I haven't seen this discussed recently, apologies if I missed a thread.

It is obvious that the talent level of draft classes have been significantly reduced. I think that is a good thing - as a couple years ago you would see teams that had all starters around 90, and backups in the 80's. That's too powerful and not realistic.

I remember having teams where everyone on the roster was ranked 75 or higher. Now I am finding it necessary to have starters in the low 70's fairly often.

Two observations in regards to this:
1. Injuries are much more significant. You get your star LB injured, you likely will have to be playing a backup with a rating in the 60's.

2. It is really tough rebuilding a team right now. Established teams are stocked with veterans that still have the inflated player ratings. However, those teams are aging fast and the owners have to make a decision to slowly replace with less rated players or hold onto the veterans until the very end and then have a team just fall off the table in regards to talent.

The most appealing part of this game to me is the slow play. Having the talent level decline has very much affected the slow play strategy of this game.

Is this something that was actually implemented? People in my league were talking about how this latest draft was the worst one they've seen but I assumed it was just bad luck.

If this is the new normal, I welcome our talentless overlords. It'll certainly bring more parity to leagues.

As far as I know, nothing about the draft has changed. If I remember correctly, draft classes are determined on bell curves based on default weights. If a league has <X> number of "good" players at a position, that position will be weaker in the draft.

That's why some classes have 10 draftable QBs and other drafts have 0.

^
That is really good info, Seth.
Thankee, sai.
It sure does give me a reason to cast doubt on some prejudices I allowed myself to have regard the draft over time in any given league.

I, personally, "think" (being the right use in light of the nuggett you shared above), that draft classes are not necessarily diluted, but it is currently more important to look for players to excel "out of position."
As in: Drafting a "cruddy" WR in rd 2 that can actually have a great chance to be a RB (TE and FB being to hard to achieve Weight/time duration to gain need eg). LBs that become DEs etc.

I would appreciate any actual and/or speculative thoughts you have regarding my ideas that draft prospects have a better spread of applicable attributes vs. a concentration (edit: using default position weights as the standard).
It seems harder to find more than a coupla-3 WRs that have 80+ in the big 4 (spd rte catch brc) than it used to be - and also tall WRs. Yet it also seems easier to find a WR that has that height - and weight - to be a RB. on and on by position (allowing weight gain or loss/time).

Hope I did not ramble to confusion in my excitement. :)

While that is certainly good logic, the way that speed overrides all other things the way that it does should be modified. That is the key to switching positions like you say, and all the other strategy help topics highlight the same issue. I’ve only played here long enough to participate in one draft, but definitely found it ridiculous to see so many strong wr that couldn’t run and offensive lineman with no strength..it was almost as if everyone needed to move from end of the spectrum to the other.

Well, it's worse than that.

Here's how speed is measured: "It's actually just a downward-opening quadratic as opposed to exponential or logarithmic, where the vertex of the parabola is at 100. Basically it just slows down the impact of increasing numbers as you near 100 and increases the impact of decreasing numbers as you approach 0."

From this thread: https://champions.myfootballnow.com/community/3/2443?page=9#31149

What this means is that speed gaps increase the further you get away from 100. That means the gap between 80 and 85 is larger than 85 and 90; and the gap between 75 and 85 is bigger than 80-85, etc.

(There is also an innate bonus that ligher weight players have to their acceleration. But let's not get into that.)

That means that 70 SP LB with 100s in all his skills will be absolutely worthless covering a 85-90 SP RB out of the backfield let alone covering a 90-95 SP WR out of the backfield running the flat.

And you wonder why people are frustrated about others converting all their players into CB's & WR's.

No, I understand the frustration.

But I think it's worth pointing out how the upper end of the parabolic speed curve works as described. There isn't a lot of difference between 89 and 92, which are the max speed for a LBs and RBs. (RB may be able to hit 93, but I have not seen it.)

That means playing WRs at RB is more of a psychological advantage than it is a game breaking one. The maximum SP gain you get from dropping a RB to WR is 2-3 (rarely 3), so a 90 SP RB will be as good as a 92 SP WR playing RB.

It's only when an RB gets to 95 that the SP difference becomes noticeable, and you have to adjust your game plan [or be content to losing to Smirt when you don't have time to game plan].

WRs at RB actually have a disadvantage that no one talks about when it comes to pushing the pile as well since pushing the pile is a Strength roll and Strength is modified by weight.

I have considered putting together a team of nothing but FBs to see if they could grind out 100+ yards a game. They would never break a big one, but I bet they also wouldn't get stopped so often running up the middle.

Maybe I’m still too inexperienced with the game planning, but I’ve noticed other threads that also point out the offensive plays either breaking a home run from the split end wr or a rb flare or having to settle for a fg/punt. The running game feels like an early 2000’s version of madden where it’s 2 yards into the line and dust and everybody just throws deep down the seems. But then again, I don’t have the 90 speed rbs it takes to just sweep outside and past everyone...

It looks like you're doing OK for just starting.

There are certain plays that are game breaking because of either bugs in coverage code or bad default match ups.

For instance, the FL Hitch blows up a lot of defenses because of a bad coverage bug that causes the WR2 to get behind the CB2 when running slant routes, and the current implementation of the code that has the QB throw to the WR2 on that play about 70% of the time. [So 70% of the time the QB is going to go to the WR2 and ~70% of those times the WR2 is going to catch the pass and then it's 50/50 that gain is going to be for 50+ yards.]

Other plays, like the 221 deep passes and the HB Flare, put the RB (as the WR4 or 5) against a slower defender by default.