Warrior General Games

Once again, high scouting bars does not = good. Low scouting bars MAY = bad, if you assume certain build tendencies. I have no reason to believe that the calculations in the sim correlate at all with the calculations to make the scouting report bar (stamina and confidence, among other things depending on the position, don't raise many scouting report bars other than Overall). I think the most obvious example of this is O-linemen with pimped out blocking bars being horribly abused by D-linemen because the bar is so heavily affected by strength and blocking. As far as what they do for scouting if you're actually trying to gameplan, taking some time to watch film has always been the most effective way to gameplan against individual players.

Oh, and please don't cite Painmaker's team. It's a good team (being owned entirely by him), but there are plenty of teams with "normal builds" who would tear it apart.

Originally posted by Jack Del Rio
Once again, high scouting bars does not = good. Low scouting bars MAY = bad, if you assume certain build tendencies. I have no reason to believe that the calculations in the sim correlate at all with the calculations to make the scouting report bar (stamina and confidence, among other things depending on the position, don't raise many scouting report bars other than Overall). I think the most obvious example of this is O-linemen with pimped out blocking bars being horribly abused by D-linemen because the bar is so heavily affected by strength and blocking. As far as what they do for scouting if you're actually trying to gameplan, taking some time to watch film has always been the most effective way to gameplan against individual players.

Oh, and please don't cite Painmaker's team. It's a good team (being owned entirely by him), but there are plenty of teams with "normal builds" who would tear it apart.

The only scouting bars you shouldn't be looking at would be any lineman; offensive or defensive. There are new ways to build a great player that won't be indicated by the scouting bar.
At least for the rest of the positions like LBs and Safeties, you can tell whether they're half decent by their scouting bars. (If they have their builds closed)

See o-line forum, I'm starting a project to determine the bar formula

When scouting an opposing team the scouting bars can be a big indicator of if the build sucks. I especially use these when looking at CBs with low pass defense bars, meaning they are most likely slow (big vulnerability). In other positions like o-line, where almost all the builds tend to be the same, it doesn't affect as much. Also scouting rushing QBs when they become effective. But when recruiting players who should have an open build, don't even look at it.

As said many times in here, the scouting bars cannot determine a good player, but it can tell you a really bad player.