Here's my opinion:
The gameplay has gotten continuously worse since Madden 25 because that was the last Madden that was not dominated by animations. The game was defined by movement, stick skills, reaction time, and prediction, as a competitive game should be. The past few games have been much too centered around trying to get the best animations possible to win the game(i.e. falling forward, diving picks, dice roll on juke move success, etc). Does EA purposely change or take away good, competitive features each year just to see how watered down they can make the game and still have us buy it? These last few games sure seem like it. It's a real shame too, because it feels like they have become more F2P friendly, yet they "play" part of it gets less and less enjoyable each year.
With that being said, when was the last "good" Madden in your opinion? I personally had a lot of time on Madden 19 and remember having fun with the gameplay.