Has EA Sports Killed Theme Teams?

This year has been the hardest to have a quality theme team, besides if you run Chiefs, Eagles, or the chem not to be named. It feels like EA doesn’t seem to card about filling out the rosters of these teams even with lower end cards, and they keep giving +2 upgrades when there’s guys who are stuck in the low to mid 80’s. They also give random cards out for teams at positions they already have enough players, like the chargers getting another tackle that’s worse than the two they already have today. 
last year, my Vikings theme team stayed competitive all year, with OOP players and other interesting promo players helping to fill out the roster. This year the lack of content and the delay to TOTY has put me in the spot where my team won’t be competitive in a couple weeks without TOTY player upgrades and such, so for the first time I’m considering selling and running a god squad. 
I know everyone and their dog is running legends this year, which imo should not be a thing, but I’ve never seen a bigger money grab move from EA before in other maddens. They’ve basically said run legends and spend money to stay relevant. 
 

wondering what you all running real theme teams this year are thinking.

I’m pretty unbiased because I honestly don’t have a favorite NFL team. I live in Iowa and I’m a huge Hawkeyes fan but we don’t have any pro teams. That being said I’ve always really enjoyed using Legends and OOP players in MUT so for me this year has been fun running a Legends TT but it has been hard to keep up with the amount of coins needed.

To your point, I do agree that it seems EA doesn’t care much about keeping regular TT’s viable with their blatant disregard for necessary upgrades to keep these teams competitive. I’m not sure about how much thought is put into any of this game by EA when we’re even seeing Legends get recycled at +2 or +3 OVR before we get new Legends or even other Legends that haven’t had upgrades since basically launch.

EVERYTHING in MUT has become something intended to take as many of our coins/money as possible and that is where the majority of EA’s time is spent when making decisions.

Team teams were a struggle until they came out with that gold strategy item. Jags theme team cookin now

I’ve had my Cowboys TT all year and would have it no other way

Every year  I do a Chargers TT and I'm usually able to max it out sooner than this year. Despite the fact I'm sporting 3 legendary strat cards I barely max out by dumbing down 2 or 3 slots and using faux TT cards like Deion Sanders.

I'm very frustrated with the lack of cards. I'm running a Lions.

I’m running cards tt and so many players on my team are fake cardinals or not cardinals eve. I have quadfather at rb and most of my oline are not cardinals except 96 faneca. Last year there were a lot more promos like veterans heavyweight etc all year so a lot of random players to buy. Cardinals tt has never been the best but was better than it is now like secondary is pretty bad plus DT is also lackluster. The legendary strat makes it better but still pretty bad

I feel like they arent dead but having the legends team chem makes it harder. But ive been rocking a Broncos TT all year there is times its frustrating but im just trying to have fun

If they're not going to make it a point to ensure all themec teams are viable, I think they should do away with them completely.   The point of theme teams should be to drive variety but that only works if all are viable and every promo addresses a different gap for each team.

Lions tt is struggling bad. It’s been a month since it got anything useful💀

Moderator Sevein131 said:

If they're not going to make it a point to ensure all themec teams are viable, I think they should do away with them completely.   The point of theme teams should be to drive variety but that only works if all are viable and every promo addresses a different gap for each team.

I think the biggest problem this year is the o line now looking at it. last year it didn't really matter as much, as the pass rush was bad and you could just roll out with you QB at will to avoid the bad o line play. even then the o line blocked all these agility players better last year. This year it's essential to run edge protector at tackle, which it has never been before, and there are only a handful of teams (legends, Giants, Jags, maybe a few more) that have two edge protector tackles. Hell, most teams don't even have one. having to cheat on the O line sucks, and the reason for lack of cards is them not having wildcard Wednesdays from the start of the year, so we haven't got the usual Heavyweight to fill the trenches, and then the rising star skill players and a few flashbacks.

It's weird, because as someone who tracks every theme team by hand there are definitely times when EA definitely hits a theme team need so they definitely know theme team weaknesses (as they should, if I can track this stuff there's no excuse for them not to be)... On one hand it's great when they do this but on the other it makes me realize that they could be doing it a whole lot more.

Promos just haven't really been focused on current players. However, recent promos have given me a little more hope in this department. AKA: The New Class and Weekly Wildcards are entirely made up of current players. This past week's Wildcards actually improved quite a few theme teams. It's a step in the right direction.

It's apparent EA is looking to make as much money as possible this year but there are plenty of ways they could make money from theme teams if they made them all viable.

MaxAlkaline said:

Team teams were a struggle until they came out with that gold strategy item. Jags theme team cookin now

yeah I agree there are a few good theme teams besides the two I listed, Jags are strong, as are 9ers, ravens, giants, jets, packers and raiders. So that's like 8-10 out of 32 teams, and its not like the others are close behind, many are barely useable in my opinion

I agree, My broncos theme team went dead because they constantly dropped safeties (legends Bdawk, Atwater, John Lynch, Ghost Simmons, and Weapon X )and nothing else to support the team. I recently moved to legends because I couldn't compete anymore. Our Online is still stuck with its highest overall being a 90 overall (from the most feared promo), still having a gold card as the highest LG, and to top it all off Casper is the highest TE unless you have 98 Gronk which I don't