Scouting Talent with Madden NFL 12
EA SPORTS has posted an interview with ratings guru Donny Moore to learn how the Madden NFL team comes up with the player ratings, particularly for rookies.
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There’s probably still confetti and BBQ sauce stuck to hidden places in Cowboys Stadium and we’re already turning our attention to the future of football. In video games.
Each February the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis provides hundreds of football players the opportunity to run, jump and lift their way into the NFL. This time of year also finds the EA Tiburon development team hard at work on Madden NFL 12 adding new features, adjusting what works and updating teams, players and other details you’ll surely notice. As these two occasions line up, we get the opportunity to discuss the topic that drives heated Madden NFL conversations year round: player ratings.
We got a hold of Madden NFL’s ratings czar/designer, Donny Moore, to get a peek at what he’s looking for at this time of year when it comes to NFL players in general and rookies in particular. Not all college superstars translate to the NFL and even with updatable rosters, Moore wants the new game to get it right on the new players as soon as possible.
What follows is a Q&A session that scratches the surface of the science behind the method.
EASPORTS: Accurate representations of players in Madden NFL is what you do, but what specifically are you trying to accomplish when coming up with ratings for rookies?
Donny Moore: We’re trying to portray each player and their on-field performance as accurately as possible, and that’s difficult to do because so much is subjective, -ratings like speed, jumping, agility acceleration; you can put a number on them and be pretty accurate.
We’re putting all that stuff together right now. Up to this point, there’s been no [Scouting] Combine but we’ve received scouting reports and, -I use ESPN Insider, Sporting News War Room reports, Football Outsiders and similar resources. We have access to a number of different scouting services. I try to use all that information and accumulate as much information as possible.
Take Mark Ingram, for example running back from Alabama. For his speed, he’s probably going to get a decent grade. He’s not a guy that’s known for speed. That’s not why he won his Heisman, that’s not why he’s a great back and that’s not why he’s going to be the first running back taken off the board. His speed's not great, but it’s not terrible. Where is it? Well we don’t really know because he hasn’t run yet. These scouts make projections. They say “this guy’s probably a 4.5 [seconds in the 40 yard sprint] guy, this guy’s a 4.55 guy and this guy’s a 4.45 guy.” And then you’ve got guys who are your sub-4.4 guys. All that information has a big weight right now when I’m creating these guys. I’ll put in numbers; -I’m giving Mark Ingram a speed rating now. I’m giving all these guys speed. When the NFL Combine happens that solidifies my data. Or, it could screw someone’s rating up. In the case of Ingram, if he’s a 4.55 guy and he ends up running something in the 4.6s? Well then I immediately have to take whatever I had his speed at initially, like say 87, 88, 86, and end up subtracting 2,3,4 points from his speed, wherever 4.6 fits into our range. At the same time it’s not as if we say “Oh, the dude ran this 40 time? That’s how fast he is.” At the end of the day, it’s game speed. It’s how fast he plays with pads on because that’s what you do in the video game and what you do in life. You’re not playing in shorts and running the way Usain Bolt does.
EASPORTS: How involved do you get in these projections? It sounds like you’re putting together your own big board or something.
Moore: Yeah. Although we don’t put together a board to say “this is who we think is going to be what.” We’re just strictly reacting. We’re always trying to react to what’s going on in the real world. A lot of that is based on perception right? We don’t know who’s going to get drafted where but we have a pretty good idea of where a lot of these guys rank right now. Most of the time, that doesn’t change dramatically between now and the actual NFL Draft. Jeff George a few years ago, I don’t think he was perceived as the number one quarterback, but he’s a guy that the Colts ended up taking first pick overall and [ESPN draft analyst, Mel] Kiper ended up jumping all over them. A lot of that was because nobody perceived Jeff George as a guy you needed to spend a big pick on. It’s perception but it’s all based on scout’s perception and the pundit’s perception and these other experts that really follow football. It’s all about trying to come up with this one number for whatever that rating might be, and a lot of times you’ll see conflicting information, of course.
EASPORTS: How do you treat the Heisman caliber players compared to incoming player who don’t have the same name recognition?
Moore: Ingram is a guy that had the great track record AND he’s a high profile guy. It’s all about figuring their draft position and how their skills are translating to the NFL. Eric Crouch, we didn’t have him with decent quarterback skills when he came into the league after winning the Heisman because his NFL quarterbacking skills were below average. They turned him into a safety.
If a guy won an award and he’s considered a sixth round linebacker, we’re not going to give him much of a bump if at all. He’ll have better awareness than probably your average linebacker if he was a guy that won awards and things like that. That said, we don’t give points to the guys that were well known in college. It’s all about where he ends up getting drafted and what his pro prospects look like.
EASPORTS: What's the process of giving a rating to a rookie player?
Moore: To quickly walk through the process: I’ll take a guy like Mark Ingram or Blaine Gabbert and I’ll find what everyone perceives is his best NFL comparison. Just to throw an example out there let's say Mark Ingram’s baseline equivalent is Ricky Williams. I’ll take Ricky Williams and utilize him as a template. I’ll know right away that the Mark Ingram player I’m creating is in a similar mold as a Ricky Williams. From there, obviously, I’m tweaking each individual rating to how Ingram plays. It’s just a starting point to give me a template for a player and how he plays.
