I actually think the changes in this draft to static attributes made a difference, but had some unintended consequences too. Since more of the later round players creation value was spent on the static attributes, the dynamic ones were generally less. Especially problematic is the smaller gap between current and potential attributes. Even with high volatility, a small gap allows the rating to move only a little. As JDB has explained, the closer the actual is to the potential, the less the potential will move.
I found plenty of players with enough good (not great) static attributes, but with little available growth range. For example, a player that has 15/25 in M2M, even with 100 vol could top out at 35 or 40. I’d like to see volatility be able to push beyond these limits a bit more.
I also think we should figure out what we really expect from these later rounds. When I did research in the past, the last few round really only produce about 1 starter per round each season, and only a handful of hall of gamers in the history of the NFL. So I agree with JDB that we need to carefully tweak it to keep good-to-great player rare in the late rounds. (They were basically non-existent before).
