OK I re-upped the roster for NCAA 11 in my locker - 'ajimithing'
I updated the top 150 players from DraftTek's latest big board. I'll be doing the rest tomorrow and will upload it again when I'm done.
Here's a walkthrough of how I used the roster file to get the most accurate draft class for Madden and also a walkthrough of how I set up my Madden franchise to use them...
1) Download my roster from the locker 'ajimithing' on NCAA 11.
2) Start a new dynasty. I usually pick the most important 12 teams and user control them (especially Stanford (Luck), Oregon (James), Oklahoma State (Blackmon), Oklahoma (Broyles), Alabama (Richardson), etc)
3) Go into dynasty options and turn off fatigue and injuries.
4) Simulate an entire season.
5) Once you get past everything it will take you to "players leaving". Go into this screen and go through all your user controlled teams and spend 60 mins (max) of recruiting time trying to talk any players declaring for the draft or trying to transfer schools into staying. Luck and James always try to transfer. If they decide to transfer, you can decide if you want to start the process over again. Worse case scenario they go to a different school and won't come out until the 2013 draft - which is possible anyways. Once they're in Madden you can change their college back to Stanford/Oregon/etc. Also, there will always be a few players declare early for the draft. Usually their ratings are too low to actually be included in the export though.
6) Sim forward and export draft class to Madden. You now have your 2011 draft class.
This is totally optional but this is how I set up my Madden franchise with the draft classes.
1) Make sure you update your Madden roster to the latest update from EA. Then go in and adjust as many of the new transactions as you can (Bob Sanders to the Chargers, OJ Atogwe to Redskins, Shaun Rogers to Saints, etc etc) - you can find a list of all NFL transactions on ESPN.com or NFL.com
2) Start your franchise and make all 32 teams USER controlled, with all 5 sub-options CPU controlled. I think there are 5 options - Sign Free Agents - CPU :: Sign Draft Picks - CPU :: Auto Fill Roster - CPU :: Update Depth Chart - CPU :: maybe another one? Just make sure whatever team you will actually be playing as is listed as USER controlled for those sub-options.
3) Sim pre-season and import draft class.
4) Sim entire regular season and playoffs.
5) After Super Bowl it will ask you if you'd like to go to offseason - click no and go into player management.
6) Go through each team and release all the big name UFA's. This will prevent the computer from resigning them. (DeAngelo Williams, Matt Hasselbeck, Ronnie Brown, Ahmad Bradshaw, Joseph Addai, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Matt Light, Robert Gallery, Charles Johnson, Ray Edwards, Nnamdi Asomugha, Ike Taylor, Roman Harper, Quinton Mikell to name a few - a full list can be found on numerous sites online).
7) Once in the offseason you can either go through and update all the new head coaches or skip it if you don't care. Harbaugh isn't on there so I usually just hire a coach who has QB as their specialty. Also, Munchuk isn't on there so I find someone with OL specialty. You have to go through and fire some guys, to rehire them. But you can get most of the HC changes - DEN - Fox, CLE - Shurmur, OAK - Jackson, CAR - Rivera, MIN - Frazier, DAL - Garrett, etc. Also, you have to rehire Andy Reid (PHI), Norv Turner (SD) and maybe another one as for some reason they always get fired after the season.
8) Skip through retired players, nothing you can do about them.
9) Go through each team in the re-sign phase and make sure to sign any of the big names that have been resigned or franchised (Ngata, Seymour, Bailey, Greenway, Vick, Manning, etc etc). There are also a bunch of guys who are listed who aren't going to be free agents, so I usually go through and make sure to sign all of the guys who are major contributors who aren't actually free agents. This list contains guys like Kevin Kolb, Pierre Garcon, Danny Woodhead, Danny Amendola, Steve Johnson, etc etc etc. I don't know why some of these guys are listed as contracts being up. Also, be sure to re-sign for the team you actually want to play as.
10) When the free agent signing period comes up, just make sure the team you will actually be playing games for is selected and go through this phase as you normally would. Go after any free agents you'd like. As long as all other teams are listed as CPU controlled for free agent wire they will automatically be bidding on players for the other teams.
11) Now for the draft I go to
www.drafttek.com . They have an online simulator. I am a Bills fan so I will use them as an example. I run a new sim draft. I take a look at the first two picks and then decide who I would draft if I were the GM/who I want in Madden. You go to the "Grab and Lockout Tool". Under the grab section, I select Buffalo, Cam Newton, QB, Round 1. Run a new sim and the mock now has the Bills taking Newton at #3 and updates picks for the rest of the draft. I note the picks for the next 30 selections and when the Bills pick again at #34 I repeat the same process. I decide who I want to draft and go to the grab tool - Buffalo, Quan Sturdivant, MLB, Round 2. Repeat for the entire draft until you have made all the selections you want. Open up the final mock draft with all your selections and start the draft process on Madden.
12) It gets a little tricky here. If you make too many trades of picks the whole franchise freezes up and you have to start everything over again. So, what I did is just go in whatever order it is on Madden. For instance, if Cleveland picks #1 overall on Madden I go to the DraftTek mock and read down the list. Cleveland took AJ Green in the mock so I draft AJ Green with that "#1 overall pick". If Miami picks #2 on Madden I go to the DraftTek mock. Miami took Ingram #15. So I select Ingram #2 overall to Miami on Madden.
I like to copy and paste the mock to a Word file so I can delete the picks one by one, it is much easier to keep track of this way. Once it gets into rounds 4-5 you will start seeing teams come up that don't have any picks left. The easiest thing to do is to go to trade players, and trade their picks to teams that do have extras and trade punters back and forth. For example. Oakland comes up in round 6 but doesn't have any true picks left. I go to trade players, trade their round 6 and 7 picks and P Shane Lechler to New England for just their punter. Then I make another trade and trade just the NE punter back to NE for Lechler. New England now has two more picks and Oakland is out of picks.
It is a long process, but the most realistic. What you will find is a handful of guys that get drafted in the first round being busts (hopefully not your picks!) and also you will get a few picks in later rounds that actually had 1st round grades on Madden and have 80+ overall ratings. Busts and gems, just like the real NFL.
After the draft is over you can run your franchise like normal from that point on.
Also, I like being in control of all the teams because as free agent signings and retirements and stuff happen, I like to constantly update the rosters. For example, Stephen Neal of the Patriots just retired so I went in and took control of the Patriots, changed him to a punter and released him. Or I had been in the middle of a season when the Chargers signed Bob Sanders, so I went in and made sure he got onto the Chargers roster.
It's a lot of fun. You can use the draft classes whichever way you want, use some of my ideas or none of them. Whatever you wanna do. Let me know what you think though.
03-03-2011, 11:36 PM
