So I just went through 2 seasons of drafting. My 1 season was not amazing, but after realizing some patterns, I managed to hit on 7 of my 10 drafted players with star or better development in year 2.
4 of them were 2nd round picks, the other 2 mid 1st rounders, the other the 6th pick. I traded up for most of them.
Feel free to contribute:
- As with the past Madden, mark down every player who has any story written about them. Note that different stories appear in both columns and I'd expect to see maybe 30+ stories per season. Luckily they updated it so way more players now are also listed with their position.
- Go through every player in week 1 who is Day 3 or better and check their physical stats. This should take about 1.5 hours or so in total, but afterwards you are pretty much done till the combine and pro day.
- After going through the process below, I probably had around 75 or so players favorited WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING AT RATINGS at this point.
- Pretty basic process of elimination. You are in general looking for only the players with ELITE skills at certain categories. In general, the most important trait is SPEED and ACCELERATION. The only position I'd suggest otherwise is Oline which should be STRENGTH based. QB is about THROW POWER (unless you prefer running QB's).
- Anytime you see a story about a player, go back and look at their athletic skills. Athletic skills >>> Story, but I found many occasions where a player fell who had elite abilities.
- In general, I found after the process of elimination at most you should have maybe 5-6 players per position (as an example: 2 Day 3 guys, 1 or 2 1-2nd rounders, and 1 or 2 2-3 rounders). But in general depending on the class, it's very likely at certain positions you may only have 2-3 players at a position.
- Till they fix the bug: When you get the "focused scouting" they all need to be 3 people at the same position.
- Before you even get to the combine/pro day, you should be at least 80% sure who you are drafting OR waffling between 2 players with similar athletic abilities.
- Pro Day and Combine is where you finally make your decision. In general it'll be pretty easy to tell as I found plenty of times where a "red flag' from a player I loved's athletic ability made me put them off my board ("F stamina, D tackling, F stiff arm for HB's, D man coverage etc...).
- Notice what I haven't mentioned much? Ratings! A lot of your staffing will be dictated by the draft class NOT your actual needs. You may have a huge need at MLB but the class is poor so don't even bother. You have week 1 as the best opportunity to look at the entire class and see other than Tier 3 coach (who you will most likely make National Scout), where the best opportunities are for each of your scouts to go.
- But even assuming you do absolutely 0 scouting for a position and have them at 0%, with the focus on stories and looking at their pro/combine stats, it's fairly easy to see who the best players are.
There's a lot more, but really the biggest way to succeed is by Process of Elimination. Spending 1.5 hours going through each player's athletic abilities before you lock in your scouting makes it virtually impossible to not draft amazing.
A big difference from Bengal's video is I do emphasize how important those drafting stories are. Just from year 2 alone, I'd say 80% of the negative stories led to players with star development BUT 60-70% of those with positive stories were busts and had poor athletic ability and ratings.
I'll add more, but others feel free to contribute.
4 of them were 2nd round picks, the other 2 mid 1st rounders, the other the 6th pick. I traded up for most of them.
Feel free to contribute:
- As with the past Madden, mark down every player who has any story written about them. Note that different stories appear in both columns and I'd expect to see maybe 30+ stories per season. Luckily they updated it so way more players now are also listed with their position.
- Go through every player in week 1 who is Day 3 or better and check their physical stats. This should take about 1.5 hours or so in total, but afterwards you are pretty much done till the combine and pro day.
- After going through the process below, I probably had around 75 or so players favorited WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING AT RATINGS at this point.
- Pretty basic process of elimination. You are in general looking for only the players with ELITE skills at certain categories. In general, the most important trait is SPEED and ACCELERATION. The only position I'd suggest otherwise is Oline which should be STRENGTH based. QB is about THROW POWER (unless you prefer running QB's).
- Anytime you see a story about a player, go back and look at their athletic skills. Athletic skills >>> Story, but I found many occasions where a player fell who had elite abilities.
- In general, I found after the process of elimination at most you should have maybe 5-6 players per position (as an example: 2 Day 3 guys, 1 or 2 1-2nd rounders, and 1 or 2 2-3 rounders). But in general depending on the class, it's very likely at certain positions you may only have 2-3 players at a position.
- Till they fix the bug: When you get the "focused scouting" they all need to be 3 people at the same position.
- Before you even get to the combine/pro day, you should be at least 80% sure who you are drafting OR waffling between 2 players with similar athletic abilities.
- Pro Day and Combine is where you finally make your decision. In general it'll be pretty easy to tell as I found plenty of times where a "red flag' from a player I loved's athletic ability made me put them off my board ("F stamina, D tackling, F stiff arm for HB's, D man coverage etc...).
- Notice what I haven't mentioned much? Ratings! A lot of your staffing will be dictated by the draft class NOT your actual needs. You may have a huge need at MLB but the class is poor so don't even bother. You have week 1 as the best opportunity to look at the entire class and see other than Tier 3 coach (who you will most likely make National Scout), where the best opportunities are for each of your scouts to go.
- But even assuming you do absolutely 0 scouting for a position and have them at 0%, with the focus on stories and looking at their pro/combine stats, it's fairly easy to see who the best players are.
There's a lot more, but really the biggest way to succeed is by Process of Elimination. Spending 1.5 hours going through each player's athletic abilities before you lock in your scouting makes it virtually impossible to not draft amazing.
A big difference from Bengal's video is I do emphasize how important those drafting stories are. Just from year 2 alone, I'd say 80% of the negative stories led to players with star development BUT 60-70% of those with positive stories were busts and had poor athletic ability and ratings.
I'll add more, but others feel free to contribute.
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