Once-In-A-Lifetime (in terms of FOF's player creation module) QB
 

For context on this, Combine Checker has 485 draft classes in it now, and 29,381 QBs. In all that time, there have been only two QBs where Bench>17 and Sol<28. One had an 18 and the other a 19. There's never been a 20 with a Sol that low--and only two 20s (out of 37) were 28s. The 35 others were 33 or better, with the vast majority being 40+.

RNK	NAME	SIMILAR PLAYERS	POS	HT	WT	RAW	ADJ	DASH	SOL	BENCH	AGI	BRJU	POS	%DEV	VOL	AGE	COLLEGE	BDAY	GRP
12	Lucas, Josh	Similar Players	QB	75	240	5.8	6.6	4.58	27	20	7.35	109	88	9	58	22	Tenn. - Chattanooga	8/17/2006	7

My scouts have him with impressive bars.

Jamarcus?

9% developed, 6 formations known, his intel has to be 0 or 1. haha

603 height, 240lbs, 458 dash, 735 agility and of course the 20 bench.You could always convert him to a TE if he washes out as a QB :-)

I sure do hope he washes out because he's in my division.

Dumb freak of nature!

Hahahahahahaha

End of 1st season

So far so good.

How was his first camp?

You guys thinking VSOD or no...?

Nope, my scouting sees him as +5/-11. Looks like a pure dud.

League scout shows +4/-13.

His bars look pretty decent, but his overall score clearly looks dragged down by what likely is a 0 Avoid INTs rating.

I don't think a 27 sole would doom his Avoid INT to be 0. It's probably more that he's both an underdeveloped rookie (who are always prone to INTs, even the good ones, right?) and also not very good overall.

I recall back to Malcpow's FOF2k7 drafting guide where he said, for QBs, he's nervous if even one score is outside of the constraints. Perhaps that's the takeaway here: sure he had some good combines, but that one bad sign probably should have put most of his super high bars into question?...

20 bench, though. You have to figure his long/deep (or at least one of them) ends up being fairly top notch.

I have no idea why people will not listen to me on this one. (At least garion gets it.) I've said it many times, and this is another classic example. It should be *obvious* that his Avoid Interceptions future bar is very low. Every single future bar that matters for overall is at 44 or higher, and several key ones are higher--some even into the 80s--yet his overall future is only 46. That is because one really important, hidden bar is very low. And that ain't Avoid Fumbles.

Certainly agree with this although I don't understand why your putting it down to AI rather than AF (or both)?

Do we have an in idea of the main influential bars to the overall rating? I am presuming sense rush is more important than screen passing in the calculation, for example.

Because this has been tested before. AF isn't a big part of QB overall.

Yes. I don't feel like looking it up, but it's here somewhere. And iirc, sense rush isn't particularly high in the overall. I'm pretty sure it's low. 3rd down, accuracy, medium, and long are all pretty high.

Not if it the combines were all a lie and he's a workout warrior.


This is true except if his future avoid INT was decent or good we wouldn't see such a crap overall future.

He has incredibly low Intelligence, an ok Read Defense so my guess is his Avoid INTs is terrible.

That and the whole thing he's clearly rated lower than his bars would suggest, which is why it's clear as day to me his Avoid INTs is dead to the world. He's -10 or more in his Scouted rating because of that.


Right. The SOL is an indication that something is up, especially because SOL is the most important combine score along with Bench.

Would you draft a 4.25 WR who has an agil of 7.02? I wouldn't most likely. Well, not at 1.2. (Btw, this is not a perfect example because Dash is stupid important for a WR, but because it's something most people understand.)

Yeah, that 46 future with those fairly big bars screams pick machine. What a brutally effective disguise this guy was wearing.

I was talking about guarantees. AFAIK, 20 is still a guarantee score. Of course we don't have Malcpow's study totally redone for FOF7, but I haven't seen anything too solid that turns any of it over, either.


Huh, yeah, I guess I didn't really look at what his present futures were showing and try to guess his AI that way.



Isn't "important" mostly about what skills are important to you? So-- any score would have indicated something was up, with the possible exception of 40 time, and even then, maybe not?

I was going back to the MP charts that did show a boundary at 28 sole, but it wasn't as damning of a boundary as some other ones. But perhaps that was misleading and a 27 sole *is* exactly that damning. I'm not sure I've seen a quality 27-sole QB ever, but I'm sure those of you who've played more, might jump in and correct me on that. I am not sure that AI was one of the bars that Malcpow could have set in his experiment.

(i.e, maybe a 27 sole is just as bad for Avoid Ints as 7.82 agility is for OT pass blocking -- but it just didn't appear that way in the dataset for some reason).


Uh....yes? Assumed typo here ;)

A few key points...

• 20 is not a guarantee. It wasn't in FOF2K7 and it isn't in FOF7.
• Some of the MalcPow thread is most certainly obsolete. For that matter, some of the charts' contents were completely invalid for FOF2K7, especially if you didn't understand the ramifications of some fields not being available in TCY imports or of the imports having been done with all flat players.
• 28 was a pretty hard boundary in FOF2K7 and still is. It's specifically mentioned in my thread.

And speaking of 28 and that thread...

I'm not sure how much more clear "it supercedes it" can be, but whatever. *shurg*

20 wasn't in 2k7? It certainly looked like it -- for the bars in question, up to about 70.

Your thread lists some numbers as "most important", "also important", and "least important" as it applies to correlation between combine scores and OVR rankings -- and the difference between those categories is variable.

That's neat on a macro level, and maybe the macro picture is all we need, but it's answering different questions and not looking at individual bars. For example -- I'd love to see an OT with 84 broad jump that, outside of volatility, had anything more than low endurance.

And there's what I'm thoroughly convinced is the major flaw in this line of thinking: worrying about combine/bar correlations rather than just collecting big red bars overall by using the constraints, then just using scouts to find under-50 guys with good specific bars. 20 was no guarantee that the guy would even make it to 50 overall--kinda like this guy illustrates in FOF7.

In virtually every MP league out there (*maybe* not the CCFL and FOOL, because those are the best-drafting groups around, but probably even those, too,) there are 50s and 60s overall guys slipping through the cracks every single draft, in part because people are focused too much on specific bars, rather than just loading a team up with talent. Simply limiting drafting to constraints-only guys increases the chances dramatically--even if just stabbing in the dark after that--of getting a quality player.

And yes, the macro in your example completely obliterates the micro concern you're expressing. It's nearly impossible to find a guy to prove or disprove your assertion because less than 0.4% of OTs are draftable and have 84 broad jump.

More than one way to skin a cat. Loading up on high overall guys is going to make the cap that much more challenging. Lower rated guys with high bars that are particularly important can be very cost effective. Our WR Lang is a prime example in the CFL. Only 57 overall but in performance terms he is an exceptional player. Bonus being now it's renegotiation time he isn't asking elite WR money.

The thing with this game is many bars do next to nothing, yet still pump up the overall rating and thus the salary. I tend to want particular attributes in my players. If he isn't strong in what I am looking for it doesn't really matter too much what his overall rating is. As the draft gets into the mid and late rounds I do find constraints helpful, although I am still looking for a certain skill set.

Interesting that you 2 guys are coming from different angles. Will be interesting to see how it pans out in the CFL. Clearly Aston can't have gone far wrong judging by the quality of his team now and in the past.

Yeah, clearly important is different for different people. I was speaking directly from the combine correlation chart Ben put up. No, not that one at the top, the one later in the thread that holds his actual numbers. I much prefer to use that because the ambiguity between his designations and (in large part) because seeing the actual numbers is a big deal.

Here's how I was thinking about it: Sol has a 0.435 correlation to overall quality in a QB, so that SOL score below 28 in Lucas means there's a damn good chance he's gonna suck overall ratings wise. If it were Broad and Lucas was above the SOL threshold then Lucas probably would've panned out as a 60+ QB if not 80+. But that stupid SOL score screamed *I'm here to screw with you!*.

And in that way, the SOL score is very important to almost everyone, I imagine.

And since it directly relates to Avoid Int then it again would be very important to people. But you are arguing in general that there are different strokes for different folks, so I won't blather on any longer. For this particular discussion, Sol clearly is a very important combine score and a 27 being below the 28 threshold is a very good indication that something highly funky was going on with the dude.


Oops, yeah, meant 7.21 as it falls right outside the 7.20 cutoff.

FWIW, I don't think there's any magical gimmees in the game anymore. I've seen too many QBs and WRs who have had gimmee scores turn out crap. Jim saw what was figured out, that any WR with a 4.28 40 was gonna be a stud and said "nope! workout warrior!" Nothing is a given anymore. There's always a decent chance the game is gonna burn you, if only because of the die roll associated with combine correlation, which is just bad luck like VSOD.

I don't think it's two different angles at all. I look for specific bars some time; it's just less effective to use combines to do that in cases of bars whose combines are split. If I'm looking for a specific skill set, I just sort Analyzer on those bars. With the way combines are generated in ranges from bars, they're not as helpful in that regard. (To be clear, they are *somewhat* helpful, but I'm talking about optimization here. I suspect that he has had success doing that because he's never had to draft in a league with guys like MalcPow, Subby, sjshaw, corbes, QuikSand, stelmack, and so on. Drafting against those dudes really dilutes the talent in a hurry. I've found that competing with them requires.)

The other thing to remember about constraints is that they often help reveal in which direction the game is trying to fool you on a player.

I guess all of those guys must be rich if they are that good. Even so, they could win some money off our man Bode and give it to charity :) I think you might be surprised how tough it is to get over on the likes of Aston in the CFL. 3 seasons without much success so far Ben. Time will tell I guess, but it will be entertaining to watch :popcorn:

Macro > micro, I can dig that.

I'm not looking for bars exactly -- actually, you put it best, Ben: if I can, I like knowing which direction the game is trying to fool me. E.g: 7.21 agility WR with a nice GD bar >> "Aha! You are lying." WRs can still be good with low GD, but WRs showing a high GD that is guaranteed to drop? ... eliminating those players from consideration is what this is about.

So in the case of OT broad jump, the question to me is which is the boundary line below which their endurance bar is doomed: 84 (as you've put out), or 90 (as Malcpow had it). From what you've said so far, I don't think we have overturned the 90 figure with evidence, since your numbers don't consider that question exactly. I can accept that your numbers consider a much more important and useful question, though ;)

But I do feel knowing that an 85 broad jump tackle has zero chance of booming endurance is a useful thing (if that number's accurate). Right?

*Not to say those guys won't be okay. But considering the boundary at 84 ("hey, none of these new FOF7 boundaries have been violated in this prospect"), vs 90 ("maybe he's useful, but his endurance score is below boundary"), paints a different picture of these guys' prospects.

Remember, those were flat players. Real FOF players aren't always flat. I'm getting the sense now that you may be misinterpreting his chart. Otherwise, I'm not really sure why you're caring about endurance anyway. This guy is performing pretty well, for example: RT Darnell Volz Player Details

But beyond that, here's a guy from FOF2K7 in the 84-89 range who did just fine:

http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...playerid=29425

He was drafted in FOF2K7. His endurance was 49 CUR at its highest in FOF7, without any apparent VSOL, and he was and had been fully developed for several years prior to the conversion in 2042, so there's no reason to believe that the 49 was from bad scouting.

Given that MalcPow imported flat-rated guys, my guess is that 90 is the bottom for 50 endurance, and given that I was able to find a guy pretty quickly in the 85-89 range who was at precisely 49, I'll further guess that guys under 90 can be anywhere in the 0-49 range--though 49 probably only shows up when the "scout variance" rating is extremely high.

Yes, they are flat ratings. Even for OTs with flat 20 bars, for example, there isn't a single instance of a <90 broad jump. If you look at similar boundaries that I think are reproduced (at least some of them) exactly in your new thread -- 7.20 agility WRs, 37 PD defensive backs, 5.27 dash T/G, 7.80 agility T, 7.90 agility G -- they also go so far down.

Hence my understanding during FOF2k7 that these were rather killer boundaries. I'd see some variability, sure, but nothing that ever made me question this "locked into low" understanding -- back in the day. But I have to admit, when it comes to knowledge, you're the top dog, SkyDog: so I'm always ready to stand corrected. Does my interpretation make sense, though, or do you still think it's a misinterpretation?

By the way, I think I see some volatility in that second OT. This guy enters the league with 40 potential and winds up 57/57. He gets a 7-point potential boost in his second camp. Would not be surprised if a big jump in endurance was a good part of that. Not every volatility swing was huge, and if he were a natural creeper, I'd expect his first camp to have shown more -- but of course I am not familiar with the player and don't have any FA stage changetrackers, etc, to confirm.

Ouija board, I use.

*fixed

;D

Josh Lucas was traded this past offseason (again) to Baltimore where they are planning on starting him all year.

Naturally, in his first game he throws from 64%, 332 yds and 2 TDs for his first career 300 yrd game. Of course, he also threw 3 INTs.

Looks like the 27 Sol is still working its magic.

newWeightInput.Attributes[0] = 20; //"Screen Passes (Ag25)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[1] = 19; //"Short Passes",
newWeightInput.Attributes[2] = 22; //"Medium Passes (Bj66)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[3] = 22; //"Long Passes (Bp50)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[4] = 15; //"Deep Passes (Bp50)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[5] = 24; //"Third Down Passing (Bj33)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[6] = 23; //"Accuracy (PD50)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[7] = 0; //"Timing (PD50)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[8] = 8; //"Sense Rush (Ag75)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[9] = 11; //"Read Defense (So10)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[10] = 7; //"Two Minute Offense",
newWeightInput.Attributes[11] = 0; //"Scramble Frequency (Ft85)",
newWeightInput.Attributes[12] = 0; //"Kick Holding"

Baltimore has gone all in With Josh Lucas.



8-8, 9-7 and now 3-0.

Maybe the dude is worth starting.

Update on Josh Lucas. He has a very Josh Lucas year last year, which I kinda expected would be his every year.



After having gone 8-8, 9-7 and 11-5 with the Ravens, Josh Lucas has helped them to a 7-9 and 4-12 record.

After throwing 32 INTs and fumbling 8 times last season, I expect Baltimore will cut Josh Lucas to save $25 mil. Crazier things have happened though.