A look at the underrating of freshmen on the default roster

[renegade28]

Having suspected that EA's default roster underrated the incoming freshmen for many iterations now, I decided to use the dynasty website's ability to download the entire roster to look at the actual numbers. I started an online dynasty with a default named roster, then simulated each year while grabbing the roster for each season. So far, I have gotten three subsequent years (2013,2014,205) of rosters to compare the default freshmen to their game-generated counterparts.

The results back up the feelings I had originally. The average top 5 freshman at each position is underrated by 3-4 points.

Top 6-10 is worse at 4-5 points underrated.

Top 11-20 is 3-4. 21-30 is 1-2. 31-40 is 1.

So what is happening during my dynasties is the freshmen on the roster rarely have a big impact and are routinely passed up by new recruits.

I also am going to look into the older underclassmen being underrated as well.

Excel file used to run the numbers: Roster Breakdown (http://www.4shared.com/zip/UQPEjwgk/Roster_Breakdown.html)

I plan on continuing the simulation and gathering of subsequent years to see what the rosters look like once all of the default players have graduated. Hopefully, there is a roster editor who can use this information to make the default roster more comparable with the generated ones and allow some of this year's freshmen to make an impact during dynasties.

[souljahbill]

Good luck with this. I think we all had a feeling that default freshmen sucked.

[psuexv]

Well the big issue is that EA really has nothing to go off of except recruiting ranking and that is hit or miss at best.

[steelerfan]

Could the reverse be true and the generated recruits are overrated instead? You'd have to know how these guys turn out to determine if one is overrated, or the other is underrated.

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[psuexv]

Could the reverse be true and the generated recruits are overrated instead? You'd have to know how these guys turn out to determine if one is overrated, or the other is underrated.

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Very good point since there are those that complain about the amount of high 90s upperclassmen.

[ryby6969]

Very good point since there are those that complain about the amount of high 90s upperclassmen.

Yeah, I actually like how the default Freshman are rated. It is tough for True Fresh to come in and make a Huge impact as it should be. You should not be able to just plug Freshman into the starting lineup and not be penalized for it.

[renegade28]

Yeah, I actually like how the default Freshman are rated. It is tough for True Fresh to come in and make a Huge impact as it should be. You should not be able to just plug Freshman into the starting lineup and not be penalized for it.

Yeah, I don't have problem with that. It's the fact that the game-generated freshmen come in higher making the default freshmen irrelevant.

[JeffHCross]

Renegade, when you say that the default freshmen are underrated, are you comparing them to the generated freshmen class? I assume so, it just wasn't clear from your original post.

Take a look at this, it's a similar idea: http://www.thegamingtailgate.com/forums/showthread.php?1794-JeffHCross-Project-2-Progression-Examined. I don't plan to update it this season, because I believe the calculation for OVR has changed drastically this year.

In my opinion, there are several problems (at least in years past, I haven't had the chance to over-analyze NCAA 13) with the default freshmen.

The most obvious is that their progression does not, in practically any way, resemble the progression possibilities that the roster reflects year over year (i.e. between NCAA 12 and NCAA 13).
Another problem, one that was readily apparent in NCAA 11, was that sometimes the freshmen have their rating reduced in ways that they can't recover from. In NCAA 11, the most common was that a freshman WR (maybe more than just WR) would have his AWR at 40. You simply won't progress highly enough to overcome that, at least in terms of OVR. I've noticed at least a few guys that are similar in NCAA 13; like some OLBs with 90+ SPD and 90+ ACC, but absolutely pathetic (~65) AGI, which kills their OVR.
The third issue, and I believe this may be the most relevant to Renegade's post, is that, unlike Madden's rookie ratings (or, I guess, Madden's ratings period), I don't believe NCAA's freshmen are necessarily individually rated. That is to say, I'm not sure Mario Edwards, Florida State's :5star: DE, rated 80 OVR on the default roster, would necessarily have been rated 80 OVR on another team, say Ohio State, or say Mid Tenn State. Now, that's just my opinion, and I could be totally wrong.