Rate This Guy: Patrick Peterson

We've had alot of questions recently regarding to our rating system and we've decided to do another rating and go a bit more in-depth with how we determine our ratings. Today's victim: Patrick Peterson. NOTE: We've decided to rate Peterson in his primary position as a CB. We're pretty adamant that a game with as many resources and as much depth as Madden SHOULD HAVE, should possess a rating for both Kick Return and Punt Return just like they have for Speed, Awareness and Tackling. Peterson's return ability has absolutely nothing to do with how good or bad of a CB he is. The two should be rated entirely independent of each other.


As always first we look at the numbers. Like any rookie, we started Peterson out based on his draft position, he gets the same rating any first-rounder would get: 60. Normally we would look at three years worth of production, but Peterson is a rookie so we'll only have this year to draw from, we couldn't care less what he did at LSU or at the NFL Combine.


Peterson's Stats


Years ago we devised positional stat ratings in addition to things like stat minimums. What's a PSR? Easy, a Positional Stat Rating is a value we devised for each stat based on position. For example, 5 INTs for a CB may have a value of 90, while 1 INT might be valued at 70. Looking further, 50 tackles might have a value of 85 while 30 tackles might only be valued at 70. Essentially we look at all of a player's stats, plug them into our macro formulas and then let their numbers determine an average. Let's look at Peterson.


Games: 14 (85)

Tackles: 59 (75)

INTs: 2 (75)

FFumbles: 0 (65)

PDs: 11 (70)

Wins: 7 (60)

Rush Defense Rank: 18 (65)

Pass Defense Rank: 22nd (65)



Some people may question some of the categories. Why would you care about how a CB plays the run? Does it matter how many wins his team has? We care because multiple categories can track how well a player is contributing to his team as a whole. The more items we draw from allow for more accuracy. Wins? That might be the most important stat of all. Like Herm Edwards said many moons ago "Its why you play the game!" Numbers don't mean as much when they don't contribute to the bottom line: WINNING. While its only one category it can certainly give us a hint of players that are generating empty numbers. So we take Peterson's total (560) and divide that by the number of categories (8). 70 is his baseline rating. Pretty accurate actually, as he's proven to be an outstanding returner but pretty average corner. Now for the opinion part. Up to 10% of his total can now be added/subtracted or ignored after the baseline is generated. So we have 7 points to play with. At this point we'd ask the scout we assigned to the team where the points should go. This person has watched every game and is acutely aware of his level of play. He can easily tell us if the rating is "a bit off" or not quite indicative of his affect on games. This allows "a bit" of expert opinions, PFF breakdowns, intangibles and other subjective viewpoints to go into a rating--maybe a player made the Pro Bowl or won Fedex Player of he Week multiple times. We factor these things in, we just don't believe they should count for anything greater than 10%.

We decided to leave Peterson at 70. He hasn't been horrible, but can hardly be considered a Good CB in the NFL at this point. All in all, he's 10 points higher than he started the season, but is still slotted correctly in terms of his level of play and production. Which is exactly what ratings are supposed to do.

Got other questions about how we rate players or our stat values? Would you like us to rate someone? Let us know. There is no substitute for a Consistent, Complete and Impartial Ratings system and we enjoy what we do.