The awareness rating (AWR) could really use an overhaul. The current setup just doesn’t work as a true representation of how football players learn and grow within the game. This article is my proposal for a complete overhaul of the AWR rating, including suggestions for an accessory rating, and even some additional hidden ratings to base the visible rating on.

You might be thinking, "great one dweeb, it’s too late because the new game is about to come out."

As far as I can tell, a month to two months before the game comes out is actually the best time to suggest a big change, given that the development cycle actually starts (from what I’ve been told) right before the new game comes out. So as a total NCAA geek I feel it's my duty to suggest changes.

Before I talk about my suggestions, let’s talk about what the AWR rating is, and what it maybe should be. In the past, AWR was a catch-all for many things on the football field. It covered how well a player performed in just about every facet of the game other than running, tackling, catching, etc. It covered how quickly he reacted to plays, how well he did in zone coverage, basically knowing how to be in the right position. Now we have all these great new ratings like zone coverage (ZCV) that totally changed the game. You could have a team full of slow corners who can really hit and play great zone coverage, and play a pretty mean cover 2 scheme. These are the new ratings that help determine if he knows where to be. In short, all of these new ratings have made the entire game more dynamic.

The AWR rating now seems to be confined to a player’s ability to read the play as it happens, what angles to take to the ball, and possibly even know (in an overall sense) how the other team is trying to attack his side of the ball. This is as it should be, as the additional ratings have segmented real and tangible abilities into different compartments.

Yet something is still missing with the AWR rating. It’s not malleable enough. It doesn’t take into account a player’s past experience at different positions, and there's no governing rating that controls it. Therefore, position changes are often destructive to the rating, and it seemingly always drops precipitously anytime you make a substantive position change.

The way the system has worked the past few iterations is summarized in this example: John Smith gets recruited to a team. His position is wide receiver. His AWR rating is 75, which is pretty solid. If kept at wide receiver, even if he doesn’t play much, his AWR will typically improve, often into the mid 80's to low 90's range. If you move him to safety, he’ll take a huge awareness hit, usually around 15 points, and will no longer be a smart football player. In fact, with a rating like that, it’s likely he’s never going to be a very productive player, unless his physical gifts far outweigh his mental ones.

I don’t think an explanation of why that doesn’t suffice is even needed. Players like Eric Weddle and Percy Harvin have proven that if you’re a good football player, you can often be a good football player all over the field -- with experience. It doesn’t mean you should be able to take a wide receiver, make him a safety, and immediately have a good player on your hands; it’s just that the position change shouldn’t make him useless, or in and of itself be prohibitive in nature.

You shouldn’t have to always think: "Well, I have a glut of players at wide receiver and this guy tackles really well for a defensive back, but it’ll ruin him to make a move to safety so I won’t do it." That being said, not all players have the kind of ability required to play multiple positions. I think this proposal also takes that into consideration.

The Awareness Rating should mean a lot more than what it does now.

The first part of the proposal is an entirely new rating based on the overall football acumen of the player. Let’s call it FAC, or football acumen. This would give you an idea of his ability to have good awareness at any position -- how quick he can learn new positions, adapt to new roles, etc. In this scenario, the FAC rating would never change; it would not be an ability that could improve even a little.

Going back to the case of John Smith, let’s say he has a FAC rating of 75. Remember, this is a rating that never improves, so that would be an average, maybe even below-average rating. The 75 AWR rating, however, is quite good considering that it improves and John is only an incoming freshman. That would mean he’s an experienced high school wide receiver that probably shouldn’t move around. A position change would probably not be in this player’s best interest. You literally COULD ruin this player by moving him to safety, but at least it makes sense as to why now.

Let’s say the same player had a FAC rating of 99, though. That would be a Weddle-like rating. This player could be moved around and through practice and playing time could quickly improve his AWR rating at just about any position.

The second part of the proposal is a hidden list of his current awareness ratings at every position. In other words, if you switched a player to safety right now, his hidden awareness rating for free safety would then be his viewable awareness rating. These ratings would fluctuate based on the amount of playing time and/or practice time he had received at this position not only for your team, but during high school. If John Smith has a 75 AWR rating at receiver, and you switch him to safety, the hidden awareness rating for the wide receiver position should very slowly go down over the years as he plays safety. Maybe if you switched him back to wide receiver as a senior, his AWR rating would only be 68. But for a player with extremely high FAC, they would almost never lose AWR at a position.

Going even further with that idea, say you have the 99 FAC version of Smith and move him to free safety. He should improve most at safety, but also might improve pretty well at similar positions where he’ll receive exposure to teachings from that position in practice (strong safety, and to a lesser extent cornerback).

The third part of the proposal is a viewable Experience tab on the “view player” screen. This tab would be alongside such tabs as the current ratings, career stats, and awards tabs. Each week that a player was listed at a certain position, he would receive experience in practice. Playing snaps during a game would add additional experience. When you recruit a player, you should be able to eventually deduce (through the practice of scouting and recruiting him) how much he had played different positions, thereby getting an overall idea of his FAC rating without actually seeing it. As he plays for your team, you could go to this tab at any time. Going back to the idea of a potential position switch, you could look at his experience at each position and the FAC rating, and decide whether or not to make the position switch.

Even if you take the original scenario and never make a position switch, you could understand why John Smith, with an AWR rating of 75 and a FAC rating of 75, eventually practices five years and plays four years at his position and only improves to an 82 AWR instead of into the 90's.

I think this would be an interesting and dynamic, yet still relatively simple way to account for the true “football player” ability of a player, and even add a little personality to each player, which is always fun. And seriously, EA. If you like this, steal it. I'd be honored.

-Bryan Clark is a longtime forum administrator at MaddenMania and a staff contributor here at Operation Sports.