How Do We Not Have Customizable Celebrations in Madden Yet?

The Madden 21 trailer came out this morning. Lamar Jackson is on the cover after winning MVP and emerging as the most exciting player in football by quite a margin. It will not shock you to learn that he looks as difficult to tackle in a video game as he does in real life. The trailer is also not kind to young quarterbacks. I'm pretty sure every first or second-year QB set to start this season was sacked in this trailer.

However, as longtime fans of Madden know, getting excited for the new year's edition is an annual exercise in disappointment. The rosters are updated, the graphics are better, and basic mechanics are given tweaks. But nothing really ever changes. It's actually remarkable how stagnant the game has been for over a decade now. That's what happens when EA has a monopoly on the NFL video game market, I suppose.

But I shall not complain about that any longer. I have spent a disproportionate amount of my time getting worked up about that ever since I purchased Madden 2005 as my first video game ever. The big issue I want to present to you, readers, is a simple one: why, for the love of all that is good, do we not have fully customizable celebrations yet?

It made sense to not have them early in the decade when the NFL decided to embrace their brand of lameness and fun real-life celebrations were penalized. But once they relaxed on those rules, giving players customizable moves in Madden seemed like the mother of all layups to make everyone happy. Yet here we are, in the year 2020, with no option to do so!

This trailer suggests that, similar to Madden 20, there will be a variety of celebrations to be used and unlocked that a user can enact upon scoring. Knowing EA, there will probably be a microtransaction element involved. But no customization.

All I want to do is to be able to choose whether I Gronk Spike the ball or use the pylon to sink a putt in honor of Chad Ochocinco. I don't care if I'll get flagged, I want to dunk the ball over the crossbar like I'm Megatron. If they can make the game so realistic I think Jackson is going to walk through my TV and juke me, it seems pretty easy to give my player 10 seconds of freedom after a touchdown.

Is that too much to ask? Apparently!