Hi all,
I've made some updates to my Draft Pick Trade Value Calculator that some of you (particular online CFM commissioners) may be using already. These changes have been tested for several months in a couple of different leagues, and we've found that the calculator is now a great guideline for the fairness of trades. The tool now offers different skews of value for online versus offline play, and for sim-only versus play leagues. It also captures speed for play league trades.
Who is it for?
- Online CFM Commissioners and Trade Committees who want an objective way to ensure trades are fair.
- Players who want to make sure they aren't getting ripped off as part of a deal.
- Offline CFM players who want to avoid cheesing the CPU to keep things challenging.
- People who need to make quick decisions in the draft to decide if they want to trade down or up.
How we use the calculator in my league:
In my 32 man Online CFM, the Trade Committee uses the calculator as a baseline for deals. This helps keep things consistent across different deals, and ensure teams make relatively even trades, preventing rosters from being ransacked in case people leave the league. We will deviate from the calculator in exceptional circumstances, such as a generational prospect being available in the draft, an elite player who the team no longer wants, etc. etc. But the calculator is a really useful guideline for all trade activity.
How Does It Work?
You input data for your side of the trade and the other team's side, and the tool calculates the value of each draft pick and player and compares each side of the deal. It then tells you whether the trade is biased either way, or if it is a fair trade. It also works for future draft choices as well as the current year's.
Where Does The Draft Pick Value Data Come From?
The Jimmy Johnson Draft Pick Value Matrix is a pretty famous way of calculating the value of draft choices, but more recent research suggests it overvalues early picks and undervalues middle and late round choices. This is particularly true on Madden where draft choices are a lot more predictable than in real life. For this reason, I've used the values presented
here for offline leagues, and a set of values somewhere in between this set and the Jimmy Johnson set for online leagues. The reason being that in online leagues with more than about 20 people, all the good players are gone by about the middle of round 3 in the draft, making middle and late round picks less valuable.
Where Does The Player Value Data Come From?
So this is where things start getting a bit more subjective. I've based the value of a player around several key factors, namely their Overall Rating; Age; Position; Years Remaining on their contract; cap space they are currently taking up for their team; position on the depth chart; and Dev Trait. New for version 3 is Speed, though this is only relevant for Play leagues, not sim-only. I could have included lots more factors here, but these are - to me at least - the things that should impact a player's worth in Madden. I'll talk through how the approximate values for players are calculated below:
- OVR: Gives the core value of a player before any other modifiers are applied. Works on the obvious assumption that the higher a player's OVR, the more they're worth in a trade. The rough bandings (in terms of how these raw OVR value attributes align to draft picks) are 96+ players are worth *more* than a 1st rounder; 90-95 OVR players are worth approximately a 1st rounder; 86-89 players are worth approximately a 2nd rounder; 82-85 players a 3rd rounder; and so on and so forth.
- Age: Age is an important consideration in a player's value in Madden due to the hard cut-off of 28 when players start to regress. Therefore young players who are either still developing quickly or at their peak before the precipitous decline begins are worth considerably more.
- Position: It goes without saying that some positions are more valuable in both the real life NFL and Madden. A 85 rated QB is worth a hell of a lot more to a Franchise than a 85 rated Fullback. For this reason, the approximate value of a player is modified based on his position.
- Years Remaining on Contract: The main purpose of including this is the massive drop-off in trade value experienced in real-life by players in the final year of their contract.
- Cap Hit: This is one you might disagree with, as I've considered a large cap hit to be a knock against a player's trade value. This is so that players on their rookie deals get valued slightly more highly. I considered including guaranteed money on the current contract year as one of the criteria, as the player's previous team will have to eat this as dead cap space (which will affect how they think about the value received for a trade), but decided not to. Let me know if you think this should be added though.
- Depth Chart Position: Obviously, a starter is worth more to his team than a player 3rd or 4th on the depth chart.
- Development Trait: Superstar/Quick dev players accumulate XP more quickly and progress slower than their Normal/Slow dev counterparts.
- Speed (play leagues only): New for version 3, Speed will also affect the value of a player in play leagues (where it is the most important stat of all).
All in all, you'll find that the tool values elite players higher than the default Madden trade logic, but will value mediocre players far less than Madden. If you follow the tool's assessment, you will get much more realistic trade value for average players (as opposed to ludicrous offers like 2nd round picks for 78 OVR, 29 year old DTs, for example).
You can of course tweak the values in the lookup sheet of the tool itself if there is anything you strongly disagree with.
Preview Images:
Compatibility:
You'll need a spreadsheet application (Excel, Sheets, whatever). It will work on Excel version 2007 or newer, but uses some functions that make it incompatible with Excel 2003.
Link to Download the Tool:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing
Alternatively, download from the attachment on this thread.
Hope this tool is of use to some of you!