How To Swat The Ball On Defense In College Football 26

EA Sports has delivered several new mechanics and gameplay changes in College Football 26. However, one of the more noteworthy changes the developers implemented is called “No eyes, no pick,” which relates to defenders needing to have their head turned around and facing the ball in order to intercept it. In the past, it seemed like defenders had eyes in their back of their heads and were able to pick off passes without even looking at the ball.

While this change is important, it’s also crucial that you understand another mechanic to go along with it: swatting the ball. Now that your defenders need to actually face the ball to intercept it, swatting the ball is more vital than ever if you want to stop passes from being completed against your defense. You can find out how to swat the ball in College Football 26 in the guide below.

How to swat the ball with defenders

Fortunately, the process of swatting the ball is fairly simple. The short answer is you swat the ball by pressing X on Xbox or Square on PS5. The issue with the mechanic is that it doesn’t always seem to work. We’ll explain a little more about that after you read about the general steps to swat the ball in CFB 26:

• After the opposing quarterback has thrown the ball, switch your user player to whoever is closest to where the ball is being thrown (you can do this by pressing Circle/B)
• While you are usering the defender, wait for the ball to get right near your hands. This works better if your defender doesn’t have their head towards the ball, as you would want to try and intercept the pass rather than swat it away in that case
• At the time when your defender would normally try to intercept the ball, you need to press Square (PlayStation)/X (Xbox) to swat the ball
• If you timed the swat correctly and your defender was in the right spot, they should swat the ball away from the receiver’s hands before they have a chance to catch it

With the new “no eyes, no pick” mechanic in place, your defenders won’t be able to magically intercept passes while they’re chasing a receiver anymore. So, swatting passes is the best way to keep the ball out of a receiver’s hands when you are usering the defender near where the ball is going.

Of course, there’s a lot going on when that happens. Not only do you have to manually user to the right defender, but you have to try and keep up with the receiver while timing your swat and then pressing the swat button at the right time.

To make matters more difficult, the swat mechanic won’t always work, regardless of whether it seems like you did everything correctly. We went into Practice Mode in CFB 26 and tried the swat mechanic several different times using the same setup each time. The swat worked a majority of the time, but there were a couple of instances where the defender just didn’t put their hands up to swat the ball away. This could have been because of minute timing differences, the distance between us and the receiver, or other factors, but be prepared for the swat to be slightly inconsistent.

Either way, the basic swatting process is pressing Square/X when the ball is coming near your defender. As long as you know that and understand the general timing of when to try and swat the ball, you should get the mechanic down. You’ll want to try to put your defender in a position to play the ball and intercept it, but the changes in CFB 26 make that a little more difficult than in years past.

Now that you understand how to swat the ball on defense, why not check out the best defensive playbooks in CFB 26 so you can make the most out of the mechanic? We also went over the best offensive playbooks if you want to cover both sides of the ball.