[GoldenCrest Games]

What I've always liked to address this is to get away from "assigned" positions completely. Players don't have positions, they have skills.

Now, to make this work, you need to rethink how positions work in the game. Imagine during the draft/FA when you need to find someone to play RB. When you rank/search the draft class for a RB, what you're really doing is picking a set of skills that make up a RB, and ranking the players according to that set of skills. The way it is today, you're basically just filtering out players that don't have "RB" as their assigned position, regardless of the skillset match.

Take this a step further, and the game engine becomes simpler, too! For every activity on the field, you only have to take into account the actual relevant skills of the players. You no longer have to track the position of the player. Did the player put a tall speedy WR in the TE slot? It's not cheese if the defense only recognizes the player by the skills, and sees that this is a fast tall pass-catcher. Want to put a fast FS at DE to speed rush? Again, the position doesn't matter if the offense sees it as a speedy (light) pass rusher with low strength.

Of course, the unsaid trick in all this is that you need to make EVERY rating matter, and they have to make sense ACROSS ALL PLAYERS. That's the rub. You can't have 6'5" WRs with 80 STR and then have all TEs also have 80 STR. That's just not realistic. The fast FS guy needs to have a STR that is realistic to the OL that is blocking him. (so he gets blown up when he's run at)

Anyway, that's my ratings rant for today. I've been thinking about this a LOT lately...