A few days ago, I wrote a generally incoherent piece about the new player ratings in NCAA Football and what these might mean when you're recruiting or analyzing your existing roster. This is the second part of that subject, and it will cover the ratings that pertain to running backs.

The process I used to determine the effect of each rating on a runner was as follows.  I chose one running back on my squad and edited him, leaving his core ratings like AWR, SPD, AGI at their original level.  I then turned Break tackle to 50 along with each rating except for the one I was testing.  That one was turned to 99.  Following is a discussion of each of the ratings and their importance to the running back.

ELU (elusiveness)

I ran about 100 plays with elusiveness at 99, turned it down to 50 and ran another 100 or so plays.  I tried to run with a similar style each time, no spin moves or jukes (they'd be pointless anyway with a 50 rating).  To me, the difference was really obvious.  The elusiveness rating could best be described as the "slippery" rating. 

With elusiveness at 99 the effect was that the runner sustained fewer big hits.  He slipped tackles more easily and also had a few additional moves like slapping away a tackler's hands.  Without the rating, the runner was directly halted more often, experienced a lot more big hits, and gained fewer yards after contact.  Even in a one-on-one situation where the defender trailed him to the outside, he was more apt to receive a pretty direct hit to the rear end that stopped him pretty quickly, whereas in the same situation, a more elusive back often would pick his feet up and slip the tackle attempt. 

As you can imagine, with all of the next-gen ratings as well as the break tackle rating at 50, the runner wasn't very good with elusiveness off.  But it was surprising how well he ran with 99 elusiveness with all of those other ratings turned off. Depending on your running style I would say this rating is as important as any.  And I don't want to make any blanket statements without confirmation from EA, but I feel very confident that this move effectively "assists" the carry rating since it helps the runner to take big hits less often.

BCV (Ball Carrier Vision)

I first ran about 25 plays with BCV at 99, and noticed absolutely no difference than without it.  This was to be expected, as it seems like something that would be more for the CPU than for the human-controlled player. 

That seemed to be correct upon additional analysis.  I ran about 50 plays with 99 BCV, just snapping it with the CPU running the ball, and in this situation the cpu runner still got a pretty good YPC average and chose the best running lane most of the time.  Redirects came more often and got better results than without it.  I ran about 50 plays without it, and the results indicated to me that the rating "works" as advertised. 

With a good rating the cpu was picking the right hole and making good change of direction based on openings, and without a good rating, they just run the play where it's designed to go, and typically make bad choices if there's one side with a defender and one side without.  If you are a sim player or occasionally like to let the cpu run like I do, this is a helpful one.

TRK (Trucking)

We all know what this means; at some point somebody decided to call the power move "trucking" so we have the truck stick - running over people in front of you will be based on this rating.  I did a similar test as with the other ratings described above.  What I really wanted to find out is not whether the rating worked properly (I figured it did) but rather, how it worked in conjunction with things like strength, and the size of your runner. 

What I found is that it seems to function mostly on its own.  When I started with a runner that had 99 trucking and 50 break tackle, he ran amok.  It seemingly didn't change anything when I added 80 strength to the mix (from 50).  When I increased the player's weight from 205 to 245, it seemed to make a difference to me, but it could just be my perception. 

He didn't necessarily break more tackles with the extra weight, but didn't take as many "crushing" hits that knocked him back.  He still took on plenty of contact without the elusiveness rating being up, but he wasn’t getting destroyed as much.

SFA, SPM, JKM (Stiff Arm, Spin Move, and Juke Move ratings)

What we have here are three move-dependent ratings rather than the other ratings, which account for an entire aspect of a player's game like trucking.  Moreover, you might be thinking that these moves (like the ones above) do not have much to do with the core ratings, but it appears to be more of a mixed bag in this case. 

I did a lot more testing, moving ratings around and the stiff-arm move and to an extent the spin move did appear to be related to ratings like strength, agility, acceleration, etc.  The stiff-arm move - if turned to 99 - provided a modest increase over a 50 SFA rating - but when the strength was turned up to 80 as well, it was dominating. 

The juke move seems to be entirely independent.  I turned agility and acceleration down to 65 with juke move at 99, and was able to juke just as effectively as without it.  The spin move looked just as good, but with quite a few tries I wasn't getting as much separation or effective use out of it.

Composition Of The OVR Rating

That pretty much covers all of the new ratings that affect running backs.  But here's something that will surprise you, if you haven't already looked into it yourself:  The ratings outlined above do not directly affect the OVR rating at all.  That really stunned me.  But I think what happens is that when a player is created by the computer for dynasty mode or what have you, his ratings in these categories likely ARE based on his core ratings. 

That is to say, if the player has a great break tackle rating, his elusiveness, stiff-arm, and truck ratings are probably related to that rating or allocated accordingly to how good he is at breaking tackles in general - even though, as I discussed, these ratings appear to operate independently of it. 

What we have is a situation where EA has implemented these new into the game, but rather than develop them into the OVR rating right away, they are instead simply a description and outline of the player's running style itself.

Take Jason Howard, a freshman running back for my Washington Huskies in year 2.  I was interested in him because of his size/speed combination.  He's 6'1" 192, 93 speed, 69 strength which is well above average for a freshman running back.  In fact he's the strongest running back I have. 

He's been really effective in a limited role (limited only by the fact that he's been hurt constantly).  His break tackle rating is a 72.  His TRK rating (74) is related to that, and likely his strength rating.  However, he has an 88-elusiveness rating but only a 64-spin move rating.  I will take that!  I hate using spin moves! 

Therefore, you can see that the way a player's core ratings (which are what drive the OVR rating) are allocated to these newer ratings really control what kind of player he is, and likely, how well he will perform due to your running style.

So, when you are scouting players for recruiting purposes, keep in mind that the OVR rating does not consider them.  However, they will still perform according to the "experiments" I've done above, and if you can find a really elusive back that is only rated 72 OVR, he still may be very effective if you like that type of running style.

Ok, so let us look at what actually makes up the OVR rating for running backs.  After all, that is the topic of the section - sorry, it took me five paragraphs to get to it ... Six.

Best as I can tell, a running backs' OVR rating is determined by the following: STR, AGI, SPD, ACC, AWR, CTH, CAR, BTK.  Pass Block and Run Block appear to factor in, but very little ... like maybe 1, or at the most 2, OVR points different between an average blocker and a great blocker.  The injury rating also makes a very small difference in the OVR.

The OVR rating displays 40 OVR even if it's below 40, thus we start with the ratings at a point where changing them will move the OVR above 40...

50 STR, 62 AGI, 62 SPD, 53 ACC, 53 AWR, 53 CTH, 53 CAR, 53 BTK

• STR: it takes 16.00 strength points on average to equal 1 OVR point change.
• AGI: 3.40 points on average = 1 OVR change
• SPD: 3.18 points on average = 1 OVR change
• ACC: 9.50 points on average = 1 OVR change
• AWR: 5.71 points on average = 1 OVR change
• CTH: 9.50 points on average = 1 OVR change
• CAR: 5.71 points on average = 1 OVR change
• BTK: 3.07 points on average = 1 OVR change

Obviously these aren't exact, but they're pretty close and reflect that speed and break tackle are the most important ratings to a running back's OVR followed closely by agility, then carry and awareness, and finally, the acceleration and catch ratings.  Injury and blocking ratings (and possibly others) make a difference too, but they are more difficult to measure.

Hopefully this provides you with some insight on the running back ratings.  Till next time, have fun with those sports titles and Halo 3.