Very Overrated?

[MrDNA]

I'm sure someone other than me has had the cojones to draft someone with this dubious moniker - how has it turned out? And in fact, what does it mean? My guess is it means that your scout feels those little orange/red stripes on the attributes are placed too highly.

I have been trying to draft As Scouted through Very Underrated players (at least in the early rounds) and it's been working out pretty well for me. But this season, there is a Very Overrated RB that may fall to my first round pick... is Very Overrated always kyrptonite? :confused:

[MrDNA]

This is the fellow in question, IYWW:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/1857/kennynn6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[torgo43210]

I've found that the over/underrated tages have more to do w/ your scout's evaluation as compared to the draft rating offered in the draft menu. I don't think that those tags mean that the orange bars will necessarily move. This RB was probably rated by CSB higher than your scout thought appropriate.

[Rando]

What does Very Overrated mean? About 10.5 points lower Potential after the first trainig camp, on average, than other players in the same .5 pre-draft Grade range.

At least that was the number I got when I tested it right after FOF2007 came out and I wanted to try and figure out what these new "rated" things meant.

For that test, the first thing I did was go out and I get myself a scout who was listed as Very Good with young players and Good with recievers, offensive linemen, defensive linemen, and defensive backs. He was also good with kickers, but I decided not to include any kickers in my test. Why? Because it's my test, dammit, I get to make arbitrary and irrational decisions if I want to.

Then I went and interviewed the top 60 players available at those four positions, and recorded their Grade (not the Adjusted grade, which takes into account the importance of the position they play and where the AI is likely to draft them. I found that sorting them by the unadjusted Grade grouped the players more tightly after training camp. Don't like the decision? Tough, my test.) and whether my scout thought they were Very Overrated, Overrated, As Scouted, or whatever.

Then, after the first training camp I went and recorded all of those players Potential as reported by my scout (I made a point not to draft any of these players, as I've noticed that my scout seems to overestimate the abilities of players not on my team, even if I had just cut them. By not drafting any of the players I interviewed, it was hoped my scout would then overestimate them all equally). Then I did this again, every year, for the next ten seasons (good thing I also grabbed a young scout).

Once I had all the numbers, I arranged the players into .5 Pre-Draft Grade "ranges" (4.5-4.9, 5.0-5.4, and so on) and figured out what the average player's Potential after thier training camp was. Then I broke down each "range" by how my scout rated them in the interview (Over, Under, Very... whatever) figured up the averages in those "rating/ranges" and compared those numbers to the average of the players in that "range" Here's the Chart I got when I was done.


Average V Under Under Scouted Over V Over
6.5 to 6.9 70.9 +5.5 +3.4 -0.9 -6.6 -10.2
6.0 to 6.4 65.3 +7.7 +6.1 +0.4 -3.6 -12.6
5.5 to 5.9 55.5 +8.6 +6.1 +0.4 -2.9 -7.6
5.0 to 5.4 48.8 +11.5 +4.0 +4.6 -1.9 -8.9
4.5 to 4.9 47.7 +7.1 +1.8 +3.3 -2.0 -13.0

Couple of things that stand out. First up, the lack of 7.0 or higher ranked players. There were some, five actually, in the 10 years I ran the test (which I guess makes it a really bad decade for those positions). But five really wasn't enough to draw any reasonable conclusions from. They didn't even fill all the "ratings". I thought about including them with the 6.5 to 6.9 range. But that group was already the third smallest range (after the 7.0+ and the 4.5 to 4.9s) and the post-training camp Potential scores for these five players (four of which were Over or Very Overrated) were high enough I was worried they would screw the numbers up. So I just set them aside and ignored them. Not that I'm claiming any sort of statistical accuracy or scientific high ground here, I'm just justifying my own arbitrary and irrational decision. Don't like it, tough. Here are the "Forgotten Five".

DL 7.3 Very Overrated Potential 68
OL 7.3 Very Underrated Potential 95
DL 7.2 Underrated Potential 79
DB 7.1 Underrated Potential 80
OL 7.0 Underrated Potential 90

What does it mean? Hell if I know, there's only five of them.

The other thing that jumps out at me are the "inversions" between the Underrated and As Scouted players in the 4.5 to 4.9 and 5.0 to 5.4 ranges. If it were just in the 4.5 to 4.9 range, I'd be willing to write it off as an annomally cause by the small sample size down there at the bottom of the pile (once I got down under 5.0, I was always running low on interviews). But the 5.0 to 5.4 was the LARGEST range in the test (284 of the 600 players interviewed), and the "Underrated" and "As Scouted" in that range were the two largest "rating/range" groups in the test. So... I don't know what the hell is going on there.

Still, thems is the numbers I got. Make of them what you will.

Just keep two things in mind. First up is Scout Error. This test was done right after FOF2007 came out, and Scout Error has been changed in patches that have come out since then. It is possible that, at that time, Scout Error was affecting things different-like (I even have a theory on how). I can't say for certain until I run the test again with a new version of FOF2007. And don't think I'm likely to be doing that any time soon. The second thing is I'm not claiming to be very good at this. There was almost certainly something else, some other factor, something very important and very obvious that I was missing when I did this test, and I'm still missing it.

So there you go, a small sample size combined with some likely flawed methodology, irrational and arbitrary decisions, and an out of date version of the software. That's the test I got. Don't like it? Go do your own.

~rando

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Good work. Yours is probably the first in-depth foray into the scout assessment's we have seen here. Like you said, it is far from exhaustive but it does give us a peek under the hood. Could that missing factor be volatility? Or the random bust/boom die roll?

[Narcizo]

I think there may be a problem with this in that if your scout thinks a player is better than the consensus (underrated) it's probable that he still will do so after the training camp if that player isn't on your team. The same applies to overrated players.

Number two I think you really need to map the change in pre and post-camp ratings not the overall potential (which is what I believe you have done here). I think you'll find that most underrated players will be losing potential from drafting through the first and second camp. Meanwhile some (but definitely not all) very overrated players will be increasing in potential.