Madden Strength Rating for Linemen

Here is an interesting article by Clint Oldenburg (designer on Madden)

"What do the ratings actually do in the game?"

It's a question I hear all the time about Madden. The answer is, ratings do A LOT in the realm of gameplay; some of which you'd expect and some may surprise you. The rating under the microscope here is the Strength (STR) rating and how it relates to line play in the game. As a designer on Madden, I know Madden players want to know what all the ratings do. So let's start with STR:

First, I want to discuss how the players are given their strength rating. A lot of Madden players believe the strength rating is assigned based on NFL Combine Bench Press numbers or something similar. I can tell you that it does factor in, but it's definitely not the only data we use. Our resident Ratings Czar, Donny Moore works his tail off scouting everybody in the league and he would never just use one number to assign a rating. I worked with Donny this year to rate every offensive lineman in Madden. When working on the STR rating, the first thing I did was note whether a player plays on the left side or the right side of the line. Historically, the stronger run blockers play on the right side and the more athletic and quick linemen play on the left side. The reasons for this vary, but I'll discuss a few:

Most obviously, the majority of Quarterbacks are right handed, thus football teams want their most athletic lineman protecting their blind side on the left. In regards to Guards (pun intended), the left guard is the one who will traditionally pull the most in the running game. Why is this? I don't know for certain, but as I'll explain below, as coaches have always been very 'right-handed' in their playcalling, meaning they call a lot of running plays to the right. Here's the 'Chicken-and-the-Egg' debate in relation to football: Do coaches call runs to the right because their best run blockers are over there or are the best run blockers over there because coaches like to call running plays to the right? I don't know the answer to that, but this is where I started when giving out the STR rating. So, right off the top, most right-side linemen got an increase in the strength rating that left side guys did not.

Next, I looked at statistical reports and scouting reports for each and every lineman that I wasn't personally familiar with from my own playing days. This is where the Bench Press data was found. If bench numbers from a combine workout were decent, then I knew that guy had to at least have average strength for an offensive lineman. But, I didn't stop there. I also researched scouting reports for the most important trait; Playing Strength. When a scout writes that a lineman has good (or not so good) playing strength, it is far more important information than the bench numbers and had far more impact on the STR rating when assigning those numbers.

Lastly, I went with subjective types of data to round out each player's STR rating. I looked at things such as invidual game grades, team stats such as rushing yards, tackles for loss given up, sacks allowed and win/loss record. And as a former player, I also have a unique knowledge of certain guys I've played with or against that may help more accurately rate those players to further separate one linemen from another.

Now that you know how the STR rating is determined, I'll go into what it does in the game for the big guys. It doesn't have an affect on movement one way or the other and it doesn't change how blocks look for the most part. I'll even go as far as to say STR won't produce any more pancake blocks than you'd normally see. For the linemen, STR is a match-up of the blocker's STR rating vs. one rating of the defender of which the blocker is engaged (I will be discussing the defender's rating in my next piece -- gotta keep you hooked!!). If the disparity is largely in the blocker's favor, he will be able to hold his block for a longer-than-average amount of time based on the size of the disparity (not every time). If the STR rating matchup is in favor of the defender, he will be able to disengage from the block much quicker than normal on average (again, not every time). And if the two players have similar STR ratings, you'll see varied results in wins and losses over the course of game, but neither will dominate in this one specific area.

Hopefully this information helps you win a Cyber Super Bowl in Madden '13 and shed some light on what goes into the Madden player ratings. This is just a little piece, but it shows just how seriously we take the ratings process. It's not an exact science but I think it's closer than you may think. I'd like to write a series of these if there's an interest.

would you mind providing the link to this article? would love to keep following it without you having to post it each time

Here is the link

http://clintoldenburg.sotl.com/post/8/madden_strength_rating_for_linemen.html