Scouting Tool for Madden 17 CFM
Hi all, thanks for checking out the Madden 17 CFM Scouting Tool. This tool will make your scouting and drafting experience in Franchise Mode far more efficient and effective.
Key Features:
- Never draft a bust: "Draft Status" column separates the blue chippers from the scrubs using a huge number of position-specific checks against unlocked scouting attributes and combine stats.
- Scout Dev Traits: My extensive research into how you can use draft stories to predict dynamic dev traits is now incorporated into the tool.
- Find the mid/late round gems: You will now be able to see the potential stars hiding in the middle and late rounds of the draft.
- Find depth in the later rounds: As well as the elite prospects, the tool will also find potential contributors for your team who are likely to have an OVR in the 70-74 range.
- Rebuild through the draft like a real GM: The tool will help you draft entire classes of high quality players who are all potential starters for your team.
- Draft by BPA: The unique "True Value Rating" system provides a ranking algorithm to compare all prospects so that you can always draft best player available.
- Compare YOUR draft class to the average Madden draft class: Draft Class Strength Analysis tab shows you how your class compares to the average post-Tuning Update class (based on approx. 15 classes) in terms of elite prospects, depth, and strength at different positions.
- Big Board: Tool provides you with an NFL-style Big Board ready for draft day.
- Scout efficiently: Tool ensures you spend your scouting points as efficiently as possible, ruling out players with a low OVR quickly in the scouting process.
- Scout more players: the Tool will ensure you can cover as many prospects as possible in the class, meaning you don't have to focus on positions of need.
- Bring in Free Agents at the right positions: Draft Class Strength Analysis will show you which holes in your team you can plug through the draft, and which areas you would be advised to bring in Free Agents.
***New for Version 4!***
- Scout Dev Traits! My research into scouting dynamic dev traits via draft stories is now incorporated into the tool. You get a predictor for % likelihood of a certain dev trait, and the draft stories now impact TVR at a much more granular level than in previous versions.
- Some minor scouting criteria tweaks. Lots of minor tweaks and changes. 4-3 OLBs are now at less of a disadvantage compared to their pass rushing counterparts, and the chance of missing on a potentially good safety that the tool tells you not to draft has gone down significantly.
- True Value Rating algorithm tweaked to further normalise it across positions.
Download the file now:
Compatibility:
To use the tool, you will need Windows with Excel 2010 or newer installed. I cannot guarantee it will work on any other version of Office or older versions of Excel.
Other users have managed to get it working on iPad and Mac, but I can't offer much comment on how effectively the tool works in this form. Apparently it works on Sheets, but some of the conditional formatting goes funny.
I do know there are major, major compatibility problems with Excel 2003 or older, so probably not even worth trying. There are a couple of minor compatibility problems with Excel 2007: the TVR ranking column won't work because the function used to drive that only came into play with Excel 2010, and some of the data validation for skills and grades will mess up because it references a different sheet.
Moving in-flight draft classes from V3 to V4:
You shouldn't have too many problems moving in-flight classes from V3 to V4. The only problems will come from the Draft Stories field. You will need to remove values from this field before copying your V3 data.
When selecting your v3 data to copy, only select cells up to column R (Bench Press), and remember to use Paste Values, not the default paste option, when pasting your data into V4.
Moving in-flight draft classes from V2 to V4:
There shouldn't be any issues moving data from Version 2 of the tool to Version 4. Far fewer changes in terms of data you're expected to input than there were between versions 1 and 2 of the tool! Refer to the image album below and follow these steps:
- Refer to these images to help you understand the following steps: http://imgur.com/a/fT8y4
- Open both your existing (version 2) tool spreadsheet, and your new, brand spanking new V4 of the tool.
- On your V2 sheet, unlock the main 'CFM Scouting Tool' worksheet (ignore this step if you're using the unprotected version of the V2 tool)
- On the V2 sheet, insert a new column between 'Age' (column E) and 'Draft Story' (column F). N.B. This is where Height gets input in Version 3 and 4 of the tool.
- On your V2 tool, highlight all the cells where you have input data in the main sheet. Only highlight between rows 2 and 401, and columns A and R. DON'T HIGHLIGHT DRAFT STATUS, TVR, DRAFT BOARD RANKING ETC.!
- Copy the highlighted cells.
- Switch over to V4 of the tool and select cell A2.
- Use Paste Values in the paste dropdown menu in the main 'Home' section of the Excel toolbar. N.B. you should use paste values since a standard paste operation will mess up the conditional formatting in V4.
- You'll probably see some previously undraftable prospects come "back to life" in V4 of the tool as potential red chips. So you may need to go back to Madden and update your watch list and scout some more players!
Preview Images:
Here is a little preview of V4 of the tool (N.B. this is an incomplete draft class):
And here are a few sample draft classes I've got using my tool:
Further info and detailed guidance:
If you want some more detailed guidance about how to use the tool, I have written a very detailed series of blog posts:
- Part 1: Introduction
- Part 2: Data Input
- Part 3: Scouting Tips
- Part 4: Blue Chip Criteria
- Part 5: Red Chip Criteria
- Part 6: Off-Season Planning
- Part 7: Draft Day
- Extra: How to scout dynamic dev traits in CFM
On the backlog for future versions:
- Adjust criteria by player archetype (e.g. 3-4 Pass Rusher versus Cover 2 OLB)
- Use abbreviations like ZCV, BSH, PRC etc. in the skill fields to further reduce input time for users.
- Continue tweaking criteria (particular for red chip, which needs more maturation once I have more samples to base it on) and TVR algorithm to make it more accurate.
Disclaimer:
If you read the blog post linked above, you'll see that the tool is not completely flawless. Sometimes it will tell you to draft a blue chip player who turns out to be slightly below a 75 OVR, and other times it will tell you a player is a red chip and he turns out to be a 78 OVR stud. There is an element of randomness built into Madden drafts in that the unknown stats that remain locked after you reveal a player's top 3 attributes can still significantly affect his overall. So don't think of the tool as a fail safe, guaranteed "cheat", think of it as taking your scouting and drafting experience from crapshoot to Belichick levels of insight and knowledge.
If you want to help me improve the tool, the best thing you can do is record the actual OVR ratings of players in the Draft Recap screen and upload the results to this thread. The bigger set of data I have, the more effective I can make the drafting criteria.
Happy drafting,
Old Man Nathy
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