FOF2007-Interviewing
 

I apologize if this is covered in another thread and I didn't notice it, but can someone enlighten me on the benefits of interviewing a draft prospect.

I know it narrows down the range for the attributes (from blue bars to orange), but the "overrated", "underrated" aspect seems worthless. It seems to me that any "overrated" player already has non-narrowed down attributes (bars) that are pretty obvioulsy crappy compared to what their grade is? The same seems to be true for "underrated", their non-narrowed down bars seem to be already obviously higher than what you'd expect compared to the players grade.

Anyone have a different take on this?

I agree with your interpretation. But their grade doesn't change so if you see I high grade that is overrated, I know to skip him in the draft.

I have seen "underrated" and "Very underrated" player jump as many as 30 points up.

I recently draft a DT at 1.14 that was a 68/87! and a Center at 1.26 that was a 43/83...

It can mean a huge jump if you play it right. Overrated is ok if you get the player much lower in the draft than expected (say round three or four).

I really like the interview feature, if you focus on three positions then you can get into the 3rd and 4th rounds with a clear idea of who to pick.

Anybody seen a "very underrated" player bust?

Thanks,
Scott Kolleck

I saw a very underrated LT picked two picks ahead of me. I had targeted that guy and was sorry to see him gone. I picked the next underrated LT that was a little lower down the board. The first guy had been rated among the top 25 players and the second was in the next 25, closer to 50. It turned out that the guy I picked had ratings very similar to the other guy -- two points higher in fact, according to my scouts. I guess there's a range of variables involved, and of course, your scouts can be wrong, but maybe it isn't completely cut and dried and easy to figure out.

But I can say, every player I've been forced to pick without an interview has been total crap.

If your scout is sharp, interviewing makes a lot of sense. The Overrated and Underrated tags become true, for me anyway, at least 90% of the time. I never draft any Overrated players in the first round. I usually use about 20-30 interviews each year, on the top 15 players and then maybe 5-deep on my positions of need.

I had a WR bust on me in the 2nd round. He wasn't great but had the underrated tag. The rest of my draft was fairly solid, so I think he was just "special."

I've been having some success using about fifteen to twenty interviews on guys that I think won't be drafted. I've ended up with a lot of high forty undrafted rookie free agents to fill out my roster.