If some coaches were good at development and some good at scouting it would just add another level to the game. As for " on the clock" take a look at Washington . ...they finished in the middle of the pack with out a gm.

I think the Top 10 players in the draft ratings should be available without having to use your scout points thus helping out bad teams...Allowing them to use their scout points on other players...... deeper in the draft....Shared Scouting....I'm against it.....Also should get rid of the Trade value meter during the draft...I think 10 is enough to be used on scouting draft picks and Free Agents...I think Free Agents who haven't started a game need to be scouted too.....Overall I liked the draft

After reading all the posts on this, i still strongly feel that we should do away with this feature. When we added volatility to the mix, that was good enough to give some boom or bust to the draft. There are definitely 1st round picks that bust (Jamarcus Russell) and some late round gems (Tom Brady). What you don't see is half of a 1st rd draft class be a mystery and end up the equivalent of 4th-5th rd picks and sticking owners with wasted cap space. I am all for making this game better as we go, but I would much rather see any effort go into fixing glitches like sideways running, improving tackling, better QB play in relation to their ratings, OP blitz defenses, more playbook options on offense, etc. The draft wasn't broken from my viewpoint and didn't need tweaking as a whole. Yes I am aggravated at my wasted 1st rd pick, but others are as well. The draft should be an even slate for teams to compete in. If people like the scouting idea, maybe add a scouting process to the previous draft version (maybe 2-3 per team here and exclusive to that owner) to give a little extra potential ratings visibility. That would add a dynamic without ruining the draft process.

This would just make late round picks even more completely useless. All the good players will still be taken early, and the dregs will be randomized so you can't even accurately pick the "best of the worst" of what remains.

1-2 I felt I hit well on... While he wasn't the best player available, he's going to be someone I can build around... And he's already shown +4 / +3 improvement. Interestingly, I hit 2 out of 3 solid picks in my 4th / 5th round picks (4.19 and 5.5) that look to be heading for mid-70s to possibly 80 (from right around 70). The rest of the picks... Well... Largely average ratings, but trending upwards on most.

The obfuscation in general... I do like the idea, due to the potential mix of better players into the later parts of the Draft. I think that if we're going to insist on obscuring the fundamentals (Speed, Acceleration, Intelligence, Discipline), the range should be tighter; fundamentals should be a little more obvious and better known.

The scouting... I feel that the amount of scouts we get should correspond with the amount of visits / hostings a team can have. Also, while it'd be nice to add a specific scouting 'coach', poaching and such would be intense and probably kill it. I'm wondering if we could use the stats of our current coaches to determine how far the range of a player's stats is narrowed when scouted, but ONLY for us? i.e.: A QB I want to scout has an Accuracy range of 20-80. My QB Coach has an Accuracy of 75. When I scout, the rest of the league sees the QB's range close to 45-75. However, my coach can 'tell' that the QB trends towards the higher end of that range, so I actually see his Accuracy as a range of 60-75 (or something similar, based on the Coach's stat). This would make our current coaches even more useful without totally breaking the system.

Obviously I've gone into a complete rebuild (again... Thanks, BA. ;P Heh), so it's going to be a few Drafts to really evaluate how things will go. It's a 50/50 proposition in my eyes: A bit more churn in where the good players fall to is great, but there's definitely some refinements needed.

Not sure if this is what people were looking for in opinions, but... Heh.

Increase the progress made during training camp, especially a rookie's first camp.
Increase the likelihood of a player drafted after round 4 'booming'.

If the progress for a booming player isn't quicker, he's worthless to the team who drafted him.

The player on my team who has shown the most improvement is a 7th year OL who has gone +24 over the course of his career, but has still never been #1 on the depth chart.

League-wide the player with the most improvement over the course of his career is a 10th year OL for Miami who has gone +37 (-2 this recent camp). The average for the most improved player on each team is somewhere in the high teens.

Even if you get lucky and find one of those diamonds in the rough, when all is said and done the best you can hope for is cubic zirconia many years down the line.

It wouldn't matter if a late round pick ended up improving +50 over the course of his career if it takes 10 years to get there. That player would be cut long before any real benefit was seen.

Ok, so here's an interesting idea - what if volatility is not set until after the draft? (Maybe even turning it back off of the player cards). Then, volatility is tied to draft position - i.e. higher drafted players have a lower likelihood of a high volatility (but not zero) and later round picks have a higher likelihood of volatility.

I also like the idea of having the first camp for rookies move more than they do in the rest of their career.

I think the volatility being shown makes for some interesting choices at the top of the draft.

Do you take the 99 player with 90 volatility, or the 90 player with 15 volatility?

I've become of fan of volatility, I just wish the changes were quicker.

Rookies need to move 5-6x more in their first camp because of the reasons that WarEagle says. I end up playing a lot of rookies I shouldn't because that's the only way I've ever found them to reach potential and gain play experience.

What if volatility were obfuscated . Made clearer by scouting