Hello and welcome to the Madden 19 edition of the (in)famous Madden Scouting Tool! EA made a lot of big changes to the way team-building works in CFM this year, with a much greater emphasis on scheme fits, some all new archetypes, specialist positions on the depth chart, extra attributes, and draft classes that are more linear than in previous iterations of the game (more on this in a second). The result is that I had to rewrite the tool pretty much from scratch, but I hope you'll agree that the results have been worth the effort.
What is the scouting tool?
The Scouting Tool is a spreadsheet where you input data about prospects in Madden 19 CFM. The tool has an algorithm that calculates the value of a player based on your inputs, taking into account their scouted skills/grades, combine scores, projected round, talent round, and myriad of other factors. This allows you to fairly and objectively rank prospects against each other, giving you an advantage in CFM. It also helps you conserve scouting points throughout the season by projecting how good/bad a prospect is, allowing you to focus on the guys that are likely to be talented. It also outputs loads of other cool reports, like Top 5 players at each position, a draft day planner, and individual NFL.com-style scouting reports.
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.
- Set up your Big Board correctly: The tool provides a ranking algorithm to help you set your board before draft classes. Invaluable, particularly in Online CFMs where you're unable to attend the live draft!
- Scout Dev Traits: My extensive research into how you can use draft stories to predict dev traits is 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.
- Set your team building philosophy: are you in win-now mode or rebuilding longer term? Set your philosophy and the tool will adjust your board accordingly.
- Choose how you approach the draft: do you go BPA or draft for need? The tool will re-rank prospects based on your preferences.
- Set your biggest needs and positions of strength: prioritise players at different positions on your board based on your roster's strengths and weaknesses.
- Set your schemes: scheme fit is king in Madden 19, and the tool will help you find players who can be adjusted to fit your scheme.
- Conserve your scouting points: the tool will predict whether a player looks like a top-tier prospect (blue chip), a decent prospect (red chip) or a depth player only while you input data. This will help you only spend your scouting points on players worth scouting.
- See the Top 5 players at each position: new feature for this version, the tool will show you the best prospects at each position group.
- Get ready for draft day with the Draft Day Planner: another new feature, the tool will show you who is likely to be available at each of your picks. Invaluable for offline leagues!
- NFL.com-style scouting reports: a cool little feature, you can now generate individual scouting reports against every prospect on your board, complete with strengths, weaknesses and pro comparisons.
Preview Images
Check out this album of gifs to see some of the different parts of the tool in action:
https://imgur.com/a/yRtvRas
Your Big Board:
[img]https://i.redd.it/2uy29p1kn8r11.gif]/IMG]
Your Team Settings:
Draft Day Planner
Individual Scouting Reports
Top 5 Players at Each Position
Compatibility
The tool is designed to work with
auto-generated draft classes only. It will not work with custom draft classes, as it relies on the Madden 'templates' for prospects to know what the hidden attributes will grade out at. Custom draft classes will be all over the place.
The tool is designed to work in
Excel 2016 desktop application. There are various compatibility issues with other spreadsheet tools, detailed below.
Old versions of Excel
I use a new function called TEXTJOIN for some stuff on the scouting reports in particular, so there will be some bits that come up blank for schemes in Excel 2013. Other than that, it will work fine. For Excel 2010 and older, The draft board rank will not work, and there will be various other bits that won't either. It's not going to work well in Excel 2007 or older.
Google Sheets
I've now released a Sheets-optimised version of the tool. There are some trade-offs in terms of usability and look and feel, but it will work fine now.
Excel Online:
It ain't gonna work well... Just download it and use it on the desktop!
Excel Mobile App:
You can give it a try, but it isn't gonna be pretty... It's designed for desktop.
Thanks and Acknowledgements
This tool took a lot of effort to create, and it wouldn't have been possible without the vast array of people who have helped me, including many from within my league (reddit.com/r/MaddenGMs), reddit.com/r/madden, and Operation Sports.
The following people helped me gather pre-requisite information to build the tool:
- u/TheWunderWaffe (AKA Jox)
- u/Teutonic
- Trey31 (Operation Sports)
The following people gave me data to help tailor the TVR algorithm and helped me BETA test:
- u/JD81ND (AKA Jim)
- u/jjnelson30
- u/adiobroyster
- u/pbnotorious
- u/darceknight
- dxpsman (Operation Sports)
Previous Versions of the Tool if you're not using Madden 19 yet
Madden 18 version
Madden 17 version