The Case against Weekly Ratings

Its common knowledge that we don't agree with much that the Tiburon Madden Player Ratings team does. There is one thing, however that stands out as particularly foolhardy and woefully inaccurate, and that is the desire to change player ratings on a week-by-week basis. There are numerous reasons why this is a bad idea, and it makes us wonder, how did this foolishness start in the first place? When did this knee-jerk reaction to rating players begin? "Homer" fans have always pointed to highlights and single plays as a means to validate their players, but when did reasonable people start looking at numbers from one week and deciding players might need a All-Pro invite after a whole 60 minutes of play?


And then we realized: THEY DIDN'T. That's the loud "homer" casuals talking, The vocal minority. You know the ones, the guys whose vote never leaves their teams when it comes to voting for the Pro Bowl. The ones who never, ever think their players are rated high enough. Sadly, the Tiburon guys have fed into this: LeSean McCoy a higher juke rating for breaking some guys ankles? Really? If one positive play yields rewards shouldn't one negative one yield consequences? So what about the times he was tackled in the backfield? Did they lower tackle breaking for that? I'm guessing No. Does Jay Cutler deserve a boost for a solid week one performance? Does that even remotely make sense based on his last 1.5 seasons? Doesn't it make more sense to wait for a longer period before turning him into Joe Montana? Hell...at this rate, the entire NFL will be 90s before midseason. Even Cam Newton (who had a great debut) needs time to be properly assessed. What is he averages 140yds passing & 2INT per game for the next 3 weeks? Would he still need higher ratings? Every good play/good day simply can't be a cause to raise ratings. The NFL season is a marathon, not a sprint. But then we remembered the Roster Guru is the same guy who raised Dante Wesley's Hitting Power after this disgusting cheap shot on Clifton Smith. Really?! SMH...

While we agree that transactions should be updated every week to make sure the rosters are 100% correct, one week is to small of a period to rate players based on, what gets noticed are highlights, what gets lost is consistency.

One week in the NFL is such a bad data group to choose from, We'll prove it to you; By that rationale, these players had horrible weeks and should decline: Felix Jones (2.6ypc) Tashard Choice (1.3 ypc) LT (3.2 ypc) Shon Greene (2.6 ypc) and what about Ben Rothlisberger, Matt Ryan and Donovan McNabb? Shouldn't they all take an 8-10 point hit? (please note the sarcasm) and what about Rex Grossman? He's clearly one of the NFL's elite passers after carving up that "elite" NYG's defense. Speaking of defense, Pittsburgh's is clearly no longer any good after their poor one week showing against the Ravens. Are we getting through to you yet?

What Improving should be: Simple. This should be a quarterly (every 4 weeks) look at what players are improving, staying the same or declining. A perfect example was Jammal Charles in 2010, coming off 1100 yards in 2009, After 4 weeks last year his Chiefs were 3-1 and he was averaging 90yds a game. This is precisely the kind of consistent production that warrants raising a player's stats, not a quick flash-in-the-pan performance followed by weeks of average play. History has shown us that the Tiburon rating team won't correct the rating of a player who has one good week followed by 15 sub par to average ones. So one good week is all you need? NO WAY..

What declining should be: Again, this isn't hard. Jame Delhomme started last year as the Cleveland Browns QB and through 4 weeks was benched, went 0-2 and threw 1TD and had 3INTs. Seneca Wallace was named the Browns QB after week 5.

We're hoping that the rating of players gets a bit more accuracy and consistency, instead of the "wow, did you see that? he's gotta be a 99!" factor that it currently has, but we won't hold our breath.