PAY ATTENTION! EA Just Made A HUGE CHANGE To Weekly Spotlight Sets

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]It's Wednesday, so that means we got brand new flashbacks, but it's a pretty routine content drop with maybe one or two good cards. We're also going to talk about the popcorn conversion that did not happen just yet. Let's get ON INTO IT. YO, WHAT'S GOING ON EVERYBODY? IT'S POPULAR STRANGER AND WE ARE BACK AT YOU AGAIN TODAY with another Maddened 26 Ultimate Team video. And today's video, we're going to be breaking down the brand new flashback content and everything else going on right now in MUT 26. Let's start with the real deals promo and popcorn converting over to coin. It did not happen yet and I honestly don't think it's going to happen today. I do think it'll happen tomorrow. But the weird thing is and I'm showing you something that I can't show you anymore. But we did have a countdown timer on the popcorn store and it is officially expired. So if you have any of this currency and you didn't spend it, really the only way to spend it right now is upgrading like the CPU Payton Manning card or the welcome pack Doug Fluty because you can't spend it on anything in the store. You're going to have to wait for it to convert over. The main reason I didn't think it would convert over today, but it's also weird that the popcorn score disappeared, is because we still have real deals, a real deals tab here. We have the theme team surge promo dropping tomorrow. That would really mark the official end of real deals. And also, if you take a look in your events tab, you still have less than 24 hours now to play either the head-to-head event or the CPU event. So, you can still earn popcorn, but you can't really spend it. You're going to have to wait for it to convert over to coin. As far as what that conversion rate is, I've said it several times over the last couple videos, I'm not expecting EA to be very generous with this one. The conversions on most alternate currencies have not been very good. And speaking of, we do have the theme surge promo dropping tomorrow with another new currency that was loaded in the game on Monday. This one every year for the last couple years has stuck around basically until the end of the year. In fact, I think if you were to log into Madden 24 or Madden 23 Ultimate Team right now, assuming you played the game, you might even have surge currency left sitting there. So, we'll wait and see what that conversion rate is. I wouldn't get my hopes up on EA announcing it on GMM tomorrow, but if they were going to announce it, it would be on GMM tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll likely find out at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time when the theme search program goes live. Also, this could be a potential opportunity. I might even give it a shot tomorrow morning if you haven't earned a token by going 10 and0 or 10 and one in this event. I could see a lot of the really really good players not playing this over the next 24 hours now that you can't really spend the popcorn currency.

[00:02:29]So I could see this game mode maybe getting a little bit easier for some people out there and you could use it as a potential chance to earn one of those flawless tokens and use that on whoever the exclusive player is come tomorrow. A couple other updates before we go over the new flashback cards. Number one, your season 8 field pass because it's Wednesday updated, which means we have brand new weekly objectives in which you can knock these out to earn XP obviously to level up your season 8 field pass.

[00:02:55]You also have a refresh on solo seasons, the league and the run, which means you can earn up to eight more of these tokens. Remember, 32 tokens equals a free 99 overall. You get a fantasy pack with 10 random 99 overall B&Ds. And there is a good chance as we get more golden tickets especially there is a good chance if you get to those 32 tokens that you can get a free 99 overall golden ticket. It's not guaranteed but it is a potential chance.

[00:03:20]The one thing I wanted to point out and I kind of forgot to do it yesterday for all of you that might still be grinding the AA NHPI uh promo. You have a reset or refresh on your weekly objectives.

[00:03:32]Obviously the daily objectives refresh every single day and you can earn up to one token every single day. But with the weekly objectives, you knock out three of these five. Again, you have to have three players in your lineup to do it.

[00:03:43]But if you knock out three of these five objectives, you get two more tokens. So, you should be working your way towards a second free 99 overall from this program. And there's a lot of really, really good cards from this one. Troy Palamalu, Jason Meyers is one of the best kickers in the game. Dylan Gabriel's a really solid budget quarterback. So, just something to remind you guys if you forgot. And then also because it's Wednesday, you have a reset on your weekly spotlight field pass objectives, which means you can earn more XP right now towards this. And that means you can earn more free weekly spotlight tokens, which of course can be traded in for a free 99 overall flashback, including the cards that came out today. So knock out all of those field pass objectives. You can play your older solos from Legends, Team of the Week, Collector Series, Ultimate Legends, and of course, flashbacks. We are now all the way into week number 17 of this program. And I do believe this one is going to carry over throughout season 8 and into season 9 because currently if you played every single solo including today's you'd have 180 stars. You can see this thing is forecasted all the way out to 250 and we typically get 10 stars worth of solos every week. So we still potentially have seven more weeks of the flashback program which will definitely round out season 8 but likely last through season 9. And if there is indeed a season 10 according to Mut leaks, there will be. I think that season's going to be just for rookie premier content, maybe fan appreciation. But the moral of the story here is play your solos, earn those spotlight tokens so you can get free cards for all weekly spotlight programs.

[00:05:10]And you've heard me say this in several videos. There's been really good coin making opportunities as of late. If you're investing in buying set pieces throughout the week in a couple days prior to that content dropping, whether it's flashbacks today, Saturday with Ultimate Legends, Monday with Collector Series cards. So, if you get enough 96 overall cards, and let me rewind that, cuz it looks like they switched it on us here. What I was trying to say is if you had a handful of 96 overalls and you got them at a fair price, you could use those to build out champion sets and then sell those cards for a lot more than you paid to build the set, you know, buying the pieces individually.

[00:05:49]Well, typically when we have an overall increase on a Wednesday, that kind of starts the path for the rest of the week and the rest of the content. So, this tells me right now that on Saturday we're going to have Ultimate Legends, still 99 overall champions, but I bet those sets are going to require 397 Ultimate Legend cards and that's it.

[00:06:08]Because they made the change with flashbacks and to take it a step further on Monday, we're probably going to have 397 collector series cards to build out 99s. I truly thought that they would wait until the end of the season to make that change, but it was a bit of a surprise. And it also looks like the countdown timer on this one is uh 3,000 days. All right, so this is probably how sets are going to be for 99 overall weekly spotlight content to finish out the year, which means 96 flashback cards probably just lost a lot of value. And now 97 overall cards are probably up in price. I talked about this in my wallet warriors episode. I think earlier this morning it was in there that I scooped up a bunch of 97 overall ultimate legends for like a 100k. So, this if this indeed takes place the way I think it will on Saturday, you know, I could potentially build out a 99 overall ultimate legend for 300,000 coins. And again, to take it a step further, if you want to jump ahead and maybe start looking at 97 overall collector series cards for Monday, and remember, collector series cards have pre-lit X factors, which makes them super value.

[00:07:10]This are super valuable. This could be a really, really good coin making opportunity. So, I kind of stumbled upon this one in the middle of the video here, but very, very interesting that they changed it today. So, that's one way to get the 99s. Obviously, the auction house is the second way, and we now have a brand new 98 to 99 overall fantasy pack that only requires 15 spotlight tokens instead of 25. So, EA made a huge change to the free sets as well. And this is obviously really good cuz that's 10 less tokens needed to get free 99 overall players. I will actually get back to 96s and talk about why they still have some value right now due to a new upgrade set that EA put in the game today. But let's cover the flashbacks real quick. You know that the LTDs are going to be really good, but they're also very expensive. They do have passive Xactor ability buckets. They've had those all season, but a couple weeks ago, I think maybe even last week, they finally introduced passive buckets to the champion level cards. And with three of the four being positional players, Joe Tuni being the one that won't get it. Uh he's going to have Vanguard for 4 AP. This Diane Henley dude, I probably butchered his first name. My bad there, bro. Not a bad pass coverage linebacker.

[00:08:21]He's got pretty good zone and man coverage, 61 98 speed. If you fully upgrade him, he gets Raiders Kim, which is one of the better theme teams in the game. But he does have 93 awareness, which means he's going to get universal coverage for 4 AP, which means you get all of the knockout abilities without having to spend more AP in different buckets. And in that case, you can focus on tackling abilities. Uh Jimmy Garopolo is not bad. He's played for a handful of teams, so he's going to meet a lot of theme teams, including all of the NFC West teams. It's also important to point out to upgrade these cards, you need their 92, 95, and 97. Now, before it was 91, 94, and 96 because of that overall increase. The hero level cards did go up as well in overall. Um, we have the ability on this card, he can't get dots for 4 AP, but he can get Gambit. If you're unaware by now, this is going to be pass lead elite plus gunslinger and the ability to not throw interceptions against AI controlled defenders for 4 AP. So, probably the best passive you can have right now on a quarterback.

[00:09:21]Either that or dots. And he is going to get Gambit. Uh the third card that's a champion, Jeremy Chin. They did this one dirty. He doesn't really get anything meta in his passive bucket. No univer no universal coverage. Uh he's not going to get avalanche. He can't get shut down cuz his man coverage is a little bit too low. The only thing he can get is Zonehawk. And to me, Zonehawk's not worth the 4 AP. So, they hurt this card, which usually is a pretty good player when it comes to ultimate team. Uh, they really did hurt him. Now, if you do play a lot of man or zone, you can still get the knockout abilities individually. And if you do fully upgrade him, he does have access to deep route KO, which he would not get normally because he only has 93man coverage. So, the card's not a lost cause, but it certainly could have been a whole heck of a lot better. Going back to the usefulness of 96s, if you had some of them for flashback sets or whatever else coming out, uh they did add in a 98 to 99 overall elite upgrade set. And for this one, you need four 96 or 97 overall cards. You put them into the set in return to get a random 98 or 99. It's a big risk still, but if you have a bunch of 96s, they are going up in value because of this set. You might actually be able to turn them into some coin right now. Or of course, you can risk it on this set and see if you get lucky with maybe a golden ticket or some type of rare 99. As far as pack offers go today, I don't think the flashback content is worth justifying spending any type of money. I mean, this late in the year, really the only things I would spend the money on are going to be golden ticket offers, which we get every Tuesday and Saturday. Uh, we do have theme surge dropping tomorrow. Mut leaks just confirmed. It is a three-part promo, kind of as expected. That's what it's been the last couple years.

[00:10:59]Training usually comes into play with this promo. You can see I'm just short of four million training, so we're in a pretty good position for theme search rles tomorrow. We'll find out all of the details for that program tomorrow morning on GMM 10:30. Of course, once that's all revealed, I will be putting out a video covering all of that. We do have team fandom packs. Again, I don't think these are worth it. They don't give you a high enough percentage chance at, you know, high overall cards and they only have money options. They are divvied up here in between division. So, if you're looking for your favorite team and you want to risk it, just find the division and push right on your analog stick. But again, I just simply don't think these are worth it. And then you still have your token packs for weekly spotlight content. Some people have been missing these, others have not. I will tell you that they did increase in price. It went all the way up to 275,000 training for 392 plus cards from that associated program and three additional tokens. Pretty high price to pay. I would save my training for theme team surge tomorrow and unless you desperately need spotlight tokens, but at the bare minimum, you should still wait until tomorrow to see what type of training packs and offers we get. So, that's all of the content, but I think again the big thing we stumbled upon here is the overall increase on the lower overall cards. We're still obviously at 99 overall champions, but 97s are super important and you have a great opportunity to invest in some of those for Ultimate Legends and Collector Series before Saturday and before this upcoming Monday. And also less tokens, less spotlight tokens now needed to get free champion cards from those associated programs. Thank you guys for watching. My name is Popular Stranger.

[00:12:33]I'm out. Peace.