Rating questions

[Prinzar]

Just wondering what the deal is with my scout and the ratings system. In a MP league that I'm in my starting QB is rated 36/36, will his rating be the same to all 31 other players in my league or does the scout rating affect this?

Also do the players always play to their current ability or should I consider their potential ability too? For example, my backup QB was rated 26/47. I didn't play him often because his 26 is quite low and in the time he did play he sucked. He'd never had a start until I became GM so I'm wondering if I would have played him from the start of the season would he perform more like the 47 or the 26.

Thanks for any help

[MIJB#19]

As far as I know there are two ways how scouts look at players: on roster and off roster. Once on roster, the scout changes his opinion. In your case, the QB is rated 36/36. Other owners could see him as a 26/26 or as a 46/46, depending on how good/bad your scout and that player actually is.

A 26/xx quarterback will play like a 26 quarterback, providing he actually is a 26. From the given information, it's impossible to tell whether he really is a 26 right now or that your scout is wrong and he's actually a 16 or a 36. As far as I know, that player will like a 26 and not like a 47, but I don't have anything to back that up with.

[Prinzar]

Thanks for the reply.

The backup certainly didn't play well so he may be even worse than the 26 the scout thinks.
From what I thought before your reply, the scout seems able to get things wrong above and below. My 3rd stringer is 16/37, and outplayed his abilities by a long way

[MIJB#19]

Don't forget that newer players don't get the same cohesion boost, so if the 36/36 player is a long-time team member and the 26/47 isn't, the difference in performance could be much wider than the 10-point gap they're scouted at, independant of scouting margin of error.

[aston217]

Quite a bit of masking can be going on, on top of scout error.

It's been said before that scouts can differ on players by as much as 15%, and this happens moreso with veteran players than the young guys.

Additionally, because ratings are unmasked slowly over the years - and some players unmask REALLY slowly - some players may always play better than their bars (and vice versa).

It's also sometimes a question of if a guy has the bars in the right places. High OVR does not automatically mean anything.