every single play. Yet the defense will never know what play call we're actually calling.

Now a scheme doesn't only have to be one formation. If I have a little scheme from this formation and that formation and then a couple other formations, we build them all together. That's a complete scheme that we're comfortable with that the defense never can really pick up on because everything looks exactly the same.

This is what keeps the defense off guard and allows us to call plays that we're comfortable with and we're familiar with.

Too many people think a scheme is just going around random play to random play. That's not what it is. It's calling plays that you're comfortable with that all look like one another because they all build off one another as well.

What does freestyling mean in College Football 26?

If you can master this level along with every other level we've talked about, you're going to become one of the best passers in the world.

A lot of people will take the word freestyling and they'll throw it around the wrong way where it's like, oh, it's just doing things randomly. That's NOT what it is.

Example 1: Blocking Your Halfback

Let's say they're blitzing. One of the first ways we could freestyle is take this money play setup. Let's just block our halfback. That's not part of the play design that I gave you earlier. It wasn't, but it's necessary against what our opponent is doing.

Example 2: Changing Route Combinations

Let's say my opponent is bagging my crosser. I know I need to block my halfback because he's blitzing me. And then I also know that this crosser is just not getting open anymore.

So let's actually take this crosser and let's put him on a curl route. Then let's custom stem him up one pick on the D-pad.

The Key: It's Not Random

The reason we did that — it wasn't just freestyling for the heck of it:

• We're blocking our halfback because we know they're blitzing. So we need this extra time.
• We're putting this deep curl on the field because they're hypothetically defending this deep crossing route. We've identified that and we need a different way to attack deep.

Whenever we freestyle, it's not doing things at random. Instead, it's saying — we have this base play, and we're saying, you know what, we think we can tweak this to make it a little bit better.

You can master these seven things. You're going to become a great passer.