One of the most important things you can do in franchise mode is to consistently draft top level talent every offseason.
A couple years ago, EA Sports tweaked the scouting system to be a little different than in the past so we put together the most comprehensive Madden 24 franchise scouting guide ever developed to make sure you have an edge over your opponents.
Because the scouting system is much more sophisticated than in previous Madden games, we have to break this up into a multiple different parts. We’ll start with the information below.
Once you get a good grasp on it, you will then want to use it together with our positional scouting information.
How To Determine Overall Rating
In order to determine with complete certainty what a prospect’s overall rating will be, you need to make sure that player is 100% scouted.
Each prospect in the draft starts with a “Projection” for where he will go in the draft. That “Projection” is completely irrelevant for determining a prospects overall rating.
Once the 100% scouted threshold is met, it will unlock the player’s “Talent” rating. That is a code that will tell you what to expect for the player’s overall rating.
Note: Madden 24 gives league commissioners more customization options for the rookie drafts. They can increase or decrease how good each draft class is. The guidelines below are accurate for the “Normal” setting which is the default.
Your commissioner has the option to change the strength of any position group to Very Weak, Weak, Normal, Strong, or Very Strong. By doing so, it will slightly throw off the overall ratings below.
This is the only section in our scouting guide that can be thrown off by your commissioner. The combine information, physical ratings tab, and core attributes will all still be 100% accurate regardless of draft class strength.
That being said, let dive into it. There are 7 different “Talent” ratings that a prospect can get which can be found below along with what they mean.
- Top 5: 76+ Overall
- Round 1: 74-76 Overall
- Round 1-2: 72-73 Overall
- Round 2-3: 69-71 Overall
- Round 3-4: 68-69 Overall
- Day 3: 65-67 Overall
- UDFA: 64 and below Overall
It is important to note that the “Talent” rating will only tell you about a player’s overall rating and nothing else. It is not impacted by a player’s development trait, a player’s age, or any other factor.
You should also notice that while the difference between a Round 3-4 prospect compared to a Round 1-2 prospect may sound huge, it could be as tight as the Round 1-2 prospect being a 72 overall while the round 3-4 prospect is a 69 overall (only 3 points difference).
That means that if you like some of the physical ratings of a lower rated prospect more than those of the higher rated prospect, it may make more sense to “reach” in the draft.
An example of this is if you see a wide receiver that has 95 speed but is rated as a Round 3-4 prospect (68-69 overall), it will often make more sense to draft him over a different receiver with a Round 1-2 grade (72-73 overall) that has 92 speed.
These are tradeoffs you will have to make for yourself but I urge you not to get too caught up in the overall ratings of a prospect.
40 Yard Dash And Speed Ratings
Any seasoned Madden player can tell you that speed is the most important individual rating for just about every position so it is extremely important that we are able to accurate forecast it.
One input you can use to determine speed for any player in the draft is his 40 yard dash time. This year, you are given 2 different 40 yard dash times: Combine and Pro Day.
And because speed is such an important attribute, EA tries to obscure what the speed rating of any player will actually be. With the 40 yard dash ratings by themselves you can get a rough idea of speed but not the actually rating.
For example, if you see a player who runs a 4.33 second 40 yard dash you will not necessarily know if that player will have a higher speed rating than a player who runs a 4.36 second 40 yard dash. However, you will know that a player who runs a 4.33 second 40 yard dash will be faster than a player who runs a 4.49 second 40 yard dash.
For the most part, we are going to ignore the 40 yard dash time in the college pro day. From our extensive tests, it doesn’t seem to have much power in predicting speed rating.
The only thing it seems to do is create a random number that adds between -.08 and .01 seconds to a prospect’s 40 yard dash at the combine. So if a prospect has a combine 40 time of 4.50 seconds, he will have a pro day 40 time of somewhere between 4.42 and 4.51 seconds. The number is mostly there to distract you.
We will be focusing on the 40 yard dash combine times.
- 99 Speed – Average 40 time 4.25 (Range 4.24-4.31)
- 98 Speed – Average 40 time 4.28 (Range 4.24-4.32)
- 97 Speed – Average 40 time 4.30 (Range 4.24-4.35)
- 96 Speed – Average 40 time 4.30 (Range 4.28-4.39)
- 95 Speed – Average 40 time 4.36 (Range 4.30-4.42)
- 94 Speed – Average 40 time 4.37 (Range 4.33-4.44)
- 93 Speed – Average 40 time 4.40 (Range 4.34-4.46)
- 92 Speed – Average 40 time 4.42 (Range 4.37-4.45)
- 91 Speed – Average 40 time 4.45 (Range 4.40-4.51)
- 90 Speed – Average 40 time 4.48 (Range 4.44-4.55)
- 89 Speed – Average 40 time 4.52 (Range 4.45-4.58)
- 88 Speed – Average 40 time 4.54 (Range 4.49-4.60)
- 87 Speed – Average 40 time 4.56 (Range 4.51-4.61)
- 86 Speed – Average 40 time 4.58 (Range 4.53-4.66)
- 85 Speed – Average 40 time 4.62 (Range 4.56-4.68)
- 84 Speed – Average 40 time 4.65 (Range 4.59-4.70)
- 83 Speed – Average 40 time 4.67 (Range 4.62-4.74)
- 82 Speed – Average 40 time 4.72 (Range 4.65-4.77)
- 81 Speed – Average 40 time 4.74 (Range 4.67-4.80)
- 80 Speed – Average 40 Time 4.76 (Range 4.71-4.83)
- 79 Speed – Average 40 Time 4.80 (Range 4.75-4.86)
- 78 Speed – Average 40 Time 4.83 (Range 4.77-4.88)
- 77 Speed – Average 40 Time 4.85 (Range: 4.80-4.91)
- 76 Speed – Average 40 Time 4.88 (Range: 4.83-4.93)
- 75 Speed – Average 40 Time 4.90 (Range: 4.84-4.94)
This data can be a little confusing so we’ll go over some examples.
Example 1: Let’s say you scout a player with a 4.24 second 40 yard dash time at the combine. You look at the chart above and you see that 4.24 seconds is in the range of 97, 98, and 99 speed. This means your player will be at least 97 speed and has a chance for either 98 or 99 speed.
Example 2: Let’s say you scout a player with a 4.44 second 40 yard dash time at the combine. You look at the chart above and you see that 4.44 seconds fits in a lot of the ranges. It could be at the very edge of 94 speed or it could be at the other edge of 90 speed. That’s a pretty wide range (and one we’ll teach you how to significantly narrow down in a later article).
But because of the average rating we would guess this player has either 91 or 92 speed as that is most often what a player with a 4.44 second 40 yard dash gets.
3 Cone Drill & Acceleration and Agility
The 3 cone drill takes a player’s acceleration and agility ratings into account. Acceleration and Agility are the only 2 ratings that impact your 3 cone drill time.
This one isn’t as straight forward as some of the other combine scores but we can still get a lot of good information from it.
In an overly simplistic way, the way it works is it adds together your acceleration rating and your agility rating and gives you the 3 cone drill time. That’s the basics and really all anyone needs to know on a practical level.
If you are interested though, it is really a weighted average with acceleration impacting the 3 cone drill number slightly more than agility does. This concept can be a bit confusing so I’ll attempt to explain it with some examples below.
Let’s say a player has 90 acceleration and 90 agility. That player will always have a 3 cone drill time of 6.89 seconds (give or take 1/100th of a second).
But let’s take another player with 88 acceleration and 92 agility. When you add those 2 numbers together you still get 180 total (like in the 90 acc/90 agi example) but this player will have a slightly slower 3 cone drill time than the player with 90 acceleration and 90 agility.
A player with 92 acceleration and 88 agility will have a slightly faster 3 cone drill time than the 90 acceleration and 90 agility player.
This is because the acceleration rating carries slightly more weight in the calculation than the agility rating. Practically, this doesn’t tell us much but it is something to keep in mind as we go through the chart below.
In most players you are interested in drafting, their acceleration rating and their agility rating will be very close to one another. You won’t find too many players with 94 acceleration and 82 agility. It will generally be something like 90 acceleration and 88 agility.
Because of this we decided to keep acceleration and agility the same for each player in our tests. So we did tests with 80 acceleration and 80 agility and then 81 acceleration and 81 agility and so on until we reached 99 acceleration and 99 agility.
Given all this information, you should be able to get a pretty good guess as to a player’s acceleration and agility given the table below.
- 99 Acc/Agi – 6.47 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 98 Acc/Agi – 6.50-6.52 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 97 Acc/Agi – 6.55-6.57 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 96 Acc/Agi – 6.60-6.62 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 95 Acc/Agi – 6.64-6.66 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 94 Acc/Agi – 6.69-6.71 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 93 Acc/Agi – 6.74-6.76 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 92 Acc/Agi – 6.78-6.80 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 91 Acc/Agi – 6.83-6.85 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 90 Acc/Agi – 6.88-6.90 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 89 Acc/Agi – 6.92-6.94 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 88 Acc/Agi – 6.97-6.99 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 87 Acc/Agi – 7.01-7.03 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 86 Acc/Agi – 7.06-7.08 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 85 Acc/Agi – 7.11-7.13 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 84 Acc/Agi – 7.15-7.17 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 83 Acc/Agi – 7.20-7.22 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 82 Acc/Agi – 7.25-7.27 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 81 Acc/Agi – 7.29-7.31 Second 3 Cone Drill
- 80 Acc/Agi – 7.34-7.36 Second 3 Cone Drill
Let’s do an example with this table. Maybe we are interested in a player with a 6.85 second 3 cone drill. We look at the chart above and see that number falls around 91 acc/agi. So we expect somewhere around 182 points (91+91) to be split between acceleration and agility.
But remember this isn’t exact because acceleration is weighted more heavily in the calculation. So the 6.85 second 3 cone drill could instead result in only 180 points if there is a wide gap between acceleration and agility. For example 94 acceleration and 86 agility. Or in a much rarer situation, it could be 184 points if a player has much more agility than acceleration. For example 96 agility and 88 acceleration.
This isn’t an exact science and there is no way of knowing exactly what you will get for acceleration and agility based on just this number (although we can use other information to give us exact numbers which we cover in the position specific articles).
20 Yard Shuttle & Agility And COD
The 20 yard shuttle works almost exactly the same as the 3 cone drill just this time instead of taking acceleration and agility into account, it takes agility and change of direction into account.
This time, agility is the higher weighted attribute and change of direction is the lower weighted attribute.
That all being said, we’ll just dive right into our results and go over what they mean below.
- 99 AGI/COD – 3.81-3.82 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 98 AGI/COD – 3.83-3.85 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 97 AGI/COD – 3.87-3.89 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 96 AGI/COD – 3.90-3.92 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 95 AGI/COD – 3.94-3.96 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 94 AGI/COD – 3.97-3.99 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 93 AGI/COD – 4.01-4.03 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 92 AGI/COD – 4.04-4.06 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 91 AGI/COD – 4.08-4.10 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 90 AGI/COD – 4.11-4.13 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 89 AGI/COD – 4.15-4.17 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 88 AGI/COD – 4.18-4.20 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 87 AGI/COD – 4.22-4.24 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 86 AGI/COD – 4.25-4.27 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 85 AGI/COD – 4.29-4.31 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 84 AGI/COD – 4.32-4.34 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 83 AGI/COD – 4.36-4.38 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 82 AGI/COD – 4.39-4.41 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
- 81 AGI/COD – 4.43-4.45 Second 20 Yard Shuttle
Remember, your Agility rating and Change of Direction rating won’t always be the same. They will generally be pretty close though.
So for this example, we’ll imagine a player with a 4.17 second 20 yard shuttle time. When we look at the table above, we see that it means he will probably be somewhere around 89 agility and 89 change of direction or 178 total points to split between the 2 ratings.
Just like with before, it can be more points or less points depending on which attribute those points are in but we will generally be pretty close.
One thing to consider here is if we have a relatively poor 20 yard shuttle time paired with a relatively high 3 cone drill time, that will often mean that the player will have higher acceleration and lower agility.
This isn’t an exact science but you can generally get a feel for it if you see a player is rated as the 1st best 3 cone drill at his position and the 8th best 20 yard shuttle at his position.
The same thing works the other way around. If you see a player with the 1st best 20 yard shuttle drill and the 10th best 3 cone drill, it is a pretty safe bet that he will have more agility and less acceleration (at least compared to the other players at his position).
Vertical Jump & Jump Rating
Before we get started going over how the Vertical Jump combine result impacts your jump rating, it is important to note that the “Broad Jump” combine and pro day results are 100% useless and don’t factor into jump, strength, or any other rating as far as we can tell. It is safe to completely ignore broad jump.
Vertical Jump on the other hand is directly correlated with the jump rating your player receives.
There is still a bit of a range but it isn’t nearly as wide as the speed/40 yard dash ratings.
The table below goes over what you can expect based on vertical jump results in the combine.
- 43 inches or more = 99 jump
- 42-42.9 inches = 97-98 jump
- 40-41.9 inches = 93-96 jump
- 38-40 inches = 90-93 jump
- 37-37.9 inches = 88-89 jump
- 35-36.9 inches = 85-87 jump
- 32.5-34.9 inches = 80-84 jump
The table above has much less variablity than what takes place with speed. So for example if you are scouting a player with a 41.7 inch vertical jump, it is just about guaranteed that he will have 95 or 96 jump. And if you scout a guy with a 40.1 inch vertical jump, he is just about guaranteed to have 93 or 94 jump.
Most people only really care about guys with super high jump ratings. For most people, if a player has 72 jump vs 78 jump that won’t impact whether or not he get’s drafted so that is the reasoning this test was kept to only relatively high values.
Strength and Bench Press
When we are trying to determine a player’s strength rating, that is one of the few times we take into account pro day results (as well as combine results).
Each strength rating has a range of bench press reps that you will see. For example, if you look at the numbers below, a player with 85 strength will do anywhere between 29 and 33 bench press reps.
Or a different example is if you look at a player with 87 strength, he will do anywhere between 31 and 35 bench reps.
So let’s take an example of a player that did 32 bench reps at the combine and 35 bench reps at his pro day.
Both of those numbers have to fit into the given range. So we look at 85 strength that has a range of 29 to 33 bench reps and we realize that while our 32 bench reps at the combine would fit in there, the 35 bench reps at the pro day wouldn’t, so we know it has to be higher than 85 strength.
The same problem happens at 86 strength. That range is between 30-34 bench reps. Since our player did 35 reps at his pro day, that is also too low.
We then move on to 87 strength and see that both our 32 and 35 reps would fit here (range between 31-35) and also at 88 strength (range between 32-36) but it wouldn’t work at 89 strength (range between 33-37).
- 99 Strength – Average Bench Press 45.7 (Range 45-46)
- 98 Strength – Average Bench Press 45.1 (Range 43-46)
- 97 Strength – Average Bench Press 43.8 (Range 42-46)
- 96 Strength – Average Bench Press 41.8 (Range 40-44)
- 95 Strength – Average Bench Press 41.7 (Range 39-43)
- 94 Strength – Average Bench Press 39.8 (Range 38-42)
- 93 Strength – Average Bench Press 38.3 (Range 37-41)
- 92 Strength – Average Bench Press 36.8 (Range 36-40)
- 91 Strength – Average Bench Press 36.5 (Range 35-39)
- 90 Strength – Average Bench Press 35.8 (Range 34-38)
- 89 Strength – Average Bench Press 34.5 (Range 33-37)
- 88 Strength – Average Bench Press 33.5 (Range 32-36)
- 87 Strength – Average Bench Press 32.2 (Range 31-35)
- 86 Strength – Average Bench Press 32.1 (Range 30-34)
- 85 Strength – Average Bench Press 31 (Range 29-33)
- 84 Strength – Average Bench Press 30.5 (Range 28-32)
- 83 Strength – Average Bench Press 29.1 (Range 27-31)
- 82 Strength – Average Bench Press 28.5 (Range 26-30)
- 81 Strength – Average Bench Press 27.5 (Range 25-29)
- 80 Strength – Average Bench Press 26.5 (Range 25-29)
That is a pretty solid way of getting within a range of 2 or so strength but we can sometimes pinpoint it even further based on what position a player is at.
We are just scratching the surface with part 1 of our Madden 24 scouting guide! By the time we’re done there will be no guess work left in scouting rookies for your franchise.
You will want to use this information with the information presented in our position scouting below.
Positional Scouting
- Quarterbacks
- Halfbacks
- Wide Receivers
- Tight Ends
- Offensive Line
- Defensive Ends
- Defensive Tackles
- Outside Linebackers
- Middle Linebackers
- Cornerbacks
- Safeties
