How are Madden Player Attributes decided?

It is very interesting to look at how Madden creates its Player Attributes every season because, unlike in many other sports, easily accessible NFL statistics do not tell the full story of how well a player does in different facets of the game. With a sport like baseball, statisticians and analysts can look at statistics and production from the previous season in order to accurately rate their players in video games. In football, it is very difficult to account for all of the ways that a player contributes to his team by just looking at his statistics. There are 44 attributes and over 2000 players in Madden, meaning that there around 100,000 attributes that need to be graded on a scale of 0–99.

Player attributes (also referred to as player ratings) can be broken out into various categories based on a player’s position:

• Attributes that apply to every position are known as Overall Ratings. These include: OVR (Overall), STR (Strength), AGI (Agility), SPD (Speed), ACC (Acceleration), STA (Stamina), AWR (Awareness), JMP (Jumping), INJ (Injury), and TGH (Toughness)
• Passer Ratings include: THP (Throw Power), SAC (Short Throw Accuracy), MAC (Medium Throw Accuracy), DAC (Deep Throw Accuracy), RUN (Throw on Run Accuracy), and PAC (Play Action Pass)
• Ball-Carrier Ratings include: TRK (Trucking), ELU (Elusiveness), BCV (Ball Carrier Vision), SFA (Stiff Arm), SPM (Spin Move), JKM (Juke Move) and CAR (Carrying Ability)
• Receiver Ratings include: CTH (Catching), CIT (Catch in Traffic), RTE (Route Running), SPC (Spectacular Catch), and RLS (Release)
• Defensive Ratings include: TAK (Tackling), PMV (Power Moves), FMV (Finesse Moves), BSH (Block Shedding), PUR (Pursuit), PRC (Play Recognition), MCV (Man Coverage), ZCV (Zone Coverage), PRS (Press) and HTP (Hit Power)
• Blocking Ratings include: PBK (Pass Blocking), RBK (Run Blocking), and IBL (Impact Blocking)
• Kicking Ratings include: KPW (Kick Power), KAC (Kick Accuracy) and RET (Kick Return)

From 1999 to 2015, a man by the named of Donny Moore was responsible for rating players on Madden. He would review game film, statistics and measurements for every player to help determine ratings. Moore would put players into one of two categories before he began rating: Veteran and Rookie. Since Veterans had existing ratings from previous games, he would use those ratings as a starting template. For Rookies, he would have to create the ratings completely from scratch. Moore worked with stats from the scouting combine to establish a player’s ratings in categories such as speed and strength. A 4.50-second time in the 40-yard dash would usually earn a prospect a speed rating of 89.

Once all attributes are assigned ratings, the ratings are averaged out to get each player’s overall rating. You’re probably wondering how this is done and if there is a standard formula that is used to get the overall ratings for all players. The overall rating is the weighted average of a player’s ratings across the 44 skill categories tracked by Madden, with different categories taking on more weight depending on the position. According to FiveThirtyEight, the most heavily weighted categories for QBs are awareness and throwing power, accuracy by zone (short and medium accuracy are both slightly more valuable than deep accuracy), and play-action passing. Together, these categories make up 89 percent of the overall grade for QBs, with the rest of the weight coming from throwing on the run, agility, speed and acceleration.

In Madden 2019, 54% of players had ratings that were 70 OVR or higher while in Madden 20, only 41% of the players are at 70 OVR or higher. Below, you will see a chart with the Madden Overall Ratings for players in both 2019 and 2020:

Although it is an inexact science, Madden usually gets it right when rating player attributes.