I agree somewhat to what your saying but what skill are the madden people showing during their evaluations? You mention they have way more eyes and more information than we could expect but it doesn't show up in their ratings updates. They aren't paying attention to scheme fits and game plans and etc.....Its a well known fact that Donny Moore doesn't even watch more than a handle of games a weekend. How's he evaluating or even the people that is helping him all of the players across the league? If he supposedly uses PFF for their grade updates then why don't the scouting grades and the madden updates coincide? The madden people do what nearly every average sports fan does; they watch sportscenter and nfl network. I'd be willing to bet you Donny Moore and half his staff couldn't tell you the difference between a power I formation and offset I formation.Ulrich82 wrote:I'm certainly not married to Madden grades, but I don't see any workable alternative.
Having a committee of graders with one person each responsible for certain teams' grades would lead to way too much variation based on who is doing the grading. PFF uses volunteer graders to help them come up with their grades, but these people get some training and the site uses several graders to attempt to average out good/bad graders and possible mistakes. There is just no way to standardize this across a handful of people. I also think that, even though we have plenty of smart people here who love football, scouting/grading is a very particular skill that takes a lot of practice. I just don't think we can expect people to do a good job of this.
Madden grades have their faults. I think the biggest issues are that the grades are tied into game balance (so changes tend to be conservative and I think the non-skill positions always tend to get shafted a bit) and that the overall grade has perhaps become less important to Madden than the individual skill grades. However, they have way more eyes and more information than we could expect to compile (for example, Donny Moore has acknowledged that they pay attention to PFF ratings when making grade updates).
We need to start somewhere and its time for a change.