Some of you may be familiar with my methodology behind this system that I outlined many moons ago in the M08 Roster section of the Football Idiots forum. I won't rehash too much of that here. Madden 19 inspired me to finally finish it though and push out a first release.
It's based on the Super Bowl week EA roster.
Long and short of my system is to adjust players to more closely match their combine/pro day stats. I built a massive database of player results from those drills and developed formulas that are pretty close to what EA uses as a base. From their 40 times with 10 and 20 yard splits, 3-cone and shuttle, vertical and broad jump I could predict their EA rating within a point or so. The problems with EA's rosters occur at the extremes of the rosters. There are countless mid to low round draft picks, undrafted free agents, etc. where it is obvious that EA just attempted to get a name into the game but didn't pay any mind to the real athlete's benchmarks. Or times where they purposely crippled a player's physical ratings to force them to slot in properly on a depth chart. This is fine and all for Play Now and Online matches but those mid to low players matter in franchise play. My method fixes them so that they have a reasonable opportunity to be productive players on a roster or possibly develop into starters. On the other end of the spectrum are the stars and superstars that EA over boosted their physical ratings to drive their OVRs and desired improvements relative to the pack up rather than skill ratings. Admittedly, EA has added many more skill ratings over the years and has improved a bit on those but they'd already set the baseline for an elite player's physical ratings prior to doing so and chose not to revisit them when they added the additional skills. My system also adjusts for that and moves players back closer to their combine/pro day numbers. The "points lost" when downrating physical traits were moved to the appropriate existing and newly added skills ratings.
The other big thing is strength ratings. It annoyed me it M08 and still does to this day. Lineman with strengths in the upper 70s/lower 80s, RBs as strong as lineman, weak TEs, etc. are all gone. I built a new method based on height, weight, BMI (are they built like a brick ****house or long and lean?) and athleticism (based on combine/pro day data). I get way more in depth of my reasoning in the M08 roster thread though I've tweaked a few things since then.
For those that want to dig into the math I've posted my spreadsheet below.
The bulk of the player's OVRs don't change much but a point or two in this roster compared to the EA roster it's built from. Some of the players that EA just threw together do jump several points up or down on their OVR. I've blended my data to varying proportions with the original EA ratings to simulate how a player looks in pads versus in shorts at their combine/pro day. But in the end, my goal was to fairly rate every player across the board by tying their physical traits back to the most consistently gathered and widely accepted set of data.
It's based on the Super Bowl week EA roster.
Long and short of my system is to adjust players to more closely match their combine/pro day stats. I built a massive database of player results from those drills and developed formulas that are pretty close to what EA uses as a base. From their 40 times with 10 and 20 yard splits, 3-cone and shuttle, vertical and broad jump I could predict their EA rating within a point or so. The problems with EA's rosters occur at the extremes of the rosters. There are countless mid to low round draft picks, undrafted free agents, etc. where it is obvious that EA just attempted to get a name into the game but didn't pay any mind to the real athlete's benchmarks. Or times where they purposely crippled a player's physical ratings to force them to slot in properly on a depth chart. This is fine and all for Play Now and Online matches but those mid to low players matter in franchise play. My method fixes them so that they have a reasonable opportunity to be productive players on a roster or possibly develop into starters. On the other end of the spectrum are the stars and superstars that EA over boosted their physical ratings to drive their OVRs and desired improvements relative to the pack up rather than skill ratings. Admittedly, EA has added many more skill ratings over the years and has improved a bit on those but they'd already set the baseline for an elite player's physical ratings prior to doing so and chose not to revisit them when they added the additional skills. My system also adjusts for that and moves players back closer to their combine/pro day numbers. The "points lost" when downrating physical traits were moved to the appropriate existing and newly added skills ratings.
The other big thing is strength ratings. It annoyed me it M08 and still does to this day. Lineman with strengths in the upper 70s/lower 80s, RBs as strong as lineman, weak TEs, etc. are all gone. I built a new method based on height, weight, BMI (are they built like a brick ****house or long and lean?) and athleticism (based on combine/pro day data). I get way more in depth of my reasoning in the M08 roster thread though I've tweaked a few things since then.
For those that want to dig into the math I've posted my spreadsheet below.
The bulk of the player's OVRs don't change much but a point or two in this roster compared to the EA roster it's built from. Some of the players that EA just threw together do jump several points up or down on their OVR. I've blended my data to varying proportions with the original EA ratings to simulate how a player looks in pads versus in shorts at their combine/pro day. But in the end, my goal was to fairly rate every player across the board by tying their physical traits back to the most consistently gathered and widely accepted set of data.
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