Age vs Experience in Player Regression

[BowTieSports]

(Sorry in advance if this question has been asked/answered in other threads years ago)

In the game which is more important in the player development/regression curve, the player's age or the player's years of experience? For example --- all ratings being equal --- which player is more likely to start regressing quicker:

31 year old LB with 10 years experience
32 year old LB with 8 years experience

Assuming, of course, that there have been no hints of growth/regression from either over the past 2-3 seasons to indicate the start of a dip ... outside of our experience playing the game telling us that LBs tend to fall of quickly after around 10 yrs in the league.

The game does assign real birthdates and tracks average ages of teams by position group, so I'd think that age plays some role, but most/all studies you see posted on the message board list out based on years experience.

[Ben E Lou]

I've never studied regression related to age, but I know that age is important when it comes to the game's retirement logic.

[aston217]

I've wondered about this, as sometimes you get some pretty outlying ages in the draft class.

I've been told it could be both, but heavily weighted towards experience.

In thinking about it, it's most likely to be based solely on experience. That's just an easier way of doing things.

I think one way to test this, if you're so inclined, is to land the #1 pick every year, draft a clear stud player, never sign him for about ten seasons, and see how long he lasts after that. Make it a RB, in fact - those guys seem to start puttering out frequently beginning at year 5.

[MIJB#19]

A while back, in a previous iteration of the game, it was tested and showed that a draft class of 50-year olds would all collectively retire after their rookie season. That told us then that age is an important factor to determine retirement. I highly doubt that there has been a massive redesign in that area over time, although we do see more 'early' retirements in FOF2007.