[KalimbeNaire]

The Draft:

Probably one of the most well-handled versions of this part of a franchise I have seen. Instead of having a limited number of mini drills to do and needing to achieve a "GOLD" in order to unlock a full scouting report, NFL head coach had it broken down into many, many different sessions.

First of all right after training camp there would be a little pop up announcement (fully voiced) by Adam Schefter telling you about the potential Heisman winners of that draft class. He might drop the name of a couple of other players to watch out for. Every few weeks he would update this list and say whether a player was dropping in stock because of an injury, or if he was rising in stock because he had a huge showing in a big game. It really let you have an idea on who some of the top draft picks might be before you even looked at anything.

There would be a page to pull up called the Draft Preview. It would be a simple little thing that had a listing of all of the positions (I think Kicker and Punter were omitted though) and rank them on a scale of 1-5 on how deep or strong the draft class was at that position. It would then give you a name of an over rated player and a sleeper player at the position. Generally speaking, that over rated player might be a bust...or he might be for real. That sleeper pick was usually always a dead on very solid or better player.

After a game you'd be presented with a pop up announcement saying, "Scouting College Players." From here another menu would pop up and give you the choice to scout small, medium, or large school players from every position on the field. You could only do one at a time. So say you want a QB, but you are looking for a back up and not a starter right now. You'd probably want to scout QB's from a small school to see if there is a diamond in the rough.

After that you'd get a report back on your scouting results. Depending on the level of your GM's scouting ability for that position, you could have had anywhere from 60%-100% of all those small school Qb's scouted. If you had the special skill for your GM of "small school insider", all of those small school QB's would already have scouted 100% of those QBs, you could use the option of where to scout elsewhere.

Generally speaking, the most you would unlock of a player at this point would be about 33% done. This would give you at least a vague idea of what the OVR was, give you some plusses and minsuses to the player (up to three skills in each column) for instance a QB might have:

+++ Strong arm
++ mobility
+ Football IQ

- - - System QB
- - accuracy
- toughness

It would also try to compare this player to a current NFL player, so the player in the example above might be actually compared to Micheal Vick. Doesn't mean he will be a clone, just means that he can scramble pretty well and is probably fast for a QB, has a strong but wild arm like Vick, and because he scrambles and exposes himself to hits, maybe he is a little banged up and gets hurt easier.