Madden NFL 11 News Post

FBGRatings Seeks to Recalibrate Madden Ratings, Change Game

02:46 PM - January 24, 2011 by RaychelSnr

I recentely sat down for a talk with FBGRatings.com's Dan Berens to discuss his site's vision and what's going on over there today. The site is currently working on getting accurate ratings for every player using real hard data converted into the Madden ratings universe. Dan claims that when these numbers are plugged into the game, it plays much better and much closer to real life. Check out the interview below and also check out Dan's website to see what he's got going on!

Interview with Berens on the OS Radio Show on BlogTalkRadio

Game: Madden NFL 11Reader Score: 6/10 - Vote Now
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Member Comments

# 861 DCEBB2001 @ 10/07/12 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lon515


	to have mike Wallace at an 96 spd then have Antonio brown at 86 spd is a complete joke, mike is faster by far but 10 points, Antonio also is a much better route runner, not even close but you have them tied, i was reading threw here and i was getting excited until i looked at the ratings them selves

FBG ratings utilizes real NFL scouting data to derive Madden ratings and attributes. Unlike how EA rates players, the normal distribution of the population data is utilized. Therefore, a player with an "elite" talent is more rare than one with an "average" talent. For instance, in years past where an average speed would be around 88-90 for just about any skill player, that average is now around 80. In addition, all players are rated on the same scale no matter their position. You used to have a TE and a WR who ran equal 40 times with unequal SPD ratings. That no longer holds true. All players are rated on the same scales regardless of position where 90 is truly elite and rare. In Brown's case, he posted a 4.48 at his pro day in 2010. The 90 SPD rating is obtained when a 4.40 is posted. Average is 4.81. Therefore, his SPD is 86.

However, all of this will be changing soon. In Madden, all players stop accelerating at 45 yards and their velocity from 45 yards to infinity remains constant. Using split times for each player we can determine their peak instantaneous velocity at 45 yards using a cubic function matching the points. Their rate of change in velocity can also be determined. A graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the department of mathematics is taking the calculations for this project. By this April, all players will have new ratings matching more closely to their real acceleration curves.

# 862 DCEBB2001 @ 10/07/12 11:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zmurkz


	Hi, couple of questions, do I have to input all the ratings of the site manually? and will these ratings work with Madden 12 and Madden 12 franchise mode? Thanks.

All ratings are calculated for Madden 12. I am waiting to see what the latest patch brings as far as being able to edit and place edited players into CCM. If all goes well, I will update the calculations this year. And yes, you do have to put them all in manually.

# 863 The ArkanSaw @ 10/07/12 05:05 PM

Cant wait to use these when the patch drops, i always felt that the speed of players as currently used by EA makes the field so small.

Also as a side note, have you experimented with Upping Press coverage drastically across the board because it seems Pressing is either a successful animation or the WR blows by the CB. I think with a higher press the Passing game becomes more difficult and realistic simply because you wont wait for a WR to get open after 2 seconds and this can mess up your reads quite a bit. Also feel lower release ratings can help make the battle off of the line of scrimmage more realistic instead of the WR's getting a free release 90% of the time. This will ake routes less precise and potentially make route runners that much more important.

Also i would like to see LB's have improvements on their zone and man coverage to help with TE's being open almost at will and to help slants .

Also for OLine play i think ratings need to be upped across the board to help make better line interaction between the Dline and Oline. Specifically the Awareness and Pass Block ratings to help with block sliding and keeping Lineman Engaged more.

Also for DE's mostly in the 4-3 i think should have a drastically reduced Block Shedding and DT'S across the board need less Power move and more Block Shedding/Awareness/Play Recognition/Tackling because DT'S are so useless this year because of the lack of middle penetration.

Coverage based SS/FS/ Need drastic decreases in Play recognition and higher Awareness, Zone coverage and Man coverage needs drastic boosts. The reason i say this is because alot of FS/SS read the running plays to well and they seem to react to the run too well and get alot of tackles that the LB's should have.

And for Run helping SS/FS like Laron Landry need drastic decreases in Zone/Man Coverage and improvement in Play Recognition,Tackle,Block Shedding,Pursuit and Press Coverage. And maybe a lower awareness to make them more vulnerable in the passing game.

FB'S need a MAJOR overhaul with ratings IMO. I believe they need drastic improvements to Awareness and Impact blocking because FB's jobs are too simple for their Awareness to be so low, their job 95% of the time is blocking and leading the running back so i believe they need drastic improvements on that end.

Lastly i think 3-4 Dlinemen should have a major improvement to Block Shedding, Tackling and Pursuit and also Play recognition to make the more helpful in the running game.

Sorry for the long write up but definitely appreciate your guys dedication to make ratings more realistic.

# 864 DCEBB2001 @ 10/07/12 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The ArkanSaw


	Cant wait to use these when the patch drops, i always felt that the speed of players as currently used by EA makes the field so small. Also as a side note, have you experimented with Upping Press coverage drastically across the board because it seems Pressing is either a successful animation or the WR blows by the CB. I think with a higher press the Passing game becomes more difficult and realistic simply because you wont wait for a WR to get open after 2 seconds and this can mess up your reads quite a bit. Also feel lower release ratings can help make the battle off of the line of scrimmage more realistic instead of the WR's getting a free release 90% of the time. This will ake routes less precise and potentially make route runners that much more important. Also i would like to see LB's have improvements on their zone and man coverage to help with TE's being open almost at will and to help slants . Also for OLine play i think ratings need to be upped across the board to help make better line interaction between the Dline and Oline. Specifically the Awareness and Pass Block ratings to help with block sliding and keeping Lineman Engaged more. Also for DE's mostly in the 4-3 i think should have a drastically reduced Block Shedding and DT'S across the board need less Power move and more Block Shedding/Awareness/Play Recognition/Tackling because DT'S are so useless this year because of the lack of middle penetration. Coverage based SS/FS/ Need drastic decreases in Play recognition and higher Awareness, Zone coverage and Man coverage needs drastic boosts. The reason i say this is because alot of FS/SS read the running plays to well and they seem to react to the run too well and get alot of tackles that the LB's should have. And for Run helping SS/FS like Laron Landry need drastic decreases in Zone/Man Coverage and improvement in Play Recognition,Tackle,Block Shedding,Pursuit and Press Coverage. And maybe a lower awareness to make them more vulnerable in the passing game. FB'S need a MAJOR overhaul with ratings IMO. I believe they need drastic improvements to Awareness and Impact blocking because FB's jobs are too simple for their Awareness to be so low, their job 95% of the time is blocking and leading the running back so i believe they need drastic improvements on that end. Lastly i think 3-4 Dlinemen should have a major improvement to Block Shedding, Tackling and Pursuit and also Play recognition to make the more helpful in the running game. Sorry for the long write up but definitely appreciate your guys dedication to make ratings more realistic.

The simplest way for me to respond to your lengthy post is to tell you that I do not determine the interactions in the game. I only interpolate the data that I am given. Sliders can be used to solve the majority of the issues you describe vs. using ratings outright. FBG ratings merely uses the NFL scouting data to develop realistic ratings based on a normal distribution and universal applications of said ratings to any and all players regardless of position. What you describe above seems to lie more with slider issues than what we do. Basically, if the data says a guy is worthy of a particular rating, we rate that player at that rating. We do not fudge the numbers based on the gameplay within Madden.

# 865 lon515 @ 10/07/12 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCEBB2001


	FBG ratings utilizes real NFL scouting data to derive Madden ratings and attributes. Unlike how EA rates players, the normal distribution of the population data is utilized. Therefore, a player with an "elite" talent is more rare than one with an "average" talent. For instance, in years past where an average speed would be around 88-90 for just about any skill player, that average is now around 80. In addition, all players are rated on the same scale no matter their position. You used to have a TE and a WR who ran equal 40 times with unequal SPD ratings. That no longer holds true. All players are rated on the same scales regardless of position where 90 is truly elite and rare. In Brown's case, he posted a 4.48 at his pro day in 2010. The 90 SPD rating is obtained when a 4.40 is posted. Average is 4.81. Therefore, his SPD is 86. However, all of this will be changing soon. In Madden, all players stop accelerating at 45 yards and their velocity from 45 yards to infinity remains constant. Using split times for each player we can determine their peak instantaneous velocity at 45 yards using a cubic function matching the points. Their rate of change in velocity can also be determined. A graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the department of mathematics is taking the calculations for this project. By this April, all players will have new ratings matching more closely to their real acceleration curves.

well your "system" is wrong you have roddy white faster than Antonio brown , that's no where near true, you also have marques colston one point below antiono brown in speed , that alone is embarrassing, so who ever's scouting data you are using sure is not the nfl's brown in considered to be a way better all around receiver and Wallace needs to work on his route running but you have them equal in that department.

just checked again.. you have flacco and mat ryan rated higher than big ben not to mention you have rg3 medium throw acc at in the 60's ... yea im done with this... this is a joke

# 866 buckey00 @ 10/08/12 02:15 AM

How does fbg calculate the juking, trucking, spin move, and stiff arm ratings?
Thanks

# 867 AussieChiefsFan @ 10/08/12 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCEBB2001


	Presently, no. But we are looking into doing one for NCAA. We have all of the data for every player (our database consists of over 70,000 players but only 20,000 are on the NFL site). I wouldn't anticipate it happening until the ability to export/import rosters is back.

okay

10char

# 868 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lon515


	well your "system" is wrong you have roddy white faster than Antonio brown , that's no where near true, you also have marques colston one point below antiono brown in speed , that alone is embarrassing, so who ever's scouting data you are using sure is not the nfl's brown in considered to be a way better all around receiver and Wallace needs to work on his route running but you have them equal in that department. just checked again.. you have flacco and mat ryan rated higher than big ben not to mention you have rg3 medium throw acc at in the 60's ... yea im done with this... this is a joke

Do you present any evidence to support this? This sounds like it is merely opinion coming from a Steelers fan upset that his team's 2nd WR and QB are not rated as high as he likes.

The raw attributes (SPD, AGI, ACC, STR, and JMP) are attributed to raw measurements that show the POTENTIAL for maximum ability.

Brown:
40 Time: 4.48
http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members...php?pyid=74466

Colston:
40 Time: 4.50
http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members...php?pyid=32697

The great thing about FBG is all bias on the interpolation is avoided and the data is allowed to determine the distribution. It's not a system for everyone, but it seems to work fine for fans of the site.

# 869 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by buckey00


	How does fbg calculate the juking, trucking, spin move, and stiff arm ratings? Thanks

It depends on the position. For RB/FBs it is attributed to several scouting grades. One of which is an actual juke grade that incorporates short agility, ability to stick a foot in the ground, and COD. Another grade is the "strong arm" grade. It is the direct attribute for the stiff arm. This correlates very closely to the TRK grade as well as many RBs will have effective SFA and TRK grades. Some will have one higher/lower than the other significantly however, albeit more rarely.

Other positions have different grades such as "work in space", "close quarter moves", "shed tackle", "elusiveness", etc. It really depends on the position group.

# 870 lon515 @ 10/08/12 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCEBB2001


	Do you present any evidence to support this? This sounds like it is merely opinion coming from a Steelers fan upset that his team's 2nd WR and QB are not rated as high as he likes. The raw attributes (SPD, AGI, ACC, STR, and JMP) are attributed to raw measurements that show the POTENTIAL for maximum ability. Brown: 40 Time: 4.48 http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members...php?pyid=74466 Colston: 40 Time: 4.50 http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members...php?pyid=32697 The great thing about FBG is all bias on the interpolation is avoided and the data is allowed to determine the distribution. It's not a system for everyone, but it seems to work fine for fans of the site.

this has nothing to do with being bias, because i dont have to use your ratings. what i did was judge your ratings based on players i know. and you prance around like you got the best ratings when there just as bad as EA.

you put up colstons 40 yd time . but how many years ago was that, the announcers always say if he was faster he could the best receiver in the nfl,

and once again you have brown's route running tied with mike Wallace which is in no way possible dude, you can ask Wallace himself he said on numerous interviews that he is not the best route runner along with Tomlin always telling him to be more than just a deep threat.

so false ratings in the physical department, along with the players core skills, thats what we have so far.

# 871 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lon515


	this has nothing to do with being bias, because i dont have to use your ratings. what i did was judge your ratings based on players i know. and you prance around like you got the best ratings when there just as bad as EA. you put up colstons 40 yd time . but how many years ago was that, the announcers always say if he was faster he could the best receiver in the nfl, and once again you have brown's route running tied with mike Wallace which is in no way possible dude, you can ask Wallace himself he said on numerous interviews that he is not the best route runner along with Tomlin always telling him to be more than just a deep threat. so false ratings in the physical department, along with the players core skills, thats what we have so far.

I am not prancing around doing anything. The thread was based on an intereview that I was approached by OS to do. It's the same with anything else I publish. The thread is to make people aware of the site. I did not even start the thread, so prancing around seems to hardly be the case. If people have questions regarding the ratings they can contact me directly or use this thread to do so. I am pretty darn opaque with how I rate players. Is it perfect? No, of course not. All it does is offer an alternative perspective on rating players in Madden. I am not forcing anyone to use them. I don't even have rosters to download presently, so if you want to use them, you have to take the time to input them manually.

I am more than open to suggestions for changes, but I always ask that primary source evidence be provided. For instance, there are several people who frequent this thread who have offered a better way of rating SPD and ACC. I took those stances, considered the data I had, and have found a better way to rate those attributes. That process is already underway and should be ready to go for next year.

As for Colston, yes he could be faster, but a 4.50 is not bad speed. It wasn't like it was 10 years ago either...he ran it back in 2006, not 2002.

The data I have shows that Wallace has gotten to be a very good route runner. Top in the league? No. Top for his position? No. Good enough to also warrant a top 5 rating for the position? Yes.

It all comes down to what you prefer. I am not going to flaunt anything here, but if you have questions feel free to ask. I will answer as much as I can without being in voilation of any NDAs. Please feel free to offer any source material for me to analyze as this still seems to run along the side of opinion and conjecture until I see something tangible.

# 872 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UC Bearcat


	Is there a ps3roster file that's already edited to download?

There are not any rosters available for download presently.

# 873 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big FN Deal


	I think DCEBB did a great job of responding to you in a concise manner and I would just like to add my 2 cent. It's like you are coming in attacking him for how he does ratings, instead of trying to have a discussion about them. It's not like DCEBB is holding up FBGRatings as the best thing since ever, he is just saying a standard universal method is the best way of having ratings that make sense. Like he stated to you, if you feel like you have a better formula to calculate route running or whatever ratings, fine, present it for discussion because he, unlike seemingly EA Tiburon, is very open to new ideas IF they provide a universal standard. As it stands right now, you seem like someone in the peanut gallery or on the sidelines trying to tear down another persons hard work, instead of offering constructive criticism, ie trolling, imo.

Precisely what I was getting at. I am very open to people's ideas since there are always better ways to impliment things. What I have to work with is nowhere near perfect. However, I do personally believe that my approach offers another perspective into how ratings can be implimented into the video game. That being said, all sources are seemingly limited in one way or another. For instance, I only have scouting data for about 10-20 different ratings for each position. I don't have data to support how well a C can cover in a man-coverage scheme or how accurate a DE is when kicking. So everything has its limitations.

What I do offer is Madden ratings based off of real NFL scouting data provided to me by several inside sources. Anyone can take that for what it is worth as I cannot give out the actual data sets due to the NDA I had to sign in order to use the information. What you can trust, however, is that the provided data allows me to rate well over 20,000 players in this database. Without that data, I would not be able to do so.

Think about how much time that takes for a second. I remember it taking WEEKS to edit a roster of 2000 players, top to bottom, in Madden. Now multiply that by 10. Oh, and add 2500 new players to that database every offseason to signify incoming rookies and college football graduates. It is not an easy or fast process. In fact, it is an ONGOING process. I openly encourage anyone else to rate players how they like and create a website with your edits. Making Madden ratings is a lot like interpreting history; there are often more ways to interpret an event from several different angles, neither of which is truly "correct" or truly "false". Rather, each offers another piece to a complex and incomplete puzzle.

# 874 Zmurkz @ 10/08/12 04:27 PM

Sorry for the questions but I'm still a little confused. If I input all these ratings myself for Madden 12, I will end getting a lot more realistic statistics? I usually use sliders for that. So this will let me have a more realistic game with defaults sliders? Sorry about my confusion.

# 875 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zmurkz


	Sorry for the questions but I'm still a little confused. If I input all these ratings myself for Madden 12, I will end getting a lot more realistic statistics? I usually use sliders for that. So this will let me have a more realistic game with defaults sliders? Sorry about my confusion.

No. The system merely rates players off of real NFL scouting data instead of however EA rates them (watching youtube vids and stats). It also utilizes a universal distribution for every attribute and player no matter their position. It is a different way to rate players. However, there are many testimonials out there from people who have liked these ratings better because they claim that the game plays better with said adjustments to ratings. I am one of those people, however, so don't just take my word for it.

# 876 buckey00 @ 10/08/12 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCEBB2001


	It depends on the position. For RB/FBs it is attributed to several scouting grades. One of which is an actual juke grade that incorporates short agility, ability to stick a foot in the ground, and COD. Another grade is the "strong arm" grade. It is the direct attribute for the stiff arm. This correlates very closely to the TRK grade as well as many RBs will have effective SFA and TRK grades. Some will have one higher/lower than the other significantly however, albeit more rarely. Other positions have different grades such as "work in space", "close quarter moves", "shed tackle", "elusiveness", etc. It really depends on the position group.

Thank you. I found it interesting that lesean mccoy has 92 trucking vs 82 juking while ray rice has 72 trucking vs 87 juking considering I always thought of mccoy as a shiftier back and rice more of a pounding one.

# 877 DCEBB2001 @ 10/08/12 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by buckey00


	Thank you. I found it interesting that lesean mccoy has 92 trucking vs 82 juking while ray rice has 72 trucking vs 87 juking considering I always thought of mccoy as a shiftier back and rice more of a pounding one.

None of these attributes work alone, however. When running in the game the other attributes do have an affect on the performance of the player. In this case, Rice has much more STR which will work well in conjunction with his other abilities. The ELU rating is for breaking are tackles. The TRK is for bowling a player over. I would consider Rice better at the former than the latter, but that's just me. I didn't come up with that data, however, so I imagine that there is a reason for it.

McCoy's Juke and Spin grades are based on the ability to perform those abilities at the player's speed in conjunction with the AGI rating. McCoy graded out at being far better at finishing a run, however. His lower STR rating will affect the effectiveness of those ratings though. The SPM/JKM ratings are also based on the burst/balance/COD grade.

Make sure you consider all of the other ratings and how they may work in conjunction. The cool thing, IMO, about this system is that you can have a player rated highly in one attribute and poorly in a correlating attribute that will affect the player's ability during a running play by employing several factors like accelerating, finding the hole, getting through the arm tackles of a DL, side stepping a LB, getting up to speed on the sideline, and running through a SS at the goal line. EA uses such a small margin for variance, that all the players feel and run the same. FBG Ratings uses more variety in combinations of skillsets to make each player feel differently from one another (like in having low STR but high TRK).

# 878 buckey00 @ 10/08/12 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCEBB2001


	None of these attributes work alone, however. When running in the game the other attributes do have an affect on the performance of the player. In this case, Rice has much more STR which will work well in conjunction with his other abilities. The ELU rating is for breaking are tackles. The TRK is for bowling a player over. I would consider Rice better at the former than the latter, but that's just me. I didn't come up with that data, however, so I imagine that there is a reason for it. McCoy's Juke and Spin grades are based on the ability to perform those abilities at the player's speed in conjunction with the AGI rating. McCoy graded out at being far better at finishing a run, however. His lower STR rating will affect the effectiveness of those ratings though. The SPM/JKM ratings are also based on the burst/balance/COD grade. Make sure you consider all of the other ratings and how they may work in conjunction. The cool thing, IMO, about this system is that you can have a player rated highly in one attribute and poorly in a correlating attribute that will affect the player's ability during a running play by employing several factors like accelerating, finding the hole, getting through the arm tackles of a DL, side stepping a LB, getting up to speed on the sideline, and running through a SS at the goal line. EA uses such a small margin for variance, that all the players feel and run the same. FBG Ratings uses more variety in combinations of skillsets to make each player feel differently from one another (like in having low STR but high TRK).

That is very cool. So Rice's strength will allow him to break more arm tackles while mccoy will be able to finish runs more effectively? I have noticed ea has so little variation in the ratings and they are very inaccurate. Such as Arian Foster runs a 4.78 but he has speed in the 90's while Trent Richardson runs a 4.45 and has a lower speed. And Collin Kaepernick feels allmost the same as using Aaron Rodgers. I cant wait to use these after the patch comes out.

# 879 DCEBB2001 @ 10/09/12 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by buckey00


	That is very cool. So Rice's strength will allow him to break more arm tackles while mccoy will be able to finish runs more effectively? I have noticed ea has so little variation in the ratings and they are very inaccurate. Such as Arian Foster runs a 4.78 but he has speed in the 90's while Trent Richardson runs a 4.45 and has a lower speed. And Collin Kaepernick feels allmost the same as using Aaron Rodgers. I cant wait to use these after the patch comes out.

There are certain ratings that do not work alone. When running, the SPD and ACC ratings do work symbiotically up until 45 yards. At 45 yards, the SPD rating takes over until the STA determines how long the maximum velocity is effective. For SPM/JKM moves, the AGI and ACC ratings play a very large role in getting into and out of the move effectively. For instance, a RB with a JKM of 90 with ACC of 90 will get out of the move quicker than a RB with a JKM of 90 and ACC of 80. So when you look at the ratings on the site, don't sinle out any one attribute. Instead, look at how they may affect one another. The only "true" way to see how each player performs is to actually try it out.

I do not have a timetable for how long it will take to do the OVR calculations for M13 presently. It really depends on how much we CAN edit for CCM. If EA allows us to edit everything in a roster before starting a CCM, then it would be worth all the time it takes to get the calculations correct. If we can't edit as much as we would like, then I may have to skip that for this year and hope that full editing is back next year. I would also like to see if we can edit in CCM, especially draft classes.

The one thing I am constantly fighting is the urge to simply rate players the same way EA does, but with the better info. For instance, all attributes have a designated "average" rating as well as a max and min. This average for all raw attributes is 70. So an "average" vertical jump of 34.5 inches (the average since 1998) would yield a JMP rating of 70. However, in Madden the average JMP is 68. The average SPD is 74, ACC is 81, and AGI is 74, and STR is 71. So as you can see, the average would change if I were to rate players the way EA does. However, I would still utilize a normal distribution based on the data.

I would love to hear from some of the guys who are regulars to this thread about this in detail. The upside to using the same way EA rates players is that you can use rookies produced in CCM. The downside is that you get more ratings inflation toward the upper bound. Thoughts?

# 880 PGaither84 @ 10/09/12 01:23 PM

I assume you plug these ratings into Madden and actually test the game play. After all, the title of this thread is "Change Game."

Well, I was wondering about things like Zone Coverage. I am still playing Madden 12 and I use custom sliders, and even with 90-100 pass reaction time for the computer, the zone coverage by line backers was still quite lacking for my tastes. For example, I could call a simple cover 3 blitz with the players in yellow hook zones across the middle, and a LB with 64 ZCV would roll over to the wrong zone leaving his area uncovered. I also find many times when I have both MLBs assigned to hook zones over the middle, they often like to split wide leaving the middle WIDE open, an area that was supposed to be on lock down. There are countless other examples on how they cover flats or buzz zones as well [or don't for that matter.

Well, I decided to take a look at the roster of Madden 12 and found that the highest ZCV rating of any line backer was Brian Urlacher with 85, and it all went down hill from there. There were only 9 line backers in the entire game with 80 or higher ZCV ratings, and of those only 3 or 4 were over the 80 mark, and one of them was in the free agent pool.

So, the first thing I decided to do was edit all of the 49ers linebackers to 99 ZCV [not save] and go into practice and see how well they did their job when maxed out. Well, while they didn't always do a perfect job [programming] they did a very good job of covering their assigned area and locking down routes/receiver in those zones. Part of what I wanted to test is if the programming of the game itself was even set up to do it's job correctly, which it should with a rating of 99. Anything lower than 99 and per-programed random mistakes creep in more and more. Players start to become less perfect.

So, i reloaded the roster and began an NFL wide roster edit. I chose to edit ever line backer who had a ZCV rating of 65 or higher and give them all a universal +10 to their ZCV rating. I have found over the years in Madden that 70-75 is about the cut off of effectiveness of Madden positional ratings before it doesn't matter how low your rating is. For example, the QB Cone from Madden 06 was the same size for about a 70-75 Awareness QB as it was for a 40 awareness QB. It wasn't until you started to go above 75 that the cone would actually get bigger. There are other examples of this, but the real point is that in Madden, if you want your rating to matter, it had better be over 75. Also, what this really means is that if you had below 65 ZCV [in my opinion] you didn't really need that 10 point boost. You were never going to be a coverage line backer anyway. That's how/why I set that cut off point so I wouldn't waste my time editing everyone.

Well, fast forward a bit and I have really enjoyed the results of my efforts. Playing against he computer is more difficult [and realistic] as players DO THEIR JOBS. I can't over stress how important that is to me. They aren't perfect out there, but they look a lot less like high school kids and look more like pros out there.

Now, there is a separate talk about how high a rating should be, and what a 90+ rating means, but that isn't what I want to get into just yet. I just wanted to address how the ratings on your site actually impact game play in Madden. I find the incredibly low ZCV ratings I see on your site to be detrimental to a simulation experience. Weather or not I agree with how low those ratings are is irrelevant.

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