Okay... So, odd question perhaps that is illuminating my ignorance on a few aspects of MFN..

I have a pretty young backup player at QB. He is not rated well. First question is... Can that rating change, or will he surely not improve or regress? If it says 44/52 at the current/potential could it end up being significantly different than this number or is this set in stone? Is there any way to improve these numbers or can I count on my actions having little or nothing to do with altering these ratings?

Next question... What kind of impact will his poor ratings have on placekick holding duties? I mean, how much do these ratings actually play into the role of placekick holder? Do his "hands" or "intelligence" numbers matter at all? Experience? Or, is the position of holder really just a generic position that is not truly influenced by any numbers?

Finally, do holders have the potential to be injured? Does it help me to sit my primary QB and let the backup do the holding to try to limit the exposure somewhat to injury for the primary QB?

I would imagine the answers to the simple questions matt not prove to be so simple. I appreciate your responses. Still trying to understand what is really happening in MFN.

Thanks again...

Jason
Bandon, Oregon

Ratings will almost always change for better or worse. After training camp you will see players future ratings jump or regress. I am under the impression that this is completely random at this point.

Injuries do happen. Not sure about the likelihood that a place holder would be injured though. Guessing it would be a minimal risk.

Not sure about how intelligence or hands affecting place holding either... Sorry I cannot be if much help here.

Ratings are random in their adjustments, but each player is assigned a hidden value to determine the general direction (if you're into statistics, they are all assigned a mean but have a pretty large standard deviation). You'll find some players boom, others will bust, and most will have a small general movement one way or the other with an occasional blip in the non-trending direction. The current values will always move towards the max, but the max may go up and down from the above description.

Your player's development is influenced by his coaching staff - mostly by the head coach, then by his coordinator, and then by his position coach. So if your coaching staff hierarchy is poor in an attribute, the players will take longer to develop that attribute. In the first year there's not much you can do about your coaching staff, but in early free agency you can hire away coaches from other teams as long as you are offering them a promotion. Oh, and coaches will trend just like players do, including a decline as they age.

For kick holding, you should be safe from injuries. Injuries are determined by actual collision events, which are very unlikely for the kick holder (the exception maybe being a botched snap). The kick holding attribute is what you want to look for here - that's pretty much the only influencing attribute, and has a small impact on the kicker's accuracy as well as the botched snap potential.