TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Time to put EA Sports College Football 25 to the ultimate test.
The new video game has been out for a little more than a month now, which played right into the usual preseason hype ahead of the 2024 season. Already, EA has dropped a couple of updates. Their goal is to make the game as realistic as possible.
And what better way to judge that than to simulate a virtual season alongside the real one?
That's what we're doing here, today and all season. We loaded up Dynasty Mode and will simulate Alabama's virtual 2024 season — with full video highlights and everything — while the actual Crimson Tide play on Saturdays this fall.
We already played a full season as Alabama to see what it's like to play with the Crimson Tide, andwe already simulated the 2024 season 10 timesto see if the video game might tell the future.
In this exercise, we simply want to see how accurate the game is. Our plan is to simulate each of Alabama's games ahead of their actual games.
EA plans to release regular updates for the whole video game, and we plan on downloading those updates to see if they make the game as realistic as the developers hope. Then we'll compare and contrast the video-game results with the real-life results and see how it all looks.
A few more quick notes before we get to the results of the first game:
We are not playing or controlling any of these games. For the first week, we altered Alabama's roster to reflect our own depth chart projections, but in the future, we will adjust the roster to reflect Alabama's official depth chart. We set the game to Heisman level, set the quarters to five minutes each, but left all other gameplay settings as is.
That's mostly it. Special thanks again to our friends at EA Sports (shoutout to Edwin and the gang) for both a copy of the game as well as a custom-made, Alabama football-themed Xbox Series X.
Now then, to the actual simulation itself — which we'll call our EA CFB 25 Sim Season — and Week 1 brought good news. Alabama beat Western Kentucky, 30-13.
With rain falling, the Crimson Tide put up 404 total yards of offense, 130 rushing and 274 passing. They led 20-6 at half and 30-6 well into the fourth quarter. While Alabama didn't really run up the score here, they didn't play with their food, either.
Jalen Milroe played well: 19-for-25 for 274 yards and three touchdowns. Germie Bernard and Kendrick Law both popped off: Bernard recorded three catches for 110 yards and two touchdowns; Law had seven for 101 yards and a touchdown. Justice Haynes ran for 94 yards on 11 carries. Graham Nicholson hit two 50-yard field goals.
Defensively, the Tide held Western Kentucky to 198 total yards of offense and kept the Hilltoppers out of the end zone until there were 22 seconds left in the fourth quarter. Keon Sabb led the team with 11 tackles. LT Overton recorded three sacks and earned national defensive player of the week honors. Keanu Koht added 2.5 sacks.
All in all, the Tide rolled to begin the (virtual) Kalen DeBoer Era. While the offense could've probably done a little more, the defense held a talented offensive team in check and cruised to a three-possession win. Through that lens, most fans will probably take a comfortable, dominant victory over a lesser foe come Saturday.
You can watch thesimulation in full below:
Elsewhere around the (virtual) country in Week 1:
– Georgia Tech upset Florida State in Week 0 in our simulation, 27-24, then followed it up with a Week 1 win over Georgia State, 35-20, to move to 2-0. The Seminoles fell to 0-2 after losing to Boston College, 38-27, in Week 1.
– Clemson gave Georgia a good fight, but the top-ranked Dawgs held on for a 24-21 win. Texas also barely hung on to beat Colorado State, 23-17. The Longhorns appear to play with their food in this virtual world, too.
– Three SEC teams lost in Week 1: USC topped LSU, 36-33; Temple shocked Oklahoma, 30-27; and Notre Dame took down Texas A&M, 31-28. There were a couple of surprise results, too: Vanderbilt topped Virginia Tech, 35-31, and Florida blasted Miami, 59-31.
– We're only through Week 1, but Oklahoma State's Ollie Gordon II is the early Heisman front-runner after rushing for 164 yards on 18 carries in the Cowboys' 59-0 win over FCS Northwest.
Cody Goodwin covers the Alabama Crimson Tide for 247Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.
