Greg Ellis and other questions:

[Saber]

So, I'm just wondering:

I know EA has reported that when you change a players position, that his speed will no longer drop which I'm okay with. Just wondering about this though:

It has been the case in the last few iterations of Madden, that if you move a great pass rushing DE to OLB he dropped (generally pretty dramatically), but you could move just about any OLB to DE and he would enjoy an immediate ratings increase. You could say the same of moving DEs to DTs. While this seldom mattered if you were using the team, the sim engine ran by ratings only. So you could take a Greg Ellis, move him to DE where he became a high 90s and then deal him like he's one of the best DEs in the league. He would then record an incredible number of sacks, ect. You could also do the same thing with moving DEs to DTs (Richard Seymour becomes a 99 and plays like Albert Haynesworth).

I'm just wondering if the logic on this has been changed to reflect this. I know that he issue was essentially that SPEED was too big of a determining factor, but since the strength ratings were generally so low in moving a OLB to DE or a DE to DT, they would generally continually get pancaked in games when you used them even though they were still rated incredibly high.

[CM Hooe]

While not a direct answer to your question, I'm thinking that the ratings spreading will help to alleviate this problem, as linebackers' block shedding / power move / finesse move / etc. ratings shouldn't be as high, except for the most elite linebackers. Briefly looking at the teams for which EA has released player ratings, my assumption appears to hold some water.

EDIT: Doing a comparison of two players on the Panthers, Landon Johnson and Na'il Diggs, from 09 to 10, in particular looking at their Finesse Move, Power Move, and Block Shedding ratings:

(year, player: fmv, pmw, bsh)
09 JOHNSON: 75, 67, 87
10 JOHNSON: 67, 62, 79
09 DIGGS: 78, 57, 84
10 DIGGS: 70, 53, 71