Madden NFL 26 is coming this summer, and when it arrives, you’ll find that the team at Tiburon has done something it hasn’t done before: It’s added a new player ability based on a rookie. The game’s library of X-Factor and Superstar abilities is a lengthy one that gets new additions every year, but Travis Hunter is the first rookie to inspire the team to think up a new one.

The ability is called Iron Man, and it’s designed to let Hunter play both sides of the ball more effectively. Hunter comes to Jacksonville with the bona fides to play both wide receiver and cornerback, and football experts everywhere are wondering if he can become the NFL’s version of Shohei Ohtani: a two-way superstar the likes of whom only come around once in a generation, if that.

Madden developer Tiburon had to find a way to make this work in-game. Typically, a player who might play on both offense and special teams gets winded more easily, and a tired player is more likely to get hurt, commit penalties, or fumble if they’re a ball carrier–not to mention slow down, of course. Because Hunter is expected to play both offense and defense, and has shown, at least in college, an ability to do this remarkably well, the Iron Man ability essentially rewrites his stamina drain. This allows him to fend off fatigue and the game’s Wear and Tear injury system, which Madden 26 is adopting from College Football 25 and 26.

Similarly, a team’s depth chart now allows for two-way players like Hunter. Before, if a player was starting on offense or defense, they could not start on the other side. The game wouldn’t even populate those positions with most players; only a select few could be subbed in based on positional overlaps, like a safety playing in a linebacker spot in some defensive packages. Players who might appear in special formations–such as the Patriots’ Marcus Jones, who can play returner, corner, and wide receiver–were given similar permissions in certain formations only. However, Hunter has forced a more pronounced change, and now players can be two-way players without these long-held restrictions–though that’s not to say they’ll be good at it.

At launch, Hunter will be something of a unicorn. However, players in Franchise mode who delve deeply into the player-regeneration system–Madden’s method of populating future years with fake draft prospects–may find that more two-way players emerge. Finding them and the other new draft archetypes is meant to be like an Easter egg for players, Franchise lead Josh Looman told me. “We’ll see people on Reddit be like, ‘Hey, I found this one guy.’ We have a good laugh about it,” Looman continued, “but yeah, we’ve got a good chunk more [draft prospect archetypes] this year, and we’ll continue to do that in the future.”

For more on my time with EA’s next NFL sim, check out how Madden 26 performs on Switch 2 and how its biggest change is something it learned from College Football 25.

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