Madden NFL 25 CoachGlass Still Not Functioning and Causes Game to Freeze

One of the new features being introduced in Madden NFL 25 – exclusive to the Xbox One this year – is the Microsoft SmartGlass functionality known as CoachGlass. It was marketed as such a big deal that EA Sports even held an event with games and tech media to show it off.

As mentioned in the earlier article on differences between the One and PS4 versions of the game however the feature was broken at release and now nearly two weeks later it still remains so and should be completely avoided until fixed.  

After making a successful connection to SmartGlass (which requires selecting the profile on the system) the app will either never sync to the game or lose the sync within the first handful of plays. Oftentimes that occurred after the first play with the longest it ever worked in all the tests being four plays. Once that happens the clock on the app either stops or continues to count down while no further data is recorded. In its current state it is completely useless and does nothing that was promised.

Even worse than simply not working is the freeze that occurs when exiting any game that had a connection to SmartGlass. To recover from that freeze Madden has to be completely shut down, restarted, and all progress from the game that had been played is lost. So don’t even make an attempt to use CoachGlass in Franchise, Ultimate Team, or online head-to-head as you’ll have completely wasted your time playing the game.

EA Sports has yet to comment on why CoachGlass is broken and what they plan to do to fix it. Whether or not the feature would utilized by many consumers it’s something they advertised heavily – especially embarrassing now considering the hype they attempted to build for it – and must deliver on immediately.